Please explain how the schools are failing.
The answer to the OP is “some of both.” Really, there’s no other reasonable response.
Coming from a poor background obviously has a very heavy influence on future poverty. On the other hand, I think you’d have to be sort of blind to not accept that some people do make themselves poor through their own bad choices. Hell, I know some of them. It’s more the former than the latter (you don’t think everyone in Mozambique is an irresponsible doofus, do you?) but there are certainly both elements to be considered.
Buffett and Gates came from probably upper middle class families, but they earned their zillions. I know many examples like this. My ex-boss moved to Bermuda and started a reinsurance company, making over $100 million in less than ten years.
It’s harder if one is beginning from abject poverty. Still, I know many immigrants who came to this country with nothing at all and would up as multi-millionaires. E.g., an Armenian immigrant who came to Fresno, CA and made tens of millions by recycling used clothing and used cloth.
However, examples don’t prove anything. We really ned statistics. I’m afraid I do not have statistics handy.
Happy to oblige. Here’s a cite from Will Hutton’s book “The World We’re In”,
[quoted in the Observer]
(http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,706484,00.html): in a comparison of “the mobility of American workers with the four biggest European economies and three Scandinavian economies”
and
Sources for the above are not quoted in the article, though I’m sure they are in the book.
an attempt to point out the difference to december
tomndeb suggested that you post examples of stuff that actually supported your view.
And you repeated the Gates & Buffet stuff, admitting that they came from middle class or upper middle class beginnings.
now, how on this planet is that any kind of example when the subject is people being poor?
you need to look for people who came from poor beginnings and then went on to achieve wealth. (hint, in most cases if it happens, it happens when the person is a sports figure, entertainer etc.)
There is a good part of luck in the equation.
And a large factor in that luck is what family you happen to be born in.
I have a friend who, if left to his own devices, would be poor. (Or maybe if he was left to his own devices, he’d get a decent job). But he can live, acceptably well, off family money. So he does.
One of my sisters high school friends got pregnant and dropped out of high school. She is doing quite well in a middle class lifestyle, her boyfriends parents let her move in, they got married, his folks supported him through college, networked him into a decent job. Voila, happy ending to a story that usually has a pretty miserable one.
Certainly, the choices people make contribute to their economic status. But poor people get fewer choices. And they often don’t have exposure to the range of choices actually available to them.
I gave the example of Vahan Chamlian in Fresno. He came to this country at the age of 31. To know how broke he was, he told a story about how he had to gamble in order to win enough money to come here.
After making millions in the cloth business, he made the mistake of starting an insurance company, which is how I got to meet him. It recently went broke. He discovered that the way to make make a small fortune in insurance start with a large fortune. 
I personally know others who became millionaires over time by working hard, living prudently, saving money, and investing sensibly in the stock market.
If you save $10,000 per year for 29 years and your money grows at 8%, you will be a millionaire.
I think Dangerosa hit on a very important variable for the cause of poverty - support structure. Yes, someone who drops out of high school is more likely to live in poverty. However, the question is WHY did that individual drop out? Did they come from an impoverished family that really needed the extra income? Did they come from a household where the parent/s were on drugs, so needed to support younger siblings? And thus the cycle of poverty self-perpetuates.
And yes, teenagers get pregnant. The support structure that the teen has around her has alot to do with the outcome. Is there someone to council her as to options (let’s not get into that debate…)? If she chooses to have the child, what then? A person with a strong support structure will likely have help with child care and be able to either stay in school or hold down a job. Someone with little or no support may need to rely on the state to support her and her child. In that case, you now have a teenage mother with no high school diploma on welfare, and few prospects to improve the situation. And let’s face it, Dan Quayle isn’t a big proponent of state-funded programs to lift people like her up by the bootstraps.
Kids from middle-class families have a better chance of finishing high-school and getting help if they make mistakes. Kids from poor backgrounds, regardless of the good intentions of their parents, are more likely to have to fend for themselves.
