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It always comes down to education. An educated poor person can pull herself out of poverty within one generation. My parents were dirt poor because their countr

It always comes down to education. An educated poor person can pull herself out of poverty within one generation. My parents were dirt poor because their country was devastated by war, but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class, and now me and my siblings are 1%ers. The problem is the poor areas in the US are exceedingly violent and basically succumb to victimization to explain why they can’t get out of poverty. If they can’t have safety and the culture is to just blame others and not try to better themselves, this is a perfect way to create generational poverty. I think we need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into the most economically devastated areas of the US and first create safe neighborhoods with jobs. Once kids can go to public schools and not worry about violence, that neighborhood will thrive. In order for that to happen we need to INVEST in those communities with more police and more jobs with middle class wages. Instead of $100B to Ukraine we need to invest that money on Americans in South Side Chicago, where there are 50 shootings a weekend, and Baltimore that has live birth rates lower than 3rd world countries, and Missouri and Oakland, etc. Create Amazon warehouses there or whatever can create an impact immediately and then hire a ton of police officers from the community and train them (1 day of training a week). Within a generation it will change the entire city and you will have a thriving middle class where wss once generational poverty.

Pigalowda 4y ago
Why would we want DoD budget going to chicago or Baltimore?
- remote_phone 4y ago
  Because we spend too much on the military industrial complex and not on our own communities. We are rotting from the inside because we create generational poverty in these communities and just leave them to themselves. Occasionally when a cop kills someone there, we will remember them for a few days and then forget them in a couple of weeks. Over 3000 people were shot in Chicago this year so far. And that’s down 20%. Did you even hear anything about that? We let these poverty-stricken neighborhoods live in violence and don’t do a goddamn thing about it. Meanwhile we feed the military industrial complex to fight wars on the other side of the world. That’s bullshit.
  - Pigalowda 4y ago
    But chicago and Baltimore’s poor violent neighborhoods are not a federal problem. That’s a chicago and Baltimore problem. I don’t want any of my tax dollars that go to DoD going to either of those cities. I’m sure you can find ways to donate to various social programs and outreach for those places if you looked. I want to support Ukraine with our defense budget not waste it on Baltimore
mbfg 4y ago
people won't get out of poverty working at amazon warehouses. America has always had enough money to do whatever it wants. We could spend money in Ukraine and Chicago if we cared to, but we just don't. This country will never solve the poverty problem, as there is no real interest in doing so to any significant level by those who could solve them. Universal free health care, like the rest of the modern world. Free Education, like much of the modern world. An effective and cheap transportation system like most the modern world Those things would make a pretty big impact. America doesn't believe in such things. It won't happen. America believes in the lottery system (not just thru tickets). You have a chance to be rich beyond your wildest imagination. But almost certainly won't be. and if you aren't, hit the road.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > This country will never solve the poverty problem When poverty is defined as the lower quintile of income, it cannot be solved. America's poor are the richest poor people in history. It's one reason why millions flood over the border to get in.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Which is why the general sentiment in this thread is not to solve the poverty problem, but to solve the unaffordability problem, ie. living paycheck-to-paycheck with no liquid assets, and still having less than $50 at any point, maybe going through periods of high credit card usage and paying minimum payments to get through things like vehicle repairs.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      How to get into the middle class in America: 1. stay in school, pay attention, get good grades 2. get a loan and go to college, major in something that pays well 3. don't do drugs 4. don't commit crimes 5. use birth control It isn't rocket science.
      - bruce511 4y ago
JackFr 4y ago
You elide the impact of a stable two parent home. No doubt education, hard work and grit are also at work here, but the facility of two incomes, two people to split housework and childcare duties are an enormous boon. Statistically, two parent married families who have children after high school are almost never below the poverty line. I offer that as descriptive and not proscriptive - I don’t know the solution. But I know two parents in a stable household make it much easier.
- remote_phone 4y ago
  It’s as basic as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food, shelter and Safety are foundational. Everything else comes with they. The poorest neighborhoods in the US are like war zones. Once they have safety and middle class jobs, things like 2 parent households will flourish.
WalterBright 4y ago
Want to make South Side Chicago prosperous? Make it an attractive place for productive people to set up shop. Cutting taxes and regulation is how that works.
- bagels 4y ago
  What person is going to invest in a shrinking city with poverty and tremendous violence just to pay a little less tax?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Anyone who is willing to take on risk for a large payback. After all, those sort of people settled in America and made it the most prosperous country in the world.
jeffbee 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the people of Oakland would welcome you to keep these ideas confined to whatever place you currently inhabit. Why don't you take your weird crusade to a city that could actually use it, like Memphis, Tennessee?
vishnugupta 4y ago
> My parents were dirt poor because their country was devastated by war, but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class, and now me and my siblings are 1%ers. You just described me and millions like me in India. Education continues to be the most reliable path for the poor to escape the poverty trap.
smileysteve 4y ago
In the scale of $20t debt and $3t deficits, and $700b tax cuts - $100b is not an either or situation.
BoorishBears 4y ago
This is a surprisingly tone-deaf comment as someone from the same background, and its not even internally consistent. On one hand you seem to understand that education helped our parents: > but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class On the other you seem to think that menial labor will somehow fix these places, you think we just haven't tried more police (for every sound bite you hear about defunding the police, go look at the YoY expenditure that city actually has) You also flip-flop on being able to understand that safety is a pretty big part of being able to focus on education for some reason. - I mean can tell you right now, our parents are not representative of their surroundings. Yes there are a lot of stories like theirs, but your home country is anything like mine, the stories are almost bi-modal: either a given person from "home" is the hardest working person you've ever met and pulled themselves up by the thread of their bootstraps (tends to be our direct family or family friends so we hear about this more)... or they're borderline dysfunctional, often struggle with addiction as a form of escapism, and probably not trying to better themselves just like the people you're thumbing your nose at (tends to be something you see a lot more if you go home yourself). Maybe instead of taking the good fortune that we've had with what our parents sacrifices and struggles started us off with and stomping on it with self-aggrandizing diatribes where you proclaim the simple fixes that would right everything for these "poor self-pitying victims"... maybe just take away the lesson that things can improve for them. Focus on the more positive aspects of that exposure, rather than confusing exposure with experience. Because if you're anything like me, we sure as hell don't have any experience near what these people struggle with, both in the US and in our home countries.
bagels 4y ago
The police in Oakland are not always a force for good. They are under federal supervision essentially for being too corrupt. it's not clear that hiring more of them will help.
Quarrelsome 4y ago
> The problem is the poor areas in the US are exceedingly violent and basically succumb to victimization to explain why they can’t get out of poverty. If they can’t have safety and the culture is to just blame others and not try to better themselves, this is a perfect way to create generational poverty. I think its more that if you want a straight-forward means to earn proper money without a degree then organised crime has positions for you. That's not a case of a "bad culture", its a case of opportunity. > Instead of $100B to Ukraine we need to... everyone knows that one of the two political parties attacks _every_ piece of public spending, not because they wish to re-invest it elsewhere but because they would like to justify tax cuts a few years down the line. So it surprises me every time this line gets trotted out when they're in opposition. Are we not learning? Furthermore; Funding Ukraine is a very cheap means of gaining geo-political outcomes that fit the aims of NATO. Every citizen of a democratic nation should be celebrating the success of the Ukraine armed forces as opposed to trying to defund them.
panick21_ 4y ago
I have to disagree here. Education is often more a result of increase in wealth then the cause. How do you invest in JOBS? That's not a thing that exists. Also, cities are not save because of police. That's a misunderstandings of how city work and a misunderstanding how safety works. Simply reducing violence is hard, or impossible, more police isn't the answer. What are the underlying reasons for the these issues in the first place. > Within a generation it will change the entire city Schools and policy are not changing a city. What changes a city for the better is public transport, good infrastructure for utilities, good tax and land use policies, effective minimum public services. Schools and policing are part of that, but only a part.

