What's so difficult for the poor to move up to middle-class?

[Bill_7154]

Actually there are four basic steps to move to middle class from poverty.

1. Graduate from highschool with decent grades.
2. Don’t get married before age 20, stay married after you get married.
3. Don’t have children out of wedlock.
4. Stay off drugs

If you can accomplish those 4 basic steps and are of fair general health you will most assuredly become solid middle class. I’m 45 years old and have never met a person that did those 4 things that didn’t have a “middle class” life style.

Sorry, but there are those with mental and emotional afflictions that severely impede people’s functioning. And there are varying degree’s to which those people can overcome said afflictions based on numerous different factors. It’s not so simple as you would believe. I came out of extreme poverty (having nothing, no job, no place to live, minimal basic life skills and severe mental and emotional problems to becoming a working poor person. Most people with my background and my problems don’t even make it to the working poor class. They wind up in the government handout system for life, if they are lucky. Many wind up in prison or the grave.

 

[Bill_7154]

Its easy to make excuses

Yes it is. And a lot of people who are in the middle class (whatever that is, it isn’t what it once was that’s for sure) and the upper middle class (what I would consider the actual middle class) to make excuses for why people are poor in order to turn a blind eye towards them.

Also, it’s easy for the poor to make excuses for why they are poor and allow those excuses to get in the way of them trying to better their lot in life. But there are also very real barriers that exist in changing one’s circumstances in life, such as mental illness, extreme emotional suffering, lack of basic life skills and any sense of self worth that is very deeply engrained in poeple who grow up abused and neglected on a daily basis (trust me, if you have not experienced this in childhood or worked with people who live this way first hand you have NO IDEA how horrible it is and NO IDEA to which the degree of having such a childhood impacts one for their entire lives (unless they kill themselves, like they sometimes do).

 

[Bill_7154]

As long as we are excusing ignorance I’ll extend the same courtesy to you.

Where exactly have I stated I have never been poor?

I’m the 9th of 12 children born to a share cropper that only attended school to 8th grade. I worked a full time job (lying about my age) while in high school to feed the family the share cropper left behind after he died. I worked 50 to 80 hrs a week on a job “that Americans won’t do” while attending college and still supporting my widowed mother.

Yeah – I know nothing about being poor, or hungry or having to struggle to put food on the table.

As for our responsibilities for our brothers and sisters - I worked ****ed hard to fulfill mine. Perhaps you should direct your ire at our multimillionaire president - ask him how he takes care of his brothers and sisters.

Did you have anyone who loved you or cared about you when you were growing up? Did the people who were raising you beat you, sexually molest you, have a chaotic home where the caregivers were drunk and ranting and fighting constantly, emotionally neglect you only giving you attention when they were abusing you or when you needed to go to the hospital, etc?

I doubt it. And I would suggest you don’t be so quick to generalize, or judge.

 

[Bill_7154]

Do the poor have an attitude problem? I suspect many do.

My life experince has taught me that ‘attitude problems’ are not restricted to any ‘financial’ class of people. IMO this is a no brainer to realize this. The fact that you point out that ‘the poor’ have an attitude problem when all financial classes have them is telling of your mindset towards the poor.

 

[Bill_7154]

There’s honestly so many factors that I can’t name them all. It’s something that’s not impossible, but hard for them for various reasons. You can say family and what they were raised with are big contributors. If you’re raised to believe you can’t do any better, .

And the reality of this is that this stuff is engrained into children moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day… either negative stuff or positive stuff. After years and years of negative stuff being put in your mind, your heart, your soul by your caregivers…this kind of sets the stage for your life.

Sure change is possible, but I don’t think people who are raised in ‘normal’ homes have any idea how severely an abusive and neglectful childhood impacts people and stays with them despite them trying very hard to change themselves and despite getting tons of professional help.

And those are the lucky ones. Many simply never try because of their conditioning that they are worthless. Many never accept help because of their conditioning they received despite it being offered over and over again.

The lack of understanding of the impact of a bad childhood has on poeple is astonishing to me.

 

[maryjk]

If you can accomplish those 4 basic steps and are of fair general health you will most assuredly become solid middle class. I’m 45 years old and have never met a person that did those 4 things that didn’t have a “middle class” life style.

Sorry, but there are those with mental and emotional afflictions that severely impede people’s functioning. And there are varying degree’s to which those people can overcome said afflictions based on numerous different factors. It’s not so simple as you would believe. I came out of extreme poverty (having nothing, no job, no place to live, minimal basic life skills and severe mental and emotional problems to becoming a working poor person. Most people with my background and my problems don’t even make it to the working poor class. They wind up in the government handout system for life, if they are lucky. Many wind up in prison or the grave.

If they have mental and emotional afflictions that severely impede their functions, then they wouldn’t be in good health, would they???

 

[SamH]

Sorry, but there are those with mental and emotional afflictions that severely impede people’s functioning. And there are varying degree’s to which those people can overcome said afflictions based on numerous different factors. It’s not so simple as you would believe. I came out of extreme poverty (having nothing, no job, no place to live, minimal basic life skills and severe mental and emotional problems to becoming a working poor person. Most people with my background and my problems don’t even make it to the working poor class. They wind up in the government handout system for life, if they are lucky. Many wind up in prison or the grave.

I guess you missed the part about good general health. No one ever said it was easy.

 

[SamH]

Did you have anyone who loved you or cared about you when you were growing up? Did the people who were raising you beat you, sexually molest you, have a chaotic home where the caregivers were drunk and ranting and fighting constantly, emotionally neglect you only giving you attention when they were abusing you or when you needed to go to the hospital, etc?

