Quote:
Originally Posted by TSGracchus
But Steve, you're confusing two questions that really aren't the same.
One is: "Why is any particular person poor?"
The other is: "Why does poverty even exist in the first place?"
The rules of the economic game, which are largely set by government, determine how many people will be poor and how crushing their poverty will be. Who, exactly, those people will be, is determined more by their own actions and abilities. The government doesn't specify that of two children born in the same lower-class circumstances, one will work his way through college and become a professional, while the other will end up homeless and on the streets. But it does determine that one of them will be homeless. Which one? That's up to them.
Whey I was a boy, although we still had poverty, we also had factory workers making a middle-class income and living a middle-class lifestyle, including my father, who was a machinist but managed to send me to college. Today, you can't do that on a working-class income. Have the people doing the work changed? Are they less hard-working, less responsible, than their predecessors in the '50s? No. The rules of the game have changed, that's all: the big winners are winning bigger, and the working class has gotten the shaft. As for the poor, well, that hasn't changed much. It sucked then, and it sucks now. But the poor are only a small portion of our society, the real losers of the game on the bottom. For most Americans, who aren't either the big winners or the real losers, the rules have gotten worse, and they suffer accordingly.
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I'm not confusing anything.
Poverty exists because some people are unwilling to do what they have to do to make themselves
not poor.
The basic impetus behind any discussion like this is "we need to take from the rich and give to the poor". You look at the plight of the poor, while completely disregarding the merit of the rich.
You make the assumption that many of "the rich" have inherited their money. Tell that to Bill Gates. Tell that to Donald Trump. Tell it to countless others who inherited little, worked their asses off to become ridiculously rich, and see if you're not met with, at best, bemusement.
I'm not rich, and I'm not poor. I live in a nice three-bedroom home I bought nine years ago. I have a good job that pays me in the low six-figures. I have three fully-paid-for vehicles. I have nice things in my nice home, and I worked my ass off for every single one of them.
What I see you attempting to do is create a sense of guilt among those who "have" in deference to those who "have not". I'm not saying they're not in a shitty situation, I'm just saying that you're going to have to come up with something that's pretty fucking convincing to compel me to believe that their situations are beyond their control.
Every time someone talk about a "wealth gap", their solution is always to narrow it by giving from the rich and giving to the poor. This creates nothing. I would much prefer to see those in less-than-desireable situations do something to better their situations. It's better for everyone all around. Why you're incapable of grasping concept that is beyond me.
Now, if I've completely miscalculated where your head is at, fine.
What do
you think should be done to narrow that gap?