Once we get past the wailing and hand-wringing about the injustice of it all we get down to more objective analysis. (And for those who always like to joke about Political Science being a classic oxymoron, let me point out that is what a political scientist does. Just like any scientist you observe what is happening then you attempt to apply some analysis of cause/effect. Measure, interpret, evaluate, analyse and maybe predict for the future.)
Take a look at this piece and see how you could frame the discussion:
Brit Paper Reports One-in-Five US Children Impoverished
Notice the map with that dark band of high poverty rates across the bottom of the nation. Is that reasonable? What's wrong with the statistics?
How about this: Poverty level is defined as a national dollar value. It's currently $22,350 per year for a family of four. The problem is that you can't apply a single number across a huge country with vastly different costs of living. You might be able to do quite nicely in Brownsville TX on that amount, but you couldn't buy two weeks of groceries in Manhattan, Aspen, or Palo Alto. To label states like Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana or New Mexico as wells of deep poverty is to apply a skewed yardstick.
Then what about this situation from the news article:
Poverty: Karla Washington, 41, an undergraduate student, has a five-year-old daughter but earns less than $11,000 from her part-time jobDid you break that down? She is 41 years old. She has a five-year-old, which means she gave birth at the age of 36. This is hardly an ill-timed adolescent adventure with dire consequences. She was a mature adult and supposedly cognizant of what causes babies.
Unless we have the second known instance of immaculate conception, she had a man involved. He apparently is not in the picture. No indication is made that he ever was.
While it is commendable that she is taking action to improve herself by pursuing a college degree the effort seems to be decidedly late in life and an apparent failure to prioritize her obligations. In other words she didn't do the number crunching prior to matriculation. Apparently the assumption is that someone will provide for her on the basis of giving her little girl that life that she deserves.
If that doesn't explain a lot about poverty and its causes I don't know what would.
1 comment:
Ed:
Why do you hate the children?
It's For The Children (TM).
I'm channeling a liberal the best I can. LOL.
Even at this late date, it is hard to explain to people that the leading causes of poverty in this country are laziness and apathy.
Every person in America has the exact same number of hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, and months in a year (assuming they live). The big difference is how people make use of those hours. Those that are successful tend to make good use of them with education, outside learning, skill development, and work. Those that are poor do not and do not take a livelihood very seriously. I sat in schools all the way through law school and saw people all around me make choices. It was not hard, even from an early age, to tell who would go somewhere and who would not. There are occasional surprises where the slacker wakes up, gets serious, and hits it out of the park. The world has changed and works against those types, fewer people with minimal education are excelling now compared to 50 years ago. But more commonly, those that made bad choices throughout their lives and have favored leisure over learning and work have not accomplished very much.
In a free society where people are allowed to make choices, there will always be those who make good choices and those who do not. It's not the job of the achievement class to subsidize their freedom to make choices and then indemnify them from the consequences of those choices.
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