Posted on 04/18/2012 5:09:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
America is a land of class mobility. That's what makes America a magnet destination for people all over the world: Come to America and make something of yourself. If you want great welfare benefits, try to bust into Europe; if you want to work for a living and get rich, come to the United States.
But for some Americans, there is no class mobility. There is a permanent economic underclass, and those who inhabit it have no ability to rise above their fiscal fate.
There is a reason for that: They make bad decisions.
Take, for example, prom night. A recent study from Visa shows that the average family spends a whopping $1,078 on their teenager's prom night. But what's more interesting is that there is an income breakdown. If you make more than $75,000 per year, you will spend somewhere between $700 and $1,000. If you are one of the unfortunates who earn between $20,000 and $29,999 per year, you will spend ... $2,600. In other words, if you earn three times less, you'll spend three times more.
This is not a recipe for financial success.
And yet President Obama believes it is. In fact, he thinks that if we distribute income to the lowest economic rung, we'll somehow build our nation's wealth. Thus spoke Obama last week: "In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few. Prosperity has always come from the bottom up, from a strong and growing middle class."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Prosperity has never trickled from the bottom up. It has always come from the top down, in terms of investment. That's because people at the top have money. Even in Obama's vision of the universe -- the vision where wealthy people subsidize poor people -- the wealth is flowing top down. It's just being forced to flow by the government.
True wealth comes from generating goods and services people want to buy at a price they want to pay. The only way such goods and services are generated is if somebody is willing to front the cash to do it. Henry Ford needed investors to get his Model-T up and running. It didn't magically appear. And when enough rich people are competing to create the next great product, you get capitalism's greatest achievement: thriving markets with choices for consumers.
And yet, the left does not want to see this. They proclaim that poor people spending money produce goods. This is insipid. It leaves the left in the unenviable position of having to argue that unemployment benefits help the economy because after all, people who are poor are spending more money.
If poverty generated wealth, Sudan would be a paradise.
Wealth generates wealth. It takes money to make money. Nobody has ever been hired long term by a member of the permanent poor. Nobody has ever developed a product while being funded by a member of the permanent poor.
The left insists that such talk is racist. It isn't. Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America" deals solely with American whites and makes the same point. The permanent underclass is a permanent underclass because it is filled with folks who make rotten decisions. That doesn't mean we can't help them. It doesn't mean we can't lend them a hand. It does mean that building our economic strategy on their ability to stimulate growth is a fool's errand.
If you work hard and do the right thing in America, you will benefit financially. If you don't, you won't. If we redistribute cash from the hard workers and good decision makers to their less responsible counterparts, we penalize hard work and good decisions in favor of frivolity. We don't want the parents who spend 10 percent of their earning power on prom night defining our economy. We've already done that once. It led to subprime mortgage meltdowns and stock market collapses. Why not try responsibility?
Some idiots pay to let their princesses pretend to be rich and famous: limo, VERY expensive dress, VERY expensive meal, HOTEL ROOM????!!
The irony is the fact that it's really all very low class behavior.
...He wouldn’t want to wear the one I wore in 1979. LOL”
In 1973 I wore a purple crushed velvet tux with a pink ruffled shirt and purple velvet cummerbunder. I can’t remember the shoes exactly, but I think they were white with platform heels. I looked like a friggin’ white pimp....and was able to signify with the few black dudes who attended my high school. There is a photo somewhere, but I recall it is rather scary...
My wife teaches high school, and they have a large daycare.
Most kids coming from a single parent household will follow a similar pattern. This is spreading faster than you can believe.
Lolz! You win!
Suddenly I am no longer embarrassed about the idiotic getup I wore to the prom. Compared to you I was a regular Beau Brummel.
The 70s were truly a lost decade.
Yes, there's more, including the professional photos taken at the prom to have a permanent record of that $1000 dress, shoes and purse ensemble.
Yep, I forgot the professional photos, and someone else pointed out that prom night now includes a fancy, pre-prom meal for many.
All that, for pictures that 20 or 30 years from now other people will laugh at as "bad prom pictures!"
What do they spend money on? A fancy gown (bought, not a rental), expensive restaurant dinner, limo rental ('cause the family beater is too beat--if there is one), flowers, nails, hair, photographer, etc...
For those who have little, going nuts and bingeing on special occasions gives an aura of importance and is commonplace, but economically destructive overall.
A good, conservative suit, made of the best material you can afford, will rotate in and out of style, but can last a lifetime. I still have the one I got as a graduation present, (I'm not saying it fits now, OK), but I wore it twenty years ago to testify at a State Senate subcomittee hearing on a Bill, and was better dressed than the legislators.
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.