Why poor people stay poor: A firsthand account

[HT: GP].  My Tea Partying friends need to read this firsthand account of real life in America and try for one millisecond to get out of their own self-righteous skin and imagine the lives of America's working poor, who walk the knife edge of bankruptcy, joblessness and homelessness.

Related but unrelated... Sometimes I listen in the car to the show "Simply Money" on conservative talk radio, the running theme of which is useful and "true," as far as it goes: to have a household budget and stick to it. 

Often the hosts chastise their listeners for not setting aside an "emergency fund" of at least $20,000. And again, that's true as far as it goes, an emergency fund is definitely a good thing to have... assuming you could possibly manage, by Hurculean efforts and monastic self-denial, to earn and set aside such an amount if you're working two part-time jobs in America. Yet the real truth is that rainy day funds and savings accounts are a fantasy for most working Americans. We're all living hand to mouth.

Until conservatives and the GOP acknowledge real life in America, they will never be trusted by the majority. They may win midterm elections with low turnout in gerrymandered districts, but they won't be trusted, they won't win support except from the already comfortably converted.

Why Poor People Stay Poor

By Linda Tirado

December 5, 2014 | Slate

URL: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/12/linda_tirado_on_the_realities_of_living_in_bootstrap_america_daily_annoyances.html?wpsrc=fol_fb

Preaching 'personal responsibility' to African-Americans

With the audacity of hope, I encourage you -- and my conservative friends especially -- to read Coates's article about how African-Americans struggle to relate to President Obama as "The Man" and his calls for blacks to exercise personal responsibility. Try to understand in particular the last three sentences quoted here [emphasis mine]:

"I am not raising 'nothing niggers," my mother used to tell me. "I am not raising niggers to stand on the corner." My mother did not know her father. In my life, I've loved four women. One of them did not know her father and two, very often, wished they didn't. It's not very hard to look at that, and seethe. It's not very hard to look at that and see a surrender, while you are out here at war, and seethe. It's not hard to look around at your community and feel that you are afflicted by quitters, that your family—in particular—is afflicted by a weakness. And so great is this weakness that the experience of black fatherlessness can connect Barack Obama in Hawaii to young black boys on the South Side, and that fact—whatever the charts, graphs, and histories may show—is bracing. When Barack Obama steps into a room and attacks people for presumably using poverty or bigotry as an excuse to not parent, he is channeling a feeling deep in the heart of all black people, a frustration, a rage at ourselves for letting this happen, for allowing our community to descend into the basement of America, and dwell there seemingly forever. 

My mother's admonishings had their place. God forbid I ever embarrass her. God forbid I be like my grandfather, like the fathers of my friends and girlfriends and wife. God forbid I ever stand in front of these white folks and embarrass my ancestors, my people, my dead. And God forbid I ever confuse that creed, which I took from my mother, which I pass on to my son, with a wise and intelligent analysis of my community. My religion can never be science. This is the difference between navigating the world and explaining it. 

In other words, we should not expect to hear the lessons that we teach our children repeated back to us by our elected leaders, as if we are children.  We don't elect them to be our parents or pastors; we elect them to solve problems that we as individuals or individual communities cannot.  As for the rest of us, as a body politic, we cannot preach "personal responsibility" to each other and thereby wash our hands of our society's problems. If only it were that easy.

(And if you don't believe there are any problems that individuals or communities cannot solve by themselves, as many Tea Party conservatives say, then you should really consider not voting in federal elections at all, since basically all Washington does or can do is "meddle" in our lives.)  

  

The above applies to the socio-economic strife of blacks especially. 

The Champion Barack Obama

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

January 31, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-champion-barack-obama/283458/

11 habits of highly successful fetuses

I'll save all you fetuses, or ovums, as it were, some reading (I know it's dark in there), and list the habits of unborn millionaires and successful belly dwellers:

1.  Have rich parents. Listen up, fetuses. You should definitely make this one a habit; it's gonna pay off someday. Your parents can also help.

2.  Have well-edumacated parents.  It's key for fetuses to remind their parents to get a top-notch higher education before combining their sperm and egg. 

3.  Be beautiful. Fetuses, make sure that, at the moment of conception, you are getting your parents' choicest genes to look your best. You can still be successful without a pretty face... you'll just have to work a lot harder.

4.  One-child policy.  It has worked for China!  Your only "brothers and sisters" should be black people that you know (careful, don't forget #9!) or your church congregation.

5. and 6.  Select a good year and month to be born. Good judgment is a habit and it starts before life even begins. Fetuses, make sure you're parents get it on in May or June, in a year that is not 22 years before an economic recession!

7.  Fetuses, try to be born in the developed world. This one helps a lot!  If your future parents live in some hot mess of a country, before you pop out of the oven, make sure they emigrate someplace nice and civilized with lots of iPhones, Starbucks and expensive colleges.

8.  Fetuses, if you've chosen to be born in the USA -- excellent call! -- look closer and choose the right state. Avoid the Southeast!  (I know, it sounds so obvious.) Later, when you're a highly successful, rich adult you can go there for golf and deep-sea fishing, but until then you're not missing anything.

9.  Be white. If you decide later in life that you really like other races, you can always hire them.

10. Be a man. Even many women recommend it. Because it's a man's world. Even before conception, always be one of the guys! 

11. Choose a CEO dad. Preferably one who plans to bequeath you his company. Some dads are just more generous than others. Fetuses, make sure you always choose the right papa!

And if you're too undisciplined or lazy to do these things before you're born then... you'll just have to pull yourself up by your booty straps after your born. There are no excuses and no free lunches in life, non-people.

11 Things Super Successful People Do Before They're Even Born!

By Maxwell Strachan

November 15, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1e7CRSN