How do we change the mindset of the poor to get them out of poverty?

[JEDI]

the poor will stay poor even if we give them a bucket of $.
think lottery winners. A majority of them become bankrupt within 5 yrs.

Better education?
schools in the inner city are underfunded.
NYC has a novel way of fixing this education inequality. Instead of throwing $ at underperforming schools, bus some kids at random to better schools.

And if that school is still underperforming over the years, it will have less and less kids to the point the school will close because it doesn't have enuf kids.

but that's just for kids. How about the poor adults? Are they a lost cause?

anyway, any other ideas of changing the mindset of the poor so they want to lift themselves out of poverty?

 

[mrjminer]

The schools aren't underfunded.

 

[Dman8777]

What is this mindest that you speak of? Are you possbily generalizing here?

 

[debian0001]

Livable wages would be a start.

 

[nehalem256]

the poor will stay poor even if we give them a bucket of $.
think lottery winners. A majority of them become bankrupt within 5 yrs.

Better education?
schools in the inner city are underfunded.

Proof the inner city schools are underfunded.

http://www.educationminnesota.org/~/media/59D76A7AF8D74627A335BBF1CF0D5ABC.ashx

Looking at my state it would appear that Minneapolis(the inner city district) actually has the highest level of funding. At almost 50% greater than the state average.

NYC has a novel way of fixing this education inequality. Instead of throwing $ at underperforming schools, bus some kids at random to better schools.

And if that school is still underperforming over the years, it will have less and less kids to the point the school will close because it doesn't have enuf kids.

Maybe the issue isn't with the school, but with the students? Or with the way the students are being raised?

 

[Jaskalas]

Is it will, alone, that separates burger flippers from rocket scientists?

Ok... you didn't mean such black and white extremes. Yet it demonstrates something, will is not the only ingredient at play. Their mindset alone is not sufficient.

What people need is opportunity, the right skill set, and determination. Yet there cannot be opportunities all the time for everyone. It is guaranteed that some people fall through and must be provided for. Currently we have some serious trouble in that area alone.

Then there is education, providing the skill set. I'm a big fan of apprenticeships and on the job training, starting from an easy to enter low level position and working your way up. If we stopped requiring college as a barrier to entry, then it may be possible to raise a generation that doesn't have to land a quality job just to pay their debts.

Ah, but it's so much cheaper to offload that time and effort to colleges. What is cheap for the corporation is damning for the nation as a whole. We have a diseased infrastructure and so long as the mission statement is to cut costs, we're going to cut corners and avoid taking the time to pick people up and train them.

Barrier to entry is a big concern. It's like the housing bubble. Buy a house for $100k, then $200k, $300k etc. Eventually you run out of folks who can afford it, no matter how much you have bent over backwards to ease up the lending rules. In this case, you run out of folks who can afford student loans just so they can apply for a job.

Determination is interesting. It can clearly have external motivators, but it's also an internal choice that we ultimately do not control. All we can do is provide for those who lack it, remove barriers for those with it, and see where the dust settles.

IMO, a work program for those on Welfare, which provides training and apprenticeships, is definitely how we must proceed.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Don't ignore what a traditional family, i.e. having mom and dad around can do for a child in poverty. Sadly the welfare system only makes having dad a around into a burden in terms of receiving benefits. Also opportunity can come in the form of entrepreneurship which for some reason the current system has also gutted.

 

[Dman8777]

Poor people are poor for a variety of reasons which can't simply be attributed to a mindset. The poor are comprised of crazy war vets who aren't psychologically capable of anything resembling a normal life to professionals caught by cost-cutting at the wrong time, as well as everything in between. My parents have a neighbor who was a marketing executive until 2008. She had bought a house in 2005/2006, lost her job (division shut down) in 2009, and due to hiring freezes at every major firm in the area, was bankrupt practically overnight.

Give somone something meaningful to do and most people will thrive. There will always be those that aren't compatible with the system but they are a tiny minority. This is an area where free market capitalism is a complete failure.

 

[WHAMPOM]

the poor will stay poor even if we give them a bucket of $.
think lottery winners. A majority of them become bankrupt within 5 yrs.

Better education?
schools in the inner city are underfunded.
NYC has a novel way of fixing this education inequality. Instead of throwing $ at underperforming schools, bus some kids at random to better schools.

And if that school is still underperforming over the years, it will have less and less kids to the point the school will close because it doesn't have enuf kids.

but that's just for kids. How about the poor adults? Are they a lost cause?

anyway, any other ideas of changing the mindset of the poor so they want to lift themselves out of poverty?

What mindset? Most of the poor I know are working two jobs and having a hard time paying their bills. Try another track, an improved job market.

 

[Jaskalas]

Don't ignore what a traditional family, i.e. having mom and dad around can do for a child in poverty. Sadly the welfare system only makes having dad a around into a burden in terms of receiving benefits. Also opportunity can come in the form of entrepreneurship which for some reason the current system has also gutted.

