Posted on 10/04/2008 8:12:01 AM PDT by george76
A number of readers have taken me to task over my contention ...that most poor people are impoverished by choice. To be clear, I don't mean that one day a person gets up and decides to live in poverty. I believe a person winds up poor because he or she chooses not to succeed.
Truth is, staying above the poverty line is relatively simple. Basically, all that's required is to finish high school, wait until at least age 20 to get married and not have a child out of wedlock. Now how hard is that? Not very, which is why I equate poverty (in most cases) with a conscious set of choices.
William Galston, a former adviser to President Clinton and scholar at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, devised that lucid, easy to follow anti-poverty formula, and the data back him up. Fewer than 10 percent of families that follow his blueprint live in poverty, while 79 percent of those who don't follow the three-step plan end up poor.
The value of a high school education is undisputed... However, the role of marriage in avoiding poverty is too often ignored by policy makers and low-income advocates...
That huge oversight must be remedied. The John Edwards' "Two Americas" model of confronting poverty... is outdated and incomplete.
Compared to marriage, the "Two Americas" discussion and its solutions verge on irrelevancy when it comes to creating upward mobility for the poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
Why is the obvious so hard for some people to grasp? Or accept, is probably closer to the truth. But I guess if we officially acknowledged the obvious, the poverty pimps would be out of business. Good article.
Finish school and get established before you have kids. Duh, eight? It seems easy enough to follow if you’ve been raised in a decent household. It was never an option in my house to do anything else. Blame the parents.
Americans are poor because they choose to live as irresponsible, self-indulgent adolescents. Pretty simple. And then as adolescents they expect the more responsible adults in their lives to bail them out. IN most cases these more responsible adult are taxpayers with whom they are not even acquainted.
The key to avoid poverty is to be born with a brain in the USA.
The keys to avoiding poverty: Keep it in your pants...both your money and your p—ker!
What was left out was a willingness to take risk.
After all, even if one were single and child free and maintaining a lucrative living in an honest position, to prevent personal poverty, one must be willing to risk jail and evade taxes. ; )
Anymore, most will be poor even as productive people whether we want to be or not.
Remember - it was Pontius Pilot who asked the ultimate question..."what is truth" when Truth was standing right in front of him. The obvious is hard to grasp only because we reject truth and embrace the lie of relativism.
Not to be overlooked is: Stay out of jail!
Spending a few years in in prison whether in one term or several, can really wreck a life, financially and emotionally.
Don't buy things you don't need until you can pay cash for them.
Save something from every paycheck.
Show up for work on time every day.
My keys to staying out of poverty:
Finish school even if it’s just high school.
Stay off drugs.
Stay out of jail.
Pay your bills on time.
Develop good work ethics.
There have been poor in the world since the beginning of time and there always will be. Those that want to eliminate the poor have other things in mind and that is basically to enrich themselves......but people don’t look at it that way.
I thought that living as a responsible buyer would be enough. I didn’t count on the government stepping in to be charitable with my money.
The funny thing is- my middle daughter at 23 is finishing her degree to get licensed as a Special Education/Elementary Ed. teacher and is engaged. She has been engaged for two years and people are always asking her when she is getting married, she tells them she will marry after she finishes school and gets a job. I am amazed at how many people do not seem to understand why she hasn’t already married, and act like her plan doesn’t make sense. I am very proud of her, but wonder at the people that think she should be rushing down the aisle.
So is falling off a cliff....that’ll f*ck you up big time.
Amen! Also, the marriage factor needs to be considered too. I encouraged my kids that when they get married (one has) to work hard for at least 3 years before starting a family, in order to establish themselves financially, and/or finish school (higher learning). I find financial problems to be one of the biggest strains on a (relatively) new marriage.
True, that’s a good reason to avoid both.
Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.
Way over simplified. There is more to it than the will power to make a couple of good choices. For example, I was the son of a well employed civil servant who taught at the Air Force Academy. Not only did that mean I was removed from poverty in my own life, but that I had the advantage of knowing that my education, present and future was not solely up to me. I never once lost a wink of sleep wondering what schools would accept me or how I’d pay for college. By virtue of my birth, those were simply non-issues.
Not only that, but I was literally surrounded by success and successful people. In those so formative years when a child had no idea what’s going on, but is developing habits watching those around him, I was developing good ones. My counterpart in the ghetto had no such luck. The kid in the ghetto who succeeded had to strive to overcome, whereas I would have had to strive to fail.
Even in early adulthood these advantages I was born to worked in my favor. I met a woman from a similar background, which not surprising given that we as people tend to associate with people on our own level. Again, our ghetto kid most likely met a woman from the same background he came from, which was probably less than advantageous.
This will carry on to our own children, who’s educations are secured. Who won’t struggle overly much for their first house because the down payment will come from the Bank of Mom & Dad gifting program, as were their parents, their grand parents and so forth.
So please, let’s not pretend that poverty is a simple choice and everything is equal. It’s not, it can’t be, and as cold as it may sound, it probably shouldn’t be.
