The child would be in foster care in no time, regardless of mom’s intentions. The girl would get on her feet and get the kid back or continue on a different path and not get the kid back.
That’s how it works now, what’s the big deal?
The only room for improvement is the caring and giving people in her neighborhood, would they stand by or give her a hand up.
[quote]vroom wrote:
By this, I mean there are things that are instinctively alluring. Belonging to a group, having respect, power and safety, for example. I’m not advocating gangs, but acknowledging that there is an underlying reason that people are drawn into certain types of lifestyles and activities. Having children, or more aptly having sex, is one of them.
I do think there are various wants and needs that people have, that can be tapped into, with respect to appropriately motivating them to want to succeed, or become part of a productive mainstream society. However, the concept of instant gratification is perhaps not compatible.
Obviously everybody wants a nice place to live, plenty of cash, a nice car and so on. However, there are less tangible needs that might be addressed. Perhaps appropriate pride, self-reliance and accomplishment in an environment that doesn’t trivialize them would be useful.
For example, it’s great to have pride, but it won’t do much compared to living in fear of your life due to local gangs. Survival, perhaps joining the gang, trumps the pride of making the right choices.
[/quote]
I agree with a decent amount of what you wrote, Vroom, and I think environment certainly makes things tougher for people looking to make a better start. I think (from what I read) that we are in pretty close agreement on education being an important factor and social equalizer.
What I take more issue was where you wrote:
The problem with this line of thinking is that there are plenty of people who do not join gangs, get involved in crime or dealing drugs while living in poor neighborhoods. Heck, I would guess the majority of people below the poverty line do not, so there is true personal choice involved there. What explains all of the people who decide not to get involved in all of that?
Also, there are plenty of situations of people who come to the U.S. as immigrants with hardly a dollar to their names and who end up (over time) building better lives for themselves and for their children/grandchildren and so on.
Overall, I see your point and I would never dismiss environment’s effects on how people turn out or them having more difficult choices to face. I think figuring out a better way to give kids, no matter where they live, a great education is hugely important. No kid should have to suffer by virtue of where he or she was born.
Kuz,
I don’t disagree with anything you are saying.
I suspect that some people are weaker than others. Look around you. How many people do things by themselves, alone. Heck, in most cities, the large majority of people are clumped together with friends or family at all times. When was the last time most people have gone to see a movie alone?
So, some people have a harsher environment at home, or are simply weaker, or received even less education perhaps via a crappy section of the educational system. I’d guess they are less able to face up to the situation and make the right decisions. For example, I can’t blame a child for getting away from regular abuse… even if it means belonging to something like a gang. How can a child be expected to make good decisions for their life at that age? They haven’t even been a part of the real/working world yet.
Honestly though, I’d really like to go a bit beyond helping poor people who will work for it. It would be nice if everyone who was motivated could get temporary assistance to improve themselves, paying back this assistance once they get back into full time work afterwards.
No handout, but an ever present hand up. The more people make, the more tax they pay and the better they can provide for their children and the education that they will need. Will it be abused? Yes, it will, but how could it be more expensive than the current ongoing system of hand-outs?
[quote]JohnGullick wrote:
Maybe a better welfare system, but then I’m European so ‘big government’ doesn’t scare me. Huge communist government does, but not big amiable government. Little, angry, war-like government scares me as well. You know for all the left-haters out there think how much good the New Deal did. The poor could do with a newer deal now though.[/quote]
Riiiight! Let’s take the failed concept and program of welfare and develop a newer failed welfare program.
[quote]Todd S. wrote:
sasquatch wrote:
Todd S. wrote:
How about she counts on her family, or doesn’t drop out of school and start having unprotected sex. Take some personal responsibility. Why should I have to pay for her to have a decent life when I can barely provide myself with one. The woman described is going to spend the rest of her life on some sort of welfare. Maybe they should be left to starve… (ok that was joke)
You are assuming she had a supportive family to begin with. Many don’t. Your attitude is both cavelier and prejudicial. You wanted to come off like a poster before preaching personal responsiblity, but your tone is clearly different. It has nothing to do with your ‘struggles.’
I’ve seen what a helping hand can do and it is life affirming my friend. Are there those that can’t/won’t be helped? Absolutely. To turn your back on all who are in need is shallow and lacking in the true understang of manys plight.
Noone is asking YOU to pay for her to have a decent life. How about a decent chance?
I’ve seen the other side where a helping hand turns into a way of life. That is what drives me nuts, the welfare system needs major change…
I keep getting asked when I’m having kids, I respond I can’t afford it. I must have had a dozen people tell me not to worry about it there are welfare programs I can use… WTF kind of attitude is that. I do think there should be some sort of safety net to help when you NEED it.
[/quote]
We’ve all seen the negative aspects of welfare, that doesn’t mean you stop helping and giving chances. Reform–yes!
