521–530 of 632 posts
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Poverty itself can be caused by many things. But poverty in the most powerful country on Earth is not for a lack of resources.
There was no poverty in Ancient Rome?
It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
The diabetic Vanessa could have chosen not to have her first baby at 16.
If you're just into shaming people for bad decisions, I'm not.
It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
>you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. This is a traditional, stereotypical belief that in order to escape poverty you have to work harder. This is old understanding of meritocracy and it's no longer valid. The new meritocracy is that you have to learn harder. And now, given all the learning resources available for free on the internet (which is also very accessible nowadays) it's probably the best t…
This is the part you should be focusing on.
You've developed a model to explain why people live in poverty and how they can get out. Yet, as you can plainly see yourself, it doesn't actually jibe with reality.
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>America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances >We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up These are things some Americans would like to be true, but are actually far from true, and far from universally supported. America IS a cruel society in many ways. Many Americans blame the poor for being poor, and do not support any form of public assistance. The nat…
Yes, you're absolutely right. I guess what I should have said is that those things are parts of the American mythology, and I would really like the country to start living up to them.
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A modern wealthy society that allows a bad-but-understandable move by a 16 year old girl to basically wreck her entire life, is a cruel society. Also don't overlook that America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances, and that we as a society derive strength from that. We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up - but rather capitalize on the fact that those…
At 16, she could have chosen to do a million things that would have messed up her life. Kids can choose to hurt themselves in many ways. We can’t “not allow” kids to do jumps on their dirt bikes or venture into danger in other ways. Once they are given freedom from constant adult supervision, they have to act in self interest. You think that being 16 somehow absolves them from the responsibility of surviving. That’s…
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What's tragic is that millions of poor children are being raised in households considered poor because there is only a single earner. We have to address the cultural issues leading to the epidemic of single parent households. That will do far more for the children of the future than anything else.
That is one part of the problem, but I think you are being hyperbolic in describing it as the key. In many countries single parents (or single income families) are not automatically poor. Having a single income (at minimum wage) be above the poverty/food stamp line would be a start. Sick/carers leave and subsidised childcare also have huge impacts in allowing mothers to retain higher paying jobs. The real question is…
America has a significant social safety net, but should responsible citizens pay for the upkeep of someone who has multiple children out of wedlock before the age of 20 without any means to support those children? Absolutely not.
People must take responsibility for their own actions.
Well jobs absolutely are the solution for the 85% of Americans living above the poverty line. That said... The article completely ignores the major cause of Vanessa's struggles: she is a single parent trying to raise three children. Where is the father of her children? If you are not married, do not have children. Just going by the statistics, I suspect Vanessa's children were born out of wedlock. Also, if you are ve…
It's said that you need to do 3 things in America to avoid poverty. 1. Graduate High School 2. Work full-time 3. Don't have a baby out of wedlock It's that easy.
It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
Attributing outcomes to inherent properties, instead of systems and interactions, seems to be a fundamental mental error that is manifested in language, at least in English. We say that a blanket or jacket "is warm", even though all it's doing is trapping heat that we produce. We say a task "is difficult", even though we are the ones who are having the difficulty in completing it. We say an apple "is red" even if we…
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> You can escape poverty by working harder; it is just that working harder will not always work. You can escape poverty by buying lottery tickets too. Obviously it is all about the probabilities. But if you earn $10/hour (what kind of insane unlivable wage is that?) even if you work 16h/day you'll still be poor.
If you work harder than yourself you might still be at the bottom of the pole. It's a competition. If you work harder than the next person above you, you'll definitely earn (keyword is earn) better than them or live a more comfortable life than them.
I think what a lot of us a eluding to, is that some people can work as much as they can, up to burnout, without ever reaching above the poverty line.
I think that would be basically fate for a minority group single mother with low education living in a poor neighbourhood. People could blame her for her life, but except if her kid is exceptional in some way, he/she would also be doomed to be poor, for instance.
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Learning costs is only marginally higher than the cost of idleness.
you assume poor people are idle.