Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The idea to be focusing on, rather than poor or middle class, is "self sufficiency" (or not).
From post #9
In short... it's about a lack of self sufficiency.
That term and what it implies, demonstrably doing for yourself, is a far better gauge of success.
On that basis however we are doing very poorly indeed.
So now, we have to help those, help themselves, to the point of "getting their minds right"? Historically speaking, there was only one way that this ever happened. No support. It was amazing what the Italians and Irish did about 100 years ago. When need exceeds desire, it's amazing what you can do to help yourself.
Perhaps, if we made it less comfortable to BE sustained in the first place, some folks "motivation" to do better and become self-sufficient would take a steep learning curve albeit, a short one. In short, cut off all but the very basic essentials and let's see what they can do.
My mother, for example, 1st generation Irish, grew up in a 3 room apartment with her sister, brother, and parents. Note, 3 room, NOT 3 bedroom. As she often said to my father late in life whenever she "toured" that part of Cleveland (Newberg Heights), "its better than what we had". That housing would be deemed "insufficient and below minimum standards"......insufficient.....for who? Oh and yeah, they had no social fabric to support them.
End result? Mom worked at Kroger for 5 years (35 cents and hour) to put herself through Nursing School....had 6 kids, took 10 years off while kids were being raised, went back to nursing for 20 more years after we were raised, and retired quietly. Basically, pulled HERSELF out of poverty. Her sister? Became a nun, Francisan order, assistant principal of a school in Cincinatti....brother? Worked for the RR and Post Office and quietly retired in Va years later.....her Mom? Housekeeper all her life, her dad? Ditch digger for East Ohio Gas and worked on the RR later on...manual laborer......and all the while, they learned to live WITHOUT...a lesson while painful, is a tremendous motivator for those that "care".
If they could do it????? Not special. This was the norm. Almost everyone around her did the same thing, lived in the same "squalor" (although, you CAN keep a house clean, even in poverty, no excuses).
Oh and yeah, overcrowded classrooms is bs. She went to a school with 72 kids in a class....think depression era......9 rows of 8 desks......those teardrop table top kind....and noooooo one had a problem with it, and noooooo one expected more.....crowding is NOT the problem, kids are. When parents stopped being parents and corporal punishment went away, all hell broke loose and everyone knows it. And the left will NEVER admit that. Take away discipline and their answer became....more schools, less kids to babysit per teacher....pathetic.
Soooooo, maybe the problem is a "lack of motivation" and not a lack of trying (God only knows what we have spent in the last 50 years "trying"). To some extent, quite a few did leave the poorest of areas (Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia) and did quite well for themselves thanks to those "damn yannkee jobs up north" and settled in the rust belt.
If that generation was able to gut it out, why then oh why, is it so hard for this generation to get it? They are afforded things my parents, and millions of others, could only have dreamed about like free or heavily subsidized housing, food, phone, utility, etc....but then again, back then, going on "the dole" was a stigma....they avoided it....we use to call it....pride.
Simple, no "motivation". Cut off that proverbial feedbag of goodies we all pay for and watch them learn how to "swim" in weeks, not decades?
Tough love. Worked VERY well in the past. Could work again.
So now, we have to help those, help themselves, to the point of "getting their minds right"? Historically speaking, there was only one way that this ever happened. No support. It was amazing what the Italians and Irish did about 100 years ago. When need exceeds desire, it's amazing what you can do to help yourself.
Perhaps, if we made it less comfortable to BE sustained in the first place, some folks "motivation" to do better and become self-sufficient would take a steep learning curve albeit, a short one. In short, cut off all but the very basic essentials and let's see what they can do.
My mother, for example, 1st generation Irish, grew up in a 3 room apartment with her sister, brother, and parents. Note, 3 room, NOT 3 bedroom. As she often said to my father late in life whenever she "toured" that part of Cleveland (Newberg Heights), "its better than what we had". That housing would be deemed "insufficient and below minimum standards"......insufficient.....for who? Oh and yeah, they had no social fabric to support them.
