Posted on 01/20/2015 5:34:51 AM PST by shortstop
To fight poverty, you’ve got to attack the behaviors that cause it.
The governor (Cuomo) should remember that.
If all of a sudden he’s decided to be concerned about poverty, and is riding to the rescue, his only chance of success is to be honest about both poverty’s causes and cures.
Thus far, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be.
To progressives, poverty is a condition imposed upon victims by oppressors. One party is disadvantaged by the evil of another. There is a fixed amount of wealth and the fact someone else has it and you don’t is because it was unjustly taken away from you by them.
To progressives, poverty is cured by using the force of government to take money away from one group to give it to another group.
As a consequence, progressives will forever fail to either understand or reduce poverty. They are wrong as to its origins and its remedies.
In fact, the progressive misunderstanding of the nature of poverty and how to reduce it is arguably one of the reasons we have so much poverty in America.
In fact, poverty is seldom externally imposed. When it is, it is most typically imposed by foolish or failed parents who doom and damage their children. Normally, poverty is a result of personal choice and cultural injunctions.
Consequently, it is overcome by making better personal choices and rejecting cultural injunctions.
To fight poverty, you’ve got to attack the behaviors that cause it.
Here are four of them: Out-of-wedlock birth, hostility toward education, drug use, and criminal conduct.
That’s it.
Poverty in America – particularly in its cities – would be dramatically reduced if conduct and culture led people to behave wisely in those four areas.
A culture that tolerates and honors out-of-wedlock birth is doomed to dysfunction and failure. Ditto for a culture that teaches people to be contemptuous of learning and the educational system.
Sadly, many people in America’s cities are products of a culture that does those two very things. It is no surprise that those communities have the highest poverty rates in the country.
If you choose to have your children outside marriage or even a stable relationship, the great likelihood is that you have doomed you and your children to poverty.
The one-percenters didn’t do that. The suburban people didn’t do that. You did that.
If you choose to be insolent in school, to not seriously engage it, to not attend, to not study and, ultimately, to not graduate, you’ve set yourself on a course for the welfare line.
Again, it’s not evil Republicans who made you act up in class. It’s not the teachers who taught you wrong. It’s not the businessman who made you drop out of school. It was you. You chose poverty.
So blaming it on someone else is neither honest nor productive.
Further, the dissipation of drug use, and the wasted life and deserved stigma associated with criminal incarceration, further increase the certainty of poverty.
Unfortunately, the governor’s plan to fight poverty neither acknowledges nor addresses any of these issues.
Rather, he wants to increase the minimum wage, give more grants for city kids to get summer jobs, pay for more subsidized housing, increase funding for charities dealing with homelessness and food, and increase the number of set asides for minority- and female-owned businesses.
Those efforts will accomplish just about as much as they’ve always accomplished – nothing.
To accomplish something, people have to change. And they don’t change if you give them unearned money and freebies. They become dependent, which is to enslave them to more and longer.
To fight poverty, you’ve got to attack the behaviors that cause it.
Out-of-wedlock birth, hostility toward education, drug use, and criminal conduct.
A leader needs to speak to the people in a loving but authoritative way, and tell them the truth – about the culture to which they are clinging and the choices they are tragically making.
That is not to scold or condemn anyone, it is to merely tell the truth, and believe that truth makes us free.
Life is about choice and consequences, and so often the consequence of poverty is directly ascribable to foolish choice.
A true leader would call people to wiser choices, and to the happy consequences of those wiser choices.
But not this governor.
He’s neither honest nor smart enough to truly address the problem of poverty.
Change behavior...and lose Democrat votes? Are you serious?
Plus even when unemployed because the economy is depressed, you get up, get dressed and occupy yourself with something, even if it is just cleaning, raking, mowing, sewing, knitting.
The right is often accused of being in favor of “social darwinism” - of wanting to let the unfit die.
This entirely misses the point. Social darwinism isn’t about the survival or extinction of people, it’s about the survival or extinction of behaviors.
We want to stop subsidizing self-destructive behaviors, so that people will abandon them - because only that will improve their lot.
It’s so simple and accurate that it’s almost embarrassing that someone has to spell it out for you!
I’m renting to several people on assistance. They share some common traits. They run the heat in their mobile homes at 75-85 in winter, but 65-75 in summer. (I heat only the bathroom in mine and generally cool only one room in summer.) They have amazing amounts of stuff, clothes, furniture, jewelry, etc. They have new cars, full-everything cable, internet connected phones and eat out. I do and have none of that stuff. When I was a child I asked my mother, “are we poor?” If we had meat it was a tiny piece and I was sick to death of potatoes. She said, “No, we’re not poor. Poor people spend their last dollar on beer and cigarettes. I spend our last dollar on food and cloth.” (She made all of our clothes.) That’s the other thing, although none of my renters smoke, as I won’t take them if they do, they drink like fish and the food they eat is all junk.
I don’t think the confiscation and redistribution is their primary motivation.
“Having someone really smart whom they support in charge of who gets what” is the basic foundation of sheeperal ideology.
IE, Humanism.
I agree, the actual cause of what our gov’t defines as “poverty” in America is almost entirely due to the “progressive” policies that had the stated intent of resolving that very issue.
To fight poverty, you’ve got to attack the behaviors that cause it.
Out-of-wedlock birth, hostility toward education, drug use, and criminal conduct.
Yep, “that’s racist!”
The left doesn’t want that. They encourage individuals to engage in anti-social behavior, and then they reward them, with money from people who work hard and actually accomplish things.
so who pays for their heating bill?
“so who pays for their heating bill?”
I don’t actually know the agency, but they’re all on EBT cards and welfare. People who are paying their own turn the heat and air off when they’re not there. People who are getting it free don’t. One group of three unrelated much older (60’s-70’s) adults listed their only income as Social Security. It is not enough for the $400-500 per month electric and rent and the other stuff I’ve observed while there. (They have both satellite and cable!) I frankly have no idea how they’re living, but they’re obviously having no problems and are unconcerned by the electric cost. (Oh, and they haven’t yet missed a rent payment. I really hesitated in taking them but I needed the unit rented right away and they had first and damage in crisp, $100 bills.)
Excellent article.
Bookmark
In a nutshell.
If you want to be poor, do what poor people do.
If you want to be rich, do what rich people do.
I have a family member who has been on welfare for years. Every time they come over to the house, they complain about how cold it is inside in the winter, and how hot it is inside in the summer.
I said, “Well, see, when you pay your own way through life, you have to be mindful of energy costs. Not all of us can afford to life the high life on the backs of others.”
But *I’m* the bad guy...lol
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.