Your comments about the woman getting pregnant are at best insensitive. Your problem is that you are assuming that everyone who chooses to have a baby shares your value system and has had the benefit of your upbringing.
What about the woman that was raped? What about the woman that was severely beaten as a child and now just yearns for something in her life that will love her unconditionally? What about the woman who was molested as a girl whose ideas about sexuality are all screwed up? Do you mean to tell me that these people are able to sit down and make a rational decision about having children?
These people are not "squandering an opportunity." Someone else decided to squander it for them. So why blame them?
I understand your point, but you have to realize that your experience isn't everyone's experience. And you know it's bad when I'm taking the liberal viewpoint!
What if her husband died . . . do you still disagree with my actual point? Then it wasn't a choice to raise children alone, but an unfortunate fact of life. Maybe they chose not to have sufficient life insurance at a young age? Does this woman and her children deserve to have limited opportunities for success?
It would be unfortunate that he died, but if we all stopped to help everyone who fell down along the road of life, we would never get anywhere. If they chose not to have sufficient life insurance then though luck. This is where socialism has it's true failings. If everyone knows that they will be taken care of no matter what they do, there is no need for them to compete to survive.
What about the woman that was raped? What about the woman that was severely beaten as a child and now just yearns for something in her life that will love her unconditionally? What about the woman who was molested as a girl whose ideas about sexuality are all screwed up? Do you mean to tell me that these people are able to sit down and make a rational decision about having children?
It takes two to tango, or in this case, reproduce.
It would be unfortunate that he died, but if we all stopped to help everyone who fell down along the road of life, we would never get anywhere.
An economist would be pulling out their hair right now. The simple truth is that you need some sort of safety net in order to encourage risk taking. It's risk taking that advances our society. That's why things such as bankruptcy laws create innovation and advancement.
See this quote: "Carl Schramm, president and chief executive of the Kauffman Foundation, said one reason the United States has twice the rate of capital formation as that of almost every other developed country but Israel is its bankruptcy laws, which encourage and protect risk. Encourage and protect risk. Did you hear that?"
An economist would be pulling out their hair right now. The simple truth is that you need some sort of safety net in order to encourage risk taking. It's risk taking that advances our society. That's why things such as bankruptcy lawscreateinnovation and advancement.
Oh, I agree. It's just that when it goes from more than just a safety net and takes care of everyday day struggles.
If this single mother of two were truly interested in what's best for her kids why does she not:
1) Move back in with a family member? 2) Move in with a friend? 3) Find a man that wants a 'ready made family'? 4) Take a good hard look at what she needs as opposed to what she wants?
I don't know her particulars but I have no sympathy for someone who continually makes bad choices.
Like WIP said, if you remove the negative aspects of failure you will also remove the incentive to achieve.
I don't know her particulars but I have no sympathy for someone who continually makes bad choices.
I totally understand this feeling. My point is that we need to look at the cause of the bad choices, and not just punish someone for the result.
If someone truly is making bad choices, then I don't have any sympathy. On the other hand, if there are factors that show that their ability to make a good choice was compromised, we should try to fix the problem.
It takes two to tango, or in this case, reproduce.
No offense, but you are missing my point entirely. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you've had a pretty easy upbringing.
I think WiP is still a child (no offense meant).
Speaking for myself, I joined the Army at 18 to get out of my broken home. If this woman is that hard pressed she can try and go that route. The Army takes care of its own (while you are alive) and you can get $500K of life insurance for dirt cheap while you are in. That way, if you get killed, your kids will have enough money to survive until they are 18.
However, if someone squanders their opportunity and learns their lesson after it's too late to easily escape, I'm not so sure if the society should bail them out somehow. It is very sad, and it seems unfair, that people who get into these situations are unable to escape despite their best efforts.
The problem with the situation you mention is what about the children? The woman in this example is raising children and now we went from having one problem, to two. From the perspective of this child, her mothers choices and societies abandonment of her based on those choices, is setting the foundation for her life.
Her mother wants to succeed but doesn't have the tools to do it at her disposal. She may not have been taught personal financial management in high-school (I know I wasn't). Maybe the only person she had to talk to about her mortgage was the person selling her that mortgage, now she's in a 30 year contract. I was told I could have up to 60% of my income going towards debt when I bought my home . . . that's insane. This is all hypothetical and I don't want to get away from the real issue here by building the perfect anecdotal evidence . . . because that's not what we need.
