[ISiddiqui]

So at what point are some on this thread just going to come out and say that all poor people are lazy and/or gaming the system? It seems to be danced around - talking about personal responsibility and impulse control while minimizing lack of education, talking about not taking advantage of universal public education while minimizing that schools in the US are funded by local property taxes and therefore poor areas have much less money for public school than richer areas. It's just all beating around the bush right? It's just code words for saying all the poor are lazy or irresponsible or cheating things - its all their fault, right?

The chart showing the very low levels of social mobility in the US (look at how low they are when you compare it to other industrialized countries) was also minimized. Makes it easier to blame the victims, doesn't it? I'm not saying there aren't lazy, incompetent, or cheating poor folks, but similar amounts exist among the middle class and rich. (Let's put it in baseball terms, using an example we've all heard, involving the Yankees and smaller payroll/market teams - it isn't that the Yankees never make mistakes. It's that when they do make a mistake, it doesn't ruin them. However, when a smaller team makes a mistake it may indeed ruin them, because they can't use their money to mitigate it)

Ignoring societal circumstances and policies that keep folks in places where they start out from is just being ignorant or deliberately looking the other way because someone else is comfortable.

Fucking threads like this make me want to be a Socialist.