Just then, Lenwood Brooks walks out of the check-cashing place. He is angry about how much it just cost him to cash a check. "They charged me $15 to cash a $300 check," he says.
You ask him why he didn't just go to a bank. But his story is as complicated as the various reasons people find themselves in poverty and in need of a check-cashing joint. He says he lost his driver's license and now his regular bank "won't recognize me as a human. That's why I had to come here. It's a rip-off, but it's like a convenience store. You pay for the convenience."
First, banks have other ways to tell who you are, like signature files. And second, I've used check cashing places. None of them ever cashed my check without at least as good an ID as my bank would require, for obvious reasons.
Then there's this:
On a hot spring afternoon, Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE. Before the cashier finishes ringing up his items, he puts $43 on the conveyor belt. But his bill comes to $52.07. He has no more money, so he tells the clerk to start removing items.
The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings.
Carter tells the clerk he has no such card.
Bonus cards don't cost money. They're free for filling out a form. This is annoying, but it's not some perk he missed out on because he's poor.
Or this assertion:
"You pay rent that might be more than a mortgage," Reed says. "But you don't have the credit or the down payment to buy a house. Apartments are not going down. They are going up. They say houses are better, cheaper. But how are you going to get in a house if you don't have any money for a down payment?"
Probably the person who said it believes it--but in Washington DC proper, prices have not fallen so low on housing that it's cheaper to pay a mortgage than to rent. A mortgage alone would almost certainly run you more than an equivalent rental payment, and of course, there are taxes and repairs to consider.
This is all mixed in with very sensible and true observations. So why did the writer either garble the words, or unquestioningly parrot people saying fairly crazy things?
Passages like this challenge the credibility of a very good point: access to even small amounts of capital can be the difference between getting by and sinking. Car downpayments, housing deposits, enough storage to buy in bulk, make it possible to get by on a lower wage. And those endowments are persistent--if you have to live in a motel room because you don't have enough cash for an apartment deposit, you won't be able to save any money for a car downpayment, or for that matter, an apartment deposit.
There are a fair number of charities that focus on providing this sort of seed capital--interview clothes, apartment hunting assistance--but not enough. And American political culture is particularly weak at filling those sorts of gaps.
So, let me see if I get this,,,,, there is an advantage to staying in school, working hard, doing your homework, becoming educated, learning a trade, working hard, saving your money, not having children until you can afford them and, then, someday, maybe being able to buy a house, all by your own hard work.
If you don't do these things, then you will probably have to rent, rather than buy and you might have to walk or ride the bus rather than be able to buy a car and you might have less money than those people who do these things.
Sometimes I think I have awakened in Wonderland.
As stated yesterday, and still unrefuted by anything more scientific than "no sir!"
Most poor people aren't smart. They fall in the "below average" category.
Not all, of course, but most.
If the question is "what do we do to make unintelligent people intelligent?" the answer is "nothing." You can't make a bee swim, you can't make a horse type, and you can't make an unintelligent person intelligent. Flowers for Algernon was a book (and a good one, btw).
Does this mean that we abandon the dumb? Of course not. We offer education. We pressure them to stay in school. As Basil states, there are clear and definite advantages to getting as much education as you can, and going as far as you can.
But what about the dumb offspring of dumb parents? What about the cycle of stupid that plagues this society? What do we do with kids who are getting no support (of any kind) from their single-mom who is only 15 years older than them and is, herself, a dropout? (or use one of the other 1,000 similar situations).
How do we pressure those kids to straighten up, stay off drugs, take school seriously when they have no pressure from home to even go...
...and then they end up "renting" furniture for 10 times what it's worth, presuming they haven't already turned to a life of crime?
Liberal policies don't help, even if we could afford them. Pouring education on 20-somethings is way too little, way too late. And as we are seeing in California this very day, most people are tired of paying for other people to have things (beyond the basics) that they haven't earned.
Socialism only works as long as there are other people who still have money, AND are willing to give it.
Perhaps some of those "jobs that Americans don't want" might help? Presuming we can keep them for Americans...
Religion can fill a gap here. I personally prefer using my own judgment on things... but I can totally see people without good judgment relying on other methods, such as following the commands of God. No sex before marriage may not be the most cherished of Church teachings, but following it will give you a better chance to stay alive in areas with HIV epidemics.
That's a great point.
I loved this:
"The poor pay in other ways, ways you might never imagine. Jeanette Reed, who is retired and lives on a fixed income, sold her blood when she needed money."
Ah, yes, I would never have imagined that poor people sell their blood. Seriously, did the writer go to college? She's surprised that people might sell plasma or blood for extra money? She might have known that if she had lived in my dorm...
Just as with the idea that the poor can't afford to get a supermarket bonus card, it's a mistake only a trust fund baby could make.
I did medical testing to help pay my way through school. I was a human lab rat. They took my blood many times a day. It sucked. But I had to do it to pay my tuition.
And even with my degree I'm still using those supermarket discount cards...
Now, I don't know about "Giant", but around here, if you don't have a discount card or your forgot yours, they scan a card they keep on the register.
This story sounds a little bogus.... but I could be wrong.
How is it bogus? I would think grocery stores are a bit less likely to let the cashier use the "bonus card" they keep on the register because of the recession. Not all stores are as kind as the one you go to. That said, it is not that hard to help educate the guy about the use of the card. That is a different point than articles like this not having an editor(or a crappy editor)
How is it bogus? I would think grocery stores are a bit less likely to let the cashier use the "bonus card" they keep on the register because of the recession.
I speak as someone who was employed on the front lines of the retail food industry when those cards were first rolled out. Orginally they wouldn't let us use the bonus card we kept at the register. The most common reaction from the furious customers was to leave their carts at the register and storm out - it was a disaster. Within weeks the policy of always having a backup card was instituted.
I find it hard to belive that Giant enforces the card policy.
But, I could be wrong.
So being poor sucks? I had no idea!
Many people are poor through no fault of their own, but many more are poor because they do not have the wit, ability, or energy to earn more money. A modern technological society is hell on those who are only marginally-capable. In the old days, it was possible to get a decent-paying job even if you couldn't read -- all you really needed was a strong back and a willingness to work hard.
There is always the unstated proposition in pieces like this that imply that being poor is not fair. Well, that's true; it's not fair. But then, this is merely a part of that vast collection of things in life that are not fair. It's not fair that an idle dimwit like Paris Hilton has more money than I have, or ever will have; but it's not as if I lie awake nights seething at the injustice of it all.
I guess I'm just kind of confused as to what the point of a story like this is. Being poor does indeed suck, but that's not exactly a newsflash to someone who is or has been poor.
Some stories are so patently absurd, only Ezra Klein could believe them.
"but many more are poor because they do not have the wit, ability, or energy to earn more money. "
There are also those who belive things that just aren't true. I bet there are people here who wouldn't belive that there are parents out there teaching their children that getting an education is a waste of time. But there are!
The question is - what, if anything, can be done to change those people's values.
You mean Republicans who don't want schools(at least inner city ones .. or down South(see Mark Sanford)) funded properly?
You mean Republicans who don't want schools(at least inner city ones .. or down South(see Mark Sanford)) funded properly?
I was thinking more of the Democrats and teacher's unions who don't want schools taught properly.
Fixing education isn't a matter of just throwing more money to people doing their jobs badly.
jmo3:
The bell-curve is not a figment, you know. When I say "half of all Americans are below-average in intelligence", I'm not being mean; I'm stating a fact. And most of America's poor reside in that lower percentile. Why? Not because they're bad people (mostly), but because they suffer from problems like poor impulse-control, poor training skills, poor learning skills, poor money-management skills, and an inability to plan for the future.
Poor people are vastly more likely to be dull in an IQ sense than more successful people. The key is not to adjust their values; the key is to make dumb people smarter. But this is probably a practical impossibility, for many reasons -- so we must accept, as Matthew wrote in his Gospel, that "Ye have the poor always."
"half of all Americans are below-average in intelligence"?
I don't think you mean what you say.
Imagine a hypothetical town called Billgatesville, where lives Bill and his thousand servants. Bill makes $100M a year; his servants $100k each.
