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Scott Hughes
Site Admin
Joined: 18 Aug 2006
Posts: 208
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 Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 5:43 pm Post subject: Answer These Questions from My Poverty Blog |
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If you have not already, please check out my new blog post: Questions to Ask Ourselves about Poverty
In the post, I wrote a series of questions to help us relate to poverty and understand the threat of poverty.
So please post your comments on that blog post and try answering those questions.
Thanks,
Scott
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kazvorpal
Joined: 07 Jun 2009
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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How may your life have been different if you were born in a much poorer family? What if you went to a much poorer public school in a much poorer community, with much more crime, with much more wayward students and with much less funding?
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Well, I think of how many people in that situation have worked their way of it to become wealthy, I think your implication is insulting to poor people. It's also overly flattering of government education, where in fact funding often has a reverse effect on quality of education. DC spends well over ten thousand dollars per student per year, and yet is among the most ineffective in the country. If every kid in DC got a voucher for FIVE thousand dollars to go to a private school, instead, they'd get far better results.
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What if pretty much all of your family and friends were poor throughout your life? Have you ever been bailed out by family or friends who had spare money or personal connections? What if you hadn’t been?
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Again, that's nice, but plenty of people do manage their whole lives without it.
It's amazing how often the bemoaning of poor people's conditions is actually done by clueless, guilt-ridden wealthier kids who can't imagine someone being productive and responsible for real, without daddy's money. But real people do it all the time.
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What if your household never had a car or other automobile for your entire childhood? What if you never had internet or a computer? How may that have changed your life?
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Pretty much anyone, even poor people, could afford at least a crappy computer and minimal internet service. Some of them actually do have enough sense to do this.
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Can you think of something that could have been different in your past through no fault of your own that would have caused you to fall into poverty? Even if you had worked just as hard and exercised just as good decision-making, what may have happened to you that could have led to you being poor (or poorer) now?
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I have fallen into poverty before, AND gotten myself out, the way responsible people do.
Being poor for the long-term is a behavioral problem, not a magical trap.
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Can you imagine a future scenario in which you end up poor through no fault of your own? What kind of help would you expect to get or need to get to escape poverty? If you fell into poverty in the future while still working just as hard or harder, how would you feel if people called you lazy or stupid or said you deserved to be poor?
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If you fall into poverty while working ever harder, then you're doing something wrong. Hard work should NOT be rewarded; contribution to society should. People can work hard and still not really benefit others enough to merit a rise from poverty.
What we do need, to allow people to lift themselves out of poverty even more effectively and fairly, is to get government out of their way. At one time, a poor person who was a great cook could start letting people into her kitchen to each, charging them, and eventually end up converting her house into a restaurant, benefiting herself and society...but today, that is literally illegal in most places, thanks to bureaucratic zoning laws.
In fact, government is the sole impediment for most people rising above their poverty, other than themselves, which is their own problem, responsibility, and fault. |
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Kerkren
Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 2:18 pm Post subject: working your way out |
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| Quote: | I have fallen into poverty before, AND gotten myself out, the way responsible people do.
Being poor for the long-term is a behavioral problem, not a magical trap. |
How nice for you that you were able to get yourself out of a poverty situation. I don't know if this is as much a "responsible" behavior as a "resourceful" behavior.
Also, there is the matter of good luck and bad luck. For instance, I was walking down a street and a mugger popped out and held a gun to my head--demanding my purse. Everything I owned in the entire world was in my purse, so I told him to just shoot me. I started screaming like a baby. He ran away. I ran away. He came back and was following me. I called 911.
The police caught him. They also picked me up and would not let me go. The mugger told them that I was a crackwhore that robbed gas stations.
Even though I had no police record at all and the mugger was on parole for murder, the police believed him. After 3 years, it went to court. He had a pro bono $500/hr. fancy lawyer. I testified in court and he was convicted on personal theft--not aggravated robbery. The jury just could not believe that anyone would say 'just shoot me' to a mugger. Well, several months earlier I had a great life--great job--great boyfriend and then everything fell apart. My boyfriend died. My job was lost.
I had just worked very hard to put my life back together. I did not want this jackass mugger to hurl me back into poverty and despair. He did hurl me into a nasty world of guns and police and false accusations and courtrooms. I rose above this, but it left a scar.
Yes, I too am resourceful.
This mugger is not. He has spent his entire life from the age of 13 in some kind of jail. His only job has been as a minimum-wage janitor. He was sent to jail for murder, but he really just ran over someone while he was stealing a car. I do not feel sorry for him. In fact, I really hate this person. However, he is getting out of jail in a year or so and I hope he can find some way to get money besides putting guns to people's heads. I hope he has better luck and can be more positive and resourceful.
