Posted on 12/16/2014 6:18:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The odds are stacked against low-income Americans seeking the education they need to move up.
Chelsey Stone had already escaped so many of the traps that keep poor children in poverty for life. She recalls begging neighbors for dinner when her mother sold their food stamps for drug money. She slept on the trampoline outside when the heroin showed up and her mom locked the door and the binges began. When she rebelled as a teenager, it was with poster board: She plastered her house with bright signs warning, Do Not Throw Needles Away Here.
Her teachers saw that spark. You can earn a college scholarship, they said. Land a good job, and dont depend on the government or anyone else. She knew they were right. She was almost there.
Then she got pregnant. Then she was 17, working two jobs to feed herself and her daughter, Kiara. She started college and tried to carry a full load of classes, and it was too much. She dropped out. And there went her chance at the middle class, racing away across the plains.
Where I was from, everyone was like, Shes going to be like her mom. And I was like, No, Im not, Stone said. But when the baby came, I couldnt keep it up.
The American economy has stopped working the way it used to for millions of Americans. The path from poverty to the middle class has changed now, it runs through higher education.
In 1965, a typical man whose education stopped after four years of high school earned a salary 15 percent higher than the median male worker.
By 2012, a high-school-only grad was earning 20 percent less than the median.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Everything you say is incorrect. Let’s start with the premise that you can’t get ahead in America without factories. Nonsense. My father was murdered by his brothers when I was 9, my mother became a hard-core IV drug user overnight. I was raised in 3rd world poverty because of her choices. Possessing zero advantages or opportunities, and only average brainpower and work ethic, I have made a success of myself. Because this is America, my climb to success was breathtakingly easy. I went to work every day; that’s about it.
Also, your plan would create 10s of millions of unionized filth in this country. More union filth, means more money for dems, more dems in office, more corruption, more corrupt elections, more al frankens, etc.
I would much rather send my money to the communist chinese than to union filth. Union filth have done, and will do more damage to this country than commie chinks.
Unless you want to fight a large sustained war with another world power. Yeah factories are useless < /sarc >
The percent of manufacturing that is still done in the USA by unionized workers is about 10%. That’s it. You are fighting the last war, get over it.
Raise tariffs on imported goods, thereby creating an incentive to build factories in this country. Ill gladly pay fifty cents more for a t-shirt and $2.00 more for a toaster because it will give unskilled American people without college degrees a real opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty and government dependency.
Me too.
You cannot be a first world country based on service industry, the only way to create wealth is to mine it, make it or grow it. That's it.
re: Having no accountability for fathers is driving the problem of illegitimate children.
So true. And the option of killing the baby in the first place through abortion diminishes the concept of accountability even further.
Why would you say factories are useless?
You said factories are useless not me.
Under your plan, that number would rise greatly, and besides, 10% is still dangerously large. Unions are weakened, no doubt, but please don’t pretend that they are NOT extremely powerful.
Factories mean one thing: millions of uneducated people gathered in buildings, 99% of whom are convinced that they’re really worth 3 times what they are getting paid by their corrupt, rich, evil, capitalist, bosses. They are easily organized, and told how to vote, they put in union rules which allow them to sleep on the job, manufacture junk, and raise the prices of goods, all while voting democrat.
I did? Show me where.
I am constantly chatting with degreed Millenials who display gaps in their knowledge of the world that was all stuff I had learned by the eighth grade.
Your opinion of your fellow Americans is really low. There are millions of young people that would love a chance at a steady non union factory job. It would help national security too.
My opinion of my fellow Americans is indeed VERY low. They are generally ignorant filth—look at the last two pres elections and tell me I’m wrong. Just try. Clinton TWICE????? Really? Only filth could make pull that lever.
FDR, JFK, LBJ, Truman, Carter, Clinton I, Clinton II!!!!, a democrat congress in something lik 55 OF THE LAST 70 years, Obama I, Obama II!!!!!!!!
Half the population 150 million people have IQ’s lower that 100. They have to either be employed doing manual or industrial labor or paid to graze on the public farm. Like cows-horny breeding cows. You pick.
IIRC, she was of two minds - great for the girl, but does society really want to cheer on a unmarried, not yet legally an adult that can be taken as an example of it being an "okay" practice among the yet to graduate student populace?
Nothing about what the future holds for those that will be tripped up by a more than likely poverty predictor.
Kids these days are denied nothing.
I stopped going to university because I couldn’t afford it. I hit several speed bumps along the way, but at 31 I have my own business budding and I will likely do a fine job once it’s off the ground.
Mental/emotional issues and I daresay that I ma of a clearer mindset and better equipped than I was at 21. It’s a blessing.
As for skills training, yes, I would encourage trade school and university/college later, mainly in the late twenties and early thirties.
I’m sick of the college/university obsession myself.
Actually, if you read the story, you would see her name is Chelsea, and there are no weaves.
I find it amazing she has done as well as she has given her early childhood of drug exposure. Chelsea will be okay. She has significant resilience. But folks like her are rare and it has to be heart breaking for those who work with people like her as the failure rate is high.
College, like most things, is what you make of it. We told our kids that they needed to major in areas where jobs would be available. Our son majored in engineering, and now works as a mechanical engineer. He will always be able to find work. He is constantly called by other companies offering employment. His twin sister is now in grad school studying Speech Language Pathology, with an eye toward working with the elderly and stroke victims. She will not go unemployed. (Yes, we are very proud of them.)
But college is worthless (or worse) if your major is art history, English, philosophy, sociology, etc. They just aren’t manufacturing or selling much philosophy these days. Chances are good that a retail sales job may be in your future if you choose those majors— but you will be a good person to invite to parties!
You posted:actually I have observed an actual discouragement of informing fathers. There have been multiple cases of where the father is actually known but is never informed in order for an adoption lawyer to profit from the adoption process.
***
Don’t blame the lawyers for this. First, they don’t make a great profit on this sort of case. Second, no lawyers are trolling for this sort of work. People come to them seeking to adopt or place a child for adoption. In my state fathers must be given notice and an opportunity to consent (or not) to the adoption.
Then she got pregnant. Then she was 17, working two jobs to feed herself and her daughter, Kiara. She started college and tried to carry a full load of classes, and it was too much. She dropped out. And there went her chance at the middle class, racing away across the plains...
This has always been the case with teenage pregnancy.
same in this state. There are lawyers who are KNOWN for being able to arrange adoptions and have sets of instructions for expectant unwed mothers. (father unknown, notice by publication, and the adopting wanabe parents pay the legal fees which are NOT cheap)
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