thintoast
Mayosapien
At what point do you stop applying that logic? After three experiments? Three hundred? Three Thousand?
FYI Being a Transvestite is Expensive
- Thread starter APRIL
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Mr. Argumentor
I fab shitboxes and shitbox accessories.
When you start seeing the cause of something, you've found the cause and you can stop.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
I think think it's unmotivated. They're not happy with 'just getting by' but not motivated enough to make a drastic change about it. We do a pretty good job of offering opportunity, but you can see by the 'just raise the minimum wage' chant that they think someone else commanding that they get paid more will benefit them. Not that they have to figure out a way up or out of their current status.
The point I'm making is that the complacency being shown about it doesn't recognise just how motivated it appears you need to be to drag yourself out of poverty in America. The lie is that all men are created equal. It's less true in America than in most developed countries and for those whove had to make a moderate effort to denigrate those who would need to put exceptional effort in to achieve the same things is smug and to a degree ignorant. Why should you have to be exceptional to raise yourself to 'average' because you weren't born with the advantages of even the average? Are the 65% who manage to remain in the top 65% better motivated or is there an inbuilt unfairness that is hard to overcome?
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
that's a false choice. Anyone can be motivated. You don't need to be exceptional. I deal with dumbshit business owners every day. I just had a conversation with a supplier who couldn't believe a guy that he and I are getting equipment/money for is as brain dead as he is. I told the supplier "this just means anyone can make it. Absolutely anyone."
They come from a more motivated environment. The people around them repeatedly tell them they can do better, there's another great opportunity, etc. the lower class doesn't have that. They have a gov't that says 'we'll lower the cost of your houseing and subsidize your food. Where's the motivation in that? I read somewhere that during the last month of unemployment, somehow, a huge percentage of unemployed get jobs at or near their original paying job. Why not take that job 6 mos earlier instead of living on 40% of the salary? Because they're not motivated. That's all it is. It has nothing to do with 'exceptional' and more to do with 'I don't have to.'
i know it's anecdotal but the last 3 people i've known that have been on extended unemployment magically found employment within 2 weeks of being cut off from uncle sam.
i assume it's because they realize they can't be so selective and open up their job choices. one was looking for a job within 10 miles of her home, even though she lives in the middle of nowhere (i'm not sure there's any company with more than 5 employee's within 10 miles of her house) and the job she got laid off from was 25 miles away in the nearest major city. when she had a month left of unemployment she opened that range back up and found a job within 2 weeks.
another guy i know got laid off from an office job and spent the first 6 months looking for a job he could work at from home.
as the deadline approached he gave up on that and found a job with little trouble.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
See, I think you can see these guys are suddenly motivated. But if you're brought up in a culture of 'we just do it this way' 'there's no money for that,' you almost need two people to motivate each other to get out. Otherwise you're surrounded by a whole bunch of 'we just do it this way' 'there's no money for that.' & tbh, that's not a completely bad attitude. When I look at a yacht in a marina, or the new benz in the parking lot of the marina, or the massive home sitting on the lake, that's exactly what I think. I've brought myself to an income level that's good for me. Could I rework my life to get more? Maybe. But I'm not entirely motivated right now.
Jehannum
Puts the "pro" in procrastination
give them a cheap tablet. if it breaks, have a replacement program at their local school. replace them every few years, again, all adminstered via the school like a textbook program. pretty easy to wipe and reinstall an os on a tablet. it's actually an extremely easy idea... you IT types are over complicating things
It is not easy to get those grants. There are far more qualified applicants than there us funding to dole out.
More importantly if you grow up poor you are less likely to have the education and support necessary to get those good grades.
Again, you and everyone else is a product of their childhood. If you grew up like they do you probably wouldn't be a success either. None of us would be, we all played life on easy mode. You can't pretend that everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed.
Why do you think that culture exists? It's because most prior in poverty are the result of generations of oppression and exploitation. They weren't given many other options.
*why* are you less likely to have that education?
august claims it's because of absentee parents busy working, but since half of the impoverished only work part time if at all i'm guessing that's not the case.
you claim it's underfunded schools, i already pointed out the kcmo school district disaster where extremely overfunded schools ended up losing their accreditation.
i say it's cultural. you can blame that culture on whatever you want but many different subsets of people in the US where oppressed and exploited, like the irish. or the germans. or any other major immigrant group from the early 1800's through whenever... nobody here likes history that doesn't fit into their viewpoint though. i assume you're specifically talking about our black population, but they don't account for 100% of our impoverished population. the asian's in america faced the same obstacles but they certainly excelled.
august claims it's because of absentee parents busy working, but since half of the impoverished only work part time if at all i'm guessing that's not the case.
you claim it's underfunded schools, i already pointed out the kcmo school district disaster where extremely overfunded schools ended up losing their accreditation.
i say it's cultural. you can blame that culture on whatever you want but many different subsets of people in the US where oppressed and exploited, like the irish. or the germans. or any other major immigrant group from the early 1800's through whenever... nobody here likes history that doesn't fit into their viewpoint though. i assume you're specifically talking about our black population, but they don't account for 100% of our impoverished population. the asian's in america faced the same obstacles but they certainly excelled.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
Lets study everyone as an individual using two other people per person studied -of course paid for by the governments endless $ supply - so there's no bias, classifying, so we can double check results, hell, let's triple check, and not apply any results to anything 'cuz in the end there's more than enough people making excuses, and more than enough people making up even more excuses for them.
Let's pretend you had a suggestion other than that won't work we should throw more $ at it.
There are a lot of reasons why, the reason august stated is one of them. The fact that schools in those areas are often underfunded is another.
One example of a school system screwing up its funding does not invalidate the fact that underfunded schools in poor areas are a significant obstacle to a good education. Your KCMO anecdote is not relevant.
You say it's cultural but you ignore why that culture is the way it is. All the other groups you mentioned were oppressed into the 1800s. The people we're talking about are the children and grandchildren of people who couldn't go to white schools. Don't pretend the irish faced anything like what blacks have in the US.
I'm talking about our black population because they do account for a lot of the impoverished but poor people living in those areas will be affected regardless of their race.
The fact that you say "the asians" faced the same obstacles is telling. It was primarily centered on a specific nationality and the bulk of chinese in the US are not descendant from the slaves that built the nation's railroads.
That culture you keep referring to that is keeping poor people poor is American culture as a whole. It's not a specific one to those areas, it's a systemic and institutional obstacle being created by all class levels.
listen.
it's not my fault. it's not your fault. it's not our fault. stop with the white guilt already.
it's not my fault. it's not your fault. it's not our fault. stop with the white guilt already.