That burden is a mere legal formality easily dispensed with. All you need is the right policy, and people determined to see it corrected.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

That burden is a mere legal formality easily dispensed with. All you need is the right policy, and people determined to see it corrected.

Tap, tap. Damn meter.

 

[shortylickens]

Show them poor folks who worked hard and made something of themselves.


NOT Al Sharpton. He's a shitty role-model.

 

[dmcowen674]

Livable wages would be a start.

Does the OP think $7.25 is a livable wage?

 

[Vic]

Complex problems do not have simple solutions. People are poor from a variety of causes, and so more than one solution must be considered based on the specific root cause.

I do not consider people who exhibit chronic financial mismanagement to be poor per se, nor is that even a major cause of poverty. Poor people typically don't have sufficient income/cashflow in the first place.

 

[IGBT]

liberal Poverty Pimps want to grow their dependence base. It's all part of the current day liberal agenda and the collective mental illness called liberalism.

 

[shortylickens]

liberal Poverty Pimps want to grow their dependence base. It's all part of the current day liberal agenda and the collective mental illness called liberalism.

This thread is about constructive solutions. Not angry mud-slinging bullshit.

 

[shortylickens]

Complex problems do not have simple solutions. People are poor from a variety of causes, and so more than one solution must be considered based on the specific root cause.

I do not consider people who exhibit chronic financial mismanagement to be poor per se, nor is that even a major cause of poverty. Poor people typically don't have sufficient income/cashflow in the first place.

The MAIN cause is mindset and the main solution is to start there. They believe they cant be rich because thats their place in the world. Some cling to their church, others cling to welfare, a handful cling to shooting up their own neighborhoods.
They all need to believe in something more positive and more realistic.

 

[Vic]

liberal Poverty Pimps want to grow their dependence base. It's all part of the current day liberal agenda and the collective mental illness called liberalism.

You really need to read your own posts before clicking the reply button.

 

[MongGrel]

What mindset? Most of the poor I know are working two jobs and having a hard time paying their bills. Try another track, an improved job market.

+1

 

[Vic]

The MAIN cause is mindset and the main solution is to start there. They believe they cant be rich because thats their place in the world. Some cling to their church, others cling to welfare, a handful cling to shooting up their own neighborhoods.
They all need to believe in something more positive and more realistic.

What if the environment is such that being positive isn't realistic?

 

[berzerker60]

It's going to be unpopular with some, but: We need to give the poor money. Add basic conditions like keeping their kids in school if you want, but that's a marginal issue. Research has shown it works, even the free-market-loving, libertarian-leaning Economist accepts that:

http://www.economist.com/news/inter...people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal

Now enough of these programmes are up and running to make a first assessment. Early results are encouraging: giving money away pulls people out of poverty, with or without conditions. Recipients of unconditional cash do not blow it on booze and brothels, as some feared. Households can absorb a surprising amount of cash and put it to good use. But conditional cash transfers still seem to work better when the poor face an array of problems beyond just a shortage of capital.
...
Of course, not all the money has gone on things that make development economists happy. Sitting on a rough bench in his moonshine bar in a banana grove, a tipsy Bernard Okumo says his wife used her windfall to bail him out of jail, where he was facing a murder charge. But the first independent study of Give Directly’s methods, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro (who is a former board member of Give Directly), suggests this sort of spending is unusual. In randomly selected poor households in 63 villages that have received the windfalls, they say, the number of children going without food for a day has fallen by over a third and livestock holdings have risen by half. A year after the scheme began, incomes have gone up by a quarter and recipients seem less stressed, according to tests of their cortisol levels.
...
A trial in Vietnam in 2006 gave one-off handouts to 550 households; two years later, local poverty rates had fallen by 20 percentage points. The scheme was dubbed “cash for coffins” after elderly recipients spent the money on their funeral arrangements to save their children the expense.
...
A different scheme has been running in northern Uganda for four years. The government gives lump sums of around $10,000 to groups of 20 or so young people who club together to apply. Chris Blattman of Columbia University, New York, who has studied the programme, calls it “wildly successful”. Recipients spent a third of the money learning a trade (such as metalworking or tailoring) and much of the rest on tools and stock. They set up enterprises and work longer hours in their new trades. Average earnings rose by almost 50% in four years.
...
The biggest conditional transfers, Bolsa Família and Mexico’s Oportunidades, are credited with cutting poverty and boosting literacy in Latin America’s largest countries. They have helped tens of millions, not tens of thousands: a vast weight of evidence supporting CCTs’ effectiveness.

 

[alkemyst]

The poor's problem (that remain perpetually poor) is they blame everyone else for their being poor.

They refuse to 'serve' if in a inferior role.

They refuse to work in general.

 

[alkemyst]

+1

How many of them are also blowing money on drugs, booze and designer clothing?

 

[shortylickens]

What if the environment is such that being positive isn't realistic?

Damn, every time I complain, people ream my ass.

I think you need to have it out with them instead of me.
Lemme go find them and link this thread.

 

[MongGrel]

How many of them are also blowing money on drugs, booze and designer clothing?

You obviously generalize way, way too much.