Morality Games
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2009
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- Location
- Iowa
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- Political Leaning
- Centrist
Yup, and typically for that reason they don't do as well. The vast majority of American millionaires are first-generation (like, around 80% of them) wealthy, and never got an inheritance.
I agree that it is difficult to escape poverty, but it is always difficult to improve ones' station in life - whether you are moving from the lowest income bracket to the middle or from the middle to a higher one. There is a club for that called "life" and we meet at the bar.
Unfortunately, hand outs appear to make it harder for people to climb out of poverty, as they become dependent upon the aid, stunt their natural drive towards self-improvement, and begin to seek ways to enrich themselves not through increasing production, but rather through increasing the amount that they take from others. They get caught in self-destructive generational cycles of broken families, joblessness, and functional illiteracy. Our attempts to "help" through government have thus far exacerbated these trends, not reduced them.
If we actually want to help the poor, perhaps we should start taking a look at what works rather than what is easy.
Tens of millions of the working population are unemployed. There are at most four million jobs available in the nation.