G? I’ll be honest, I don’t give half a fuck about G. But there’s something mentioned in your first paragraph that disappeared by the middle of that paragraph and never showed up again: G’s kids, impacted by poverty.
You’ve repeatedly endorsed public school funding systems that are going to shaft G’s children, and I do give a shit about those kids.
Poverty affects kids. Saying that assholes like G are poor, and therefore fuck the poor, is not much of an answer at all.
This is essentially tantamount to financial hostage-taking, though. If someone willfully wastes money, then says, “my kids are hungry and if you don’t give me money they will starve,” at what point do you break the cycle?
Yeah, not a big fan of “I know one example of a bad actor, therefore I assume they’re all bad actors” generalizations.
The potential solutions to this are pretty bad all around. Removing kids, preventing kids from being born, or other invasive stuff that really sucks worse than the problem trying to be fixed. Any viable solution is going to result in some measure of going through the poor quality parents. So that sucks.
It sucks, no doubt. The suckage is not worse than the problem it fixes. I’m not all about rewarding G for being a fuckin loser; but if he catches a few lucky breaks on the course to making sure his kids get what they need, that’s the price of doing business.
On the other hand, being poor means you’re more likely to be dirty, unable to fulfil certain responsibilities, and so forth AND people unable to fulfil their responsibilities are also those most likely to be unable to get their shit together to stop being poor.
The other thing about that specific “G” dude - I’ve met guys like him before. They donate sperm, like the notion of having offspring, but don’t want to do the work of raising them or contribute to their upbringing. In my experience, which is not intended to represent all such instances, they tend to refer to their ex-fuck buddies as “whores” and “gold-diggers” and other unsavory terms while crowing about having produced viable sperm. Perhaps G’s strategy is to live as large as he can without being forced to contribute money towards the upbring of his children or the [del]whores[/del] [del]bitches[/del] women who bore them or the kids themselves, like it’s some sort of game to see how much he can defy the courts and society and keep for himself.
In which case blowing his money on wheel rims and booze makes a perverted sort of sense - no sense saving anything when savings can be taken away. Spend it all! Then spend some more! Eat, drink and [del]fuck[/del] [del]father more kids[/del] be merry.
Hey, it’s not how I want to live, or anything I can approve of, but I have encountered the mindset more than once. Nor would it surprise me that such a person would bitch about being poor since that sort tend to blame anyone and everyone but themselves for their own problems.
You break the cycle of poverty by realizing that sermonizing and punishment doesn’t help anyone.
Providing social services helps.
Enforcing laws with discretion helps.
And yes, sometimes throwing money at people helps.
I think we need to accept that moral hazards are unavoidable. Yes, if you serve children free breakfast and lunch, you’re getting their parents off the hook for feeding them. But the alternative–not feeding anyone–is that children will go hungry. Hungry children do not learn very well and do not grow up to be tax-payers. I’d rather enable some lazy parents than ensure their children will grow up even “lazier.”
What is it about being poor that makes it more likely to be dirty? Poor people can’t pick up trash in their apartments or yards? Can’t afford soap? Water? what is it?
What is it about being poor that makes it more likely to be unable to fulfill non-monetary responsibilities? Can’t make it to the library because you are poor?
I’ve seen this in other cultures as well. My question is, what is up with the girls not wanting to use birth control? I’ll never understand that. What leads a girl to decide to have a baby with a loser, no-job having, asshole?
People put extra care into something when they have a sense of ownership of that thing, and when they believe that caring isn’t an exercise in futility. I probably wouldn’t bother keeping trash out of my front yard if everyone else around me has trash in their yards. Why would I expend the effort when their trash is just going to spill over into mine?
A poor person may not have time or energy to care about dirt. If you’re working two jobs and caring for children all by yourself, it is likely that you are under a time crunch. Maybe you can only afford to wash two loads of laundry every week, which means wearing the same work uniform twice or three times before washing. Or perhaps you are too broke to pay the water bill. Or maybe you are poor because you are raised by a severely mentally ill parent–one who did not teach you basic hygiene. The possible reasons are endless.
Two good reads:
The cognitive burden of poverty.
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.
If someone is broke, they are always going to have monetary woes on their brain. This cognitive “tunneling” will not only impede their awareness of other matters, but it will make them more likely to make bad decisions. I think this should be easy enough for anyone who has ever had a bad day to understand. I know when I’m nervous about an important meeting, I’m more likely to do something stupid, like getting lost on the way there or leaving my wallet at the Starbucks or doing an illegal U-turn and getting a ticket.