So are the poor responsible for their own poverty? Probably sometimes, but I think more often not.
Not in my experience.
Let’s see - my grandfather drove a truck. My father is a millionaire.
My father-in-law was a security guard in a bank. My wife went on to earn a salary that put her in the top 20% of income.
Sam Walton’s father was a farmer.
Dave Thomas was raised by a single parent.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, december
The pertinant part of my post, which both of you neglected to quote was:
Now, as far as being able to demonstrate that certain select few people that you personally knew or were related to, who came from ‘poor’ beginnings and now are ‘well off’,
A. this of course does not negate my statement of “most”
B. when you look at a list of the ‘wealthiest folk in the US’, damn near all of them will fall into one of the categories already mentioned - they were at least middle class to start with (hence the position that a beginning in poverty is an enormous hurdle) or they fall in the class of additional folk that I alluded to (ie, Oprah, Micheal Jordon - tho’ I confess that I don’t know for certain that either or both came from ‘poverty’)
and Shodan neither classification of “single parent” nor “farmer” is indicative of economic situation. Jackie Kennedy was a single parent for a good number of years, and I doubt that anyone would question if her kids were raised in a priveledged environment.
Non sequitur. The fact that someone’s wealth has increased does not mean that it has happened at the expense of a poor person. Or even another rich person. Wealth is not a zero-sum game.
The focus on “the gap between rich and poor” is, to me, one of the most misplaced priorities of too many liberals. The size of the gap doesn’t matter–what matters is whether those on the bottom end of the scale are able to achieve a decent standard of living with what they earn. Unfortunately, too many people are more concerned with whether someone is richer than someone else. If the poorest are able to afford decent housing, services, and food (and I’m not saying they always are, I’m saying if they are), then it really doesn’t matter if the richest have an average net worth of $10 billion.
If you can afford to save $10,000 per year, you are nowhere near disadvantaged.
Therefore, no poor person can ever become rich, because as his wealth increases, he will no longer be poor. Q.E.D.
Seriously, it’s quite plausible for a disadvantaged person or couple to eventually attain jobs where they can afford to save $10,000 a year. It wouldn’t require exceptional skills.
BTW USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2002/05/10/edtwof.htm]praised Quayle
Have we defined “poor”? What exactly is “living in poverty?” Some of the examples given (a truck driver, a farmer) are certainly working class, and may be low wage earners (though I think truck drivers can actually make a decent living), but do they meet the requirements for poverty?
Here are the US government’s 2001 poverty guidelines (from this site http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/01poverty.htm :
Well, at least we will never have to hear any of the conservatives in this thread complaining about generations on welfare, since they don’t believe in that.
Tris
The Ryan wrote:
I won’t attempt either to support or to argue with this opinion, as I’m not even sure where I sit on this issue myself.
But you’ve gotta admit, the phrase “Most poverty is caused by the poor” definitely sounds like something Dan Quayle might say.
december: However, examples don’t prove anything. We really ned statistics.
Happy to oblige! 
You challenged Tris’s original assertion that “Most of the rich are not rich because of their own actions. The richer you are, the more likely it is that your parents, and grandparents were rich.” According to this article on a study of the sources of wealth of the Forbes 400 (richest 400 persons and families in this society, as of 1997 in this case), that assertion is quite justifiable:
-
Percentage of the Forbes 400 who inherited enough wealth to become a member of the Forbes 400 on the strength of that inheritance alone (which required a minimum of $475 million in 1997): 42%
-
Percentage who inherited wealth in excess of $50 million or a large and thriving company: 6%
-
Percentage who (a) inherited wealth in excess of $1 million or (b) inherited a medium-sized business or (c) received significant start-up capital from a family member: 7%
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Percentage who came from wealthy/upper-class background but with less than the above inheritance advantages: 14%
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Percentage whose families were not wealthy and did not own a business with more than a few employees: 31%
So yes, certainly among the very richest people, most were rich to start with. Mind you, this is not intended in any way to denigrate the achievements (if legally and ethically attained, of course) of those who made themselves even richer by their own hard work. Nor is it to deny that there are indeed numerous cases of truly self-made wealthy people whose families were middle-class or even poor. But statistically, yes, the majority of the richest people were already rich before they ever started working at it.
