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I do not understand how it helps a poor child reach for more than what they’ve known, if the message they receive from society is that the deck is hopelessly stacked against them, compared to others, because of x,y, z.
Yes, they may not not have advantages given to others in higher SES, but comparing themselves to others does not help them get out of poverty. If anything, it hinders them by providing excuses, lowering their confidence, or relinquishes any control they have over their life to external “saviors”. Life is not fair, but you have to try to do what you can with what you’re given, and at least give it your all.
Many schools provide poor kids with enrichment opportunities including museums, art performances, and other cultural activities. They also provide specialized academic programs to meet the needs of diverse students. (But I think discussions about the role of schools and education in contributing to poverty is too broad and complex for this thread because the situations are not all identical, whether it be in rural Appalachia, or urban NYC, D.C., Detroit, Houston, Chicago, L.A., etc)
Social structure is hereditary and it is getting bottom heavier. Does it really matter who wins the game of musical chairs? Sure it is possible to coach some lower class cogs into displacing middle class cogs on the economic ladder, what difference does it make if we look at the society as a whole? Cultivating this hope does more harm than good. Instead of improving averaged lot of a group people seek individual escapes. And if we look at a society as a closed system - there is nowhere to run.
Just like how the psychological/mental/skill/attitude traits that produce economic prosperity tend to be passed on from one generation to the next.
I wonder what history you are reading?
I live on a property that was owned by Reginald Vanderbilt. He drank, whored and raced motor cars and horse, lost all his inheritance and his inside melted (from booze) at 42...dead. His family was the wealthiest in the country. This story can be told 100's of times over and over again - as the inheritances were split up between children (who usually didn't work), they were squandered away.
I stated before - but will repeat - Britain is/was a class society. Your "surname" proof is just about like going to India and asking why the chit shovelers aren't in the top caste. The answer is that they were held in that class.
There was no opportunity in Britain to go from a coal miner or factory worker to the upper class. Zero. Nada.
Given the facts above, how you can you make the statement about prosperity being passed on? If anything it's the complete opposite. In general, only the original prosperous generations are the "makers" and everyone else takes.
Why do you think the Walton Family spent millions lobbying so their estates wouldn't be taxed on death? I'll tell you why. They don't have confidence that they could survive on 80 billion and want 100 billion just for the cushion.
I guess, in that sense, you are correct. They know how to lobby government with the money they have to assure that their dollars don't go back to paying for the society that helped them get rich.
If you had said in your original post not through genetics alone but also through psychological conditioning by the parents then I'd have no problem with it.
Well, I'm not sure that is also the case. How about this. Let me try to make clear what I really mean. Genetics may/might be a factor. I don't know. I'm leaving it out of the equation for now. I used to work for a charity organization and habitat for humanity and I also used to take in homeless youths. I have interacted with enough poor people to know that they are not dumb or unintelligent. Some of them are pretty darn smart. In fact, there was a kid whose mom was homeless and dad was in federal prison. Extremely smart. I really wanted to take him under my wing and teach him everything I know. But in the end, he was too far gone. To this day, I still feel really bad about not being able to save him knowing the vast potential that he had.
I'm sorry, I simply am not convinced there's a gene somewhere that makes people poor.
Social structure is hereditary and it is getting bottom heavier. Does it really matter who wins the game of musical chairs? Sure it is possible to coach some lower class cogs into displacing middle class cogs on the economic ladder, what difference does it make if we look at the society as a whole? Cultivating this hope does more harm than good. Instead of improving averaged lot of a group people seek individual escapes. And if we look at a society as a closed system - there is nowhere to run.
Not sure what you are getting at?
There is somewhere to run...or to aspire to, and that is a more equitable society. One with more opportunity for all where the deck is not as stacked.
The results are less crime. Less ignorance. A more civil society that more people take part in. Better General Welfare and Happiness of the People.
Am I being silly in referring to the dreams or words of our founders?
There is plenty of stuff and plenty of wealth in this country. We squander a large part of it...and get nothing (or negative things, like pollution and war) out of it.
Why not improve our lot? Isn't that really the meaning of life?
I live on a property that was owned by Reginald Vanderbilt. He drank, whored and raced motor cars and horse, lost all his inheritance and his inside melted (from booze) at 42...dead. His family was the wealthiest in the country. This story can be told 100's of times over and over again - as the inheritances were split up between children (who usually didn't work), they were squandered away.
I stated before - but will repeat - Britain is/was a class society. Your "surname" proof is just about like going to India and asking why the chit shovelers aren't in the top caste. The answer is that they were held in that class.
There was no opportunity in Britain to go from a coal miner or factory worker to the upper class. Zero. Nada.
Given the facts above, how you can you make the statement about prosperity being passed on? If anything it's the complete opposite. In general, only the original prosperous generations are the "makers" and everyone else takes.
Why do you think the Walton Family spent millions lobbying so their estates wouldn't be taxed on death? I'll tell you why. They don't have confidence that they could survive on 80 billion and want 100 billion just for the cushion.