End result? Mom worked at Kroger for 5 years (35 cents and hour) to put herself through Nursing School....had 6 kids, took 10 years off while kids were being raised, went back to nursing for 20 more years after we were raised, and retired quietly. Basically, pulled HERSELF out of poverty. Her sister? Became a nun, Francisan order, assistant principal of a school in Cincinatti....brother? Worked for the RR and Post Office and quietly retired in Va years later.....her Mom? Housekeeper all her life, her dad? Ditch digger for East Ohio Gas and worked on the RR later on...manual laborer......and all the while, they learned to live WITHOUT...a lesson while painful, is a tremendous motivator for those that "care".
If they could do it????? Not special. This was the norm. Almost everyone around her did the same thing, lived in the same "squalor" (although, you CAN keep a house clean, even in poverty, no excuses).
Oh and yeah, overcrowded classrooms is bs. She went to a school with 72 kids in a class....think depression era......9 rows of 8 desks......those teardrop table top kind....and noooooo one had a problem with it, and noooooo one expected more.....crowding is NOT the problem, kids are. When parents stopped being parents and corporal punishment went away, all hell broke loose and everyone knows it. And the left will NEVER admit that. Take away discipline and their answer became....more schools, less kids to babysit per teacher....pathetic.
Soooooo, maybe the problem is a "lack of motivation" and not a lack of trying (God only knows what we have spent in the last 50 years "trying"). To some extent, quite a few did leave the poorest of areas (Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia) and did quite well for themselves thanks to those "damn yannkee jobs up north" and settled in the rust belt.
If that generation was able to gut it out, why then oh why, is it so hard for this generation to get it? They are afforded things my parents, and millions of others, could only have dreamed about like free or heavily subsidized housing, food, phone, utility, etc....but then again, back then, going on "the dole" was a stigma....they avoided it....we use to call it....pride.
Simple, no "motivation". Cut off that proverbial feedbag of goodies we all pay for and watch them learn how to "swim" in weeks, not decades?
Tough love. Worked VERY well in the past. Could work again.
I wonder if you read a single post in this thread.
Your long diatribe is one I could practically lift word for word out of an utra-conservative manual of politics.
Let's start off by talking about what you haven't addressed in this post. You haven't addressed statistics which show poverty rates of approximately 23% before the 1960's began. You haven't addressed the fact that after the war on poverty those same rates fell to 13%. Above all, your limited dialogue fails to address the very things the War on Poverty sought to address: structural barriers in the American economy that kept certain groups poor. A whole series of structural barriers existed at the time that kept minorities and female headed households poor.
If employment discrimination against minorities is legal that is a structural barrier that keeps minorities poor. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, made that illegal. Long term, this has been a critical means through which minorities have advanced in this country.
If poor and minority groups can't get a decent education to prepare themselves for jobs in a modern economy than that is a structural barrier that keeps them poor. This was addressed in many ways by Johnson's programs. Here are a few examples:
1. Head Start to help poor children learn some basic language, communication, and reading skills before they begin public school.
2. Job Corps. To help young people who unwisely dropped out of school to reclaim their lives by learning a trade or skill that will allow them to do more than the most menial employment.
3. Student loans and grants for young people from poor families who otherwise could not afford to go to school.
4. Civil Rights Act which contained a section on education to help improve schools that the poor and minorities attend.
If minorities can be denied the right to rent or purchase housing because of their race and color this is a limitation which will hold them back economically and socially. This barrier was broken by the Fair Housing Act of 1967 which prohibits racial discrimination when it comes to renting or selling an apartment or home.
If children cannot receive adequate medical and developmental care when they are very young, it may result in learning disabilities and impairments that follow them their whole lives. This is another structural barrier that keeps certain groups poor. Medicaid is much maligned these days because it probably is overused. However, Medicaid enabled these children to get medical care that would help fix health problems when they were young that might otherwise result in a lifetime of disability.
Yeah, yeah, give me an anecdote about a relative. Tell me how they "pulled themselves up by their boot straps" without any help from guvamint. All of it is your opinion and nothing more. On the other hand, other posters here, including myself, have shown hard factual data and described what the problem actually was and how it was fixed.
