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LABEVO

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Posts posted by LABEVO

  1. 2 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

    My family's experience was similar.  Both grandfathers had high-school educations, but made sure their kids all went to college.  Before that, both families were relatively poor farmers.

    It just takes one generation.  Just one generation to lift a family out of poverty.  Or one generation to consign the entire family to poverty.

    We're two generations into this new economic model, in which money isn't made in the coal mines or automotive plants, but with education and knowledge and hard work and entrepreneurial risk.  In two generations, we've pretty well separated the smart from the dumb; the hard-working from the lazy; the ambitious from the content.

    Imma gonna let my inner Republican show just a little bit here.  Yeah, there's institutional racism.  If you're black or brown, there are a lot of cards stacked against you.

    But if you're white?  What's your excuse?  Imagine who shitty your economic situation would be if we didn't lock up a third of black men and they were instead out there competing against you for jobs.  Imagine where you'd be if we treated meth and opiods like we treated crack cocaine back in the day.

    The smart kids who grow up in poverty in small towns?  You see them now working in decent jobs in big cities.  You walk down the streets of Dallas, and you're going to see the top 20% of the graduating class from Ada High School.  But the bottom 80%--they're still in Ada.  Doing shit.

    And, again--I'm going to let my Republican flag fly, but I don't really give a shit.  If you're too lazy or stupid to stay in shitty circumstances in a shithole like Ada, Oklahoma, then that's a whole lot of your problem.  There are pathways out.  They're not a secret.  They're taken by plenty of people every day.  But some people just aren't suited to it.

    My only critique is with the bold. When in absolute poverty, the individuals do not have the resources or ability to escape their environment due to the cost and lack of support structure to move. I am not talking about Joe and Jane that make $30k -$50k that just need to save to make the move. The individuals making sub-$25k can never save enough to escape the geographical poverty trap.  

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