The average income of Billgatesville? $199.8K. Does half the population of Billgatesville have below-average income? Not even close.
Why do I point this out? Because I find this ironical (yes, it's a math word ;-) in a discussion about intelligence.
Why do I point this out? Because I find this ironical (yes, it's a math word ;-) in a discussion about intelligence.
And you used a poor example to make your point. While intelligence is fairly normally distributed in the population, there are long tails at each end. The difference between IQ scores and salary is that Bill Gates can make 100X the median in come which skews the average, but can only have double the IQ which skews it far less. Of course the bottom end of the tails are around 1/2 of the average IQ so it balances out quite a bit. Your example does not prove that average is any better or worse for proving his point than median for a measure of IQ scores.
Actually, the fact that IQ is normally distributed really doesn't tell us anything about the distribution of intelligence, because IQ is defined in such a way that it's forced into a normal distribution. See my post here for details.
On the other hand, we don't, as far as I know, have a very good cardinal metric of intelligence, so "below median" is really the only logical interpretation of "below average" when talking about intelligence.
About half of all US workers basically don't make enough income to pay income taxes. If we are correlating poverty (income) to intelligence this is a pretty good proxy - and it indicates that the above-average half of the population are subsidizing the below-average half.
And it is about 50/50.
I also hasten to add that smarter people may start out being poor but rarely remain so. Duller people can be born rich, or become rich through chance (say winning a lottery), but still end up poor due to the problems I listed in my previous post. Funneling more money into the school system isn't an answer to the "make dumb people smarter", either, because many dull people simply do not have the capacity to pick up abstractions beyond a certain point.
I think the best possible course of action for us to take as a nation is to provide people with more than one post-high-school career track. College is a waste of time for many people, but a good trade school or apprenticeship program wouldn't be. A person who is dull in mathematics might turn out to be a fabulously gifted carpenter or gunsmith, for example. Pushing this person into an academic track is only a recipe for failure and frustration.
From the article:
She says she makes $15 an hour working as a certified nursing assistant. She pays $850 for rent for a one-bedroom that she shares with her boyfriend and child. She went looking for a two-bedroom unit recently and found it would cost her $1,400. She pays $300 a month for child care for her 11-year-old son, who is developmentally delayed. She tried to put him in a subsidized child-care facility, but was told she makes too much money. "My son was not chosen for Head Start because I wasn't in a shelter or on welfare. People's kids who do go don't do nothing but sit at home."
A sad story, and one that goes both ways unfortunately. On one hand, this woman probably didn't have a good role model herself, and consequently probably did not finish school and sought companionship through sexual consortion. Her son will now have a severe disadvantage at entering society as a responsible adult, and likely repeat the cycle as the live-in boyfriend. On the other hand, there's an obvious selection of lousy personal choices that went into setting up this situation, and who takes responsibility for those? Actions do have consequences.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who aren't willing to make painful compromises. If you can't afford an apartment, you can get a room at a rooming house. I lived in them for about 7 years while getting two degrees. It's not spacious or elegant but it's quite livable and very cheap. If you can't afford that you aren't even making minimum wage.
And thanks to the glorious Ramen corporation (all praise unto their name), you can survive on about $10/week in food if you have to.
A modern technological society is hell on those who are only marginally-capable.
Yes and no. It's somewhat harder to find work (though there are still ditch-digging jobs out there), but productivity is so much higher that you can afford to buy things only available to the rich in a non-tech society.
Time again for my favorite poverty statistic: the average income in the 1950s, adjusted for inflation, is about where today's poverty line is. Suck it up kids, the grandparents had it a lot worse than you.
Yes and no. It's somewhat harder to find work (though there are still ditch-digging jobs out there), but productivity is so much higher that you can afford to buy things only available to the rich in a non-tech society.
Well, there are some ditch-digging jobs. There are actually quite a few ugly, labor-intensive jobs out there if people are willing to do them. But these jobs are stigmatized to such an extent that not even the poorest of the poor want to do them -- cleaning toilets, castrating sheep, mucking out stalls, shepherding. The jobs go begging because they require a lot of hard, heavy work for not much pay. And in America these days, that kind of job is a tough sell.
OK, this thread quickly degenerated into the expected, "Poor people are stupid, lazy, probably do drugs, and probably criminals" therefore they deserve a crappy life.
This article has its flaws and poor examples, but as Megan points out, there are numerous legitimate ways in which the poor get forced to pay more for things. I've been there and it sucks. I could write a ten page essay on all the ways you get screwed over by being poor.
But, ignoring all that, even if you think these people are undeserving lazy stupid lowlifes, they are human beings. Many have absolutely no chance of escaping poverty no matter what. But, like your elderly grandmother in the home, just because she can't pay her own way, doesn't mean its ok to let them live a horrible and demeaning life.
A lot of people here are talking about Christian values, yet no one actually sounds much like a Christian at all. This is America. And, as they say, you can judge a country by how it treats those that are most worse off.
If you think the education system is in shambles, and if you hate the teachers union, you can do what I do. You can go out and donate your time and tutor/train people to give them marketable skills. You can talk to your employer about setting up programs to get jobs for people. You can work with your church, donate food, and help feed people who cannot afford food (or must choose between food and other worthwhile expenses).
My grandparents built a small house and for years housed a poor family, for free, they gave housework to the wife and yardwork to the husband. They never were able to escape the poverty, but it gave their kid a chance to live in a decent school district, get a decent education, and get his way into college. He ended up getting out of the cycle. My parents spent over a decade hiring a guy to do yardwork that doesn't even really need to be done, just to provide him with an honest job. It took him ten years, but he saved up enough to start his own landscaping business (my father gave him some money too), and that allowed him to move his family to a better neighborhood (mainly to get their kids away from the influence of gangs) and his kids (now about 9-14 in age) go to a good school and their future is looking better all the time. My dad says the guy even has $20,000 in the bank now. In 1990, he was begging my family to let him and his wife to live in a 10x10 utility room/basement with 6 foot high ceilings.
There are a million things you can do to be part of the solution. A major part of the problem is that so many people do absolutely nothing to help and just like to rattle off excuses as to why people deserve the horrible situation life gave them.
We all can do something and its in our mutual best interest to do so. So figure out what you can do to fix it rather than just bitch about taxes.
MR/MRS NYLUND
I made my own comment on this post.But your comment was much better than my own.I completely agree with you.Instead of showing contempt for their fellow humans people should instead volunteer their time to help others. Habitat For Humanity is always looking for volunteers. They ,and other organisations give a "hand up" , not a hand out.
Once again thank you for your comment.
MR MANLEY I would have to respectfully disagree with you sir
While some people may turn down ditch digging jobs, there are many who do not.These jobs are defintly not plentiful in the Baltimore area at this time.I now run a small demo;ition and excavating company and I do hire Americans.Yes there are some lazy people out there. But there are enough hard working people to get the job done.
I am sorry to disagree with you since I agree with many of your other comments.I defintly agree with your comment about trade schools. I hope that my disagreement causes no offense, since none was intended
BEST REGARDS TO YOU SIR
They don't really go begging; they just get done by illegal immigrants. None of whom are too proud to do the work.
How's your ticker doing after 7 years of Ramen?
Rice, beans and a crock pot would have been a better choice, since you're so concerned about the choices of the poor.
I'm not sure why Ramen noodles would be bad for your heart. Is there some epidemiogical report you can cite on that?
Anwyays, it was MY choice when I was poor. Never liked beans much.
I guess I just spent too much time suggesting to people they shouldn't do various expensive things and watching them ignore me to have much sympathy, especially when I took the cheaper, harder road.
Ramen noodles are extremely high in both salt and fat; not that different than eating a bag of potato chips. They contain no protein, no fiber. They're high in carbs and msg, low in calories, so they don't give much lasting energy.
In short, a long-term diet of ramen would likely lead to a malnourished, skinny person who had problems focusing and high blood pressure, potential heart problems or diabetes by the time they hit mid-life. If they've got the wrong set of genes, the "savings" from their food choices will than drive up other's health-care costs; not to mention the cost to their own health and well being as they age.