Johnson was far from a perfect President and the truth is the War on Poverty needed fine-tuning over the years that it probably didn't get until welfare reform was passed under Bill Clinton's Administration. However, Johnson deserves credit for seeing a problem and putting together a very rational series of measures for solving it. He actually did solve about half the problem. That alone is a huge accomplishment worthy of praise.
Its easy to see who is making a real argument here. Its also easy to see who is just ranting and raving.
...her Mom? Housekeeper all her life, her dad? Ditch digger for East Ohio Gas and worked on the RR later on...manual laborer......and all the while, they learned to live WITHOUT...a lesson while painful, is a tremendous motivator for those that "care".
If they could do it????? Not special. This was the norm. Almost everyone around her did the same thing, lived in the same "squalor" (although, you CAN keep a house clean, even in poverty, no excuses).
One thing almost never mentioned in these stories of "boot strap pulling up" is that the economy has radically changed beginning in the late 1960's and shifting most abruptly in the 1990's. The efficiency provided by technology has greatly reduced the need for manual labor both in the field and in manufacturing. Buick City in Flint used to employee 15,000 people to churn out 100,000 or so cars a year. At the end, they had around 1,800 people turning out 65,000 cars a year. It used to be a ratio of 1 worker to 6.5 cars. The ratio is now around 1 worker to 36 cars. That's a 6-fold change in labor need. The truly manual jobs like "ditch digging" and road building have also been radically changed. It used to take thousands of laborers weeks to build a 20-mile stretch of highway. These days, that same stretch can be built by around 75 people in a few days.
Basically, the jobs that allowed those Irish, Italian, Polish, etc. immigrant groups to support and establish themselves and then have their children move-on to more succesful careers simply don't exist or people can't be wage competitive. Who cleans houses and cuts lawns? It's not poor Americans, it's generally illegal immigrants. I suppose we could argue that in absence of the social supports poor Americans would take those jobs, but they couldn't do it legally at the same rates. The fact that many middleclass Americans pay people to cut their lawn is a recent phenomenon driven by cheap labor through illegal immigration. Then we have the issue of outsourcing of jobs and that falls primarily on the low-skilled sectors. There are multiple reasons for the outsourcing, but the basic fact is that those jobs don't exist and when manufacturing does come back it is often high skilled manufacturing.
The radical changes to the economy actually show LBJ as a bit of a visionary with some aspects the Great Society programs as low-skill manual labor which was the sector used by the succesful immigrant groups, even in the 1960's, was starting to go away. In today's economy, education is key and even most regular jobs like office clerks and administrators require degrees. What "labor" jobs there are require extensive skills training.
I don't disagree with the argument that people need motivation and should work to better themselves, ergo we shouldn't provide a "lifestyle" of public dependence. However, we can't tell people to go dig ditches like our great-grandparents and grandparents did, because no one hires "ditch diggers" anymore and if one wants to dig ditches it actually requires technical training and cetification to run the machinery that actually does the digging.
Johnson expanded the existing Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, an old New Deal program. Originally the AFDC program was intended for white women only and excluded black women. It used to be called ADC, and the phrase “Families with†was added in the 60’s.
The Civil Rights movement extended all the rights of AFDC to black women. I say “women†because they were the principal recipients of AFDC assistance.
From the beginning, under FDR, there was discussion about whether the ADC, which became the AFDC, would promote single motherhood in some form. And as the state by state rules changed, the fears of the original authors came to fruition.
At first states used such things as sexual morality of the mother in order to determine eligibility. Phrases such as “man in the house†were used to eliminate unwanted – usually black – applicants. That is, if there was a man in the house you were not eligible. The program was for widows, divorcees and the like, was the thinking; not for lazy single mothers.
In 1968 The Supreme Court put an end to the “man in the house†rule. Now, it didn’t matter how much your boyfriend made. The question became how much do you (the recipient) make? And if you were married, the question became “how much does the household make?
