Conclusion
While the tone I’ve used has a tinge of sarcasm, it is to make a point. Poverty is inevitable for some, but a choice for others. The American dream has a chapter about capable people overcoming bad odds to pull themselves out of the poverty they were born into. We love those stories. They inspire us. They help us feel good about our freedom to achieve. But what we don’t hear, or want to hear, are the stories of kids who never made it out. Either by virtue of intelligence, or character, or a hostile environment, they remain sucked into the black hole of poverty. They have kids and the cycle repeats itself. Black, white, or brown, poverty is an equal opportunity destroyer.
Then there are the stories of reformation. The "I found the light" stories. Only it isn’t religion, it’s financial salvation people discover. The couples who cut up their credit cards, make Christmas decorations from old Coke cans, and clip coupons to save a fortune on groceries are in this group. Some of them are people who live on the edge of poverty, but by being clever and careful, they don’t fall into it. Others are people who fell into poverty and learned the hard way how to get out and stay out. We love their grit and determination.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to poverty. No free nation can make people take personal responsibility when they don’t want to. The best we can do is to educate people to make good choices and to protect the less able from being preyed upon by the unscrupulous.
There will always be people who lack the intellectual or physical capacity to earn a living wage or manage the money they earn. For these people, welfare programs are an essential safety net because education will not overcome their challenges. There will always be children born into poverty. For them, child care and education programs can provide one avenue of escape from the debilitating effects of poverty.
Society can keep the heads of the poor above water, but it cannot raise them out of it. Only by applying personal effort and using the social supports available can individuals make their lives a success.
The great challenge for the nation is to decide the roles of family, government, and charity in helping those who are not in a position to help themselves - but who could prosper with the help of others. With that decision must come the commitment to financially support those efforts. The challenge for government is to know what programs truly make a difference.
When the poor are poor forever, there is little to lose by attacking those who have what they need. Thus, it is in the best interest of all to continuously address poverty and its causes.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Poverty - How to Get Poor & Stay Poor (2nd of 3)
How to Get Poor and Stay Poor
Not everyone who is poor got there the easy way by virtue of his or her birth. Some people had to work at it. There are proven pathways to becoming poor if you are not born that way.
The first is to let your worst personal characteristics take over your behavior when you are young. Let your frustration stop you from sticking to your tasks, especially school work. Let your laziness steer you into trivial pursuits and idleness. Let your need for gratification have you focus only on what is happening now so you are unprepared for later. Youth is a great time to waste your talents and prepare for poverty. Simply by slipping through the educational system with minimal effort (the system will help you do this), you can enter adulthood with neither the skills nor the personal character required to earn a decent living. If your parents don’t value education, it makes this much easier because they will not pressure you to perform academically. The sad truth is that you may wise up to your errors only to find yourself with kids, car and house payments, and a full-time job that leaves you no time to get the education you should have gained in your youth. "Too soon old, too late wise" is the saying that applies.
You can also achieve poverty quickly by having one or more children. Do this as early as possible - preferably while you are still in high school. If you are a girl, this is especially effective because you will be raising the baby. If you drop out of school to do that, you get a boost on the path to poverty. If you are a boy, don’t expect you can walk away from your obligations. States have become very tough on enforcing child support orders. The money you thought you had for a car payment will now be paying for diapers and formula. If you can have a child in high school, belong to a minority group, and live in an impoverished neighborhood, you have the trifecta combination for a life of poverty.
If you are getting by and not yet in poverty, you can use a common route to poverty that many people have discovered. Get divorced. Once you divide into two households instead of one, you have practically doubled your housing payment and your utility bills and some of your insurance costs (if you have any). While the government may supply extra help to the party raising the kids, don’t worry, it won’t be as much as the additional expenses you will incur. If living together is hard emotionally, living apart is hard financially unless you are well off to start with.
It is tough, if not impossible, to save when you are in or near poverty. Getting by week-to-week takes everything you have. Truly, it does. Because of that, you will never have any retirement savings. However, if you are fortunate enough to have the ability to save for retirement, it does not mean you must do so. Spend the money instead. You may be dead next year. Why worry about something that far away? After all, there is Social Security to take care of you. True, but try living on just Social Security. If your wages are modest, you Social Security assistance will be even less modest. If you aren’t poor while you are working, by not saving you can become poor in your old age.