I'll take that bet. With the cool hundred million that Britney is worth, she'll never be broke. Her money alone would earn on simple interest more than even she could party away, and we haven't even scratched massive royalties and licensing that just make her richer every year.
The only way to lose that kind of cash is to make some horrible business decisions, and apparently she doesn't make any. The great thing about being rich, is that you don't pay as much for anything as poor people do. When you buy a house, you just buy it. Every cent you pay is instant equity. Your money changed form, you didn't lose a penny. Once you establish enough wealth that credit becomes beneath you, it's easy sailing.
The best analysis on the thread.
Thank you. It’s a shame that more can’t see such a simple truth.
It is not that simple. I have been fortunate to have attended one of the Bridges out of Poverty workshops (Ruby Payne http://www.ahaprocess.com/) She was a teacher who picked up on the fact that people in poverty have a different set of unspoken rules by which they live from the middle or upper class. Their’s are survival based. In order to move out of poverty, they have to understand and learn to operate by a whole new set of rules. For instance, the middle class view is very goal oriented, the poverty class is not.
It was a fascinating enlightenment and it was interesting to see the “ah-ha” moments among attendees who saw where there approach in working with kids and adults in poverty could be much more effective by understanding the differences.
Law enforcement were taught to be aware that many families in poverty are matriarchial and how to assess family structure and alliances so they don’t turn their backs on the wrong people in a domestic violence situation.
The principle of unwritten rules also goes for mobility between the middle and upper class. The speaker gave us a short multiple choice test as an indicator of class and you can see right away the differences. The author of this piece is applying his own middle class formula to the situation and it doesn’t translate to those in poverty.
It’s the difference between short-term thinking and long-term thinking. Survival is short-term. The ghetto kids are often not taught to think long-term.
You are right. And the benefit of your remedies is a fine sense of accomplishment. Once one has that, they are on their way! :)
I think you're on the right track, but I would amend your statement to read that you would have to try to simply NOT fail.
I grew up with every advantage in life - good parents who worked hard, made something of themselves, and provided for me. They were educated, and passed on to me a respect for education. They made a good living, and while I didn't always have everything I wanted, I never went without something I needed. I was able to go to college without getting into debt because of a combination of summer employment, frugal living, a partial scholarship, and parental sacrifice. So, for me to get where I am is not quite surprising given my parents' resources and their values.
A kid with with parents who didn't have the values or the resources mine did would have had a much more difficult time of it than I did. They'd have a lot more to overcome.
And don’t pick an industry that TANKS at the first sign of the financial market meltdown!!!
Um.. Anyone need a good project manager in the Chicago area :)
JB
>My bet is they are both broke in the next 10 years.<
They undoubtably have competent financial advisors. Did you think the same of Ed McMan?
You know you are right; we forget what we learned growing up and what inner city people are learning or not learning as the case may be.
Not long ago I met a Black woman that grew up in a Detroit ghetto. Her husband has a decent job working for the railroad and she is going to the University near here. There was a group of us talking with her and she was speaking very openly about what her life had been like.
The woman’s parents were druggies/dealers in and out of jail and when her parents were arrested or gone on drug binges her aunt would put on an act with authorities so they would think the kids were being cared for when in reality she didn’t want to mess with them so they were on their own in the apartment even as very small children.
She had some real horror stories about her childhood and the neighborhood, etc. We then asked her how she managed to get out of all that. She said she had a teacher that became her mentor and the teacher guided her up through high school, encouraging her to do well in school and not get caught up in the early sex, etc. The woman said she did not know there was a program that provided financial aid for college but the teacher made sure she got set up to go to community college.
The college was nowhere near her neighborhood and it was a challenge to get there— several transfers on the city bus, confusing and time consuming so she had to get up early and get home late due to the bus schedules. She hung in there and got her associates degree. She met a nice young man at the community college (she would have never had an opportunity to meet anyone like him in her neighborhood) married him and he went to work for the railroad. The railroad transfered her hubby to NM and she enrolled in the University when they got moved and settled.
I was simply amazed at how much harder these life steps were for her than they were for me or anyone I knew. This woman had no knowledge of how things worked outside her neighborhood until a teacher took her under her wing. The woman never knew adults with any money that weren’t criminals until she began to ride the bus out of her area to go to community college.
What infuriates me is all the money the taxpayers have poured into these areas for all these years- why don’t we have programs to try to reach these children? Real programs that do inform the children how they can get out of there- how things really work. It seems most or all the money that is supposed to go for that is pocketed by those in charge- wasted, and what have you.
We are not reaching the children in order to break the cycle. I know liberals say the answer is more money- but that has been done for years without results. I don’t know how to get honest caring people to take the money already allocated and actually put it to good use.
The family and the role models make such a huge difference, I come from a family of 4 kids, 2 MBAs, 1 Nurse Practitioner, I am the youngest and least educated with just a B.S, they are pushing hard for me to get a graduate degree.
I can’t really imagine what my counterpart in the Ghetto would have to deal with.
Exactly which is why I scoff at the idea that the playing field is equal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.