See the problem? Now, because it was much more advantageous for a young mother to remain single, there was a reason to remain single. And still is to this day. Every young pregnant girl in America knows it is better to wait until after the baby is born before getting married. If they get married at all.
Black people were a lot poorer than white people in 1960 for all the reasons that we all know. So, since black people were disproportionally poor, they qualified for AFDC in disproportional numbers.
Enter, the black unwed mother. The system created her. She, after all, had very little earning power, and as long as she remained single she had assistance. Get married, lose assistance.
I won’t make many comments about growing up poor and on public assistance other than to point out that most of the comments I have read here have some validity, I think. It’s lethal in terms of future performance.
We have reached a point of reverse evolution, I fear. Because so many black women become mothers and never marry, their earning potential suffers. A single mother has enough on her hands and is usually unable to develop a career. And this hopelessness – this idea that no matter what I do I’m not going to get ahead – is passed on generation after generation.
Will it reverse? Doesn’t look like it. It looks as if black society has been permanently and irrevocably damaged. And it will forever be up to those of us who are successful to carry the burden.
Clinton’s welfare reform, which he vetoed twice before signing it under pressure, was predicted to send former welfare recipients out into the streets starving. Instead, they went out and got jobs. But that was a different economy, a different time……….and a different thread.
Per the State of Pennsylvania, a woman with 2 kids making 57K a year has LESS disposable income than a woman making 27K a year with 2 kids in the same state! Where is the logic in that? 57K is still an above average wage for most and is actually not bad by any modern standard.
And yet, she lives theoretically worse than a woman making 1/2 with all the subsidies (WIC, housing, other food, medical care, transportation vouchers, free phone, subsidized cable, etc...). I'm not saying her life is fun 24X7 but, can you imagine the look on the OTHER woman's face when she comes home and wonders how to keep going let alone, saving for the future?
If my math is right, and this is just a guess (you in Pennsylvania do the math), the woman making 57K probably takes home 45K? Roughly $3,750. She has to pay rent/mortgage, utilities, food, transportation, medical insurance deductibles and monthly contributions, co-pays, cell phone, tv/internet, etc...etc....probably leaves her with less than $500 when all is said and done...maybe a little more, probably a little less.
Now, take the woman making 27K. Probably takes home 100% of it. Roughly $1,500 difference between the two. Now, take subsidized rent, free phone, utility assistance, free medical, free dental, transportation vouchers (read, free), food stamps, and any other handout the Democrats can think of and I guarantee you it is MORE than that $1,500. Heck the food bill alone has to be worth $600? Add no charge for medical ($300-$350/month value), free cell ($50), section 8 housing ($600-$900 month value), utility assistance ($100-$200?), and so on and so on.....goes pretty quick.
Where's the logic? The only one I see in this equation that is "less fortunate" is the one that is less fortunate enough to have a job paying 57K a year!!! What does it take for her to break free and move ahead? 60k? 70k?.....
Except you are wildly exagerating the value of the programs and this theoretical person's eligibility for them. But whatever.
What we REALLY bought with all that money is a massive Big Government bureaucracy that continues to grow and confiscate most of the discretionary income from working Americans. And I don't see one thing this Big Government does that is useful, but plenty that is negative (wars and foreign aid, oppressive over-regulation, huge tax burdens, money diverted from productive activities, War on Drugs, etc.).
It wasn't just a waste of money, it was money spent for intensely negative purposes.
Hmm...taxes, whether individual federal rates or corporate rates, etc. are lower now than they were in 1984. But whatever. I guess it's just fun to always say they are higher than ever.
The war on drugs is a waste. Not necessarily so much for the money spent on it, but that its enforcement has jailed and wrecked the employment prospects for millions of people.
Well, there's a saying: You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
Investments in alleviating poverty, education, and infrastructure pay off later in less social dislocation, less criminal activity and the social and economic costs of poverty, crime and dysfunction, as well as a higher educated workforce who will contribute to the economy.
Costs a lot more to jail somebody than it does to school a person. And unfortunately, we spend more on the correctional institutes than schools in this country (we incarcerate more people as a percentage of the population than any other country).