I guess, in that sense, you are correct. They know how to lobby government with the money they have to assure that their dollars don't go back to paying for the society that helped them get rich.
I've been trying really hard to minimize the politicizing of this topic. I can already tell you're a SJW. I don't think anything I say can get you to stop and think for a moment.
You have very much of this correct. However, there is a fairly large slice of people in poverty who were raised in a financially stable households and never exposed to government programs yet ended up there because of other circumstances. Mental illness and physical disabilities are just two of those. It is incredibly difficult for someone with a severe mental illness and numerous psychiatric hospitalizations to stay stable in life, and just about impossible if that person also has a number of other serious health issues as well. Believe it or not, it can happen that way.
Not sure about the specific mental illnesses mentioned, but some poor may also suffer from depression due to the circumstances of their upbringing, including being raised in households where the primary caregiver suffered from untreated mental illness. This would also hinder their ability to climb out of poverty.
This thread is a follow up of my post in another thread here.
I'm speaking in general terms. Please do not point out the 1 exception out of a million. I am not talking about every single case in the world.
Liberal SJW's insist that people who are in poverty because they are victims of the system, the 1%, etc. Conservative nutjobs insist that poor people are poor by choice. I'm here to say that both sides are wrong.
To be clear, this is not a new idea at all. Everyone knows this already. Hence, we have sayings like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and such. Unfortunately, even though everybody is aware of this, there is no formal name for it and thus people act like it doesn't exist.
When we inherit something, most people think of material wealth. What most people almost never think about is almost all of us also inherit at least certain aspects of the way of thinking from our parents, and they from their. Take my brother, for example. He's an executive at one of the largest companies in the midwest and pretty well off. His wife owns a shop. Their 16 year old son could get anything he wanted. And yet, this past summer on his own he went out and got himself a job at the Panda Express. My brother and his wife swore up and down to me that they never said a word about getting a job to their son. He just did it on his own. He is still working at the Panda Express even after school started up again. He wants to become an engineer and is already looking to go to a good engineering school in the Midwest.
We as a society expects hard working and successful people to have hard working and successful offsprings. Again, I'm sure you can find plenty of exceptions to this rule. But generally speaking, statistics do tell us that upper middle class kids tend to grow up upper middle class.
What statistics also tell us is that poor kids who grew up in poor families tend to grow up in the same situation.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have met some of the most hard working members of our society who are also very poor. They juggle between 2-3 minimum wage jobs and 4-5 kids that they have. Statistics tell us that about 70% of these kids will grow up into adults that will stay in these living conditions.
I have a brother several states away who owns 20-some income properties. Some of his rental properties are section 8 properties. As a land lord, he tells me that he's seen it over and over over the years that section 8 folks have kids who would grow up aiming to land another section 8 ticket. To them, once they win the lottery process of section 8 process, they consider it as "making it".
Please understand I'm not denigrating the poor. What I'm pointing out is that the same forces that make kids who grow up in well-off families tend to become well-off adults themselves are also the same forces that make kids who grow up in poor families to tend to become poor adults themselves.
Poverty is hereditary. Not through genetics but through psychological conditioning by the parents. Hence, we have generational poverty.
In the past, I have taken in homeless youths and tried to help them become self-sufficient. I did this for a while until certain incidents caused some strains in our marriage and my husband made me promise to never do it again. I have seen first hand how hard it is to change the mental conditioning that have been instilled in these kids. You can give them $1million and they would still be poor a year later. The conditioning is so strong that they will do whatever it takes, even sabotage their own opportunities, to make themselves poor and without direction.
I apologize if I offend anyone here.
Yes. This is a basic truth. Socialization and acculturation happens naturally via emulation. You see what is around you and emulate it for the most part. It's largely subconscious. Culture is a LEARNED behavior, not instinctive. This is why concentrated poverty is the worst, because there is no one nearby to emulate who are successful the "right" way. The rich generally do not want the poor living in their communities or a certain race of people don't like living or sending their kids to school with another race. This creates racial and economic polarization that then breeds the continuation of poverty.
I live on a property that was owned by Reginald Vanderbilt. He drank, whored and raced motor cars and horse, lost all his inheritance and his inside melted (from booze) at 42...dead. His family was the wealthiest in the country. This story can be told 100's of times over and over again - as the inheritances were split up between children (who usually didn't work), they were squandered away.
I stated before - but will repeat - Britain is/was a class society. Your "surname" proof is just about like going to India and asking why the chit shovelers aren't in the top caste. The answer is that they were held in that class.
There was no opportunity in Britain to go from a coal miner or factory worker to the upper class. Zero. Nada.
Given the facts above, how you can you make the statement about prosperity being passed on? If anything it's the complete opposite. In general, only the original prosperous generations are the "makers" and everyone else takes.
Why do you think the Walton Family spent millions lobbying so their estates wouldn't be taxed on death? I'll tell you why. They don't have confidence that they could survive on 80 billion and want 100 billion just for the cushion.
I guess, in that sense, you are correct. They know how to lobby government with the money they have to assure that their dollars don't go back to paying for the society that helped them get rich.
