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The biggest screwer of poor Americans is poor Americans themselves. Poor Americans vice too much, television too much, and camouflage too much (i.e., they try to look rich).
But, sadly, self-sabotage isn’t the only obstacle poor Americans have to contend with. Poor Americans also have to contend with our vaunted elites. Yep, our all-knowing, all-caring elites are doing much to hurt the poor. Here are five examples.
Our Handout-Centric Safety Net
I’m all for a safety net, providing it’s limited, of course. In a free country, no group of tax-eaters—whether they’re defense contractors or unwed mothers—should have an unlimited claim on the paychecks of the tax-feeders.
I also think a safety net needs to strike a balance between handouts and jobs. You can help struggling people with handouts (food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, Head Start, etc.), or you can help struggling people with factory jobs.
For fifty years, our safety net has become increasingly handout-centric. We’ve dramatically increased the size and scope of safety-net handouts while simultaneously allowing millions of factory jobs to move overseas. Poor Americans are thus being squeezed by a diabolic pincer movement: fewer factory jobs on one side and readily available handouts on the other side. And the results of these policy moves have been anything but kind to our poor brothers and sisters—unless, of course, you think dependency, wage-stagnation, and the absence of social mobility are the hallmarks of a life well-lived.
To revive American manufacturing and give poor Americans better employment options, I propose the following:
- No corporate and property taxes for manufacturers.
- In order for a manufacturer to escape corporate and property taxes, however, it must meet the following conditions:
- At least 50 percent of the goods it sells in America must be made in America.
- No employee can be compensated more than 15 times the lowest compensated employee. If the lowest compensated employee for Manufacturer X makes $30,000 a year in salary and benefits, the CEO of Manufacturer X can’t make more than $450,000 a year in salary and benefits.
- A corporate manufacturer must pay at least a five percent dividend to its shareholders.
- Tariffs high enough to maintain a robust manufacturing base. If China wants to sell stuff here, it can build factories here.
College Education
For the vaunted bachelor’s degree, America’s premier credential, you need to take 40 courses. But here’s the rub. Of those 40 courses, 15 or fewer will pertain to your major. The rest will be totally frivolous.
Now a question. Who do you suppose is better able to handle the cost of 25 or more frivolous courses? College students with rich parents? Or college students with poor parents? If you said college students with rich parents, go straight to the head of the class.
The bachelor’s degree credential is a total joke. Fifteen courses are all that’s needed for most entry-level jobs in most fields. If our college leaders really cared about our young people—especially our poor young people—they would give our young people a choice: go full-monty on the bachelor’s degree (take 15 relevant courses and 25 irrelevant courses) or go two-fifths-monty on the bachelor’s degree (take 15 relevant courses only).
That would be the noble thing to do, of course, so I’m not holding my breath. Our college leaders fancy themselves as paragons of virtue, but in reality, they’re as slimy as collection-agency reps. And they will thus continue to make our most vulnerable students take 25 courses they can’t afford and don’t need.
K-12 Education
According to one news outfit, New York City’s public school system spends an average of $28,808 per pupil. Let that sink in. For a child starting kindergarten in New York City today, the cost of his or her high school diploma will easily exceed 375 thousand dollars. THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS!
Now, call me a curmudgeon, but I have one simple question for New York’s elites: what exactly are New York City’s public school students getting out of the huge sums of money being tossed their way? How many 18-year-old New Yorkers can handle college-level math? How many 18-year-old New Yorkers can craft a grammatically correct sentence that cogently expresses a single thought? Finally, how many 18-year-old New Yorkers have a skill that can garner more than 1.5 times the minimum wage in the labor market?
My point here is not to pick on New York City. New York City just represents an extreme example of a nationwide problem. We’re spinning our wheels when it comes to public education and poor students are suffering the brunt of this wheel-spinning.
Not everyone is college material. Very few jobs require math beyond algebra. So why are our elite educators trying to adorn every student in America with knowledge few can grasp and even fewer need?
When it comes to public education, it’s time to embrace the “less is more” adage. Rather than prepare every kid for college, or for world citizenship, or for some other lofty bullshit, how about making sure every kid enters adulthood with basic numeracy and literacy and one worthwhile skill. If I were the grand poobah of public education, here’s what 13 years of public education would get you:
- Proficiency in basic algebra.
- The ability to read at the eighth-grade level and write a grammatically correct sentence.
- And one concrete skill that can garner more than 1.5 times the minimum wage in the labor market. There’s no reason why our high schools aren’t pumping out tons of junior plumbers, junior electricians, junior lab techs, junior bookkeepers, and junior programmers.
For roughly 50 years now our public schools have pursued a college-for-everyone business model. This model has worked reasonably well for the kids who are actually capable of college-level work (roughly 20 percent of our kids). For the kids who aren’t capable of college-level work, however, this model has been a dismal failure. Such kids leave high school useless and have little choice but to give college a try. But because they’re really not college material, college does little to advance their prospects. They find themselves at 22 very much in debt and still useless.
Being 22, in debt, and useless is tragic for anyone. But it’s especially tragic for those 22-year-olds who started out life poor. Public education should be advancing social mobility—not making a mockery of it.
Promiscuity
In the 1930s, this is the way our elites said a single young lady should conduct herself regarding sex.
And this is the way our elites today say a single young lady should conduct herself regarding sex.
For the life of me, I don’t know why our elites are determined to transform America into the land of horny hook-ups. Has it ever occurred to them that sex isn’t always rainbows and unicorns—especially when it’s done outside the confines of marriage?
Here’s a chart from one of my earlier posts that shows the perils of self-sabotage.
| Race/Ethnicity | Percentage of Births to Unmarried Women | Average SAT Score | Arrests Per Million of Population | Median Household Income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 11.7 | 1223 | 5,655 | $87,194 |
| White | 28.2 | 1123 | 21,348 | $70,642 |
| Hispanic | 51.8 | 990 | 20,178 | $51,450 |
| Black | 69.4 | 946 | 50,112 | $41,692 |
The biggest driver of poverty, poor academics, and crime are girls and women from any background having kids they can’t afford. But the consequences of procreating irresponsibly fall hardest on the poor. And the biggest driver of poor girls and women having kids they can’t afford is our elite’s relentless efforts to glamorize sex and promiscuity and poo-poo chastity and marriage.
Completely divorcing sex from any sense of propriety or restraint may be “empowering” for Cardi B, but for Germania, the young lady featured in the below video, and millions of other poor, unwed mothers, it’s been anything but “empowering.”
Subsidizing Self-Sabotage
Question: If you tell certain people that nothing’s ever their fault, that their lamentable circumstances have nothing to do with their failure to learn valuable skills (i.e., impulse control, discipline, an in-demand job credential, budgeting, etc.) and everything to do with a malevolent “system” that’s hellbent on their economic demise, what’s the likelihood that these certain people will give up and wallow in self-pity? If you answered that the likelihood is great, you get a gold star.
And this is precisely what our elites are doing to poor Americans. Our elites are the best in the world at manufacturing “science-backed” excuses and delivering those excuses to the doorsteps of the poor. And poor Americans devour these excuses with extreme gluttony—for one perfectly understandable reason: It’s far easier to blame the “one percent,” the “system,” or any number of “isms” that supposedly ravage the American landscape than it is to take stock of their lives and admit their screw-ups.
Our elites, in effect, are expert at subsidizing the self-sabotage of the poor—at lowering the psychic costs of the bad decisions poor people make. And as the old economic saw teaches us, whatever you subsidize, you get more of. And so the cycle of poverty goes on and on.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Am I being too hard on our elites? Or are our elites making life even harder for our poor brothers and sisters? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
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