Sure. You’re arguing that someone at the base of the hierarchy is stupid for wanting to grasp for something higher. Sorry, not stupid, just not a grown-up.
Why do middle-class people beat down the doors to gain admission into Ivy League schools? Because they ain’t crazy. If you want to get a foot into the best social networks in the country, you’ll get it by attending an Ivy League institution. Do you deny this?
I find it hilarious how the people who are the most vocal against AA and other “hand-outs” are usually the most blind to how they’ve been helped by their own environments. I don’t know a thing about you, but I do know that you and your friends didn’t get jobs by pulling your own lone individual bootstraps, with no guidance or assistance from anyone else. Everyone who has reached success in this life has been “hooked up” in some shape or form, especially the non-poor.
A poor student who goes to a no-name “easy” college is not well-placed for any kind of “hook up”. You can call this “bullshit” all you want, but I think you’d be the only person on this board who’d challenge such a incontrovertible assertion.
Choosing between beer and an investment is NOT choosing between a non-essential and an essential-to-survive necessity. But that is the strawman that always seems to get brought up in these discussions. There are three types of poor people.
People scraping by because of circumstances or maybe a bad decision or two. These are the people that work two jobs or take the best job they can as crappy as it is but their family has a roof over their head and food on the table and clothes for school.
Poor but not survival mode. These are people that can take care of the necessities of life but not much else. A few bucks at the end of the month but will never put away the down payment for a house or a really nice car or pay out-of-pocket for school, etc. You sound like you’re in this group.
The group that really is (or at least should be) under discussion. These are the people that have to go to the food bank or they won’t have food the last four days of the month but they buy a dog. They buy a new expensive truck but can’t afford the gas to get to work. They can’t afford the utility bills but go to the movies at full price with popcorn and coke. They can’t afford their full rent but buy needless (or needlessly expensive gifts) for people. And they are always begging for money to cover the necessities.
Some people lump all of these groups together, but I think that when it is the poor or poverty mentality that it is being discussed it is the third group. Yet when I complain about my SIL who spent a ton of money on a kids birthday at an amusement park then needed my wife to give her money to buy gas to get there, someone counters with yeah but my husband took all our money and left me with three kids and doesn’t pay support …
So LIMITING ourselves to group number three, my question still stands. Is it ever a valid choice to pick a non-essential item (movie, expensive dinner out, etc.) if it meas you cannot afford essential items?
Also, to be perfectly clear: I’m not a “poverty apologist,” whatever you and bump and whoever else thinks that term means. I understand the choices people in poverty make. That doesn’t mean I support their making those choices or want them to continue doing so.
I get where you’re coming from. I think the question really hinges on the word “valid.” It’s an entirely understandable choice. It’s possibly–probably–a poor one.
Hey, if you want to buy the movie-goer’s groceries, go right ahead. I don’t want to.
There are lots of people in tough situations that are “worthy of help”. Those people almost certainly don’t make perfect decisions, suppress every impulse, avoid every mistake, or otherwise perform at an unrealistic level well beyond their abilities. I don’t begrudge someone the occasional PBR after a long day, or even a little luxury here or there. The scenario given was “A person goes to the movies every Friday but cannot afford food.” I might help this person the first weekend, and possibly the second, but after weeks and weeks of seeing them blow their grocery money at the movies (when going to the movies is a luxury for me that I enjoy maybe once a month) I’m probably going to say, “screw you buddy, I’m not going to help you anymore”. I think that’s pretty basic human nature.
And like HurricaneDitka, I’ll help out occassionally like invite them and pay when we go to the zoo or offer to meet them for dinner and pay for the meal. But I don’t have sympathy for someone who takes their family of four to a very expensive restaurant ($60/person plus drinks) and talks during dinner about how they have to go to the food bank the next day because the father of the children (who lives with her) refuses to pay any bills, buy any groceries, watch his own kids and makes her pay for the babysitter. Oh yes, she was treating him to the dinner for his birthday.
Yes - but they are not entitled to shift responsibility on to someone else - “I spent $20 on movie tickets, so I have no money for dinner - if you don’t give me money I’ll go hungry.”
I’m fairly certain that Medicaid pays for birth control. I’m also fairly certain that Planned Parenthood will provide free or extremely cheap birth control for people. I’m also fairly certain that saying “No condom means no sex” is also free.
I’ll chalk this up to excuse #1 in your list of excuses dealing with poor people behavior.
No, I’m saying that the vast majority of middle-class college students end up building their own networks in school and afterward in the working world. It doesn’t really come into play right out of school for that first job, unless your parents are somehow much more connected than most middle-class people are.
There’s no reason a poor person in the same situation can’t or won’t do the same thing- if anything, I’d think the poor person would do a better job, as networking seems to be a more important skill in poor parts of town than in middle class areas, where you can just go to the auto shop, and don’t have to find a friend of a friend’s uncle who knows how to work on cars.
Once you’re out and working, it’s more about your own network, which is mostly people you went to school with and people you met during your career, which is a network entirely within your control to build and nurture how you see fit.
That’s where those 70% of jobs through networking from, not entry-level jobs from recent college grads.
If you can’t tell the difference between seeing people going to college in the media and wanting that, and seeing a FLYING CAR in a movie and wanting that, then I suggest you read some more or something.
As for no one to tell them about things, it is too bad their is not some sort of counselor that offers guidance in schools that might help them out.
Excuse #3 - “Nobody tells the poor how to get ahead”
Excuse #4 - “poor girls can’t meet nice middle class men, so they HAVE to fuck loser assholes with no job without protection because that’s the only pleasure they have in life”
There are many good community colleges that have open admission that will accept less than stellar grades. There are many need-based scholarships and grants that an aspiring college student can get.
Excuse #5 - “Poor people can’t get good grades, and cannot pay for college no matter what they do”
Excuse #6 - “Poor people can’t get an education because their relatives are ignorant morons”
Excuse #7 - “Poor kids can’t walk to libraries because of the most extreme example I can think of cause them to not be safe”
I meant I can’t speak on the quality of performing arts programs or the chances of success with them. But continue being sad for me.
I’m all in favor of upward mobility. I simply disagree with you on how to achieve this goal. If you look at the statistics, countries with a strong social safety net have a higher degree of upward mobility than the United States. Someone born in the bottom 20 percent in Denmark is about twice as likely to end up in the top 20 percent later in life than a person in the USA.
I find this statement to be highly sexist and stereotypical.
ALL men are attracted to the same thing? Are you a woman with rounded curves and tits and smooth skin and all those other Hollywood starlet features? If not, why is your husband attracted to you then, since ALL men are attracted to that?
Again, you speak for ALL women? ALL women are the exact same?