[ruesrose]

You sure have that right!

[Tax-chick]

Walter Williams, among others, repeats the simple steps to avoid poverty in America: Graduate from high school. After that, get married before you have a child, and stay married. Get a job, any job, and work diligently at it.

Just these things, especially the second item, would result in non-neediness for a hugh swath of today's "poor." As Theodore Dalrymple said, the problem of the underclass is not "poverty," in the sense of a lack of money and stuff: the problem is moral, personal, and community squalor.