Why do you think people are poor?

Well, any school obviously helps you learn if you don't have a mentor or otherwise to help you sieve through the information. It's not like I can just walk into a library, go to the business/accounting section, and become an expert once I've read every book on the shelf. You need a way to manage what you're taking in, and courses help with that.

It doesn't need to be an academic course though, gaining the experience through work is good too, and I'm guessing that's what you meant about the "less skill" of graduates - their lack of actual experience.

Unfortunately for someone who didn't really know any accountant or business person until recently, I had no knowledge or confidence of getting my foot in the door, but if I'd studied the subject back in school, I would've been more competent earlier.

>Well, any school obviously helps you learn if you don't have a mentor or otherwise to help you sieve through the information.

I don't see how that's obvious at all.

I mean, I have a reasonable understanding of the creation side of business, and I can do straightforward sales; That side of things is easy enough to learn via trial and error.

Now, obviously, that's not /all/ there is to business, and maybe b-school teaches you about the bits I don't understand. But from a pure "you shall know him by his fruits" perspective, antidotialy, people with MBAs tend to be less successful (at sustainably growing the business... not at getting paid) than people without.

But yeah. as a small business that gives customers products or services in exchange for money? the most valuable thing you can learn is something about the product or the process that creates the product. The most valuable thing a small company has is the owner's labour. I mean, even with the ridiculous $150K/year salary numbers I hear friends throwing around these days... if I was working for someone else? I would have quit yesterday. (well, I would have gotten another job first, but... that has never been difficult for me.)

It's hard to write this, and my opinion is probably biased because of it, but this article is nothing but a giant load of horse shit and is a carefully constructed as "feel good" to reinforce the preconceived notions the author had going into it. A little bit of background; I grew up poor, people randomly leaving food on our doorstep poor, my parents giving the bike I had bought with my own earned money to my brother for christmas poor, moving every couple of years because my dad would make a bad enough name for himself in an entire town/city that he couldn't get a job poor. I was rejected from his classes (I was actually living in Queens at the time) when they were first available. I may have been one of the two 16 year olds turned away, but I'm pretty sure I was older than that at the time, I may have been one of the people who was "too poor" to take the class. I distinctly remember being told that I "wasn't what they were looking for" and that they "wanted the classes to be as beneficial to all attendees as possible." So, given that, my opinions may be a bit biased.

What I learned, clawing myself to where I am (I currently make more than twice what both my parents combined ever made), is that independent of the person, you HAVE to get the out of the situation they are in. Being "poor" or below the poverty line, life is not what you would expect. There is nothing extra, there is not even enough to sustain yourself. Each month, you make decisions of what bills to pay (food, electricity, gas, rent) based on which is most likely to be shut off. You spend money you can't afford on things you don't "need" because you need just something, anything, to make it feel like you are actually alive and not just some "thing", only there to feed on the remains you can come across. Learning about the humanities doesn't change the fact that you're working a minimum wage job 3rd shift and rarely making it to your classes at high school (just often enough to keep from being expelled) just so you don't end up homeless. It doesn't change the fact that you try to cheat and go through the lunch line twice to get two free meals just so you can have something to eat that evening (breakfast? The programs that give kids breakfast ends at middle school).

I escaped from poverty because I am significantly above the average intelligence level and I managed to make the right decision at the right time. For a point of reference, not the last time I talked to my dad, but the time before that, he was letting me know he may not have a phone for a while because the lady's cell phone plan he was on had passed away almost a year ago, and now that it was up for renewal and she was dead, he likely would not be able to put it in his name. I was paying someone I knew $30 a month to sleep in a sleeping bag in their closet when I joined the Army (shipped out January of 2000). I blew the ASVAB out of the water and had my choice of MOSes with all sorts of bonuses as well. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that I was removed from the environment I was in. I was able to see how other people lived while being provided for and then having some extra money on top. When my enlistment was over, I moved on and have done great things and I am now in a wonderful place in life now. But I'm unique in that aspect. A large number of people I served with would not be able to once they were discharged and I hope most of them stay in, because it's a better life for them.

Just as having middle class or better contacts, friends, network and confidants can help you maintain or better your station, being poor and having poor contacts, friends, network and confidants will help you maintain or lose ground. If everyone you know is working for minimum wage, you don't ask where a good place to work is expecting good work, you're expecting somewhere that will actually give you full-time hours, or enough to barely sustain yourself.

Downvote me, rail against me, disagree, defend the article all you want to, but the article is full of as much hope and potential as the government programs that are available to help the poor go to college, all the way up to covering the entirety of their tuition. It sounds like such a great idea, but the reality is that fully covered tuition means jack shit when they are working 70-80 hours a week just to make rent and keep the lights on. It's feel-good drivel by people who never truly understood (and never will understand) what it's like to be at the poverty level or below.

I read about two pages of the article and there was nothing of the sort you describe, just anecdotes. Not even real anecdotes, more like atmosphere descriptions. Apparently it gets better, but I simply can not read every long winded opinion piece on the internet. If their message is important, they should aim for a more concise writing style.

The only indicator that it might be worthwhile to read is a couple of people here claiming it is important. But there are also people who claim reading the bible is important. I was simply asking for some convincing reasons to invest my time into reading that article.

Whoa there. I merely questioned the notion that simply educating everyone will solve all of our problems. I was implying that there's a lot more to it than that. Look at the media industry, for example - we have developed technology which makes information freely accessible to everyone yet we have a considerable amount of resources being thrown at locking that down, which makes no sense in the grand scheme of things.

I agree that education is a must, but it's also about addressing the social structures we currently have in place and recognising that they will fight tooth and nail to keep things the way they currently are.