From my historical studies there was always an opportunity to move up the social class. Even in the middle of the Dark Ages there was a chance for a serf to become a noble. Were the rest of the serves any better because of that happy occurance, as common as a trailer park kid becoming a CEO of a multibillion company at the very least? Should have serves of the Middle Ages stopped their bloody uprisings and instead concentrated on bettering their chances of becoming a noble?
Industrial England provided plenty of opportunities for the commoners with the right skill sets (usually bossing around lower forms of life on the shop floor) to enter upper circles. Worker' aristocracy was introduced to decrease sabotage and riots in the industrial slums. It was not rare at all for the descendants of worker aristocrats to hook up with impoverished proper aristocrats as industrial revolution picked up steam. Should sweat shop condition be reintroduced since the opportunity was clearly out there?
See, I don't think work ethics or the lack thereof is that big of a factor in determining who will be successful and who will not. I know some poor people who are the hardest workers you will ever meet in your life.
Can anyone seriously say that guy doesn't have the right work ethics?
It's gotta be something else. I believe it's a series of traits that brought him down and that his hard working trait wasn't enough to compensate.
Nothing bothers me more than when I hear a conservative proclaim that poor people are poor because they are lazy. I can assure them that a single mom with 3 kids juggling between 2-3 minimum wage jobs is anything but lazy.
Complete and utter lack of family support in any and all of its capacities.
Complete and utter lack of role models - mentors - anyone who will be someone an other will look up to and try to emulate. And I don't mean useless celebrities, I mean real people, who do real work, and have succeeded.
Of all of the successful people in this world, the majority had family support in any and all of its capacities.
Those who do not have that support rarely ever make it.
Again, as I have said multiple times on that other thread: If we educate people, and I don't mean "free college!!!", I mean the basics - the things we learned all growing up - can and has worked. Tossing it off as "Eh, they wouldn't want to change" is baloney. Some might not want to, but I think most people would love to have that information and do what they can with it. You can't toss money at someone without also teaching them how to manage it - as I said elsewhere, I am not talking about stocks and bonds, I'm talking about the basics - how to navigate in life.
Example only: Payday loan places - people want to complain about predatory lending? There's your predatory lending. A person needs to fix their car. They don't have the money, but they need their car fixed so that they can continue going into work. What do they do when they have no family or anyone to help them out? They get desperate. They go to those stupid payday loan places. They do get a contract, they may even read it, but how many of them have a clue what they're reading? How many of them fully understand the terms and conditions? How many of them can figure out how much that's going to cost them in the end? Most of them can't. And that is why those payday loan places are in poorer areas - they know this. They know that once that person signs, that person is now owned by that business. All the person can think of is: "I have to get my car fixed or I'm going to lose my job."
And yes, the "windfall" idea is rampant. Do you have any idea how many times I've seen on social media some account claiming to be a wealthy person, and they will write a post saying that the first "1000 people will get $1000 distributed equally". And what do you see? Hundreds of replies from people claiming they sure could use $1000, boy life has been rough, or their birthday is coming up, blah, blah, blah.
They don't even understand what they read there. The account that claims to be wealthy said $1000 for the first 1000 distributed equally which means each of the first 1000 would get a grand payment of one. whole. dollar. They also don't understand that the so called "proof" is always, always, always someone who knows them already - it's not hard to fake a social media account and pretend to be someone else, entirely. AND they don't understand that the sole reason for posts like that is to get a high follower count and high engagement account. And the reason for that is because people can make money off of social media - the more active followers, the more people seeing ads, guess what? Cha-ching in the bank.
Yet those hundreds and hundreds of posters never understand that.
A simple explanation of what is going on is all that is needed. THAT is what I mean by "educate" them, give them "knowledge". The simple things like that, not 4 years of free formal education.
(Disclaimer for the anecdotal evidence kings and queens: OF COURSE there are exceptions to everything, those exceptions do not equal "majority".)
There is somewhere to run...or to aspire to, and that is a more equitable society. One with more opportunity for all where the deck is not as stacked.
The results are less crime. Less ignorance. A more civil society that more people take part in. Better General Welfare and Happiness of the People.
Am I being silly in referring to the dreams or words of our founders?
There is plenty of stuff and plenty of wealth in this country. We squander a large part of it...and get nothing (or negative things, like pollution and war) out of it.
Why not improve our lot? Isn't that really the meaning of life?
Opportunity per se means little. There is always opportunity and chance for just about anything, always was, everywhere, capitalism, socialism, feudalism, whatever ism. What matters is probability to capitalize on that opportunity. Probability of the lower classes collectively moving up a few class notches above is exactly zero. Probability of shrinking the lower classes by sheer power of personal efforts on their part is exactly zero. Affecting probabilities and social class distribution by means of sheer power of personal efforts is as effective as extinguishing fire with gas. USA is a prime example, as soon as American working class stopped fighting for their collective plight and concentrated on the individual escapes, a good deal of formerly secure workers was flushed down to underclass status.
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