Pigalowda 4y ago

Why would we want DoD budget going to chicago or Baltimore?

remote_phone 4y ago
Because we spend too much on the military industrial complex and not on our own communities. We are rotting from the inside because we create generational poverty in these communities and just leave them to themselves. Occasionally when a cop kills someone there, we will remember them for a few days and then forget them in a couple of weeks. Over 3000 people were shot in Chicago this year so far. And that’s down 20%. Did you even hear anything about that? We let these poverty-stricken neighborhoods live in violence and don’t do a goddamn thing about it. Meanwhile we feed the military industrial complex to fight wars on the other side of the world. That’s bullshit.
- Pigalowda 4y ago
  But chicago and Baltimore’s poor violent neighborhoods are not a federal problem. That’s a chicago and Baltimore problem. I don’t want any of my tax dollars that go to DoD going to either of those cities. I’m sure you can find ways to donate to various social programs and outreach for those places if you looked. I want to support Ukraine with our defense budget not waste it on Baltimore

mbfg 4y ago

people won't get out of poverty working at amazon warehouses. America has always had enough money to do whatever it wants. We could spend money in Ukraine and Chicago if we cared to, but we just don't. This country will never solve the poverty problem, as there is no real interest in doing so to any significant level by those who could solve them. Universal free health care, like the rest of the modern world. Free Education, like much of the modern world. An effective and cheap transportation system like most the modern world Those things would make a pretty big impact. America doesn't believe in such things. It won't happen. America believes in the lottery system (not just thru tickets). You have a chance to be rich beyond your wildest imagination. But almost certainly won't be. and if you aren't, hit the road.