Another great way to diminish your chances for the good life is to be convicted of a crime. Felonies are better than misdemeanors because they stand out on your record. Many employers do criminal background checks where they find out about felonies. Who wants a felon on the payroll when a law-abiding applicant is standing in line for the same job? Maybe you get lucky and catch a break with a sympathetic employer, but those are long odds. Because crime doesn’t pay, you won’t get a high-paying job. You pay for your crime twice.
Let’s assume you are smart enough to stay out of trouble with the law and disciplined enough not to create kids before you get married (or at least reach 21). What other good opportunities are there for reaching poverty? One of the best is to pile up debt. Fortunately, our society offers many ways for you to do this. Start with credit cards. Get as many as you can. Max each one out. Because you have spent money you don’t have, and you won’t have any extra coming in to catch up for the overspending, you will end up either being enslaved by your minimum monthly payments or filing for bankruptcy (and that is a whole other story).
Clever enough to manage you money and your credit? Don’t worry, there are other options for poverty. Student loans are useful to tie you down, but you only get those for advanced education and you may in fact earn enough to pay them off. Unless, of course, you spend $50,000 for a degree no employer is interested in. And, by the way, bankruptcy won’t rid you of these loans - while your education lasts forever, so does your student loan obligation.
Credit card debt, student loans, car payments, leases, and mortgage payments are all debts you can see coming so you can avoid or manage them. Medical bills on the other hand arrive out of the blue. The best way to be impoverished by medical expenses is to not have health insurance. You will be amazed at how expensive even the tiniest procedure is, and hospital stays - well, they are off the charts. With only a few uninsured days in the hospital, you can kiss a year’s worth of pay good-bye. Oops, you need that paycheck for rent and groceries and gas? Indeed you do, so you can plan on paying off the docs for a long, long time. Did I mention bill collectors if you don’t? Such lovely people. You’ll get to know them well. They know more poor people than anyone else.
If a little self-indulgence is a good thing, what’s wrong with a lot of it? If you see something you want, buy it (and please use a credit card). Live for today and you can ease your way into poverty. A simple way to do this is to live on the cash you have in your pocket now. If you get paid and you have a lot, you are rich. Indulge yourself. Don’t worry about the bills coming due at the end of the month, or end of the year, that’s too far out to concern you. Besides, saving is such a pain. It’s better to buy on credit and get it now than save and get it later.
Low on cash? Visit your friendly cash advance location and get that extra $300 to last you til payday. Their interest rate is only about 200% a year. Not bad for them when you compare it to what you would earn by saving the money in a bank or CD. You’ll like the friendliness of these folks so much you’ll be back again and again. All the while, the fees they collect from you could be buying bread and milk for the week.
Everyone likes Disneyland, but it is expensive. You can do just as well by living in La-La Land for free. Just ignore things that might trouble you financially. Worried about whether you can afford the car payment for that new car? Nah, don’t worry. Wondering how you will pay the car insurance bill? Oh, fiddle - there’ll be money from some place when the time comes. Be like the animals in the Lion King and just hum a little "Hakuna Matata" - no worries my friend, that’s what La-La Land is for. Ignorance is bliss, if only for a while until poverty takes over.
It helps others to know that you are among the poor by dressing the part. In short, you need the right "costume." You can not only be poor financially, you can use poor taste in your appearance to emphasize the point. While fashion changes with the times, generally speaking you can look the part of a lower class poor person by getting tattoos and body piercings - the more there are and the more visible, the better. Find an alternative hair style to go with it (too much or too little works as do wild colors). Pump up the makeup. Use motorcycle gang members and streetwalkers as your models. Once people see you looking this way, you can be sure you won’t get job offers for those good paying jobs that all the straight looking people have. Your chances of staying poor are now enhanced.
Finally, to enhance your poverty possibilities, take risks. Find a dangerous hobby. Drive recklessly. Ignore speed limits. Pick a fight in a bar. Sleep with strangers. Sign contracts without understanding them. Do drugs - they have the wonderful benefits of not only taking all your money, but getting you in trouble with the law and piling up medical bills. Of course, with enough drugs, you can forget your troubles.
If you live on the fringes of poverty, all you need is one small disaster to put you completely over the edge. A good injury, a sizeable traffic fine, an HIV infection, take your pick. Each is a great way to tumble head-over-heels into poverty. Taking risks will get you there.
Not everyone who is poor got there the easy way by virtue of his or her birth. Some people had to work at it. There are proven pathways to becoming poor if you are not born that way.