Hopefully, it won't happen to you. But you're awfully easy about blaming others for making bad choices, so maybe you ought spend a few hours contemplating your own choices while you're at it; maybe they weren't so wise as you think, maybe they will put a burden on others you never intended.
Poverty -- as reflected in ramen noodle diets -- may save in the short term and cost in the long. (And it really won't matter what we do to fix our health care system if we don't tackle ag subsidies at the same time. You can't control health care costs on just the back end, you've got to hit the front-end cause of problems -- as in diet -- too.)
The key is not to adjust their values; the key is to make dumb people smarter
A dumb person with strong, old-fashioned, values of the sort dispensed in conservative churches nationwide (i.e., work hard, don't commit crimes, keep it in your pants) is going to do a lot better than a dumb person who lacks those values.
It's an unappreciated truth that living by Biblical rules leads you to a better life in this world, whether or not there's any such place as heaven.
From the article,
When you are poor, you don't have the luxury of throwing a load into the washing machine and then taking your morning jog while it cycles. You wait until Monday afternoon, when the laundromat is most likely to be empty, and you put all of that laundry from four kids into four heaps, bundle it in sheets, load a cart and drag it to the corner.
Someone should've boggled at the "four kids" part of that sentence. There are burdens you really don't have to shoulder if you don't choose to, and large families are one example.
Speaking as one who once washed all her clothes in the bathtub, because the local laundromat was on a particularly thug-ridden corner, four blocks away, I sympathize. But the hypothetical woman here cannot have had four children entirely by happenstance.
If your driver's license is suspended or revoked, I believe you can get at least a state ID, which will work for banking purposes though not, obviously, giving you permission to drive. There is no reason that someone with a suspended or revoked license shouldn't have a bank account.
"Bonus cards" at supermarkets don't require money up front or indeed anything beyond filling out a form that, if/when it's evaluated, doesn't seem to have any bearing on whether you can keep the discounts you've had or receive more. All they do is aggregate information for the chain. The more demographic info they have, the happier they are, of course; but they'll give you the card even if you tell them essentially nothing, because they want to know how many people will buy how much of what at what discount given that they have to identify themselves in this minimal way.
And the best possible thing the poor can do, if they live in places with ethnic grocers, is to go there for any fresh produce they need or want. Seriously.
This reporter is usually sloppy and lazy in her reporting...she's done pieces on gentrification in Columbia Heights and H Street that used equally ridiculous quotes to arrive at a pre-conceived point. In the H Street one in particular she cherry-picked people's comments to make the neighborhood look like some simmering cauldron of racial resentment (the piece was very similar to her earlier CH article, so no new thoughts there), which wasn't the case and some of the people quoted later said she totally took their comments out of context (in posts on neighborhood websites). She's just not that good at her job.
Nice post. I also thought the article was a bit sloppy.
Megan highlights the points worth saving - the cost of goods and services de facto rises if you have very little money, which makes it more difficult for people to climb out of the poverty hole.
This isn't just true for the poor. There are many mechanisms by which just having lots of money either lowers costs or generates more money. We're very far from the pure meritocracy some people here think we live in. Hard work and talent are rewarded in the U.S., but I believe more so in Western European countries, which is probably why they tend to have a higher social mobility.
Nimed,
I would agree if I didn't know so many Asian Americans who had either parents or grandparents come to this country with literally nothing. While you have generations of Americans who are mired in poverty, you have Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, immigrants rise into the ranks of the professional elite within one generation. If being poor kept you poor our asian immigrant population would have remained mired in poverty.
There is more to being and staying poor than a lack of money.
I agree. And now that you bring it up, there's definitely something to be said for what we broadly call culture.
Some first generation Asian immigrants live to provide opportunities for their children, living with very little money and enduring endless deprivation. Or, rather, what we would call deprivation, because in general their lives have improved a lot in the U.S.
I personally have a distaste for cultural hypothesis. Not that I find it implausible as an explanation. But it's so much more vague, complicated and poorly known than economic indicators and policies that I prefer to exhaust other explanations first. But I definitely don't see any other way you can account for the high success of Asian immigrants, and Asian-americans in general (other than rather scientifically unsubstantiated claims of cognitive genetic differences).
Nimed,
You may "personally have a distaste for cultural hypothes[e]s," but when the alternative is the assumption that there are genetic explanations for the way dirt-poor immigrants from some countries become prosperous with fair regularity while dirt-poor immigrants from other countries don't, I think "culture" is both the more charitable explanation and also much the better one, so far as evidence goes.
jmo,
Exactly. As others have pointed out, character trumps everything, and culture usually plays a large part in determining character.
Some people just don't place much value on saving or studying. Even huge financial windfalls may not make much difference: there was an article recently saying about half of professional athletes had lost everything they made within 5 years of exiting their profession. I bet the same isn't true for their lawyer agents.
Ultimately, though, if people are making a choice to de-emphasize wealth management and knowledge accumulation, I'm not sure it makes sense to bemoan their lack of financial success. It's measuring them by a standard they demonstrably don't care about.
Jmo3
You say
If you are talking about money, the ancestors of these Asian Americans indeed had none but you are forgetting cultural goods.
They may not have been able to speak English when they came, but if literate in their own languages they could learn English to a functional level relatively quickly. If they were numerate then mathematics is language independent. Another thing is lack of intense discrimination. These people were discriminated against when they came but not to the extent to which the descendants of the slaves wrongly freed after the civil war were discriminated against at the same time. Eventually these people adapted and became accepted as honorary white people.
One reason that the descendants of African Slaves have failed to get on the escalator of upward mobility of The American dream is that successive waves of immigrants against whom discrimination was less intensive have jumped the queue on them and multiple generations of ghetto hopelessness have wiped out much of the cultural values that they needed to escape poverty. One noticeable thing is that Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean seem to have fewer problems than native Blacks. Again this is probably partly due to them having cultural goods that American Blacks have lost, but another may be that they lack cultural identifiers of accent and attitudes that are the triggers to a discriminatory response.
Another thing that affects ghetto Blacks, multiple generations of poor nutrition. Just as generations of good nutrition have increased the size of Europeans since medieval times and improved intelligence in the last hundred years or so, generations of poor nutrition and chronic disease have perhaps had the opposite effect on ghetto Blacks. If IQ tests show Blacks lagging white people, part of this will be that IQ tests are culturally dependent on knowledge from the dominant culture but partly due to many generations of malnourished and sickly mothers having malnourished and sickly babies whose brain development is impaired. Then there is the effect of the stress of living in a mileau of violent lawlessness causing high levels of stress hormones to damage their growing brains.
One thing inhabitants of the ghetto lack that the respectable classes take for granted is the protection of the law. The army of occupation policing in high crime communities is not to protect the inhabitants, even those who are not criminals, but to protect the children in genteel white suburbs from drugs. Every minor crack dealer busted in the ghetto is seen as giving protection of white high schoolers from the evils of marijuana or saving a yuppie stock broker from powder cocaine. One suspects that a resident of a high crime area reporting a crime against himself, is risking attracting attention from law officers angered by the impertinence. This is why it is not rational for ghetto residents to cooperate with the police even when real crimes such as assault or murder occur.
I would suspect that at least part of the reason that African (and other) immigrants often do better than native-born people is probably due to self-selection. If you are willing to leave your homeland/family/country to go to another country, you are probably pretty risk-tolerant - more risk tolerant than the average person. Since the immigration process isn't easy, you've already demonstrated a willingness to deal with unpleasant, difficult things. And you probably knew before you immigrated that it would take quite a bit of work to get ahead.
In societies where just about everyone who isn't born rich has to stay poor, you do find a lot of very smart, hardworking people among the poor. All you have to do is remove whatever stupid thing was holding them down (Communism, racism, extreme corruption, geographic isolation) and they can do as well as anyone.
Once this process is done, though, you are left with a group of poor people that is a lot harder to help. Some may be unintelligent, even to the point of serious disability. (And of course they may have physical disabilities and mental illnesses as well.) Others may have cultural values that keep them from taking advantage of the opportunities they are offered. But they are a different group than the people who are breaking out of primordial poverty and into the modern economy for the first time.