WalterBright 4y ago
> This country will never solve the poverty problem When poverty is defined as the lower quintile of income, it cannot be solved. America's poor are the richest poor people in history. It's one reason why millions flood over the border to get in.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Which is why the general sentiment in this thread is not to solve the poverty problem, but to solve the unaffordability problem, ie. living paycheck-to-paycheck with no liquid assets, and still having less than $50 at any point, maybe going through periods of high credit card usage and paying minimum payments to get through things like vehicle repairs.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    How to get into the middle class in America: 1. stay in school, pay attention, get good grades 2. get a loan and go to college, major in something that pays well 3. don't do drugs 4. don't commit crimes 5. use birth control It isn't rocket science.
    - bruce511 4y ago

JackFr 4y ago

You elide the impact of a stable two parent home. No doubt education, hard work and grit are also at work here, but the facility of two incomes, two people to split housework and childcare duties are an enormous boon. Statistically, two parent married families who have children after high school are almost never below the poverty line. I offer that as descriptive and not proscriptive - I don’t know the solution. But I know two parents in a stable household make it much easier.

remote_phone 4y ago
It’s as basic as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food, shelter and Safety are foundational. Everything else comes with they. The poorest neighborhoods in the US are like war zones. Once they have safety and middle class jobs, things like 2 parent households will flourish.

WalterBright 4y ago

Want to make South Side Chicago prosperous? Make it an attractive place for productive people to set up shop. Cutting taxes and regulation is how that works.

bagels 4y ago
What person is going to invest in a shrinking city with poverty and tremendous violence just to pay a little less tax?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Anyone who is willing to take on risk for a large payback. After all, those sort of people settled in America and made it the most prosperous country in the world.

jeffbee 4y ago

I'm pretty sure the people of Oakland would welcome you to keep these ideas confined to whatever place you currently inhabit. Why don't you take your weird crusade to a city that could actually use it, like Memphis, Tennessee?

vishnugupta 4y ago

> My parents were dirt poor because their country was devastated by war, but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class, and now me and my siblings are 1%ers. You just described me and millions like me in India. Education continues to be the most reliable path for the poor to escape the poverty trap.

smileysteve 4y ago

In the scale of $20t debt and $3t deficits, and $700b tax cuts - $100b is not an either or situation.

BoorishBears 4y ago

This is a surprisingly tone-deaf comment as someone from the same background, and its not even internally consistent. On one hand you seem to understand that education helped our parents: > but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class On the other you seem to think that menial labor will somehow fix these places, you think we just haven't tried more police (for every sound bite you hear about defunding the police, go look at the YoY expenditure that city actually has) You also flip-flop on being able to understand that safety is a pretty big part of being able to focus on education for some reason. - I mean can tell you right now, our parents are not representative of their surroundings. Yes there are a lot of stories like theirs, but your home country is anything like mine, the stories are almost bi-modal: either a given person from "home" is the hardest working person you've ever met and pulled themselves up by the thread of their bootstraps (tends to be our direct family or family friends so we hear about this more)... or they're borderline dysfunctional, often struggle with addiction as a form of escapism, and probably not trying to better themselves just like the people you're thumbing your nose at (tends to be something you see a lot more if you go home yourself). Maybe instead of taking the good fortune that we've had with what our parents sacrifices and struggles started us off with and stomping on it with self-aggrandizing diatribes where you proclaim the simple fixes that would right everything for these "poor self-pitying victims"... maybe just take away the lesson that things can improve for them. Focus on the more positive aspects of that exposure, rather than confusing exposure with experience. Because if you're anything like me, we sure as hell don't have any experience near what these people struggle with, both in the US and in our home countries.

bagels 4y ago

The police in Oakland are not always a force for good. They are under federal supervision essentially for being too corrupt. it's not clear that hiring more of them will help.

Quarrelsome 4y ago

> The problem is the poor areas in the US are exceedingly violent and basically succumb to victimization to explain why they can’t get out of poverty. If they can’t have safety and the culture is to just blame others and not try to better themselves, this is a perfect way to create generational poverty. I think its more that if you want a straight-forward means to earn proper money without a degree then organised crime has positions for you. That's not a case of a "bad culture", its a case of opportunity. > Instead of $100B to Ukraine we need to... everyone knows that one of the two political parties attacks _every_ piece of public spending, not because they wish to re-invest it elsewhere but because they would like to justify tax cuts a few years down the line. So it surprises me every time this line gets trotted out when they're in opposition. Are we not learning? Furthermore; Funding Ukraine is a very cheap means of gaining geo-political outcomes that fit the aims of NATO. Every citizen of a democratic nation should be celebrating the success of the Ukraine armed forces as opposed to trying to defund them.

panick21_ 4y ago

I have to disagree here. Education is often more a result of increase in wealth then the cause. How do you invest in JOBS? That's not a thing that exists. Also, cities are not save because of police. That's a misunderstandings of how city work and a misunderstanding how safety works. Simply reducing violence is hard, or impossible, more police isn't the answer. What are the underlying reasons for the these issues in the first place. > Within a generation it will change the entire city Schools and policy are not changing a city. What changes a city for the better is public transport, good infrastructure for utilities, good tax and land use policies, effective minimum public services. Schools and policing are part of that, but only a part.