Bad luck and poor choices. But mainly poor choices.
And it is actually possible for the latter to live the happier life.
Bad luck, a failure to learn from past mistakes, not having the integrity to own up to those mistakes, and generally doing stupid crap to being with...
Yeah... I’d say there’s more than just one variable at play here and no... Love alone ain’t gonna fix it.
Well, I suppose losing lottery tickets, of which 99.99% are losing tickets can be considered bad luck.
But hey, the losers are supporting our schools since that is what ALL states with lotteries used to convince their citizens that the money would be used to fund.
This sounds like an argument against the American Dream where anyone can rise up form poverty to become rich or the president. You can’t make it so give up seems to be the message to me. It could also be a message to an migration bill that the illegals need our help, which will turn int their staying poor.
Sure there is bad luck. But that is not what causes the ghetto poverty in the US. It is caused by sin.
Ah, the old “Do we have free will?” question. Liberals always seem to come down on the side of “No.”
Bad choices and a lack of education. Poor schools combined with in many Black schools a disdain for learning leaves the “graduates” or drop outs without the basic skills needed to hold even menial jobs. Case in point Rachel, the 20 year old high school senior testifying at the Trayvon Martin trial. Being on the government dole also virtually assures poverty. For example the poorest county in the US is Shannon county, SD, the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, where every person is a ward of the government getting cash government allotments, free medical care, free education including college, mostly free government housing and food stamps.
Upbringing matters - and that is a function of culture.
So everybody stop hiding behind diversity and crying racism and get off yer duff and straighten out your act.
The Kristoff line of thinking seems to lead more to the Sanger/PP line of thinking, or perhaps the forced sterilization of the poor.
Poor people make poor choices...and it is nothing following the 10 Commandments can’t solve
My parents both grew up with poverty such as few in modern America can imagine - but they grew up in families, were raised with discipline and taught to work. None of the kids lived in poverty as adults.
My wife was born in the Philippines, and knew poverty greater than any American I’ve met - but she also grew up in a family. Some of her brothers are alcoholics who continue to live in poverty. If you send them money, they buy booze. But she and several of her sisters grew up as hard workers, and those sisters have all done well. A couple of brothers have also done well for themselves in the Philippines.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
To this nation's "poor" I say (paraphrasing Sgt Barnes's great line in Full Metal Jacket) "Poverty? What do y'all know about poverty?"
I was born dirt poor in Kansas to a father who drug himself out of poor status. I did the same.
There are a lot of factors in this equations of which luck is a large one. However, I believe the main factor is education of the child. That includes parenting and schooling.
A single black mother has two children. One says she wants to do more, doesn’t get knocked up, finishes high school, moves on to college, becomes a professional. Sister gets knocked up at 16, keeps it, has another kid by 18 to get her own apartment.
One breaks the cycle of poverty, though probably helps out her mother and sister and sister’s kids. The other perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
Same womb, different outcomes because of different choices.
Two boys act up and act out as tweens. Given the choice of jail and military school, one goes to school and the other joins the military. From military school to military, one gets a good course correction and moves on to employment and a chance at a decent life. The other goes from jail to living with friends to jail to infrequent minimum wage jobs. Different choices, different outcomes.