Rob Lyman is right about traditional religion and its importance for people who don't have any other source of structure in their lives. Or even for those who do, in extremis. I'm not the only person I know who has been at the point of suicide and chosen to hold back because my childhood Sunday school training tells me it's a sin. So what if sophisticated people call that a conditioned reflex? It's a good one to have.
Terry Pratchett illustrated the point pretty ably:
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
— Terry Pratchett (Men At Arms)
"Others may have cultural values that keep them from taking advantage of the opportunities they are offered. "
The most interesting metric I've read about has to do with the point at which parents feel the need to discipline/interveen due to a child's poor academic performance. Asian parents felt the need to interveen if grades fell below an "A". White parents "B". African American parents "C".
I honestly don't think genetics has that much to do with it - I'm certain culture is 99.9% of it.
wow, I just got a headache trying to read that.
I am a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" sort of guy. I am also a conservative. And I agree that this article could have been written better.The author could defintly found better people to interview than the rude guy in the store.The author should have interviewed the patient grocery store clerk that was putting up with abuse.
Having said that , do people here really believe that if someone is not rich than that means that they have a lower IQ? Whatever happened to "there but for the grace of God goes me" .
I have spent a lot of years working mininum wage . I have worked at many day labor shops where you were rented out to dig ditches and were paid mininum wage ,minus van fees at the end of the day.
I do not ask for pity. I have led a blessed life . And I thank God every day that I was born in America. I also have never asked for , nor recieved government aid or any charity.
But I refuse to look down on others less fourtanant than myself.Times are hard. In Baltimore you might as well not even bother going to the day labor shops.Ditch digging jobs are defintly NOT going begging as MR MANLY says.
This does not mean that all low income people are saints. They are human beings though.I have worked as a construction laborer for 20 years now. I just started my own business 3 years ago. I still shovel dirt and even though I have up to 10 people working for me I still walk to work because i have no car.I own a small rowhouse and pay taxes and property taxes .
I am not bragging or asking for pity. I am simply saying that I may not have much formal education[only made it to 11th grade] but i am not a moron with a low IQ, nor am I someone who deserves contempt.I am also not lazy.I have worked up to 5 years at a time without a day off . NOT Christmas or any other day off.I am not a burden on society and neither are most people who earn a low income.
I would ask some of the commenters here to show less contempt ,and to thank God instead for their own good fortune.
The article could have been written better.But it's basic point was right.I preffer articles like the Post one, than the ones they used to run glamorising hedge fund managers and idolising guys like Jack Welch.
It IS low income people who built this country.A stock brocker did not build your house.You can not judge someones worth by their income.
I am sorry, I should have wrote "there but for the grace of . God goes I ". It is past my usual bedtime.
do people here really believe that if someone is not rich than that means that they have a lower IQ? Whatever happened to "there but for the grace of God goes me".
I wouldn't say "not rich", but it is really hard to stay poor in our society without making a lot of stupid decisions. There are exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions.
MR DAN I Would have to respectfully dissagree with you. It all depends on your definition of poor.
The article was badly written as we all agree .But what has not been mentioned is that the author was talking to lower income people who had jobs.These people are often called the working poor.You will notice that no one in the article used food stamps or mentioned welfare.The checks that they cashed were paychecks.They used cash,not food stamps in the store.
I could see if these people had been on welfare for years. But that is not the case.As i said I think that the author should have picked better people to profile. If you google DeNeen Brown the first thing you will see is a couple of City Paper articles critisising her style of writing.
I do think that it was a good idea for an article.The fact is that if you make $7 to $14 anhour life IS hard and some things DO cost more.I do not think that we should have a pity party for these people, and I do not think that they want one.
I simply feel that just because someone makes $15 an hour that hardly means that they have a low IQ.If another person makes $16 an hour does that mean that their IQ is slightly higher than the person making $14 an hour. I doubt it.
I have no idea what this means, or even if it is meant to make sense.
This is true only in a statistical sense. The question is, what is the degree of correlation? If working hard, delaying gratification, etc betters you significanly nine times out of ten over the alternative option, hewing to these 'Biblical' values makes sense. If it only does this in 51 out of 100 cases, maybe not so much.
There is at least a third hypothesis (the one my daughter's mother prefers), which is that those first gen immigrants are not typical. Just by being able to get here, they have been selected for some melange of qualities that set them apart from their countrymen. Indeed, she (my daughter's mother) has noticed that second and later generations are often notable for not having these superior qualities.
Passages like this challenge the credibility of a very good point: access to even small amounts of capital can be the difference between getting by and sinking.
If knowledge is capital, they're not really different. I think there's no conscionable reason that confusing policies like bonus cards (which some stores do enforce) and bank identification policies should screw over people who don't understand them. It's more like the kind of thing that one can get away with than the kind of thing that makes sense.
Point taken on the rent issue, though keep in mind that those paying rent might be paying mortgages on cheaper houses that don't exist. I've often wondered
What has always stuck me is the fact that if you are poor, the cost of mistakes is much higher.
If I lose $500 (for whatever reason) it is a big ouch, but it isn't the outright catastrophe that it is for people much poorer than myself.
There are so many things in this comment thread with which I vigorously disagree that I do not know where to start.
First being poor is not a yes/no proposition. There are various levels of poverty and some are worse than others. Let us say that the highest level is one that means having less money than one would like, but one is of the right skin color so that the police are not constantly stopping one as a presumed drug trafficker and one does not have to live in a crime ridden area with dysfunctional schooling for ones children. One might have to do without luxuries that the respectable classes feel entitled to but one might have enough to eat, adequate health care and not fear financial disaster is just around the corner if something goes wrong. Below this is the level which is the same as the one discussed above except that there is no buffer against emergencies and the therefore the constant fear that an unexpected contingency, illness, an allegation of criminal conduct, loss of a job or some big expense can send one sprawling into chaos, homelessness, imprisonment or worse. Take away some more money and we have living in an army of occupation policed crime ridden ghetto and perhaps being an object of police suspicion, being in constant fear of mugging and police harassment, being only able to afford poor quality food and no medical care and having children doing time in ghetto schools and needing to join the local gang for their own protection. Going further down we have condition of not being able to afford enough food or adequate shelter.
Then there can be aggravating factors such as being a person whom the government servants with whom one must interact treat with suspicion and hostility. There is the condition of not knowing the services that are available and not being aware of the strategies to make a little money go a little further. Then there is the pit of despair where it makes sense to mug a little old lady to buy crack cocaine to blot out the hopelessness for an hour or two and maybe get a mandatory minimum sentence will get one three square meals for 20 years.
Other aggravating factors are the culture of poverty which means never having encountered the money saving strategies that the smug from the respectable classes find so obvious and not having the background knowledge to understand them in the case that one did encounter them. Then consider illiteracy, this is a massive barrier to obtaining information and to explaining ones problems. The fact is that multiple generations of illiteracy mean that the schools fail completely at giving the rudiments.
There are many factors that prevent school children benefiting from school, consider hunger, not having enough food means not having the ability to concentrate which means loosing track of the lessons, there is anxiety for fear of violence from other children and scorn from teachers this is a great inhibitor of learning. Then there are classes that proceed at a certain pace even though some children have fallen behind. Since knowledge is conveyed in layers where each layer supports the layer above falling behind means losing track of the lessons, becoming bored anxious and confused and not knowing enough to explain why one is confused, it leads to simply tuning out. Then there is the fact that the culture expressed through the lessons is one totally alien to them, that of the respectable classes who might have a future after schools end and who do not have to run the gauntlet of gang fights and police sweeps on the way to and from school. There is nothing in the lessons which resonates with their own experience and engages them. When illiteracy and school failure are multi generational their parents cannot help them and their overburdened and frustrated teacher do not have enough hours in the day. The fact is that the poor schools which act purely as child minding centres would need enormous extra resources per child to do remedial work to overcome the cultural deficits that mean that these children miss the necessary context of the lessons. I remember an episode of The Wire where the teachers in a ghetto school select a few of the at risk children for a special intensive class using things from the ghetto culture and it works but is canceled because of the need to do intensive training for the standardized tests that burden the ghetto schools. When students do not see any connection between learning what is taught in schools and a conceivable better future for themselves, the potential motivation from from seeing such a connection vanishes.