I doubt it. And I would suggest you don’t be so quick to generalize, or judge.

WHOA!!!. Did you see those three fingers pointing back at you?

 

[SamH]

And the reality of this is that this stuff is engrained into children moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day… either negative stuff or positive stuff. After years and years of negative stuff being put in your mind, your heart, your soul by your caregivers…this kind of sets the stage for your life.

Sure change is possible, but I don’t think people who are raised in ‘normal’ homes have any idea how severely an abusive and neglectful childhood impacts people and stays with them despite them trying very hard to change themselves and despite getting tons of professional help.

And those are the lucky ones. Many simply never try because of their conditioning that they are worthless. Many never accept help because of their conditioning they received despite it being offered over and over again.

The lack of understanding of the impact of a bad childhood has on poeple is astonishing to me.

I really don’t think you understand either.

 

[DarkLight]

I suspect there’s a more general problem. The way the economy works, there’s going to be limited ratios of different types of jobs. A certain proportion of our working public is going to be employed in the bottom tier of jobs, no matter what. It will be possible for some people to move up, but it will never be possible for everyone or even most people to move up unless they displace a lot of other people. And the more people want the higher-level jobs, the stricter the requirements to get them will be.

 

[Bill_7154]

If they have mental and emotional afflictions that severely impede their functions, then they wouldn’t be in good health, would they???

Your correct. I either missed that part or assumed that you meant “able bodied” when refering to general health.

 

[Bill_7154]

I really don’t think you understand either.

Please explain why you think that. Thanks in advance.

 

[SamH]

Please explain why you think that. Thanks in advance.

Everyday I work with children that come from the worst of circumstances. Making excuses does not help achieve goals.

 

[Bill_7154]

Everyday I work with children that come from the worst of circumstances. Making excuses does not help achieve goals.

Where did you get the idea that I think that making excuses helps achieve goals?

How many of my posts have you read here?

Have you read any related to habilitation of individuals? Actually correctly identifying obsticals in the way of one achieving goals is an important part of assisting people in achieving their goals, wouldn’t you agree? Or do you simply snap your fingers and get children to dance for you without knowing anything about their circumstances? You run in blind and make them all better without figuring out what is broken in them first? That makes a lot of sense.

 

[BobCatholic]

Because we have no laws outlawing outsourcing of jobs. Neither of the two “major parties” supports legislation outlawing outsourcing.

I am all for a $50,000 tax imposed for each job shipped outside of the USA… I think we could pay off the national debt!

 

[Bill_7154]

Because we have no laws outlawing outsourcing of jobs. Neither of the two “major parties” supports legislation outlawing outsourcing.

I am all for a $50,000 tax imposed for each job shipped outside of the USA… I think we could pay off the national debt!

Interesting thought. There have certainly been tons of jobs outsourced from the USA to third world countries. I’m no economist (and the little I know about the subject leaves me to only believe in The Austrian Economics School of thought) but I do see that by outsourcing jobs I get to buy goods at cheaper prices. Anther effect is that the owners of the companies make more profits. If those 2 things were weighed it would be my guess that the owners benefit more than the us buyers of goods ousourced.

Goods and services would most definitely increase dramatically if every job outsourced came back to the USA. It’s not like all those jobs could be put out for minimum wage and have them filled because we have millions of citizens who collect monies and other goods and services that put them in a better financial situation than if they were to work a minimum wage job. And on top of that they don’t have to work, there is extra value added to having a 52 week/year paid vacation. So in order to get people to take those jobs a wage somewhat significantly higher than minimum wage would have to offered.

I’m also guessing that the company owners would not want to see their profits reduced, I’m thinking that they would price the goods so that after paying the citizens of the US to make the goods they still get at least close to the same profits they were getting from the outsourcing of jobs. So it’s a complicated issue.

If the costs of most of the everyday items I buy were to quadripple I would be in a world of hurt and I immagine so would a lot of other families.

Don’t mean to through water on your idea, I think it’s great your thinking about ways to help our country, but when it comes to politics and rich people of considerable power and influence making money I think things get very complicated.

 

[BobCatholic]

Don’t mean to through water on your idea, I think it’s great your thinking about ways to help our country, but when it comes to politics and rich people of considerable power and influence making money I think things get very complicated.

It gets complicated when people want to impose their selfishness on others by using the government.

For those who was forced to train their replacement who could not even speak English properly, and then lost their job, this is not a complicated issue.

 

[DarkLight]

It gets complicated when people want to impose their selfishness on others by using the government.

For those who was forced to train their replacement who could not even speak English properly, and then lost their job, this is not a complicated issue.

The trouble is, regulation or not, it’s often not the people who are being selfish that are the ones that get hurt. If outsourcing were fined, odds are the people at the top would just find a way to make poor americans bear the cost instead of taking it themselves.

 

[SamH]

Where did you get the idea that I think that making excuses helps achieve goals?

.

Actually I said you are excusing their lack of achieving goals.

And those are the lucky ones. Many simply never try because of their conditioning that they are worthless. Many never accept help because of their conditioning they received despite it being offered over and over again.

Basically “we don’t expect much of you.”

 

[oneofmany]

Poor people can’t move up if there are no jobs. Seems right now the government likes it that way. Class warfare is good for votes. Not good for Americans though. We will become like Greece. No one wants to work or if they do they want to retire at 50 and workers want 6 weeks vacations with maternity leave of 2 years. Just who is left to pay for it all?

The rich will move to other countries if you want to tax them 100%. Liberation theology says to redistribute the wealth but those who work for their money will stop working altogether when they see it just given to those who don’t work.