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Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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The USA has poured many billions into fighting poverty and yet statistically things are no bad, whether it's the inner city or Appalachia. Much of the debt bankrupting our nation is related to anti poverty or safety net programs. I believe both people on the right and left have a problem: they can't acknowledge the overwhelming evidence in study after study that most poor people also have low IQs and the few success stories you hear about of people rising from poverty are those who were born poor but have high IQs. (examples include Neil Degrass Tyson, Sonya Sotomayor, etc)
People on the right believe poor people are smart enough to overcome their situation but are lazy. People on the left believe we need more programs to give people a leg up and that any inequality of any kind is the result of deliberate discrimination. The reality is people with low IQs are simply not capable of rising out of poverty in our complex society filled with fine print and lots of opportunities to derail your self through loan / credit debt, high insurance rates, etc. If you gave all poor American households $20k tomorrow but don't change anything else within a couple years there would be no improvement because the money would mostly be wasted on things like gambling, customizing low value automobiles, etc.
I believe the best approach is to decrease complexity by clamping down on industries that prey on low IQ people, like pay day loans, easy credit / loans, and unreasonable fine print. Heck, my IQ is 111 and I struggled to understand a FAFSA form! I've also gotten hosed by fine print in apartment leases. Such things are money transfers from the poor to the rich. For people who struggle to maintain the most basic employment we need govt jobs doing things like planting trees in parks, cleaning sidewalks, and the like. I think Universal Basic Income would prevent many people from engaging in illegal activities.
The USA has poured many billions into fighting poverty and yet statistically things are no bad, whether it's the inner city or Appalachia. Much of the debt bankrupting our nation is related to anti poverty or safety net programs. I believe both people on the right and left have a problem: they can't acknowledge the overwhelming evidence in study after study that most poor people also have low IQs and the few success stories you hear about of people rising from poverty are those who were born poor but have high IQs. (examples include Neil Degrass Tyson, Sonya Sotomayor, etc)
People on the right believe poor people are smart enough to overcome their situation but are lazy. People on the left believe we need more programs to give people a leg up and that any inequality of any kind is the result of deliberate discrimination. The reality is people with low IQs are simply not capable of rising out of poverty in our complex society filled with fine print and lots of opportunities to derail your self through loan / credit debt, high insurance rates, etc. If you gave all poor American households $20k tomorrow but don't change anything else within a couple years there would be no improvement because the money would mostly be wasted on things like gambling, customizing low value automobiles, etc.
I believe the best approach is to decrease complexity by clamping down on industries that prey on low IQ people, like pay day loans, easy credit / loans, and unreasonable fine print. Heck, my IQ is 111 and I struggled to understand a FAFSA form! I've also gotten hosed by fine print in apartment leases. Such things are money transfers from the poor to the rich. For people who struggle to maintain the most basic employment we need govt jobs doing things like planting trees in parks, cleaning sidewalks, and the like. I think Universal Basic Income would prevent many people from engaging in illegal activities.
Half are below IQ 100. A quarter are below 90. My IQ is 140 (I make no claim about wisdom) and I have no idea how to make a tech worker out of the IQ 90 guy. There has to be a viable dignified path for them.
Half are below IQ 100. A quarter are below 90. My IQ is 140 (I make no claim about wisdom) and I have no idea how to make a tech worker out of the IQ 90 guy. There has to be a viable dignified path for them.
Half are below IQ 100. A quarter are below 90. My IQ is 140 (I make no claim about wisdom) and I have no idea how to make a tech worker out of the IQ 90 guy. There has to be a viable dignified path for them.
This is a discussion that needs to be had.
Someone with an 80 or 90 IQ is probably not going to make a great living. There are exceptions, of course - I've met some who get by quite well on personality and salesmanship. In addition, people in this category often make poor financial decisions. And their parents are often in the same situation and can't offer guidance.
The same can be said for people with certain disabilities. My brother is on the autism spectrum. He's extremely bright but never went to college and works at a low-end job. He's often extremely susceptible to grifters, and it never ceases to amaze me how many of them are out there.
This is where we get back into the universal basic income discussion again as many of the jobs that people with lower IQ's work at will be automated.
Of course few are immune there - I work in finance and my company is working on automating as many job functions as possible to save on labor costs.
I suspect many problems are due to the inability of many of our citizens to read and comprehend.
We see it here everyday. The jails are full of people who cannot read.
I was grown before I finally figured out why they put pictures on all the stuff in the grocery store. A nice older man was having trouble locating a certain brand on a product and asked for help.
There is no solution to poverty, just as there is no "solution" to the fact that every human being is a completely unique individual. We are all placed into a game called life. The rules are generally straight forward and it is pretty clear what one must do and what one must not do in order to "succeed". Some make the right choices with this knowledge and some simply do not. There is nothing keeping anyone from doing the same things that successful people do. Learn, work hard, save, etc. But there will always be people that even thought they know what they have to do choose to be ignorant and don't learn skills, work only as much as they need to get by, spend everything that they do earn instead of saving or investing in something of value. So there will always be "poor" people.
With that being said, the "game" is rigged to really only benefit a select few elite in the omnipotent Money Cartel, and overall as it applies to all people, we are little more than their personal chattel. We are all shafted by our monetary/banking system as a people.
Never going to "solve" poverty......much of it based on the very poor decisions some people make, over and over again.
And yeah, I am dumb as dirt.....but I have somehow manage to learn from my many mistakes.
this. and wile i agree that we do need to either eliminate, or severely curtail, the payday loan industry, poor people still make bad decisions. the payday loan industry does provide a function, but interest rates of 500%+ apr are beyond usury, and that practice needs to be stopped. i say cap them at 30% like credit card interest rates. no reason to borrow $1000 and have to pay back $15000.
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