Genuine Question: Why do people stay poor?

[Beanz]

Denilson has hit the mother lode with you, Miles.

You make some good points, but as I've said before, the way you go about it makes you an easy target for someone like Denilson, who believes (unless it's a huge windup persona) 100% of white people are racists.

Moderate viewpoints usually make for short, boring arguments..... but extreme viewpoints are just the opposite.

I know you don't like being called racist, and I'll abstain from calling you that. But you've got some beliefs ingrained in you that could easily provide (and does) cannon fodder for not only Denilson, but someone like Beanz as well.

Beanz is ultra PC, which makes him clash with me on the transgender issue. So naturally he's going to take offense with some of your broadbrush comments.

That YouTube you posted with the Japanese pimple-faced idiot trying to ban blacks in Japan has stayed with me. That you even posted that and gave it an audience was very disappointing, as all it does is propagate negative stereotypes that do no one any good.



I try to be as clear as possible. If you say there's an overpopulation problem, I agree with you. It makes no sense to me for women to spit out dozens of babies in countries without enough food to feed those who are already born.

If you say there's a huge single mother problem which only propagates the poor, government handout dependent population..... I'll agree with that also. My only qualifier is that it cuts across racial and ethnic lines. The government is a lot to blame.

When you say some people choose to be poor, I know what you're trying to say and it's a bit coarse. But by making life choices like spitting out kids like hamsters ("let the government take care of us"), many single women choose their lifestyle.

Kids naturally struggle to escape that reality and that vicious cycle.


Governments should do a COMPLETE OVERHAUL of welfare and handout systems. EVERYWHERE. As with many other government programs, the thought and effort put into these programs is barely TOKEN and gotten out of the way as quickly as possible so these corrupt, inept legislators can move on to their next empty promise.


Anyway, Denilson will continue thinking as he does (unless it's been all a huge, giant chain-pulling exercise) until maturity sets in around his late 40's or 50's.

How on earth am I ultra PC?

Don't buy into the propaganda and bullshit. The sad truth is that Gandalf is not very different from Denilson at all. He is like Denilson wedded to an idealogy that prevents hims from seeing things objectively or engaging with any kind of rationality or sophistication.

Gandalf has only ever had to worry about Gandalf so it is hardly surprising the bloke has had an empathy bypass but that does not explain his deeply held belief that anyone who is not as fortunate (in fact anyone more fortunate too) as him deserve whatever happens to them. If he was religious one could possibly understand and it would likely be a bit more balanced and nuanced.

The fact is that actually he is not so different, hence his thinking all these YouTube celebrities are his saviour.

The truth is we do not live in a perfect or fair meritocracy, even in the west. There are plenty of responsible hard working people who are poor through no fault of their own. Of course there are lazy people who could do more to change their circumstances but to suggest that is some kind of default behaviour with which you can describe all or the majority of poor people is astonishingly stupid. It is a commonly known phenomenon and you do not have to be a psychologist to understand or have seen people use it. The lazy person on welfare who will say that the family next door are terribly slothful, and the trust fund kid who will make the same accusation of laziness to some guy who may have only been unemployed for a short time, having worked for the rest of his life.

The truth is we all want to believe that we got where we are through some kind of unique blend of effort and innate qualities. The whole system we live under perpetuates that myth. You must know, more than many others though, how simplistic that kind of thinking is. Just as a natural disaster can destroy homes and businesses, with no regard to who is lazy and hard working, who is talented and motivated, and those who lack initiative and a work ethic, so can a myriad realities of life. Disability, sickness, death, accidents, mental health breakdowns, economic collapse, employers closing down, all affect not just one person but families, communities and even countries. This is nothing a teenager could fail to understand. So it is quite rational to conclude that what motivates Gandalf to declare that Black people, or anyone else choose to be poor, is an irrational ideology. An ideology that gives him some false sense of superiority and entitlement.

Sure effort, planning, application and a good dose of luck help, but where we are born, to whom we are born, and a whole lifetime of random events have just as much of an impact on how far from poverty we really are.

I don't really believe in fate or karma in a religious sense but I would not want to be in the shoes of someone tempting disaster with talk of how the majority of people in a worse off position than myself deserve to be there. That kind of thinking automatically makes you a ripe target for those selling you the lie that racism is scientific, and an apologist for a ridiculous inequality gap that praises huge corporations and individual billionaires, that profit by not only making poor people poorer, but actually stealing natural resources from them.

I am happy not to be such a cynical entitled boring bastard.

[TitoFan]

Denilson has hit the mother lode with you, Miles.

You make some good points, but as I've said before, the way you go about it makes you an easy target for someone like Denilson, who believes (unless it's a huge windup persona) 100% of white people are racists.

Moderate viewpoints usually make for short, boring arguments..... but extreme viewpoints are just the opposite.

