The U.S. government spends quite a bit of money on keeping its wealthy, very happy.

Should we send IRS agents into their homes, and make sure their moral virtue is deserving of your tax monies…or is moral virtue only reserved for the poor?

How was poverty defined in the European nations?

“You want to fix poverty? Fix illegitimacy, with a combination of sexuality education, easily available birth control–and changing society’s attitudes (beginning with Hollywood) that having a baby is just something the girl does for fun with her boyfriend of the week.”

sinz54,

Do you still believe in Santa Clause?

I’m around very successful and wealthy people…not just your average mundane middle-class hick, but some truly wealthy all-Americans…and they are the most amoral, degenerate, sinners…divorce, prostitution, adultery, gambling, binges in Vegas and underground sex clubs…and this seems to fuel their appetites for sin….if one’s moral virtue is supposed to be reflected in one’s ability to accumulate capital, then…clap your hands harder so that Tinker Bell can come alive.

I still can’t believe folks cling to that fairy tale…working hard don’t mean squat when others are working ruthlessly and amoraly…

It would take just one generation of tough love to turn this self-perpetuating mindset around. I firmly believe that I have the moral obligation to share what I have with others–but I believe I (or my church or local United Way) can deliver that assistance much more effectively than can the federal or state government, without innumerable layers of bureaucracy.

The other side of this coin (necessary because my view is especially harsh to the female/mother side of the equation) is that we must make fathers responsible for child support. Any father who is not living up to his responsibility needs to have an ankle bracelet attached to his leg, led by the nose to the nearest McDonald’s where he will work 8 hours, then led to public service job (cleaning streets, mopping floors) for another eight hours to ‘earn’ the public assistance his child is receiving from us.

Put those two recommendations into practice, and we’d see public spending on welfare drop in a hurry–and the level of poverty in our nation recede.

As an add-on, anyone who has tattoo’s all over his/her face arms, multiple piercings, and wears “pants on the ground” should be rejected from the welfare system automatically. They’ve self-selected to be unemployed for the rest of their lives.

Agreed. One of the strongest determinants of a child’s future economic success is the parent(s)’s economic success and education level. Poor parents will raise poor children.

It is politically incorrect to say this (and impractical), but if you are a single, uneducated, poor parent, the best thing you can do for that kid is put them up for adoption. If you are living off welfare, you’ve shown you can’t take care of yourself and you have no business raising kids. If you want to have kids – there’s your incentive – reform yourself and get off welfare. We could do a lot more to reduce the birth rate in these populations, unfortunately certain factions of the republican party have hamstrung some of the programs with faith based initiatives and just say no rather than practical access to birth control methods and education.

The current focus of welfare is to throw money at a problem. The problem is many of these people need more than money to turn themselves around. They need education, job training and likely counseling and physical training. They need a life rehab. Solving the problem costs a lot more up front (and requires more government in your life than most of us are comfortable with) so we have a cheaper program that just deals with the symptoms.

What is working and has worked in other countries is a focus on education. South Korea and Spain have come very far in the last 20 years and much of that has been because of a serious focus on education.

The kids in these poor neighborhoods need more than an education from the school system. These kids show up with more needs than kids from more affluent areas. In high school, I participated in a Saturday volunteer program where we took inner city kids up to our school and provided them with a fun release (sports) and practical support (tutoring and testing). Some kids got counseling. It was amazing that in one Saturday a week, we got to know these kids better (and make more progress with them) than the teachers that spent all week with them. Sadly, programs like that are the exception to the rule. Most school districts insist that school is just for school, their mandate is not to help these kids with their other needs. It’s a fair argument and cheaper up front than making a real difference with the kids, but it costs us more later with more kids repeating the cycle of poverty.

I agree with you in principle and agree we need a better solution that rehabilitates criminals. But the ‘tough on crime’ is there by request. We need some minimum of law and order on the street. If we can’t rehabilitate them (we need to get better at that), we need to keep them off the streets and from causing more violence.

From the mid 80’s – mid 90’s many parts of the town I lived (Baltimore) were a war zone. Calling the police was almost a joke. Repeated violent offenders spent little time if any behind bars and often went right back after the victim the minute they got out. People I’ve met from DC, Philly, Boston, New Jersey, New York, Atlanta, Miami and other places say similar things. People got tired of the violence and demanded a solution.

Agreed that having a criminal record is a stigma, and putting everyone in a neighborhood in jail is not practical. Still, I’ve worked with a number of people that had criminal records that went on to be successful. Anyway, the stigma doesn’t really matter with the violent repeat offenders. From my personal experience, the fastest way to kill a neighborhood is to leave the criminals on the streets – crime begets crime as honest folks with the means move out and only the riffraff stay on. Communities with a zero tolerance policy are more likely to stay crime free in my experience.