I think most of us would agree that things aren't that bad right now for most people in our country (compared to our countries past and/or the rest of the world). I think we would also all agree that something needs to be done. All I'm trying to point out is one flaw in one meme in one society that I believe causes people to ignore these people.
It comes down to this: I think it's wrong to abandon someone who's looking for help. I think it's a tragedy when a society abandons children based on their parents choices. How to implement this on a grand scale . . . well . . . that's trial and error. We can't take care of everyones children through paying for college or censoring speech, we also can't go to Socialism . . . my core value structure still stands.
The 'insensitive at best" attitude that kilarney mentions is something that doesn't mesh well with the ideas of diversity. If you do not empathize with another human beings experience, then you certainly will not empathize with another classes or cultures experience. You can be tough on the bottom rung of people without loosing compassion for their experiences.
No offense, but you are missing my point entirely. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you've had a pretty easy upbringing.
And like I said... you know it's bad if I'm adopting a traditionally liberal viewpoint!
Rape, ok I'll take you on that one, but there are ways to even prevent that from leading to unwanted babies(Plan B anyone?) As for the others, how do you define who is mentally fit or not? Why don't they put the baby up for adoption? Why not file for Child Support? There are MANY options open to them, including abortion, which is an option as well. These people are not as innocent as you think.
Kilarney, I'll just say one thing about the woman who got pregnant from rape or some other means. I think abortions should be cheap/free and legal.
So once again you'd impose your value system on somebody else, and punish them if they did not adopt it. Say what you want about abortion, but I think we all can agree that reasonable people can disagree on its morality.
Here is the bottom line... Recent research has shown that people raised in poverty have an entirely different set of values than those who have not. More often than not, those values are inconsistent with prosperity. They got these values through luck of birth and through upbringing. It's not a "choice" they made. So let's not punish someone for having self-destructive values. Let's get to the root of the problem.
I'll give you one example of a great idea that gets to the root of the problem... In Vermont, if you collect welfare, you now have to work. Even if it's volunteering. The State subsidizes daycare so you can work. At first, I thought this made no sense. The State is paying daycare so someone can volunteer? Then it was explained to me. The point isn't so much the work. It's having the welfare recipient's kids seeing mommy work. Just that little change results in HUGE changes in their outlook when they become adults.
The leading edge research has shown that changes have to be done on a generational level. Helping "mommy" is just going to lead to more "mommies" who need help in 20 years. So now we help mommy, but with an eye toward helping the kids. The big push is to get services in place when the kids are really young. In other words, to intervene before the damage is already done. We also put incentives in place to get mommy to make healthy and productive decisions. (e.g.: Give mom slightly more welfare if she cooperates and is able to get child support. The State collects $200/month in child support and gives mom $50 of that. The kids see that Mom was willing to pursue child support and the state comes out $150 ahead. Not too shabby!)
Society should not be treated as a safety net. If she wants to dig herself out of that hole there are programs in place to do so.
CIP: I know a single mother with two kids. One of the girls is in my daughter's Brownie troop. She is on disability and can not work. Not "will not" work but "can not" work. She suffered some sort of back injury and she is on a ton of pain killers and has a ton of doctor appointments.
She puts her nose to the grindstone everyday and networks her ass off to find deals and programs. She gets tons of stuff for free, including education. She could "choose" to sit back and complain and get into debt and make other bad choices but no, she "chooses" to bust her ass to make her and her kids lives better.
I help her out when I can (babysit and what not) because I see she is trying to dig her way out and busting her ass doing it.
I have another friend who is straight out of the movie Idiocracy. They are having their third kid and they can't even afford the two they already have. The kid is due in a month or so and she is still smoking!
Ignoring the fact that smoking while pregnant is stupid both her husband and her smoke. They are deep in debt and had one car repoed last year. they cashed out the husbands 401K last year to pay some credit card bills and they have very little money. But they sure have enough money to buy TWO cartons of name brand smokes every week!
Two months ago they spent $2K to buy a dog. A dog they kept in a cage in their (rented) trailer and then gave away because it was getting too big for the cage. The dog could barely turn around in the cage!
I have NO sympathy for them because they are their own worst enemy! They do not even do the simplest things to better their lives. Know what the real funny thing is? The husband is a store Manager for CVS and makes about $50K yearly. She was working part time for another $10K. Collectively, their take home pay is very close to mine yet I own my house (almost paid off the mortgage) and own two cars (all paid off). I have a sizable retirement account (as does my wife) and I have enough money in liquid assets to pay off ALL my debts if I chose too. I don't because the interest rate on my debts is lower than the interest rate on my investments.