There are so many things in this comment thread with which I vigorously disagree that I do not know where to start.
First being poor is not a yes/no proposition. There are various levels of poverty and some are worse than others. Let us say that the highest level is one that means having less money than one would like, but one is of the right skin color so that the police are not constantly stopping one as a presumed drug trafficker and one does not have to live in a crime ridden area with dysfunctional schooling for ones children. One might have to do without luxuries that the respectable classes feel entitled to but one might have enough to eat, adequate health care and not fear financial disaster is just around the corner if something goes wrong. Below this is the level which is the same as the one discussed above except that there is no buffer against emergencies and the therefore the constant fear that an unexpected contingency, illness, an allegation of criminal conduct, loss of a job or some big expense can send one sprawling into chaos, homelessness, imprisonment or worse. Take away some more money and we have living in an army of occupation policed crime ridden ghetto and perhaps being an object of police suspicion, being in constant fear of mugging and police harassment, being only able to afford poor quality food and no medical care and having children doing time in ghetto schools and needing to join the local gang for their own protection. Going further down we have condition of not being able to afford enough food or adequate shelter.
Then there can be aggravating factors such as being a person whom the government servants with whom one must interact treat with suspicion and hostility. There is the condition of not knowing the services that are available and not being aware of the strategies to make a little money go a little further. Then there is the pit of despair where it makes sense to mug a little old lady to buy crack cocaine to blot out the hopelessness for an hour or two and maybe get a mandatory minimum sentence will get one three square meals for 20 years.
Other aggravating factors are the culture of poverty which means never having encountered the money saving strategies that the smug from the respectable classes find so obvious and not having the background knowledge to understand them in the case that one did encounter them. Then consider illiteracy, this is a massive barrier to obtaining information and to explaining ones problems. The fact is that multiple generations of illiteracy mean that the schools fail completely at giving the rudiments.
There are many factors that prevent school children benefiting from school, consider hunger, not having enough food means not having the ability to concentrate which means loosing track of the lessons, there is anxiety for fear of violence from other children and scorn from teachers this is a great inhibitor of learning. Then there are classes that proceed at a certain pace even though some children have fallen behind. Since knowledge is conveyed in layers where each layer supports the layer above falling behind means losing track of the lessons, becoming bored anxious and confused and not knowing enough to explain why one is confused, it leads to simply tuning out. Then there is the fact that the culture expressed through the lessons is one totally alien to them, that of the respectable classes who might have a future after schools end and who do not have to run the gauntlet of gang fights and police sweeps on the way to and from school. There is nothing in the lessons which resonates with their own experience and engages them. When illiteracy and school failure are multi generational their parents cannot help them and their overburdened and frustrated teacher do not have enough hours in the day. The fact is that the poor schools which act purely as child minding centres would need enormous extra resources per child to do remedial work to overcome the cultural deficits that mean that these children miss the necessary context of the lessons. I remember an episode of The Wire where the teachers in a ghetto school select a few of the at risk children for a special intensive class using things from the ghetto culture and it works but is canceled because of the need to do intensive training for the standardized tests that burden the ghetto schools. When students do not see any connection between learning what is taught in schools and a conceivable better future for themselves, the potential motivation from from seeing such a connection vanishes.
In a previous post, someone suggested that post school learning is a waste. I disagree. Adults are much more likely to benefit from class room learning than are children or teenagers with their fidgetivness, raging hormones and angst. The adult world is much more civilized than that of school and the absence of this lack of civility removes many barriers to learning. The problem is to identify the critical information gaps that prevent learning of things depending on the gaps.
I am getting tired so this post ends for now, maybe I will look again tomorrow.
I'm not sure that anything TheEvilOne says contradicts anything said previously. The examples are just concrete cases of why the people left behind in a rich society are often hard to help, even as other people manage to lift themselves out of poverty by their own efforts. (Pete from Baltimore is an example... having a working-class job is not the same as being part of the dependent underclass.)
IQ isn't only genetic, after all. Environmental factors, health, and even basic nutrition play a part in it. But once the environmental damage is done, it can be hard to undo it. ESPECIALLY if the genetic component is also cutting against the person, for example if he has a learning disability that can only be addressed in an environment that is actually better (more resources and attention) than what even middle class kids get. The more strikes against a person, the less likely he is to succeed.
But a lot of churches do get points for trying their best to create a better environment for such people. Some make it a part of their mission, and some are very successful. It's not just about personal morality, either, although that plays a part. It's also about having a community and the social support it takes to stick with long-term plans. Secular self-help groups can often provide those things too, but even those sometimes meet in churches because that's where a lot of community infrastructure is found.
Paying rent in Washington may still be cheaper than a mortgage, but not so in my country (Belgium) and other similar ones I guess, especially now with low interest rates. I for one decided recently to stop renting because I could buy a nicer home with a mortage lower than my rent payments.
'Environment' can also include family, which in some sense is the most pernicious element to be rid of. I come from, shall we say, a reality-challenged family living plunk in the middle of a reality-challenged culture. Long after I left home, I was still saving certain relatives from their own bad choices. Once I made the decision to cut those strings, my life got a lot better. But this sort of decision is harder than most, and unlike leaving a small town or leaving the bad part of town, etc, involves a certain amount of betrayal. That sort of thing is very hard to do for some people; I would extend this to most people, in fact the majority. What's that Frost line? "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
Nimed said:
And now that you bring it up, there's definitely something to be said for what we broadly call culture.
I personally have a distaste for cultural hypothesis. Not that I find it implausible as an explanation. But it's so much more vague, complicated and poorly known than economic indicators and policies that I prefer to exhaust other explanations first.
IMHO, "cultural hypothesis" is perhaps the most plausible - or, more correctly, is the factor that has the largest effect. Especially when we talk about "race" issues, I think we're really talking more about culture. It is complicated, but deserves attention.
TheEvilOne said:
One noticeable thing is that Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean seem to have fewer problems than native Blacks. Again this is probably partly due to them having cultural goods that American Blacks have lost,
Exactly.
...but another may be that they lack cultural identifiers of accent and attitudes that are the triggers to a discriminatory response.
Is it really "discriminatory" if there are specific attitudes or actions that "trigger" it?
There is the condition of not knowing the services that are available and not being aware of the strategies to make a little money go a little further.
[Warning: anecdote ahead] My father worked as a custodial supervisor for a school district. Most of his reports were - although poor by typical definition - vastly more aware of how to "milk" the various legal systems and services, and used them to great effect.
Scent said:
There is at least a third hypothesis (the one my daughter's mother prefers), which is that those first gen immigrants are not typical. Just by being able to get here, they have been selected for some melange of qualities that set them apart from their countrymen.
Perhaps now that they're here, they just don't have the same "fire" to get here (and achieve) that they once did?
A similar thought is that they get fewer chances, and that is what distinguishes the poor from the rest of us. I know of one woman, a useful contributing member of society now(and something of a big wheel), who in her youth either dropped out or was kicked out of at least four universities, two of them quite prestigious. She buckled down and graduated finally, sometime in her late twenties, but I guarantee you, if she hadn't had some familial connections she would have ended up as a cashier at Target.
Contrast that with some of the kids I work with who are on a 'merit' scholarship. If they mess up even once, coming into their dorm drunk, say, and the RA catches them, the long odds are that it will be a long time before they get back in school, if ever. Getting drunk in your dorm room? And that deep-sixes you immediately, possibly for life? Now come on. There's no reason life has to be that unfair.
I don't know, but bear in mind this is an observation, albeit anecdotal, and not a theory. Keeping that in mind, it's hard to see how to turn at risk families and kids into first generation immigrants. My daughter's mother was flabbergasted the first time she heard a young Asian lady say 'aks' instead of 'ask'. And absolutely stunned to see shiftless and lazy Asians in her case load, especially since they seemed to have grandparents who were relatively better off and concerned about the welfare of their children and grandchildren.
One tends to forget how powerful, pervasive, and sneaky selection effects are.