The first is to let your worst personal characteristics take over your behavior when you are young. Let your frustration stop you from sticking to your tasks, especially school work. Let your laziness steer you into trivial pursuits and idleness. Let your need for gratification have you focus only on what is happening now so you are unprepared for later. Youth is a great time to waste your talents and prepare for poverty. Simply by slipping through the educational system with minimal effort (the system will help you do this), you can enter adulthood with neither the skills nor the personal character required to earn a decent living. If your parents don’t value education, it makes this much easier because they will not pressure you to perform academically. The sad truth is that you may wise up to your errors only to find yourself with kids, car and house payments, and a full-time job that leaves you no time to get the education you should have gained in your youth. "Too soon old, too late wise" is the saying that applies.
You can also achieve poverty quickly by having one or more children. Do this as early as possible - preferably while you are still in high school. If you are a girl, this is especially effective because you will be raising the baby. If you drop out of school to do that, you get a boost on the path to poverty. If you are a boy, don’t expect you can walk away from your obligations. States have become very tough on enforcing child support orders. The money you thought you had for a car payment will now be paying for diapers and formula. If you can have a child in high school, belong to a minority group, and live in an impoverished neighborhood, you have the trifecta combination for a life of poverty.
If you are getting by and not yet in poverty, you can use a common route to poverty that many people have discovered. Get divorced. Once you divide into two households instead of one, you have practically doubled your housing payment and your utility bills and some of your insurance costs (if you have any). While the government may supply extra help to the party raising the kids, don’t worry, it won’t be as much as the additional expenses you will incur. If living together is hard emotionally, living apart is hard financially unless you are well off to start with.
It is tough, if not impossible, to save when you are in or near poverty. Getting by week-to-week takes everything you have. Truly, it does. Because of that, you will never have any retirement savings. However, if you are fortunate enough to have the ability to save for retirement, it does not mean you must do so. Spend the money instead. You may be dead next year. Why worry about something that far away? After all, there is Social Security to take care of you. True, but try living on just Social Security. If your wages are modest, you Social Security assistance will be even less modest. If you aren’t poor while you are working, by not saving you can become poor in your old age.
Another great way to diminish your chances for the good life is to be convicted of a crime. Felonies are better than misdemeanors because they stand out on your record. Many employers do criminal background checks where they find out about felonies. Who wants a felon on the payroll when a law-abiding applicant is standing in line for the same job? Maybe you get lucky and catch a break with a sympathetic employer, but those are long odds. Because crime doesn’t pay, you won’t get a high-paying job. You pay for your crime twice.
Let’s assume you are smart enough to stay out of trouble with the law and disciplined enough not to create kids before you get married (or at least reach 21). What other good opportunities are there for reaching poverty? One of the best is to pile up debt. Fortunately, our society offers many ways for you to do this. Start with credit cards. Get as many as you can. Max each one out. Because you have spent money you don’t have, and you won’t have any extra coming in to catch up for the overspending, you will end up either being enslaved by your minimum monthly payments or filing for bankruptcy (and that is a whole other story).
Clever enough to manage you money and your credit? Don’t worry, there are other options for poverty. Student loans are useful to tie you down, but you only get those for advanced education and you may in fact earn enough to pay them off. Unless, of course, you spend $50,000 for a degree no employer is interested in. And, by the way, bankruptcy won’t rid you of these loans - while your education lasts forever, so does your student loan obligation.
Credit card debt, student loans, car payments, leases, and mortgage payments are all debts you can see coming so you can avoid or manage them. Medical bills on the other hand arrive out of the blue. The best way to be impoverished by medical expenses is to not have health insurance. You will be amazed at how expensive even the tiniest procedure is, and hospital stays - well, they are off the charts. With only a few uninsured days in the hospital, you can kiss a year’s worth of pay good-bye. Oops, you need that paycheck for rent and groceries and gas? Indeed you do, so you can plan on paying off the docs for a long, long time. Did I mention bill collectors if you don’t? Such lovely people. You’ll get to know them well. They know more poor people than anyone else.
If a little self-indulgence is a good thing, what’s wrong with a lot of it? If you see something you want, buy it (and please use a credit card). Live for today and you can ease your way into poverty. A simple way to do this is to live on the cash you have in your pocket now. If you get paid and you have a lot, you are rich. Indulge yourself. Don’t worry about the bills coming due at the end of the month, or end of the year, that’s too far out to concern you. Besides, saving is such a pain. It’s better to buy on credit and get it now than save and get it later.
