Quote:
Chocobot
This would be fair comment if somehow across the world, in those places where the poor could not even make bad choices, such as alcohol excess, there were no poor people.
However, youll find that even in places where the entire population lives frugal and comparitively healthy lives such as India and China, the poor still exist in great numbers. Thus it is a structural phenomena rather than a phenomena born of personal morality.
|
My apologies, I have to make this point so often, I sometimes forget that I need to stipulate I am speaking about the phenomena of poverty in this country. In THIS country, poverty is not a structural phenomena, it is by and large the result of personal choice.
Now, at the national level I would say that large-scale structural poverty is also the result of choices. In most places in the world were you have substantial relative poverty the single most defining feature is one of two things, lack individual economic freedom and liberty coupled with high levels of corruption and lack of legal frameworks to protect personal property rights and liberties.
Finally, since you bring up poverty worldwide, let me assure you, as someone who has been to more genuinely poor countries than you could probably name, I can tell you there is not any statistically significant genuine poverty in this country. The "middle class" in most of the countries you refer to would be thrilled to have the material level of well being and comfort that the average "poor" person in this country lives in.
__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"
----Denny Crane
