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As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, the poor are poor by choice. To a large extent this is true. When you choose to goof around in school, cause trouble from the back row, harass the teacher, disrupt the education of others, not do your homework and not apply yourself, you'll leave school almost as ignorant as you started it. Of what value are you to a high tech marketplace?
When you sit around and smoke weed, drink excessively and do other drugs you disqualify yourself from lucrative careers. Girls who have babies when they are 15 don't have the job skills to support themselves and become a burden on society while sentencing their baby to a life of poverty. There are exception, but relatively few.
The problem is there is not enough incentive to work. I deal with business people every day whose biggest problem is getting people to come in to work on time and ready to do the job they were hired to perform. The laziness of others is the biggest obstacle to their own success. For whatever reasons our youth has very little work ethic. We have an entire generation of people who think they are entitled to live in Mommy's basement until Mommy dies and leaves them the house.
For the poor young gang member who lives on the streets because his mother works two jobs and is never home and his father was a one night stand she had when she was partying, they can either get the heck out of the street and go to school or go enlist in the military, learn a skill, and when they get out move anywhere else.
The "Great Society" was designed to create a permanent underclass dependent on government for everything so they would continue to vote for Democrats who tossed them a few scraps and kept them in the chains of poverty. Our schools are infested with liberals who tell people that tossing scraps to the poor is good and teaching them to support themselves is bad. There is no honor in being burden to your neighbors.
That title wouldn't assume they are or are not; it has no agenda.
It would just offer reasons why people aren't getting ahead.
I have no argument with this. It has to be a multifaceted approach, involving support, care, emergency aid, education, removal of unfair restrictions and hurdles, and above all, compassion.
Quite many of the poor are actually mentally handicapped or mentally challenged individuals due to life circumstances.
I know this because I had the opportunity to live and work among the poor for a long time.
Because their parents were likewise poor. These poor folks had to endure malnutrition, substance abuse of their parents, and lack of positive mental stimulation during their infancy and childhood.
They missed proper brain development at the most opportune time - during infancy and childhood.... So it's not surprising they adopt anti-social behavior especially if that's the only thing they knew from their parents or environment.
We can't have high expectations of them and they absolutely need help to become productive individuals, they can't do it on their own.
Why do you think so many people take an immediate position of saying you are a terrible person or even a racist for pointing out that too many people that are poor are unwilling to do the things you pointed out that they are unwilling to do. Are they saying you arr wrong to think too many are like this? Do they think that there are no poor that are like this? I also noticed they act as if you are saying all poor are like this but you did qualify it as being too many. You did not specify how many were too many. I do not know but it could be you see 5% of poor like this. Would they object to you thinking 1% of poor being like this was too many? I find it interesting that instead of asking for clarification on the actual message you are sending that they simply attack the messenger. Could it be they have such a black and white view of reality that any questioning of their stereotypes is beyond their ability to cope with so they immediately assume you are working solely from some sort of contradictory stereotype from theirs?
That assumes that most people aren't getting ahead, not true.
The people who offered help, ironically, were the people who were in the same boat as me: those least able to help were the most willing. The people most able found it easier to just chalk up my situation to some assumed character failure on my part and leave me to what they were convinced were my just rewards.
I refuse to do that to someone else.
I get that knee-jerk reaction often. I don't mind as I'm always trolling a bit anyway.
I thought of several inappropriate jokes about getting a head. What exactly does getting ahead mean to you? For me it has nothing to do with my finances.
So you are not entirely serious and enjoy people's emotional over reactions? I assume you must have a lot of spare time then.
Perhaps the defining reason that 'the poor' can't get ahead is because as soon as they even start to get ahead they are no longer 'the poor'.
Just flip those reasons and voile, the road to success.
Too many are,
Undereducated
Under motivated
Unwilling to plan
Unwilling to sacrifice
Unwilling to work hard
Unwilling to obey the law
Unwilling to care for their health
Unwilling to abstain from drugs and alcohol
Unwilling to remain unmarried until they can afford it.
Unwilling to present themselves to an employer properly.
I think you're missing the overall reaction. It's more nuanced than, "Don't make bad choices".
People can be and stay poor for those reasons, nobody is disagreeing with you that those aren't valid reasons, as well as many other reasons that are outside their control.
Aside from stating the obvious, I'm not sure what the overall point you are getting at is exactly.
Why the poor aren't getting ahead.
Dave Ramsey would agree with you.
As do i.
Thanks. It's good to someone else understands.
You do understand though why people unacquainted with your personal situation would simply put you in the box they reserved for all people they saw in that situation. The tendency to stereotype is a very hard one to fight. They had most likely in the past seen a similar situation caused by a real "character flaw" on the part of the person in that situation. Leaving "character flaws" aside as a bit of a subjective term and one I would not use as descriptive of the unwillingness that the OP is talking about. Pointing out that "too many" have an unwillingness to do things which keeps them from in improving their financial situation is not the same as ascribing that unwillingness to all in that situation. If the the reality, is that there are those that are unwilling to put forth the effort to become self sufficient then I would tend to say that no matter what percentage that amounts to there are "too many". If that is the case then pointing it out may not be pleasant to consider but it is something worthy of discussing rather than simply dismissing it and surely not cause to label the messenger with a distasteful label.
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