Low on cash? Visit your friendly cash advance location and get that extra $300 to last you til payday. Their interest rate is only about 200% a year. Not bad for them when you compare it to what you would earn by saving the money in a bank or CD. You’ll like the friendliness of these folks so much you’ll be back again and again. All the while, the fees they collect from you could be buying bread and milk for the week.
Everyone likes Disneyland, but it is expensive. You can do just as well by living in La-La Land for free. Just ignore things that might trouble you financially. Worried about whether you can afford the car payment for that new car? Nah, don’t worry. Wondering how you will pay the car insurance bill? Oh, fiddle - there’ll be money from some place when the time comes. Be like the animals in the Lion King and just hum a little "Hakuna Matata" - no worries my friend, that’s what La-La Land is for. Ignorance is bliss, if only for a while until poverty takes over.
It helps others to know that you are among the poor by dressing the part. In short, you need the right "costume." You can not only be poor financially, you can use poor taste in your appearance to emphasize the point. While fashion changes with the times, generally speaking you can look the part of a lower class poor person by getting tattoos and body piercings - the more there are and the more visible, the better. Find an alternative hair style to go with it (too much or too little works as do wild colors). Pump up the makeup. Use motorcycle gang members and streetwalkers as your models. Once people see you looking this way, you can be sure you won’t get job offers for those good paying jobs that all the straight looking people have. Your chances of staying poor are now enhanced.
Finally, to enhance your poverty possibilities, take risks. Find a dangerous hobby. Drive recklessly. Ignore speed limits. Pick a fight in a bar. Sleep with strangers. Sign contracts without understanding them. Do drugs - they have the wonderful benefits of not only taking all your money, but getting you in trouble with the law and piling up medical bills. Of course, with enough drugs, you can forget your troubles.
If you live on the fringes of poverty, all you need is one small disaster to put you completely over the edge. A good injury, a sizeable traffic fine, an HIV infection, take your pick. Each is a great way to tumble head-over-heels into poverty. Taking risks will get you there.
Poverty - How to Be Poor (1st of 3)
How to Be Poor, Get Poor, and Stay Poor
The Underclass in America
The earnings level for a family of four to be considered living in poverty is $22,350. For a single person it is $10,890. Try living on that and you will discover that poverty is a very tough place to be. A four-person household with one wage earner making $10.75/hr. for 40 hrs./wk qualifies for the poverty level. A minimum wage job pays $7.25/hr.
So why are people poor and what can be done about it, if anything?
How to Be Poor
You don’t have to do anything to be poor because the fastest and easiest way to be poor is to be born into it. If being born into wealth is simple, so is being born into poverty. The best family situation to assist you into poverty is to be born to a single mother. If that is not possible, aim for a family whose members are already financially poor and poorly educated.1
Being born poor does not mean you will stay poor, it only improves your chances. The same is true of being born rich. People rise form poverty and fall from wealth. It happens. Being born poor significantly hurts your odds of achieving prosperity.
The other way to be poor is to be born stupid. This isn’t a mean-spirited remark, it is simply a cold fact. The intelligence of the population is distributed along a bell-shaped curve with smart people at the high end and dumb people at the low end. This is why education only helps some people in poverty. You need a certain amount of raw brain power to benefit from it. The degree of training needed for decent paying jobs is beyond the grasp of a significant segment of the population. In a complex and technological society, having minimal brainpower condemns you to a low-skilled, low-paying job. Low-paying jobs equal poverty-level living.
Besides intelligence, there are many personal traits that are inherent from birth. People vary on their degree of initiative, persistence, organization, risk taking, frustration tolerance, and ability to delay gratification. Granted, some aspects of these can be enhanced or diminished, but a person’s inclinations on these makes up a portion of his core personality. Some personalities are more poverty prone than others. If intelligence or physical prowess is the raw horsepower for success, then personality is the steering mechanism that applies it successfully - or not.
Among the intrinsically poor portion of the population are the severely handicapped. Without family, government, or charitable support, these people would live and die in poverty. Even with support, they are not likely to be far above it.
Since the population will always have people with low intelligence, physical disabilities, and poverty-prone personalities (unless we resort to the genetic engineering of the species), there will always be poor people. Since there will always be poor people, there will always be children born into poor families. These children will become part of a never-ending supply of poor people. The potential for poverty is a problem that can never be eliminated; it can only be controlled.
