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I tell you what, I have said to my liberal co-workers, "The way out of poverty is simple: get an education, work hard, don't have kids while in poverty, and don't do drugs. We could eradicate poverty in one generation if the poor would simply do that."

They literally wince as if I've said something shocking and uncomfortable, and then sometimes they give this uneasy chuckle, like I must be joking. I don't understand them at all. Like this author, I grew up poor. Joined the military, put myself through school, didn't do drugs, didn't have kids, and now I am not poor. It's not rocket science.

"The way out of poverty is simple: get an education, work hard, don't have kids while in poverty, and don't do drugs..."

and don't get sick. That's the number one cause for people who were OK falling into poverty.

What you told them is too SIMPLE for many people to understand, I am not joking, you have to complicate things for some people. I sold printing equipment for many years and I had a dealership on one add on attachment that was so simple that most of my customers never were able to grasp how it worked. They kept trying to tell me that it worked in some strange way that they imagined. It really is amazing to see people overlook the obvious and search diligently for a complicated solution to a very simple problem. Then when you realize you have done it yourself it really hits home. I’ll go away now but I could talk about this phenomenon all day, it is fascinating.

I tell you what, I have said to my liberal co-workers, "The way out of poverty is simple: get an education, work hard, don't have kids while in poverty, and don't do drugs. We could eradicate poverty in one generation if the poor would simply do that."

Another key aspect is to spend *less* than you earn. Even if one tries never to spend more than one earns, it's impossible to spend exactly what one earns on a sustained basis because spending requirements and earnings are not completely predictable. If one doesn't spend less than one earns during the times one is fortunate enough not to have any unexpected expenditures or temporary loss of earnings, one may be unable to avoid spending more than one earns during times of even mild misfortune.

Still, I think it might be interesting to have a class where students were invited to imagine that they were evil overlords who wanted to keep their subjects in a state of mollified dependency. Suggest that subjects be supported if they get too poor, but withdraw such support from any subject who seems to be working toward self-sufficiency. I think a lot of students would see how such behavior on the part on an overlord could be effective at keeping his subjects under control. One wouldn't have to mention, at first, that the kinds of things an evil overlord would do coincide very closely to the way many real-world welfare policies actually work; let students draw their own inferences.