Contrast that with some of the kids I work with who are on a 'merit' scholarship. If they mess up even once, coming into their dorm drunk, say, and the RA catches them, the long odds are that it will be a long time before they get back in school, if ever.
Do you have any evidence of this? In my expereince the kids who lost their scholarships due to bad behavior or poor performance ended up having to get loans like all the middle class kids.
It's clear that many of us, not now poor, have been "situationally poor" at some time in the past. I've been there too, both in school and my first jobs. I've also worked in a check-cashing place (the old-fashioned kind, not a payday lender).
One thing that has always struck me about "living poor" is the wretched service that people put up with. I went to a dentist that took mostly medicaid patients, and the waits were interminable, the cleaning perfunctory and the attitude indifferent. I scheduled a first-in-the-day appointment, and found to my astonishment (but nobody else's) that I was one of four patients scheduled for the same time. And they didn't even open the door until 15 minutes after my appointment time. I could tell that the other people I was with were used to this kind of treatment because while I was fuming, they were waiting stoically.
I saw a similar difference in treatment of customers at the BMV office near my work (middle-class folk) and near my home (mostly poor and minority folk).
If you're old enough, do you remember kiting a check so you can buy groceries on Thursday even though you get paid on Friday? I did it. Can't do it now, though. Things like bounced check charges hit the poor VERY hard (and come with the threat of criminal charges).
Despite the article, my observation is that the real cost of living poor is in time, hassle and no margin for error.
If you're old enough, do you remember kiting a check so you can buy groceries on Thursday even though you get paid on Friday? I did it.
I did it, too. I tried to explain that I was just practicing "fractional-reserve banking" but they didn't buy it. :(
Once again may i point out the obvious fact, that this article ,though badly written was about low income people WITH JOBS.No food stamps were mentioned. The guy used cash at the grocery store,remember.The one lady made $15 an hour.This is hardly a lazy woman.
I think that the problem was that the author basicly portrayed them as whiners.This was unfair to them.When asked about the difficulties they faced ,they responded honestly. I am short of work right now.When some asks me "how's work" , I lie and say " I'm doing pretty good". If I answer honestly it would seem like self pity.And I hate self pity, especially from my own mouth.
I might add that allthough there is no excuse for how the one man treated the check out clerk at the grocery store. It does appear that he got himself worked up by talking to the reporter.The reporter was female , and it seems to me that the man was showing off for her benefit.
I still think all the talk about IQ is silly.I know a hell of a lot of bricklayers and carpenters who may make less than a college educated proffessional, but still are just as ,or more intelligent than the proffessional is.
Pete,
Can I ask you a personal question? What lead you to dropping out in the 11th grade?
jmo3
In this country if you are not going to college there is no point graduating from high school, unless you are trying to get a government job. I am also not good at writing.And in case you did not notice, my grammer and spelling are not great either . I have no regrets in life.And i am gratefull for the life i have been able to lead.I thank God every day for my blessings.I just think that I am not better than anyone else that makes less than $15,000 a year. And if someone makes more than me ,they may be smarter . But they may not be.
I wish that there was a 3rd alternative for the kids growing up today.I have heard that vocatoinal training is more common today than it was in the mid 1980's.I would hope that this trend continues. Many kids like myself are not good in school, but are good workers and can be productive citizens.
Pete, I'm with you 100%.
Boys, particularly boys strong in mechanical skills, got screwed when it comes to education. You grew up in an era when we expected everyone to become an investment banker, doctor, or computer programmer.
The average age of plumbers, electricians, etc. in this country must be pushing 50. In a decade, we're going to regret what we did you your generation, big time, when there's nobody available to fix the overflowing toilets in our McMansions.
But I do urge you to reconsider school; there are a wealth of trades and apprenticeship programs available through community colleges.
(FYI, my son, 21, graduated from a machine-tool program a year ago, and is working his way to becoming a tool and die maker. He also has writing issues, but great math/physics skills, and is highly motivated to succeed.)
MR/MRS ZIC
Thank you for your response ,and i hope your son does well in life.With a skill like he now has i am sure that he will do well.I would agree with you that there is a shortage of skilled workers in this country.
But i think that also some of the basic skills get overlooked.
On many jobs that i used to work on , I was always the last to get layed off. I wish I could say that this is due to my remarkable skills. But sadly i can not. On one job with 120 people i was the 117 th laid off. At least 100 of those guys were more skilled than myself. But i was the only guy to show up everyday.
One day it drizzled rain and only 3 of us showed up out of 120. Schools do not enforce attendance like they should.You can see the results on job sites.
I run a small consruction busines and I have unfortunatly had to fire skilled guys with bad attitudes who never showed up for work. I have also hired people who had never worked construction, but who had great attitudes and were willing to learn. They did great.One of my best workers is a young lady who can not weigh more than 120 pounds. But she has a great attitude and never thinks that she is too good to do dirty work.
Skills are good but they are not everything.
Thanks again for your comment MR/MRS ZIC I wish you and your son well
Thank you, Pete from Baltimore.
And I wish you -- and your employees -- well in this downturn.
And I'm very grateful that you've actually created jobs for others; there are a lot of well-off folks here who have not done as much.
pete/baltimore: I call BS. There have always been vocational and trades programs, including since the 80s, because I have worked at these institutions since then.
Our skilled trades graduates often make more money than 4 year college graduates and even their program instructors.
And they're more likely to start their own businesses or become self employed.
And the CNAs envy the LPNs their better jobs and pay, so they come back and get more education and training and move up to LPN jobs. And the LPNs envy the RNs their better jobs and pay so they come back and move up too. And the RN's get their BSN's and even sometimes MSN's and advanced certifications and earn doctorlike salaries. No one is stuck as a CNA unless they lack the drive or intelligence to take it to the next level. Nursing is a great ladder type career. You can go to work right away and continue with your schooling and ascend the ranks.
That $15/hr CNA is making more than a lot of LPNs so she shouldn't whine. She's doing pretty well for that category of nurse.
REGARDING KENTUCKYLIZ'S COMMENT
You may call "BS" all you want.Of course there has always been vocational classes.I did not say that there wasn't.But where i grew up there were very few .Ironically this was because i grew up in a predomintally black area. And many of the black parents wanted their kids to go to college , not vocational schools . There was a stigma attached to vocational schools that i think was unwarranted.
I am surprised that you would be rude enough to say that i was full of "BS ", because what i said was basicly the same thing that you said in your comment .My whole point was that vocational training was a great thing .
I just posted a comment on MATT YEGLESIAS'S blog yesterday saying how i think that the government should stop trying to send so many kids to college . I wrote that many kids would find vocational schools a better fit. I also wrote that the vocational kids would probably make more money than the college kids.It Is on MATHEW YEGESIAS'S blog on the post titled "ENDGAME" dated MAY 20.Not the one titled Endgame that is dated today May 21.[Im sorry i don't know how to link]
I basicly said the same thing here in fewer words.
Once again I do not think that the woman was whining. As i said in my comment above. The reporter shaped the conversation in a way that made the people look like whiners.
As for me i made quite clear that i am grateful to God for my blessings and have no complaints. If you detected self pity in my comments then i would urge you to read all of them again.I left more than one.
KENTUCKYLIZ i actually think that we are more in agreement than you think.
BEST REGARDS TO YOU KENTUCKYLIZ AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENT.
It's interesting to see where this conversation is going.
For some time, I've been worried about society and complexity. The world I reside in is getting more difficult as time goes on, and that is worrisome. I am an information worker, so the trends are relatively easier on me personally, but for almost everyone, even the most talented, the world is becoming a dizzying place. There doesn't seem to be sufficient concern for this in the public debate.
Consider just a couple of examples:
The U.S. Congress now generates laws so complex that no representatives can be expected to read or understand more than a small sliver of the overall output.
We are all navigating through a dense cloud of implicit legal terms each day, and very few of us understand much of what we are agreeing to. Something as simple as listening to a song, or using a cell phone, or cashing a check comes along with massive legal baggage.
Amongst all the bull here -- class warfare, really, -- I'll throw out another problem of poverty: our legal system.