What can be done is to mitigate the effects of poverty and provide opportunity for those with the ability and initiative to rise out of it so there is not a permanent, hereditary underclass in society. DNA being what it is, poor people can have smart kids who can escape poverty if their environment does not prevent it. Unfortunately, the environment typically works against this possibility. America today looks ever more stratified. Smart, educated, well-off people live together, marry, and have children (in that order). These kids have the best inherent environmental prospects for success. Under-educated, less intelligent, poorer people live together have kids, and don’t marry (in that order). They produce children who are disadvantaged across-the-board from the outset.
1 The national poverty rate among families headed by a person with less than a high school education is 24%, for those with some college education it is 7% and for those with at least a bachelor’s degree it is 2%.
If parents have low education levels, full-time employment does not protect their families from poverty. Nationally, nearly three-quarters (73%) of children whose parents do not have a high school degree live in low-income families, compared with only 15% of children whose parents have at least some college education.http://fightpoverty.mmbrico.com/reasons/educational.html
The Underclass in America
The earnings level for a family of four to be considered living in poverty is $22,350. For a single person it is $10,890. Try living on that and you will discover that poverty is a very tough place to be. A four-person household with one wage earner making $10.75/hr. for 40 hrs./wk qualifies for the poverty level. A minimum wage job pays $7.25/hr.
So why are people poor and what can be done about it, if anything?
How to Be Poor
You don’t have to do anything to be poor because the fastest and easiest way to be poor is to be born into it. If being born into wealth is simple, so is being born into poverty. The best family situation to assist you into poverty is to be born to a single mother. If that is not possible, aim for a family whose members are already financially poor and poorly educated.1
Being born poor does not mean you will stay poor, it only improves your chances. The same is true of being born rich. People rise form poverty and fall from wealth. It happens. Being born poor significantly hurts your odds of achieving prosperity.
The other way to be poor is to be born stupid. This isn’t a mean-spirited remark, it is simply a cold fact. The intelligence of the population is distributed along a bell-shaped curve with smart people at the high end and dumb people at the low end. This is why education only helps some people in poverty. You need a certain amount of raw brain power to benefit from it. The degree of training needed for decent paying jobs is beyond the grasp of a significant segment of the population. In a complex and technological society, having minimal brainpower condemns you to a low-skilled, low-paying job. Low-paying jobs equal poverty-level living.
Besides intelligence, there are many personal traits that are inherent from birth. People vary on their degree of initiative, persistence, organization, risk taking, frustration tolerance, and ability to delay gratification. Granted, some aspects of these can be enhanced or diminished, but a person’s inclinations on these makes up a portion of his core personality. Some personalities are more poverty prone than others. If intelligence or physical prowess is the raw horsepower for success, then personality is the steering mechanism that applies it successfully - or not.
Among the intrinsically poor portion of the population are the severely handicapped. Without family, government, or charitable support, these people would live and die in poverty. Even with support, they are not likely to be far above it.
Since the population will always have people with low intelligence, physical disabilities, and poverty-prone personalities (unless we resort to the genetic engineering of the species), there will always be poor people. Since there will always be poor people, there will always be children born into poor families. These children will become part of a never-ending supply of poor people. The potential for poverty is a problem that can never be eliminated; it can only be controlled.
What can be done is to mitigate the effects of poverty and provide opportunity for those with the ability and initiative to rise out of it so there is not a permanent, hereditary underclass in society. DNA being what it is, poor people can have smart kids who can escape poverty if their environment does not prevent it. Unfortunately, the environment typically works against this possibility. America today looks ever more stratified. Smart, educated, well-off people live together, marry, and have children (in that order). These kids have the best inherent environmental prospects for success. Under-educated, less intelligent, poorer people live together have kids, and don’t marry (in that order). They produce children who are disadvantaged across-the-board from the outset.
1 The national poverty rate among families headed by a person with less than a high school education is 24%, for those with some college education it is 7% and for those with at least a bachelor’s degree it is 2%.
If parents have low education levels, full-time employment does not protect their families from poverty. Nationally, nearly three-quarters (73%) of children whose parents do not have a high school degree live in low-income families, compared with only 15% of children whose parents have at least some college education.http://fightpoverty.mmbrico.com/reasons/educational.html
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