I will forewarn that this is a touchy and possibly controversial topic, but i’m only looking for people that can be honest and not afraid to sound bad.
In my opinion, when I didn’t know poor people and listened to the news and only read about poor people I felt bad for them and their situation. Then when I moved and got to know more poor people, I realized they were totally okay with being poor and were not trying to get themselves out of their situation. Additionally, they chose that poverty by their choices to not get an education or to have children when they couldn’t afford them and other choices. However, all this is the life they wanted.
What are your thoughts? If you agree, what you think should be done with poor people?
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I think it’s different for every person. I think there are people who have mental issues and cannot hold down a job and have lost their support system or didn’t have one in the first place, I think there are also people who just get genuinely bad strokes of luck and can really hurt them and be difficult to dig out of but eventually can, and then there are others who simply have zero work ethic, or are to self absorbed with drug use, alcohol and don’t want to change their life for the better and just want to survive on handouts.
As to what should be done with poor people?
I believe we need a dramatic overhaul in our nation when it comes to healthcare and by extension mental healthcare. I also think reopening asylums for truly dangerous people with mental issues to be taken care of (obviously humanely and with oversight)
I’m not opposed to universal healthcare but would much prefer to actually simply make healthcare affordable and make insurance truly for the catastrophic things. Right now our healthcare system is like having to use your car insurance to get a simple oil chain or tire rotation and along with that it’s typically tied in with careers which makes upward mobility or changing jobs even more challenging.
Beyond that, I’m not opposed to welfare systems, but they need more oversight. The poor will always exist, but we can help the mentally ill, we can provide assistance to the people going through hard stretches, but the people that simply don’t care or want to improve their life. I’m not sure. I think we should make welfare simultaneously have less red tape, but also be stricter and have more oversite to prevent people who either don’t deserve it or plan on living off it to permanently not be leaches. There no reason people should be buying anything besides the basic nutritionally beneficial food for survival on food stamps. Not saying deprive people, but I feel like every time I walk in a gustation someone is buying an energy drink, candy, or soda with their food stamps.
Yes and no. It’s crucial to acknowledge that poverty is a complex issue with both individual and systemic factors. Individual choices absolutely 100% play a role, but there are those people who are facing significant systemic barriers in life. Sometimes those barriers inform those choices. Ultimately though, it’s really not good to paint people in poverty with a broad brush. There is an indiscernible level of nuance which is required, and each individual faces their own journey and decisions and barriers.
The vast majority of people are in the current situation they are in due to their life decisions. Very few people wake up and say "I want to be poor….I choose to be poor." But many people make incredibly bad financial decisions that lead to them being poor.
This is almost a philosophy class type topic.
First, you have to define “poor”. There is one amount that is “federal poverty level” which is around $16k but that stretches differently depending where you live and your responsibilities. Those who have ever lived at the average US income ($40k) but then must take a 25% decrease for some reason “feel” poor but they are still above poverty.
Now if you really want to jump into the weeds, the Real Median income in the US was $37,740 in 2007 but was only $42,200 in 2023. The real median house price in 2007 was around $245k but it was apx $426k in 2023. Health insurance premiums have increased apx 21% btw 2007 and 2023. The average cost of gas in 2007 was apx $2.44 and 3.52 in 2023. So median income has increased apx 12% while the typical largest personal expenses increased 74% (housing), 21% (health insurance & this doesn’t include actual healthcare COSTS) and 44% for gas. So…for the average American whoever was 30 in 2007 and 46 in 2023 (prime earning years), they DID become poorer by no fault of their own.
I lost the thread of OP’s question LOL. I love an opportunity to do stats!
I don’t think there is any one universal cause that unifies all of it. The closest I can say is that there is a vicious cycle that enables poverty. Some of it is in the direct control of the individual and some of it is not. You can make all of the right choices but still have things work against you. But in my observation, the people who end up rising above poverty do share three attributes: they view life in the long term rather than the near term; thy consistently exercise good judgment, and they have a growth mindset.
I do not think the poor choose to be poor. But there is a certain amount of personal responsibility people have over their own life. And this responsibility shifted to the community under the umbrella of mental health issues.
I don’t think anybody chooses to be poor in the sense that if you ask somebody if they’d rather be poor or rich, you know what answer you’ll get. But as you point out, many people are poor because of bad decisions they make and do not want to make any sacrifices or put in any effort to address the situation.
It’s probably useful to narrow the discussion down to those who could do better but don’t. Your question is obviously not aimed at the mentally ill or disabled or drug addicted, although there is a choice involved in taking drugs or alcohol to begin with at least .
But if we’re talking about the poor, either living on welfare and whatever they can hustle, or the working poor who are working a low wage dead end job, that’s probably who we’re talking about in this case.
And that’s a complicated subject with many answers. What is choice and free will. That’s the real question I guess. Why would somebody choose to live in poverty? Maybe they don’t mind. Maybe they were raised to feel powerless or raised to be lazy. They might still be lazy. But, some of the fault might be in their upbringing. But upbringing or not, we are all ultimately responsible for who we are and what we do .
But I don’t think anything conservative, even if they fall on the side of personal responsibility, doesn’t have at least some consideration for upbringing and environment and the role they play.
Personally, I would say yes, poor people are responsible for their position. But I also have sympathy for people’s upbringing and recognize that someone born wealthy and raised in the best schools and doing quite well deserves to take credit for how well they do, but they must also recognize that they had certain advantages. This is what privileged used to mean. Now it is a cudgel to beat people with and the left comes up with silly ideas like white privilege .
But there is such thing as privileged when speaking of the upper middle class and upper class. And there is such thing as disadvantaged growing up in poverty in a rural area or urban kiddo and never being taught that you can do better .
This is one of the reasons I find the left so insidious when they teach children of color that the world is against them and they can never do any better so they might as well give up. They don’t come right out and say it but they come pretty close.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t need to be a club to beat people with, but yes, being poor to some extent is a result of the choices people make in their lives and honestly, what else do we have but the choice that we make up every morning when we get out of bed?
Some choose to be poor, others it’s something they can’t control.
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