Why are poor people poor?

[dazzleman]

The real reason for poverty in most cases is thought process.

Those with a positive thought process, who are able to understand what they have to contribute, and what they can expect to get in return, are almost never poor.

Those with a negative thought process and an entitlement mentality, who think they are owed something just for existing, are often poor.

Negative thought processes lead to a downward cycle where the poverty reinforces itself, and then reinforces the negative thoughts.  These thought processes often lead to terrible decisions, like doing things in the wrong order.  Education/job/marriage/children (in that order) becomes children, job (maybe), education (unlikely) and marriage (unlikely).  Life is so much harder when you do things in the wrong order.  Kind of like taking college classes without the prerequisites.  It's a recipe for failure.

[dazzleman]

Isn't it interesting how quick people are to blame the poor for being poor?

It depends on the type of poverty.

For some people, poverty is a temporary, circumstantial situation, caused by youth, losing a job, etc.  We are all suseptible to this type of poverty, but it is usually not a chronic state.

But I have known several people who were chronically poor because of their own actions and behavior, so it's not so far-fetched to say that some people are to blame for their own poverty.  I'm talking about people who had decent upbringings and educational opportunities but who, for one reason or another, made bad financial and personal decisions, failed to take advantage of opportunities that they had, and generally blamed other people for the outcome.

My earlier comments were meant to address hard-core chronic poverty, not necessarily less severe forms of it.  I myself have experienced less severe forms of poverty when I was younger, and once when I lost my job. 

But there are some people who, because of their life circumstances, lack of training and education, and in some cases mental problems and addictions, coupled with their refusal and/or failure to take responsibility for changing those circumstances, stand little chance of ever escaping poverty.

[dazzleman]

Yes, for a very small amount of people, Poverty is their own fault.

But for the overwhelming majority of people living under the Poverty line, it's a result of factors beyond their control.
And when you're at the bottom of the ladder it's very, very hard to climb any higher.
That's not a "nice" thing for most people to acknowledge but it's the truth, painful as it is.

I don't believe that the "overwhelming majority" of people living in poverty have no control over it, at least on some level.  It would actually be easier to believe that, and if it were, anti-poverty programs that provide resources of different types to poor people would have been far more successful than they have been.

It's a lot harder to help people when they are their own worst enemy, and this is the case with a certain percentage of poor people.  Almost every poor person I personally know has at least contributed to their own situation, to one degree or another.

It's not all black and white, but I think we have done the poor a disservice by failing to face reality, and squandering opportunities to design more effective anti-poverty programs than the failed programs that liberals have produced.

[dazzleman]

A poor child with average intelligence has no chance to make anything of himself.  Everyone pulls these great examples out about kids who worked their way out of poverty-but those kids are probably extremely intelligent.  A child of average intelligence in the upper class is virtually guarranteed a place in college.

I'm not advocating redistributing wealth or anything, but public schools should be funded equally everywhere, OR we should completely cut public schooling and privatize everything.  One less thing to tax on.

I wish the answer to good education were as easy as equal funding.  In my liberal state (Connecticut), the state gives massive amounts of money to poor districts.  The city of Hartford spends more per student on education than most of the wealthy towns in the state.

And yet the results are absolutely dismal.  There is a lot more at work here than just money.  Dysfunctional or non-existent family structure, which is prevalent in the urban areas particularly, takes a huge toll on education.  The schools cannot function without some support from the home, and this is just not forthcoming in many of the poor communities.

The answer is to provide an alternative to poor children living in areas with failing schools.  The only thing that can work is to remove them from the toxic environment in which they live, but to do this it will be necessary to separate the kids in poor communities who want an education, and whose families are supportive of education, from those who aren't interested in education and only go to school to cause problems.  This will require abandoning some of our politically correct notions about the poor, so I don't expect to see it happen soon.