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Should Society Feel Guilty About PovertyShould Society Feel Guilty About Poverty
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Subjects > [Current Events]?Create > Social Issues Discussion
In a recent Amazon.com discussion thread, someone proposed some cures to the problems caused by drugs imported from Columbia. Someone else responded that proposal didn't address the single word cause of people escaping into drug use: Poverty.
Here is my response....
Poverty?
I really dont see what the point of your message is. Is Ana supposed to feel it is her fault that people are in poverty?
Poverty in and of itself doesn't cause anything. It can be a great incentive to hard work.
However, poverty doesn't make someone a good customer for drugs. Pushers are in the biz for the money it generates. Shall we really get at the root of the problem and eliminate money?
If poverty is a problem because of pople who use poverty as their excuse to steal, many who are bent to commit crimes to fund their vices will steal to support even legal vices such as booze or cigarettes.
All too often drugs ruin people after they achieve some level of success, access to money, and new circles of friends to run in. Look at many of those stories I refered to, they are at the peak of their earnings, they get so hooked on drugs that eventually the drugs drag them down to a level of poverty worse than they had before success.
The reasons people want to escape through drugs are wide and varied. Trying to put it on poverty, which I think is usually trotted out in an argument to somehow make society feel guilty, is a gross oversimplification.
But let's thoroughly address poverty: I believe in most cases it comes down to a personal responsibility issue, and a person who is not refusing to take that responsibility. When I see someone who is "poor", rush out to buy alcohol and cigarrettes, or lottery tickets, while their water bill or electric bill remains unpaid, I have sympathy for them. But I have no sense of blaim for their condition. Their poverty is entirely their own creation. And the path out of their poverty entirely rests on their personal decisions to take responsibility for their situation. No amount of government programs stealing money from the productive members of society and handing it to the foolish will ever significantly change their position in life.
What is the path out of poverty? Learning, hard work, perseverance. Our society abounds with libraries and used bookstores to take care of learning, and dozens and dozens of role models exemplifying hard work and perseverance. And I would imagine that nearly every impoverished person has in their family or circle of friends someone who has made their own way out of poverty, someone who would help them if the poor person made themselves truly teachable and guidable.
How many here were born with the knowledge of how to design an associates site? How many people here find the income from this program useful, even if it is just $100 or $200 a month? I've heard statistics that many bankruptcies could be averted if the person had just $200 a month extra in income. How many here, even if they don't make a lot of many from the associates programs, have learned new skills that they could either use to donate labor to a worthy cause like building a website for a church or a community group, or even make some money from by building websites or writing articles? Or just learned something as simple and intangible as self-confidence of being able to learn something new?
Now think about this: How many of you who try to blaim the world for poverty have spent the time to create an amazon associates website for a friend or family member, and put all the associate ID's in their name so they can make the money from it? How many have spent the time to explain how it works, show this person how it is done, and try to involve them in the process? I have done this for dozens of people. Some of them really need the extra money, and could be considered to be living in poverty. Some of them are very intelligent, even some who know web design, and I've spent much time trying to teach them how to benefit further from the site I made for them. But often they do absolutely nothing to improve the site I made for them. And some even have the nerve, despite their lack of personal effort, to complain to me that the free check they are getting isn't bigger! One person who I made a site for, and who reluctantly admitted to receiving a check for several hundred dollars every quarter, had even forgotten their URL!
One time I even spent a lot of effort on someone who "borrowed" a laptop from me just so they could sell it to buy drugs. I called them in the rehab ward, and still offered to help them manage their life and get out of the rut they were in. Of course nothing came of it, and I don't feel the least bit blame for their position.
While I don't feel the least compulsion to loan the bum on the street $100 to invest in learning some kind of business or self-improvement, and I resent when the government steals from me to hand that money to the bum with no strings attached, any friend or family member who comes to me and seriously says "Can you help me learn to do what you are doing? Can you help me learn some new skills to better my life?" will receive more than money from me, they'll receive copious amounts of personal training and support too. But if they don't bother to follow through, don't bother to do their part, (as is the case more than 90% of the time), then my conscience is clear, their situation is their own doing. If I as their friend can't be convinced they are serious about making good use of assistance, why should I let the government just steal my money from me to hand to those living in poverty so they can spend more time watching TV?
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