If you’re broke and you’re always broke and all you can do is think about how screwed you are, how do you ever get off the bad decision train? When middle-class people are stressed out, they can go on vacation and “reset” themselves. Poor people never get a break. They do dumb shit because their situations make them kind of dumb after awhile.
This is easy too. Girls want babies for the same reason that boys want fancy cars. Babies and cars are status symbols. A girl who has a baby on her hip feels like someone important.
I wonder what % of kids who get free breakfast and lunch at school grow up to be productive, non-criminal members of society. Anyone know of any stats on that?
Well, i don’t base my actions on what OTHER people are doing. I would pick up the trash in my yard, and ask them to pick theirs up. Or pick it up for them.
And here, Broomstick, is where the “poor people work 2 jobs and care for children so they can’t be clean” comes from
Shouldn’t they be thinking “how can I get out of this?”
Shouldn’t there be some sort of outreach educational programs to put a stop to this?
Is this really true? Having 3 babies by a jobless asshole who doesn’t pay child support is a status symbol? Really?
Thanks for linking that. While I had no doubts that a breakfast program significantly helps low-income children, I can’t believe that some school districts don’t offer it, even though it is Federally paid for. 
Excerpt from When Having Babies Beats Marriage:
I don’t understand why you are shocked by this finding. The human existence is all about filling the void within.
Being a mother. Being an adult. The feeling of having *control * over your own life and being responsible for another’s. A dream made manifest.
Yeah, lots of reasons. I don’t agree or particularly sympathize, but I can sure as hell empathize with it.
(Thanks for your posts, monstro.)
Well, I wouldn’t fill the void within by bringing a baby into the world that I can’t take care of.
“Early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose characteristics—family background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental-health status, and so on—have already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further.”
I don’t understand this quote. Having a baby before you even graduate high school pretty much guarantees that you will never dig yourself out of a hole. Having more than one even more so. At least with no children, you can move, join the military, try to attend college. Having 3 babies to support pretty much ends all that.
You can ask yourself that question all day long. But if you don’t have any answers, then it’s not going to do anything but block out other, more pressing matters.
The cognitive deficit caused by poverty prevents a person from thinking “how can I get out of this?” That’s a question that requires both forward-thinking AND introspection. But poverty keeps individuals in the present. A poor person is too busy bracing themselves for the next disaster to worry about preventing them in the first place.
It can be infuriating to watch, as an outsider. I once watched a documentary about poor families dealing with homelessness. A single mother was driving her son around, worrying about two things 1) what they were going to eat for dinner and 2) where they were going to sleep. The little boy was whining about his hungry stomach and she finally turned into a fast food drive-in, where she spent precious dollars buying a greasy fried chicken meal for the two of them. An outsider can’t help but judge her. Why wouldn’t she spend that money on some wholesome fruits and vegetables? Well, I know why. Because whole fruits and vegetables weren’t going to make her little boy be quiet, and she needed quiet so she could think. And maybe at that moment she was full of despair and in need of comfort. A banana and some saltines don’t comfort the same way that a two piece meal does.
There are. But the thing is, these kind of programs require buy-in from the moralizing majority. People who think “personal responsibility” is the cure-all for the ails of poverty tend not to put a lot of stock in any kind of outreach besides the moralizing (churchy) kind. But the reality is that no one is born knowing how to be “responsible”.
One way to look at it is just math: if there are no supermarkets nearby, then it will take longer and cost more to get food. Without good transportation, it takes longer to get to work, and it’s more likely you’ll be late, and more likely you’ll get fired. Without good childcare options, kids will spend more time unsupervised. With less time and money, there are many fewer options for actually gaining enjoyment from life. Sex is really fun, and it’s cheap in the short term, so that will be one of the few enjoyable activities available frequently. And there are countless more such things.
All these things can be overcome, but it’s a lot more difficult to succeed if you have all these obstacles than if you don’t. Some good people are especially talented and lucky, and will overcome it, but plenty of good and decent folks won’t, because most people aren’t super talented and lucky, and most people have some flaws. When you’re born into some comfort and capacity to absorb crises, which most poor people don’t have, it’s not hard to succeed, even if you’re not very talented or lucky. But when you’re not, then most people aren’t going to overcome all these obstacles, because most people can’t do very difficult things with no room for error.