BTW__if you wait till you can afford kids, you’ be just old enough for most to say “Oh, You have the cutest grandkids.”
Obviously, I’m not advocating have kids go on welfare. What I’m suggesting is don’t let monitary be the only or biggest factor in your decision.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Perhaps the problem could best be solved by treating the cause and not the symptoms. We’ve tried all sorts of social programs, like the Great Society. Is there something we could do to prevent all those bad choices from occuring in the first place?
I know this will sound fascistic, but could we, as a society, intervene early on? Force this child to eat properly (making her live in a dorm setting), absolutely prevent interaction with males, force her to become educated and be punished otherwise? (Remember the scene in the movie ‘Fightclub’ where Tyler forces a clerk to go back to community college?) Do we have to resort to these terrible actions to deal with this problem? Nothing else seems to be working.
Will kindness put her back under the overpass?[/quote]
You are missing the point. In a free society people have the right to make stupid dumb-ass choices. So we will always have people under the overpass as long as we are a free society and allow dumb-ass choices.
What we don’t seem to allow, and some would argue is an infringement of freedom, is for people who make dumb-ass choices to experience the consequences of those poor choices, even if that is what they want.
So the trick is providing help for those that are willing and able to work for it, and not for those who aren’t. This will weed out those who want to be where they are at verses those who don’t.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Honestly though, I’d really like to go a bit beyond helping poor people who will work for it. It would be nice if everyone who was motivated could get temporary assistance to improve themselves, paying back this assistance once they get back into full time work afterwards.
No handout, but an ever present hand up. The more people make, the more tax they pay and the better they can provide for their children and the education that they will need. Will it be abused? Yes, it will, but how could it be more expensive than the current ongoing system of hand-outs?[/quote]
Interesting. Well, I give you credit for at least attempting to come up with an outside-the-box thought on how to combat the problems of poverty. It’s truly sad to see how it is such a cycle with generation after generation stuck in many poor communities. I know I am fortunate to have the life I do based on the hard work of my immigrants great-grandparents who had nothing, but busted their butts in shoe factories so their kids could have a little more… and then those kids (my grandparents) did the same and so on.
I think we can (or at least should) all agree that the current welfare system flat out sucks. It’s done nothing but cause successive generations to stay poor and provide little incentive to break free.
One question I have about your “hand up” system… is that basically meant to be a progressive tax scheme for all citizens or just some new system designed to incentivize people to get out of welfare?
If poor people were all educated and got good jobs, who would work all the shitty jobs? This is a serious question.
The average poor person in the USA is far better off than poor people at any other time in history.
It is impossible to eliminate poverty.
All we can do is have econmomic and educational opportunity to allow some poor people to get out of it. Most will not.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
If poor people were all educated and got good jobs, who would work all the shitty jobs? This is a serious question.
The average poor person in the USA is far better off than poor people at any other time in history.
It is impossible to eliminate poverty.
All we can do is have econmomic and educational opportunity to allow some poor people to get out of it. Most will not.
[/quote]
That is my point. We will always have people to do the crapy jobs because there will always be people who don’t take advantage of the opportunities given them.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
If poor people were all educated and got good jobs, who would work all the shitty jobs? This is a serious question.
The average poor person in the USA is far better off than poor people at any other time in history.
It is impossible to eliminate poverty.
All we can do is have econmomic and educational opportunity to allow some poor people to get out of it. Most will not.
[/quote]
Kind of a Nietzchean view you have there Zap…Hell I never know where to begin as far as helping the poor. It is in part the nature of capitalism to have a low class, a homeless class. But to a certain extent, it is personal responsibility to be able to drag yourself out of the gutter. It has been done by others. However, these people are the exception and not the rule. And not everyone has the brains to get out of there. Not everyone is gifted; men certainly aren’t created equally.
But I’m a Democrat. I believe in rehabilitating, helping, and doing what you can to help the poor. I don’t care who it is from, a Church, the state, or my pocket giving them a couple bucks when I see them on the street. Hedo’s points about personal responsibility are true. But still, everyone makes mistakes in life, some more serious than others. This country has more than enough money in it to help these folks. It should be spread around.
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Perhaps the problem could best be solved by treating the cause and not the symptoms. We’ve tried all sorts of social programs, like the Great Society. Is there something we could do to prevent all those bad choices from occuring in the first place?
I know this will sound fascistic, but could we, as a society, intervene early on? Force this child to eat properly (making her live in a dorm setting), absolutely prevent interaction with males, force her to become educated and be punished otherwise? (Remember the scene in the movie ‘Fightclub’ where Tyler forces a clerk to go back to community college?) Do we have to resort to these terrible actions to deal with this problem? Nothing else seems to be working.
[/quote]
No you can’t do that. Because most people would rather be homeless than be forced to grow up like that. Fight Club was a movie. A great movie. But a movie.
We live in this democracy thing where setting up a Hitler youth is generally a bad thing.