Atlantic City casinos closing...

Zd542, There's something I'd like to point out with regard to your blaming the poor for being poor as a result of bad decision making and not taking enough personal responsibility. Most of us contributing to this thread probably made some bone headed decisions when young but we had an internal moral compass and personal examples of what it took to succeed to guide us. Our parents, teachers, and community imbued those values in us from the time we were young. Those examples helped guide us as we grew up and gained life experience. Most of the poor never gain the advantage of positive examples and life lessons because their of crappy luck at birth.

My wife was an elementary school teacher for 39 years and believe me, she saw the full gamut of parenting and child rearing skills in our society. We are not born with the innate inborn skills needed to help us negotiate the social and financial minefields that proliferate in our society. If a kid grows up with no positive role models and no direct familial/societal pressures to succeed and evolve upwardly, no amount of government largess or standardized school testing and pressure is going to change the life trajectories of most people. That said, does that mean that we should abandon all hope and stop trying to save the few that CAN rise above their poor circumstances of birth?

Much of my work is at the other side of the educational spectrum with college students. Believe me, I see plenty of students who are the first ones in their families to go to college and they ARE rising above it all and they will stop perpetuating their family's cycle of poverty. Without the programs you say "aren't working," there would be many thousands of college students without the opportunity to change their lives. No doubt you are correct that we spend billions on social programs with inadequate outcomes. However, if we abandon efforts to help the poor and wash our hands of responsibility for them, we'll have a society with attributes of those in South and Central America eventually. Those with good jobs and adequate livelihood will live in armed compounds with private security and the rest will live in a world like the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo.

What's the answer to our societal problems and how do we improve outcomes of the programs we spend billions on? I wish I knew. I only know both sides of the political spectrum in the US seem like the blind men feeling one part of the elephant and thinking they have the whole picture.

It's nice to see a civil discussion here. There is, however, one meme that I have to slay and that is the "billions" we spend on the poor. It sounds like a lot but compared to what?

Someone, somewhere went and did the math for an average person who made $50,000/year and what the breakdown on taxes are. I think most will be in for a bit of shock, but here goes:

$347 a year for defense
$3.98 a year for disaster relief (FEMA)
$22.98 a year for unemployment insurance
$36.82 a year for SNAP (food stamps)-about a dime a day
$6.96 a year for welfare
$43.78 a year for retirement & disability to gov. workers (civilian & military)
$235.81 a year for Medicare
$4,000 a year for corporate subsidies.
Are you sure you're pissed off at the right people?

All the best,
Nonoise

Photon46,

Reading through your last post, I wont say I agree with every single word, but there's very little I disagree with. I think found disagreement when some of the other posts portrayed an overly dismal situation for the poor. Sort of like, poor people are doomed and there is very little they can do about it. I know they didn't mean that literally, but I think the picture was a little too dark. Also, you do a better job of classifying the different types of poor people. Someone born into poverty and not receiving a proper upbringing by their parents, will probably be at more of a disadvantage than someone like me, who was only poor for a short while.

"That said, does that mean that we should abandon all hope and stop trying to save the few that CAN rise above their poor circumstances of birth?"

I never said that. But I do feel that you can help too much.

"Much of my work is at the other side of the educational spectrum with college students. Believe me, I see plenty of students who are the first ones in their families to go to college and they ARE rising above it all and they will stop perpetuating their family's cycle of poverty. Without the programs you say "aren't working," there would be many thousands of college students without the opportunity to change their lives. No doubt you are correct that we spend billions on social programs with inadequate outcomes. "

Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about college loans and grants. I should have been more clear. Loans for school are great programs. I put myself through school with a Stafford loan. The only big problem I see with loans is not the students, but the schools themselves. All these new vocational type schools popping up with ultra high tuition costs, are doing a lot of damage. 6 month programs that cost about 15k and credits that don't transfer.

"07-23-14: Nonoise
It's nice to see a civil discussion here. There is, however, one meme that I have to slay and that is the "billions" we spend on the poor. It sounds like a lot but compared to what?"

You're absolutely right. We're spending trillions in other areas. Personally, though, I really don't like doing these type of comparative analyses. Each problem needs to be dealt with, not in comparison with different issues, but on their own merits. If we have to look at social programs in billions, then that's what it is. If defense spending is in trillions, then we have to look at it on that scale. Diverting money from one problem to the other won't fix anything. Good planning and oversight (if that's even possible) are how to deal with these problems.

"Are you sure you're pissed off at the right people?"

I find that people are usually more pissed off at me, as opposed to me being pissed at them. I have no idea why.

Zd542, thanks for that last sentence: I needed to laugh.

All the best,
Nonoise

Zd542, It is all too easy to feel the poor are doomed when we look at the numbers. The older I've gotten, the more I think we all give ourselves too much credit for our accomplishments in life. By that I mean that the vast majority of humans just live out their lives in the same patterns they were taught and exposed to in their formative years. Yes, I went to college, made good grades, worked hard at jobs that weren't ideal when I was younger, and worked my way up the ladder of prosperity as I got older. However, I had a road map of how to do it by cultural example and I'm an Anglo white male that's part of a group with a lot of advantages built in by luck of birth.

I once worked with a man who was born into a wealthy family and he married a daughter of one of the wealthiest and most influential business leaders in our part of the country. He quit working in the business we were in at the time and devoted himself full time to managing his wife's money right at the time the stock market was entering a prolonged bull run (he had training as a broker.) A monkey throwing darts at the financial page NASDAQ listings could make winning decisions in that environment. One day years later when our paths crossed again he remarked with great pride at how well he'd done and how hard he'd worked. When I mentioned that he might take solace in his good fortune in life, he became angry and vehemently denied that family, luck of birth, and good fortune played any role in his lot in life. I just let it go because you're obviously not going to change someone's world view in an argument like that. While an extreme example, I think that type of thinking is very prevalent among those who've done well in the world.

There are definitely those who rise above their lot in life and become successful, but our society is in a downward spiral because so few can or make the effort to do so.

I do completely agree with you about "for profit" universities and it will be interesting to see if we can come up with a way to rein in their predatory practices.