I spent a day in court with a young friend last fall, a woman accused of assault (and a number of other crimes, but assault was the charge of the day,) by another woman who was mentally ill and totally fixated on destroying my friend's life.
She is poor, and could not afford a lawyer. Through our day in court, I watched dozens of others go up to the judge, and face life-altering situations with serious legal repercussions. Like my friend, I'm sure some were actually innocent. The couple of people there with a lawyer seemed, in general, to make out much better. But the deck was totally stacked against those unable to afford legal assistance; and legal assistance was only available if the punishment for the crime was jail time.
Just the simple sorting of "wealthy enough to pay a lawyer" and "poor enough to risk it on your own" was often the difference between a felony on your record, impacting your ability to find a job, get a loan, get into a school. There's nothing about equal in the face of the law in this equation.
The same thing plays out in probate courts -- where a wealthier spouse frequently out-lawyers the poorer spouse. And in civil courts, where my brother now works, he says it's much more common to see people fight over the $25,000 estates than the $250,000 estates because the $250,000 estate was more likely to have the help of a lawyer planning the estate.
SOV, what school would yank a merit scholarship for coming into the dorm drunk once?
I was thinking about that woman who made $15 an hour. That's $30,000 a year... not great if you are supporting three people by yourself, but not horrific as a contribution to a family's overall earnings. But she had a live-in boyfriend. What did HE do? If he worked, what did he contribute to the household budget? If he didn't work, why did she have to pay for child care?
That guy was not interviewed for the article, but I suspect that he may be a big part of the problem. As that rather useless wife was in the article about the NYT reporter that has attracted so many comments elsewhere.
I do agree about people in the construction trades, though. Pretty much everybody who is middle class now had a father or grandfather who did that kind of work, and a lot of people with degrees helped pay for their educations that way. There's nothing inherently wrong with working in those trades, even if the current economy is hitting them hard.
The much harder problem is the person who can't hold down a construction job (or any other kind) because he's too chaotic to show up regularly and follow through on tasks. Families that have to carry a lot of adults who can't or won't work will be poorer than families where most of the adults are capable of holding a job. And the kind of behavior that prevents people from holding jobs (even when the economy is way better than it is now) is often the result of faulty thinking, either the kind linked to bad ideas or the kind linked to brains that just don't process things all that well. Apparently there are a lot of people with intellectual disabilities in jail. Which is extremely sad.
I am also not good at writing.
You could have fooled me. Your writing skills seems far above average - at least to me...
Um, my school.[1] And it's not merit, it's 'merit'. These are set-asides for so-called disadvantaged youth, who are started out by attending school in the summer to 'introduce them to the expectations and rigors of college life'. The summer schooling is to make up for deficiencies in their education elsewhere, but there is also a strong behavioral component as well, such as strict curfews, a two-strikes class attendance policy, etc. Needless to say, most of our prospects are a pretty unappetizing lot, and are there because of parental arrangement, the 'I never got to go to college and I don't want you to miss out on opportunities I never got' sort. If these kids don't make the cut now, the odds of them coming back, ever, to any four-year college, is very, very low.
So the 'merit' such as it is, is not for scholastic performance, but the probability that the kids will actually abide by the rules.
[1]It's not clear from the article, but the scholarship is for every year that the student attends UMC.
And recurrent legal problems stemming from petty infractions with the law. That would be my family. Sometimes the only viable option is to cut off the deadweight. For most people, that's a uniquely hard thing to do. I look at some of my peers, and marvel that they're a professor, their little sister is a comptroller, their cousins are lawyers, legal aides, nurses, their parents are still (relatively) happily married and in well-off retirement . . . they've got no day-to-day family traumas or dramas being played out, only the usual filial bickerings and sibling spats. These people don't know how good they've got it.
You are to be commended for making that difficult decision, and both extracting yourself from the situation and rising above it. One of my own friends had to walk away from most of her family in order to excel, and after two college degrees, a job, a stable marriage, and a home purchase, I can say by observation that it can be done, but requires a lot of determination.
FWIW, though, you might have explained some of this a long time ago, as it would have provided mitigating context for the extreme distrust and evident stress-induced irritation that defined some of your early interactions with the posters around these parts.
I get the impression that a lot of people making comments here have zero experience dealing with actual poor people and haven't bothered to educate themselves in the slightest about them. I'm a former legal aid attorney, and it is really sickening to read people pontificate about how the problem with poor people is that they are dumb, they have too many children, and don't have any work ethic. Please consider actually interacting with some poor people before making comments like these.
Sure, there are stupid, lazy poor people, just like there are stupid, lazy rich people, but if you seriously believe that a major source of the difference between poor people and rich people is that the latter are smart and work hard and the former don't, you really need to get out more. Some poor people work two or three jobs, but they don't have decent benefits and can't afford health insurance so if one member of a family gets sick, they can lose literally everything they have worked for. They don't have access to the kind of social "cushions" that upper income people take for granted- if I lose my job, worst case scenario is that I move in with my rich parents; if a poor person loses her job, she can wind up literally on the street. A huge percentage of poor people have serious mental or physical disabilities that make it extremely difficult for them to hold down regular jobs. Children born into poor familes experience outrageous amounts of stress from living in dangerous neighborhoods, moving frequently, and having poor nutrition, among other things, that makes it extremely difficult for them to concentrate and do well in school. It goes on and on. If you can't be bothered to reach out and help people who are worse off than you, at least be bothered to learn about them. Or if that's too much, at a bare minimum, refrain from showcasing your callous ignorance in blog comments.
Sometimes the only viable option is to cut off the deadweight.
Thing is, it sometimes takes a very long time (if ever) but eventually you get to the point where you realize that the people you're trying to help are actually making the choice to remain in whatever situation they are in. Then, with that realization, it gets easier to cut bait.
I tend to think achieving 'comfortable' middle class is harder than it was for previous generations, or at lest it is if you're starting out from an 'average' background (not fiscally driven at 18, not coming from upper-middle class background, not working for the Government, etc.)
I realize I live in a somewhat more costly area along the Baltimore/DC tract (Towson/Hunt Valley), but I'm finding the path to things like homes and nicer cars much different than my parent or their contemporaries. I'm 29, my wife is 30, our household income is $110,000, and beats the stuffing out of me of where I'm going to save $30,000-$40,000 to use as a down payment in an area where the average home is $350,000-$400,000 (and these are very average homes in low/mid middle class neighborhoods). Heck, just to buy the *condo* I currently rent would cost me $250,000, and this is very much a low/mid middle class affair.
I'm certainly not a deft hand with investments and such from a young age as probably most of the users here are, but at the same time I've picked up a Masters degree from a good school (Go Hoyas) and work as a teacher making a solid living, and my wife adds to the dollar-pile with a steady job in the business world. What we make together is by no means a huge some of money, but in the big picture I grew up with one parent working and living a fairly decent middle class life with a household income of $90-100,000. Together my wife and I make more at 30 (with no kids) than my father did at 40 (with two kids) and ostensibly our standard of living is discernibly less.
My case seems fairly common in the area where I live. I don't expect to be as financially successful as people who are driven like a laser for financial success from high-school on. However, I don't think a person should have to be a life-goal wizard at 17, work 100 hrs a week, or born into an upper-middle class background to get to what used to pass as 'comfortably' middle-class.
No, this is very specifically not the case. That's part of the problem - if only they were being willful, it would make it so much easier to cut them loose. Sadly, they're not; it's just who they are.
JerseySam,
You can easily get an FHA loan with only 3% down. Were did you get the idea you need 10%?
JerseySam,
In addition - http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2009/05/13/fha-plans-to-offer-8000-upfront-to-first-time-buyers/
I don't really understand what your complain was - it's not as if there aren't numberous options available to you...
If working hard, delaying gratification, etc betters you significanly nine times out of ten over the alternative option, hewing to these 'Biblical' values makes sense. If it only does this in 51 out of 100 cases, maybe not so much.
It would shock me if living a life free of covetousness, criminality, and licentiousness did not give better overall results upwards of 95% of the time, at least among the working poor. But I confess I have no hard data.