If not, he may pop out with a gun while you are walking down your street. And you may find yourself in a jailhouse explaining how you do not rob gas stations. |
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kazvorpal
Joined: 07 Jun 2009
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 3:17 pm Post subject: Re: working your way out |
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| Kerkren wrote: | | Quote: | I have fallen into poverty before, AND gotten myself out, the way responsible people do.
Being poor for the long-term is a behavioral problem, not a magical trap.
How nice for you that you were able to get yourself out of a poverty situation. I don't know if this is as much a "responsible" behavior as a "resourceful" behavior.
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It takes a sense of responsibility to make oneself be resourceful, in many cases. Anyone can do it, given the right incentive.
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Also, there is the matter of good luck and bad luck. For instance, I was walking down a street and a mugger popped out and held a gun to my
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Your story of being wrongfully accused by your own mugger really sucks. But some people would deal with that tribulation better, others worse. Some people have suffered far worse and come out ahead, while others have suffered far less and fallen apart, ending up in a gutter.
It's still up to the individual to make what he will, of what comes along. |
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jessbsmith
Joined: 15 Jun 2009
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:21 pm Post subject: In Response To: Answer These Questions from My Poverty Blog |
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After a trip I took to Africa in 2007, I found myself asking the same kind of questions that you pose here...the most significant question to me was "why me?"
I have lived a blessed life. I have a big family, a wonderful husband, and have never known what it is like to not know where my next meal will come from, where I will sleep, how will I survive, etc?
Why me? I could have just as easily been born in a 3rd world country, but I wasn't.
So what does that mean to me?
It means just because I have been born and raised with opportunity, doesn't mean that I don't have a responsibility to reach out to my brothers and sisters who have been less fortunate due to their circumstances.
I think about the scripture where it says " if you have more than 1 coat, keep 1 coat for yourself and give the others to your neighbors who need to be clothed".
I am trying to live by that.
It's not up to me to judge why someone has found themselves in an impoverished situation... the question that needs to come to mind when we see the need, is what can I do to help!
Jessica
Moju Project |
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kazvorpal
Joined: 07 Jun 2009
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:38 pm Post subject: Re: In Response To: Answer These Questions from My Poverty B |
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| jessbsmith wrote: | After a trip I took to Africa in 2007, I found myself asking the same kind of questions that you pose here...the most significant question to me was "why me?"
I have lived a blessed life. I have a big family, a wonderful husband, and have never known what it is like to not know where my next meal will come from, where I will sleep, how will I survive, etc?
Why me? I could have just as easily been born in a 3rd world country, but I wasn't.
So what does that mean to me?
It means just because I have been born and raised with opportunity, doesn't mean that I don't have a responsibility to reach out to my brothers and sisters who have been less fortunate due to their circumstances.
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But the reaching out is much of what has kept them in those horrible conditions. We have sent them billions, keeping them from having to put out the effort, as nations, to take responsibility and develop free economies.
You want to know why African country X has a massive rice shortage? Because they have price controls that make growing rice a waste of effort for farmers. Why don't they have doctors and factories? Because their governments routinely nationalize (and then dismantle for the cash value) factories, and tax doctors out of business or demand they work free of charge.
They have socialist governments, therefore they are third world.
Not only do we facilitate this by giving them money specifically according to how bad their economies are, but we even tie strings on the money, like "no industrialization or mass agriculture", forcing political correctness on them that would even destroy our own economy, were we to implement it here.
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It's not up to me to judge why someone has found themselves in an impoverished situation... the question that needs to come to mind when we see the need, is what can I do to help! |
That is inductive reasoning, which dismisses any actual concern for the problem itself. The solution then proposed is often the cause of greater future problems.
"Who cares why it happened" is irresponsibility, squared. |
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Leadbelly
Joined: 30 Jun 2009
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:13 am Post subject: |
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I think you are quite right to identify ignorance as a cause of poverty but it is not the cause.
Yes, there are some people who are simply unaware but there are some people are wilfully ignorant (i.e. they simply refuse to engage with the questions, suspecting the answers they will find) of the implications of their decisions. Thos decisions may relate to the practices of business, in the buying decisions of individual consumers or the ways in which we demand our governments function.
There are also people who take a differing moral stance, not believing that they are doing anything wrong despite the consequences or that they are responsible for the outcomes of their decisions.
As always with us humans, framing the problemis often as complex as the solution |
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