Posted on 12/26/2013 6:46:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
On Thanksgiving eve, a Nicholas Kristof editorial instructed us on how to think about poverty in The New York Times. The main reason there is poverty, he tells us, is bad luck.
We don’t choose our parents, after all. Or the household or neighborhood we are born into. Here are a few of his observations, with my emphasis added:
“As Warren Buffett puts it, our life outcomes often depend on the ‘ovarian lottery.‘
[T]he difference between being surrounded by a loving family or being homeless on the street is determined not just by our own level of virtue or self-discipline, but also by an inextricable mix of luck, biography, brain chemistry and genetics.
[S]uccess in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.”
So what’s the solution to this problem? It is apparently very simple: All we need is love. (Kristof’s column is actually titled “Where Is the Love?”) And just in case you are not motivated in that way, Kristof draws on the work of Harvard professor John Rawls to give a rational philosophical reason to spend more on welfare programs.
But before getting into that let’s pause for a moment. Is being born really a matter of luck? Doesn’t that take willful activity on the part of two parents? And is the inability of parents to support their children really a matter of luck? Or is it the result of bad habits and undisciplined behavior?
Let’s grant that some people do have bad luck. But bad luck usually strikes randomly. Absent hurricanes and tornados, we don’t expect misfortune to befall entire neighborhoods ― to say nothing of entire cities.
Kristof’s particular focus is on Food Stamps, given the debate in Congress over whether to cut spending on the program. So let’s concede that misfortune can cause some people to be hungry.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Poverty is mostly about attitude. Folks that become poor due to bad luck don’t usually stay poor. People with bad attitudes will stay poor even if they have good luck. Now, there is a new component...government imposed poverty. We will see how that one works out...
Based on a relatively small cohort of folks who barely get by, I’d say poor choices, inability to recognize them and change, poor choices of parents/family, and once caught in the spiral of poverty the challenge of getting out of it.
It’s not a lottery if a rich person has a child. He knows the child will be well off, and if the rich person is smart, his child will probably be smart, too. This article looks at it as though there are xmillion people born every year, and every one of them is fungible, and you could be one born to the rich guy or the poor guy. But the rich guy makes his child, just as a carpenter makes a birdhouse. It can be a crappy birdhouse or a nice one, but it’s not luck that makes the birdhouse a good one. It is what the carpenter puts into it.
Are they trying to make a logical argument for removing all children born in unfortunate circumstances and placing them with the better off?
Click on the link above for more information:
5. Salisbury, N.C
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3. Goshen, Ind.
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1. Eastpointe, Mich.
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