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Nobody implied that farmers were not smart or skilled or anything else,
NBA players are smart when it comes right down to their field if expertise. Sheepdogs are smart when it comes right down to their field of expertise.
Look how many people benefited from the labors of slaves. What does that prove?
It proves that farmers work hard, and can provide food for themselves, without worrying how much profit they make on their crops. Even if they ARE poor, that doesn't make them lazy or stupid.
They tend to have lower IQs. People with IQs bellow 100 will have a hard time finding decent gainful employment no matter what their educational level, level of drive, or whatever. Some will get lucky, the vast majority won't. Moreover, households earning a median wage at the bottom 20% earn only $19,178 per year and individuals earn a median income of $12,500. Since IQ correlates well with income, people in the bottom 20% bracket have a lower average IQ than people in other income brackets. Essentially, the lower your IQ, the lower your income will be, with some exceptions of course. Another thing to draw from this is that if you are cursed with a low IQ, your income potential is greatly limited, and IQ is fairly fixed throughout life.
There will always be people in the bottom 20% bracket no matter what. The problem is, the 20% bracket earns very little money, and their rate of income increase since the 1960s has been low relative to the upper brackets. There is a widening gap between the lower 20% and upper 20%. Should politicians try to close the gap? I'll let you forumers duke it out among yourselves. All I will say is that jobs for the poor are paying less as time goes on and higher paying jobs are becoming a lot more specialized requiring more brain power. If you want to make decent money; be born rich, smart, and/or lucky because menial work to mid-level work is either dissipating or paying less. Gone are the days when an average IQ guy could work at a factory and earn nearly as much as the 130 IQ engineer.
A high IQ is not a guarantee you'll get ahead. The ability to charm and manipulate others appears to be more important.
There are no grantees in life, but there are certain attributes that predisposes one to earn more money and IQ is one great predictor of income potential. Sure on an individual level you may find a high IQ person who is broke and a low IQ who is rich, but if you were to take a random sample of tens of thousands of people with IQ of 130 and tens of thousands people with an IQ of 100 in the US, the 130 IQ group will have a higher average income than the 100 IQ group.
It's elitists attitudes such as yours that makes me embarrassed to be a republican. Yes, there are many poor folks that are "a combination of lazy, stupid or unskilled" but there are many poor folks that have faced circumstances beyond their control, such as illnesses or layoffs, which can cause many folks to go broke. These circumstances can happen to anyone and no one is immuned to the unpredictabilities of life.
Yeah, what they say...
Who is really my neighbor?
Yes Chatteress, I wonder what people are thinking and where do they get the time to think it?
Sometimes I am just embarrassed to be part of the human race.
There is way too much suffering and anxiety going around and some are concerned that "PO' FOLKS" are just shirking their societial responsibilities?
And that it was stupid, lazy folks benefiting from unions?
Some friends were over at the house the other day and we were talking about the underclass (poor people). One of them works for social services and has got harsher in her tone about the disadvantaged as she has experienced more of the so called real people. She says, "it almost makes you want to vote republican"
The general feeling of our group was that 90% of the underclass (poor people) are a combination of lazy, stupid or unskilled. It was mostly their fault not society or business (employers). 20-30 years ago one could be a lazy uneducated person and do alright because there were plenty of jobs for everyone in manufacturing and strong unions, today, if you have no skills you will be poor forever. Agree?
Your friend from Social Services needs to return back to school. That said:
Yes, today there are more people of all colors and races, who, by choice have become poor, and are lazy, and stupid due to the proliferation of drugs, alchohol, and Hollywood. .. .... ..... However, I have met many people who are poor, but not by choice. Many would like to return to school, learn a trade, and upgrade themselves, but they cannot, due to lack of money, being a single, or divorced mothers with small children, and no one to care for them. It costs dollars to go to school, and our government is not giving it away anymore, as it used to be.
I think lots of these people will jump to the opportunity to upgrade themselves, if given a chance.
I wouldn't go that far to say that most are. However, most are missing some basic skill that they didn't pick up along the way. Such as showing up to work on time (Just ask any employer).
Here's the thing. There remains a good deal of social mobility in this country, where people move up and down the income ladder and, institutionally, our society does a pretty good job of providing the mechanisms for even the poorest people to move up in life. There's an education system and programs galore for anybody who asks for help, along with an enormous number of charities and volunteer organizations.
