If those people managed to graduate high school and didn't have children out of wedlock, then there's a 98% chance they'll escape poverty. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...

Graduate, hold off on kids, and get a full time job.

Thus my sarcasm. Escape poverty by making money. It's a miracle!

By the way, your 98% figure is incorrect. The study says that 2% of all Americans who did these three things are in poverty. The vast majority of those people were never in poverty to begin with, so didn't escape it.

Escape/avoid, now you're just arguing semantics. I'm not even really sure what your point is. The only thing I stated is that we know the recipe for avoiding and/or leaving poverty. It's not necessarily easy but it is simple and it has three major factors. All I stated was our social policies should reflect the things we know work. Yes, to a certain extent jobs don't just fall out of the sky. But it's much harder to get and maintain a job and/or move up the ladder when you don't graduate high school and pop out kids in a single parent household. And don't pretend it's that hard to maintain basic employment. We're not talking about making everyone doctors here.

There's a huuuuge difference between escaping poverty and avoiding poverty.

70% of Americans who are born poor will die poor. I can't find solid number for how many non-poor Americans will become poor, but given that the poverty rate is about 15%, and 70% of that 15% was born into poverty, we can straightforwardly estimate that about 6% of non-poor Americans become poor.

In other words, the chances of any random poor American escaping poverty are about 30%, while the chances of any random non-poor American avoiding poverty are about 94%.

With 94% of non-poor Americans avoiding poverty, saying that 98% of Americans who do X, Y, and Z escape or avoid poverty is not terribly compelling.

I'm sure that obtaining and maintaining full-time employment really helps people escape from poverty. My point is just that this is not really useful to say, because it's fairly obvious, and because the difficult part is having jobs for poor people to work. Saying that we should help poor people escape poverty by ensuring they can work full-time jobs is like saying we should help put people on the moon by giving them altitude. Yes, it's true, but not really helpful advice.

So much social policy already revolves around jobs that I just don't see why you act like this is some revolutionary idea. The question is not whether we should help poor people work. The question is how.

95% of people in poverty in the US escape poverty during their lifetime. The poverty rate stays the same, but the people who are impoverished is changing all the time.

>The question is not whether we should help poor people work.

You keep repeatedly and intentionally dodging the fact that all three things I listed are symbiotic of one another. Single motherhood is one of the largest contributors to poverty, and it tends to be cyclical/generational as single mothers tend to have children who have children out of wedlock, are more likely to drop out of high school, and as a result have a harder time maintaining employment. And no, I'm not picking on the mothers here, because it takes two people to make a single mother.

>The question is how.

We can stop by not subsidizing poverty producing behaviors while continuing to subsidize or change policy to further subsidize behaviors that don't increase poverty. Increase funding for birth control, decrease funding/subsidies/tax breaks for having children, change middle and high school curriculum to include sociology/life skills for avoiding poverty producing behavior. Determine the efficacy of stricter divorce laws and potentially apply reasonable measures to encourage people to stay married.

"95% of people in poverty in the US escape poverty during their lifetime."

Do you have a source for that? As I mentioned, the number I found was 30%.

My mistake it's not out of poverty, it's out of the lowest quintile of income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty >For example, one study finds that in a sixteen-year period (1975 to 1991 in the U.S.) only 5% of those in the lower fifth of the income level were still at that level, while 95% transitioned to a higher income category.

I see this message as the first time you really contributed new ideas to the conversation that go beyond I disagree. Which is nice because it seems like you're ready to converse.

Ultimately, I read your point here as poor people can't find work. My immediate counter-argument is that there are tons of high paying jobs in the trades that don't require an advanced degree. So getting a living wage is possible even for poor people.

I know there's a pivot point right here in this counter-argument that we will probably disagree on and that I'd like to explore. You might say, "it takes knowledge and connections and money to get those kinds of jobs". To which I will respond, "there are charities and government retraining and corporate sponsorships for journeymen all begging for solid people to apply themselves and land great jobs". To which you might respond, "these people are shut out, institutional barriers".

So, here's the pivot point I see, and we can go two ways here. This may be too crude and you can refine this, but I frame your "poor people can't find work" argument in a belief system that says there exist class hierarchies in the U.S. that are structured to keep poor people poor and generally keep people from rising. And, also too crude, but I frame my "but there are jobs, and they're well-paying" argument under a world view wherein people don't rise because of a culture of victimhood where they will settle into an impoverished state and accept welfare to get by.

I can't deny the fact that uninformed people won't have the innate ability to identify opportunities, and by-and-large there isn't any cultural crossover between classes any more to help spread the knowledge of opportunities more widely. (See Coming Apart by Charles Murray for a deep study on this.)

But it also cannot be denied that unprotected sex leads to babies, and that condoms are free for the taking, and the pill is basically free if you're poor. Noone can claim ignorance to the fact that sex often leads to babies and babies cost money. So, there must be some culture issue with the lower class as @Consultant32452 was alluding to where poverty is allowed to become multi-generational.

Please don't break off here and zero in on one thing that bugs you about a response. Right now I'd ask you to go back and address @Consultant32452's point that I think was, at its root, a criticism of culture:

> You keep repeatedly and intentionally dodging the fact that all three things I listed are symbiotic of one another. Single motherhood is one of the largest contributors to poverty, and it tends to be cyclical/generational as single mothers tend to have children who have children out of wedlock, are more likely to drop out of high school, and as a result have a harder time maintaining employment. And no, I'm not picking on the mothers here, because it takes two people to make a single mother.

I think @Consultant32452 addressed your open ended "The question is how" directly from his world view. His response might not be sufficient or relevant to you (I don't know, you didn't respond.) Would you please do the same with @Consultant32452's point about single motherhood, and from your world view? I want to understand where your head is at on that.

I wasn't talking about those people, was that not clear? I wrote because you were being either sarcastic or snarky or chronically compassionate.

There are scam artists that stitch the rich tapestry of welfare programs together to make a living. You might choose to look the other way, out of compassion, whereas I choose to look straight at it and call it theft, out of compassion. I am being compassionate (tough love). You are being compassionate (empathy). Both of our voices are important in this discussion.

I actually don't believe you have to sacrifice your belief system to acknowledge there are fraudsters in the system who are a drain on society. Everything I have read about SSD says the fraudulent claims are anywhere between 1% and 25% of the total. I'm willing to accept that as few as 1% of claims are fraudulent, but even 1% would be 106000 out of 10.6 million (2011 numbers), and that's still a ton of fraud just in that one benefit.

I was talking about those people. Was that not clear?

I was being sarcastic because I was replying to a person who said that avoiding poverty was simple, all you have to do is get a job.

I don't see what any of your comment has to do with this.

This is an interesting tactic: try to forcibly shift the conversation in a completely different direction, and then criticize the other person when they don't follow. I can't say it's working, but it's not a bad attempt.