I know you don't like being called racist, and I'll abstain from calling you that. But you've got some beliefs ingrained in you that could easily provide (and does) cannon fodder for not only Denilson, but someone like Beanz as well.

Beanz is ultra PC, which makes him clash with me on the transgender issue. So naturally he's going to take offense with some of your broadbrush comments.

That YouTube you posted with the Japanese pimple-faced idiot trying to ban blacks in Japan has stayed with me. That you even posted that and gave it an audience was very disappointing, as all it does is propagate negative stereotypes that do no one any good.



I try to be as clear as possible. If you say there's an overpopulation problem, I agree with you. It makes no sense to me for women to spit out dozens of babies in countries without enough food to feed those who are already born.

If you say there's a huge single mother problem which only propagates the poor, government handout dependent population..... I'll agree with that also. My only qualifier is that it cuts across racial and ethnic lines. The government is a lot to blame.

When you say some people choose to be poor, I know what you're trying to say and it's a bit coarse. But by making life choices like spitting out kids like hamsters ("let the government take care of us"), many single women choose their lifestyle.

Kids naturally struggle to escape that reality and that vicious cycle.


Governments should do a COMPLETE OVERHAUL of welfare and handout systems. EVERYWHERE. As with many other government programs, the thought and effort put into these programs is barely TOKEN and gotten out of the way as quickly as possible so these corrupt, inept legislators can move on to their next empty promise.


Anyway, Denilson will continue thinking as he does (unless it's been all a huge, giant chain-pulling exercise) until maturity sets in around his late 40's or 50's.

How on earth am I ultra PC?

Don't buy into the propaganda and bullshit. The sad truth is that Gandalf is not very different from Denilson at all. He is like Denilson wedded to an idealogy that prevents hims from seeing things objectively or engaging with any kind of rationality or sophistication.

Gandalf has only ever had to worry about Gandalf so it is hardly surprising the bloke has had an empathy bypass but that does not explain his deeply held belief that anyone who is not as fortunate (in fact anyone more fortunate too) as him deserve whatever happens to them. If he was religious one could possibly understand and it would likely be a bit more balanced and nuanced.

The fact is that actually he is not so different, hence his thinking all these YouTube celebrities are his saviour.

The truth is we do not live in a perfect or fair meritocracy, even in the west. There are plenty of responsible hard working people who are poor through no fault of their own. Of course there are lazy people who could do more to change their circumstances but to suggest that is some kind of default behaviour with which you can describe all or the majority of poor people is astonishingly stupid. It is a commonly known phenomenon and you do not have to be a psychologist to understand or have seen people use it. The lazy person on welfare who will say that the family next door are terribly slothful, and the trust fund kid who will make the same accusation of laziness to some guy who may have only been unemployed for a short time, having worked for the rest of his life.

The truth is we all want to believe that we got where we are through some kind of unique blend of effort and innate qualities. The whole system we live under perpetuates that myth. You must know, more than many others though, how simplistic that kind of thinking is. Just as a natural disaster can destroy homes and businesses, with no regard to who is lazy and hard working, who is talented and motivated, and those who lack initiative and a work ethic, so can a myriad realities of life. Disability, sickness, death, accidents, mental health breakdowns, economic collapse, employers closing down, all affect not just one person but families, communities and even countries. This is nothing a teenager could fail to understand. So it is quite rational to conclude that what motivates Gandalf to declare that Black people, or anyone else choose to be poor, is an irrational ideology. An ideology that gives him some false sense of superiority and entitlement.

Sure effort, planning, application and a good dose of luck help, but where we are born, to whom we are born, and a whole lifetime of random events have just as much of an impact on how far from poverty we really are.

I don't really believe in fate or karma in a religious sense but I would not want to be in the shoes of someone tempting disaster with talk of how the majority of people in a worse off position than myself deserve to be there. That kind of thinking automatically makes you a ripe target for those selling you the lie that racism is scientific, and an apologist for a ridiculous inequality gap that praises huge corporations and individual billionaires, that profit by not only making poor people poorer, but actually stealing natural resources from them.

I am happy not to be such a cynical entitled boring bastard.

100% agree with this statement. Having survived the catastrophe that was Hurricane Maria, I've seen firsthand how something like that can turn a neighborhood.... a city.... a whole island upside down. Thousands of lives were lost (not the 60-some claimed by Trump)..... infrastructure was shattered.... ways of life were upended. Less than two years later I've personally seen stories of triumph and resilience..... just as I have seen wallowing and "woe is me" attitudes. The other "myriad realities of life" of course include catastrophic illnesses, and personal tragedies that are hard to recover from.

All my life I've resisted lumping people together based on race, ethnic groups, or sexual preferences. I do however, take stands where I feel it's appropriate....... and that inevitably always ends up rubbing some people the wrong way.