- "Investments?"....you mean spending right?....just because we spend money on something, someone's money, does not mean it will solve a problem or lay the groundwork for success in coming years. The government will spend money in areas that the private sector won't touch because it's a poor investment will little chance of success. Look at the Head Start program. Total failure despite 600 some billions of dollars tossed down that rate hole. The private sector would have never dreamed us such a bad "investment" let alone spent 600 billions dollars on it.
We have more people in jail now despite all the Great Society programs, free breakfast, lunch, dinner, head start, day care, food stamps, wic, medicaid, section 8 house, etc..etc...
Our federal spending on welfare last year was almost a trillion dollars...toss in local, state and charities,...we are way off track when it comes to uplifting the "disadvantaged"....
The answer - a 50 percent across the board cut in all of these "social safety net" programs and leave the money in the private sector.
I am in favor of these sorts of welfare payments, but not because of the traditional liberal reasons. Welfare is actually the bribe that successful people pay to the unsuccessful people to try and keep them from robbing the successful people.
Unsuccessful people are a misfortune. Desperate unsuccessful people are a danger.
My father used to say the same thing, but it has done more harm than good and now we have the animals in charge of the zoo. The animals are those people that have been on the "dole" and figured out to vote the party or guy that will keep their welfare flowing.
- "Investments?"....you mean spending right?....just because we spend money on something, someone's money, does not mean it will solve a problem or lay the groundwork for success in coming years. The government will spend money in areas that the private sector won't touch because it's a poor investment will little chance of success. Look at the Head Start program. Total failure despite 600 some billions of dollars tossed down that rate hole. The private sector would have never dreamed us such a bad "investment" let alone spent 600 billions dollars on it.
We have more people in jail now despite all the Great Society programs, free breakfast, lunch, dinner, head start, day care, food stamps, wic, medicaid, section 8 house, etc..etc...
Our federal spending on welfare last year was almost a trillion dollars...toss in local, state and charities,...we are way off track when it comes to uplifting the "disadvantaged"....
The answer - a 50 percent across the board cut in all of these "social safety net" programs and leave the money in the private sector.
All too true. Here's the list of Great Society programs. Some of them are good ideas and well implemented. But most are simply costly exercises with no benefit.
HIGHER EDUCATION FACILITIES ACT OF 1963 DEC. 16, 1963 PREVENTION & ABATEMENT OF AIR POLLUTION
(THE CLEAN AIR ACT) DEC. 17, 1963 VOCATIONAL EDUCATION ACT OF 1963 DEC. 18, 1963 INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK ACT JAN. 22,1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 JULY 2, 1964 URBAN MASS TRANSPORTATION ACT OF 1964 JULY 9, 1964 FEDERAL-AID HIGHWAY ACT OF 1964 AUG. 13, 1964 CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT OF 1964 AUG. 20, 1964 FOOD STAMP ACT OF 1964 AUG. 31, 1964 WILDERNESS ACT SEPT. 3, 1964 NATIONAL ARTS CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1964 SEPT. 3, 1964 MANPOWER ACT OF 1965 APRIL 26, 1965 OLDER AMERICANS ACT OF 1965 JULY 14, 1965 SOCIAL SECURITY AMENDMENTS OF 1965 JULY 30, 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 AUG. 6, 1965 HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1965 AUG. 10, 1965 PUBLIC WORKS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1965 AUG. 26, 1965 DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ACT SEPT. 9, 1965 NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS & THE HUMANITIES
ACT OF 1965 SEPT. 29, 1965 AMENDMENT OF FEDERAL WATER POLLUTION
CONTROL ACT OCT. 2, 1965 AMENDMENT TO THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT OCT. 3, 1965 HIGHER EDUCATION ACT OF 1965 NOV. 8, 1965 CHILD NUTRITION ACT OF 1966 OCT. 11, 1966 CHILD PROTECTION ACT OF 1966 NOV. 3, 1966 NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH ACT MAY 8, 1968
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