Just the simple sorting of "wealthy enough to pay a lawyer" and "poor enough to risk it on your own" was often the difference between a felony on your record, impacting your ability to find a job, get a loan, get into a school. There's nothing about equal in the face of the law in this equation.
Indeed; the costs of legal help are monstrous, but the costs of lacking legal help are often greater. And good lawyers (as opposed to bumbling incompetents or smart but overworked) are actually very hard to find, even for those with money.
dear God the typos are comming fast and furious today...
No, this is very specifically not the case.
Well, I obviously can't speak specifically to your case, but in my own we came to the realization that the life that some people want (or are willing) to lead might be very different than the life you want for them.
This is one of my biggest beefs with many of the "bleeding hearts for the poor" crowd. They don't seem to consider that some people just don't want better for their lives. Or more specifically, some people aren't willing (for whatever reason) to do what that would take - it always has to be some external factor holding them back, because obviously they would otherwise live the way I desire for them.
If people want to live "poor" I'm okay with that - to each their own, but just not on my dime. And please don't anyone think I am making a blanket "everyone who is poor is this way" statement - I know this clearly isn't the case. But I think it is more often than we realize.
And probably somewhere some super-ambitious multimillionaire is looking at me and wondering why I'm not willing to do what it takes to achieve his level of "success", and why I'm willing to settle for the life I have...but at least I'm not asking him to fund it.
TAKEFLIGHT
I can sympathise with you not wanting your tax dollars to support lazy people. But the article was about the "working poor".
While i agree that the author picked some bad people to profile
[ the guy in the grocery line was a jerk] , it should be remebered that the people were cashing paychecks ,not welfare checks.And they were using cash at the store, not food stamps.
I live in the Highlandtown neighborhood of Baltimore .So i know the type of lazy people that you are talking about .And they are both black and white. But those of us who DO work hard and pay taxes , but make a low income, do not like being lumped in with the lazy ones.
I know that this was not your intent. But i would ask that you read the article again.It is not about the lazy people that you are talking about.
I hope you do not take my comment as an attack on you.I actually agree with much of what you said.
BEST REGARDS TO YOU TAKEFLIGHT
By the way ,while rereading my comment i realised that some people might assume that i meant that people in my neighborhood of Highlandtown are lazy. Quite the contrary.We are a blue collar community where most people work hard ,even if it is for not much money.That is why I ,and others do not like being lumped in with the small minority that does hang on the corners all day .
ScentofViolets,
There is at least a third hypothesis (the one my daughter's mother prefers), which is that those first gen immigrants are not typical. Just by being able to get here, they have been selected for some melange of qualities that set them apart from their countrymen. Indeed, she (my daughter's mother) has noticed that second and later generations are often notable for not having these superior qualities.
As an explanation of how people who come from poor countries sometimes rapidly become prosperous here, this is plausible. But what I said, and what you replying to, was about
[the] way dirt-poor immigrants from some countries become prosperous with fair regularity while dirt-poor immigrants from other countries don't
and your hypothesis doesn't at all explain why some groups of immigrants succeed and some do not -- unless, indeed, the idea is that in some places the ambitious and intelligent emigrate, while in others the complacent and lackluster do. Which would bring it all back to "culture," yes?
I think it's very important at this point to put this on the table -- it is not in any way blameworthy to have a low IQ. It just happens. Some people end up with IQs of 85, and some get 120. Just like some are born with athletic ability and some without, or some are born with perfect vision and some nearly blind. The question isn't about moral fault. The question is what to do about it.
There are plenty of good ideas here. Church. Social structure. Teaching people how to be good employees even if they aren't book-smart. Teaching specific vocational skills in fields that pay better. I happen to think these are very important regardless of what position you take on political topics like transfer payments and health care reform. It got lost in all the silly brouhaha around Sarah Palin during the election, but this was actually going to be her husband's signature issue. He was the only one talking about it, too.
Most people, including most of the people who are poor at any given time, get a lot of this stuff already. But there's a group that doesn't. What can fix that? Free health care is all well and good, but some people won't be organized enough to go to the doctor regularly even if it is free. That is a very deep problem, and it has been frustrating people who try to alleviate poverty for many generations.
I think you'd be in for a nasty surprise :-) The relevant point which perhaps I did not make clear was that the game has to be worth the candle. Sure, I'll take 51:49 odds if the prize is a $500K/yr salary, a beautiful house, and an expensive wife.
But living a life short-term gratification has it's rewards too. If the odds are 51:49 and the prize is making warehouse foreman after twenty years, with a salary of $30K/yr, and a cinder block ranch house set on a concrete apron, then maybe those aren't the odds I want to take.
Well, no, it's not that at all. Some of these people are very hard working, they do want to better themselves, and they have plans and ambitions. They just make . . . poor decisions. They are subject to 'bad luck'. The sorts of people who have poor impulse control, or who forget to make sure they have change for the parking meter before taking a necessary trip downtown. Nine times out of ten, they end up not getting a ticket; the tenth time it's a fine of $50 which they can't afford. Guys who are low on gas but are in a hurry to get somewhere, and rather than tank up now and take the ten minute hit (or leave 10 minutes earlier) decide to risk driving on in . . . and don't make that crucial job interview that someone else has taken some trouble to set up for them.
Or prickly people, who make every personal interaction an affair of honor, who will stand on principle and won't give on the slightest perceived infractions (older people, in my experience.) If we were in another part of the country, you'd think that every sales clerk they met was a Yankee carpetbagger trying to do for them, or a corrupt government official trying to shake them down.
You can't say that what they're doing is intentional, exactly, but after a while, you do get sick of cleaning up after them.
Or prickly people, who make every personal interaction an affair of honor, who will stand on principle and won't give on the slightest perceived infractions
I hate to start a flame war (well, not really) but I must say that it doesn't surprise me that some members of your family might fit that description.
They just make . . . poor decisions.
But why is this? Just saying it's "bad luck" or "poor impulse control" makes it sound like it's something external that's happening to them and that's not the case. I'd say the guy who stiffs the parking meter nine times out of ten actually has pretty good luck. Poor impulse control isn't a disease, it's just an aggregate description of someone's decisions. To the extent that my decisions are not in sync with my stated (or actual) life goals, I have some internal behavioral problems I need to sort out.
I do agree that it's not intentional, per se. But we do have a word for it: negligence.
I hate to start a flame war
Rob, as a lawyer, I simply can't believe you missed the fine print when you posted that says "you agree not to post material that is...harassing..." ;)
I also agree that poor decisions sometimes have a more disparate impact on the poor, but it isn't just the poor who deal with this. People with high-powered careers or positions often have a lot to lose in poor decision-making as well.
Case in point.
I read about a third of the article in question the other day before bailing out. It serves mainly as an example of why the MSM is, for fairly bright people, a source of amusement or irritation rather than useful information.
News Flash: Shopping at the corner market or convenience store is more expensive than buying equivalent products at Costco and loading them into your two-and-a-half ton SUV. Yeah, but you know, purchasing the SUV costs money, as does fueling and insuring the thing, and then, you add in the taxes, and the maintanance, and the cost of new tires, and so forth. To do a realistic cost comparison, you'd have to factor all of that into the cost of shopping at Costco as compared to a neighborhood market.
You know what a lot of poor people do to compensate? They maintain ties with their extended family, and pool their money to buy a used car, which is then shared among family members on some kind of equitable basis. Or one person, with a little more in the way of resources, buys a car, and then carpools with his friends, who kick in money to cover the cost of the gas, plus a little extra for the wear and tear. People can work out strategies for coping, if they are at all inclined to trust each other, cooperate with each other, and treat each other fairly.
By the way, I live in a Turkey, and I don't own a car. I take the bus, or a taxi (far cheaper than in the States) or ride my motorscooter, or walk. But I have another news flash for those of you back home. If you fly here, you can pick up Turkish carpets at prices FAR cheaper than those in the States. So I guess that all of you who buy a Turkish carpet there, because you don't have the price of airfare here (or your own LearJet) are being grossly overcharged for your Oriental carpets.
When it comes to articles like this, I find myself returning to a persistent question. Are newspaper journalists really this stupid, or do they simply think that we are?