Okay, but that’s just the Forbes 400. How about the lesser species of rich people, those who have a lot of money but not the most money in the world? Well, the wealth-market strategists hnw note the following facts:
-
10% of those now counted as millionaires in the US inherited $1 million or more to start with.
-
Members of “penta-millionaire” households—those with assets over $5 million—inherited on average 1% of their wealth. It doesn’t say what kind of average they’re using nor how big the spread is. Still, 1% of $5 million is $50,000, which is not pocket change for the poor, or even the middle class.
So the statistics indicate that as you work your way down from the multibillionaires to the “small millionaires”, the percentage of people who owe their wealth completely to inheritance gets smaller, as you might expect. Nonetheless, if 10% of millionaires inherited $1 million or more, then a high proportion of the rest inherited smaller sums. Inheritance is still an important contributing factor on average even in the case of those wealthy people who have “only” a few million dollars.
In other words: most rich people aren’t rich solely because of their own actions, and the richer you are, the more likely it is that you inherited wealth. We are definitely not talking about the average poor person and the average rich person (or even the average middle-class person) starting out at the same point, whence the rich person forges ahead because of thrift and hard work and the poor person lags behind because of indolence and stupid choices. Picking the right parents still makes a big difference in your adult economic status.
pld: The focus on “the gap between rich and poor” is, to me, one of the most misplaced priorities of too many liberals. The size of the gap doesn’t matter–what matters is whether those on the bottom end of the scale are able to achieve a decent standard of living with what they earn.
On the surface, I think that’s fundamentally true. However, I think the real problem most critics have with gross income inequality is the corresponding imbalance of power it creates in a democratic society. When one rich person has economic influence comparable to that of a few hundred or a few thousand average people, the political treatment of different classes can still be pretty even-handed. However, when the rich person’s influence outweighs that of millions or even tens of millions of ordinary joes, you’re likely to get a profound policy skew in favor of the things that rich people like.
And this often winds up making it harder to maintain a decent standard of living on the bottom. Namely, the advantages that make it easier for rich people to earn more money (lower wage floors, lower social-service expenditures that permit lower taxes, less stringent labor laws, less oversight of companies’ financial and environmental practices, etc.) tend to decrease the advantages that make it easier for poor people to earn more money (good-quality, low-cost education, healthcare, and other infrastructure and social services, secure jobs at good wages, protection against exploitation as a worker or consumer, etc.). So no, in theory there is no requirement that wealth be a zero-sum game, but in practice advantages to the wealthy do often come at the expense of advantages to the non-wealthy.
All that shows is that relative to the past they aaren’t vicitms of vindictive tax policies. It says nothing about the absolute level of vindictiveness.
As of 11/5/1998, the top marginal rate for the death tax, aka estate tax, was 55%. I consider that confiscatory.
kambuckta
No, no, and not exclusively.
None of this proves that the rich are responsible.
Cite?
isatara
No, it’s not.
tracer:
Have I mentioned that I think most crime is caused by criminals?
jshore: […] *It hardly sounds like they [the rich] have been the victim of vindictive tax policies. *
The Ryan: *All that shows is that relative to the past they aaren’t vicitms of vindictive tax policies. It says nothing about the absolute level of vindictiveness. *
jshore: And, tax rates remain far below anything that could be considered confiscatory.
The Ryan: *As of 11/5/1998, the top marginal rate for the death tax, aka estate tax, was 55%. I consider that confiscatory. *
Inference: Evaluative terms like “vindictive” or “confiscatory” are very subjective. I do not think you guys are likely to agree on a definition of either of them.