The net result? If you simply stay in school, do what your employer asks of you, constantly strive to be better at your job, and save 10% of what you make, you are almost guaranteed at least a middle-class lifestyle. If you take a few calculated risks along the way, invest in additional education, and really develop a network of mentors, then you'll do even better. I know people who have come to this country with next to nothing, not even a knowledge of the language, who are wealthy individuals today simply because they took advantage of the opportunities offered them.
I know one guy who came here from Greece in 1969, and started working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, not knowing the first word of English. Today, he owns five restaurants and is a rich man. He urges his employees to go to night school, to learn more about the restaurant biz, and the whatnot, even to the point of paying the tuition for a couple of his more motivated employees. But most ignore him and continue to work in a menial job--chiefly because they won't make the extra effort.
The other thing is that the persistently poor do two things that virtually guarantee a life of poverty: 1) Drop out of school, and 2) Have children at an early age while single. These two factors pretty much destroy opportunity. Yet, society bends over backwards to advise people NOT to do these things. You can walk into a Planned Parenthood and get contraception. You can find programs that will do next to anything to keep you on the education track. All you have to do is take advantage of them.
One thing all the immigrants have in common is that they or their family took the initiative--an affirmative act. There is a big difference between those members of my parent's family who came to America, compared with those who have stayed in the home country. The immigrants were willing to give up the known for the unknown and put their faith in themselves. Those who remained behind kept what they had and built their futures on what they knew.
In a way, the culture of the persistently poor might be seen a little like these two worlds. The members of a family who have a sense of striving in them, whether innate or learned, are like those who are willing to get on a ship and put an ocean between themselves and all they know, risking everything to make a better life. There is sometimes a sentiment in the families of the persistently poor that those who strive think they are too good for the family, and a type of shunning occurs. This can cause a break similar to that caused by physical emigration.
Most members of the extended families of the poor are like those who remained back home. There is no great striving for a better life. There is some reassurance in living out patterns that are known and comfortable, even if the rewards are not substantial. They and their children continue in their cultural habits, including dropping out of school and having children at a young age (not necessarily in that order), not by design, but by default. They haven't made the decision to emigrate to the other culture, where initiative is a driving force.
I would guess that most immigrants have families like mine, where those who stayed in their home country often enjoy a much lower standard of living than the ones who now live in the United States. And some also have the experience, like one of my relatives who is now returning home due to personal, family, and economic reasons, that the American lifestyle is too demanding. They yearn for the familiar way of life that they left behind, even though the standard of living is lower.
Many families of the persistently poor in this country have similar experiences. It is the members with the initiative to make a positive move toward a different culture--that of the middle or upper class. Sometimes they are successful and can bridge the gap between the cultures without losing their lifelong connections. Sometimes they can help their family and friends make the transition themselves. And sometimes they find that due to personal, family, or economic reasons, that moving home is the preferred option.
The original poster clarified that this post was influenced by a conversation which included the insight of a social services employee. I would venture that most people who have spent more than a generation serving the poor of a given region have seen enough to have similar insight. My own anecdotal evidence of this is that I have now taught at least 8 students whose parents I taught at the same school less than 18 years ago when I first came to that school.
Fortunately, many of the parents' generation have been able to mitigate the situation they put themselves in as teenagers, usually with a combination of education and hard work which took initiative. Many others have followed the more common path of negotiating the network of government services to live off the taxpayers. I have no doubt that the social services worker participating in the original conversation knows the pattern of generational poverty. When you see the same abuses of the system day in and day out, it is enough to make you want to vote Republican.
The problem I put to the conservatives is this: At what age should a poor child decide to "emigrate" from his or her community? How and when should they realize that their family, community, school, city, etc. must be left behind in order to seek a better future?
I would say to the social services worker: Hang in there. Look for the kids who would be interested in a way out. Help their families follow them. And try to instill a sense of initiative in those who don't have it. Good luck.
And that is why I believe social workers are saints. OP, please tell your friend thank you from me.
I don't believe that's so true anymore. I've seen alot of cities offer some types of educational programs for those who are poor - free of charge.
So, there are greater numbers now taking advantage of programs such as that. Meanwhile, there are unemployed skilled laborers in one particular field that may not be seen as prospective employees because their skill sets do not match what is currently needed but they can't seem to get in the same doors for retraining because they're not making enough to be able to afford to take classes or that they make a bit too much to be considered eligible for the sponsored 'free' programs.
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Who are the poor?