Society should not be treated as a safety net. If she wants to dig herself out of that hole there are programs in place to do so.
Isn't this statement entirely inconsistent?
No, the first sentence "Society should not be treated as a safety net" implies forced help. The second sentence points out that programs exist, if you take the time to look for them. Sort of a "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" statement.
Is anyone familiar with Peggy McIntosh? She is very well know for her paper, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies."
http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html
Basically she says that we have been taught that racism puts others at a disadvantage and that the majority of the white population is oblivious to the fact that they have advantages, referred to as white privilege. It is worth a read. I had to read it for a class, Racism: Cross-Cultural Analysis, last semester.
Is Affirmative Action racist? Or is Affirmative Action trying to just even the playing field? I used to beleive that racism was basically not a problem nowadays. After I took that class, it changed my views. Racism is still view much present, though how it presents itself has changed. It is not okay to express yours racist views in overt ways anymore. There is a lot less racism than then generations before, but certian aspects are there whether or not the person who holds these views realizes it or not. In one of my papers I wrote about an incident I experienced in class. The class was an industrial and organizational psychology class. We were talking about affirmative action and the workplace. The majority of the people who vocalized their opinions on the subject were againist it. The reason kept being repeated, this being, " It allows underqualified people to get jobs that more qualified people should be getting and that should not happen because it is unfair." Another day in class the subject of networking is discussed a little. One of the main ideas talked about was that, " It is who your know that wil get you the job even if there are more qualified people than yourself". This basic statement was repeated many times in many different class days throughout the semester. There was no one trying to argue why that was unfair. No one brought up why this is unfair for more qualified people to be passed up then. Why is that?
Class mobility statistics. @cosmicenema. While your anecdote is just that, an anecdote, I do want to point one thing out. Why is a woman who is unable to afford an education, and has bad credit, having two children? It was her choice to have those two children. If she had chosen to not have those children, she would probably already have a degree and a higher paying job. I'm not making a general statement about class mobility here. I'll let the New York Times with their sciencey numbers take care of that. I just want to say that many people of all classes are blaming outside forces such as the government, video games, and schools for the consequences of their own poor decisions. If you have two kids you can't afford, you have nobody to blame but yourself for your situation.
I think your argument is too simple. That is a super individualistic view and things are not that simple. Does everyone here believe there are no societal effects on the individual? Some people do shout, "Society!" when it is a bullshit reason, but it is a legitimate environmental and socitel reason for a how a lot of things in your life is affected. The article, "babies and banks: the "reproductive underclass" and the raced, gendered masking of debt" by Brett Williams is able to explain an aspect of this. I can't find any portion of it online. It is in the book Race by Gregory and Sanjek. I do hate the black guy who uses the excuse," It's because I'm black isn't it!" when that is not the case. Some people are just idiots and want to look for outside reasons besides themselves to explain their failure. Not everyone is an idiot though.
In one of my papers I wrote about an incident I experienced in class. The class was an industrial and organizational psychology class. We were talking about affirmative action and the workplace. The majority of the people who vocalized their opinions on the subject were againist it. The reason kept being repeated, this being, " It allows underqualified people to get jobs that more qualified people should be getting and that should not happen because it is unfair." Another day in class the subject of networking is discussed a little. One of the main ideas talked about was that, " It is who your know that wil get you the job even if there are more qualified people than yourself". This basic statement was repeated many times in many different class days throughout the semester. There was no one trying to argue why that was unfair. No one brought up why this is unfair for more qualified people to be passed up then. Why is that?
All that story says to me is that people are quick to blame something beyond their control (being the wrong race or not knowing the right people) before believing that they might not be the most qualified applicant for the job.
In one of my papers I wrote about an incident I experienced in class. The class was an industrial and organizational psychology class. We were talking about affirmative action and the workplace. The majority of the people who vocalized their opinions on the subject were againist it. The reason kept being repeated, this being, " It allows underqualified people to get jobs that more qualified people should be getting and that should not happen because it is unfair." Another day in class the subject of networking is discussed a little. One of the main ideas talked about was that, " It is who your know that wil get you the job even if there are more qualified people than yourself". This basic statement was repeated many times in many different class days throughout the semester. There was no one trying to argue why that was unfair. No one brought up why this is unfair for more qualified people to be passed up then. Why is that? All that story says to me is that people are quick to blame something beyond their control (being the wrong race or not knowing the right people) before believing that they might not be the most qualified applicant for the job.
Of course that is just an example I thought of while I was writing my comment, so you can only generalize so much about one incident. They were not trying to blame not knowing the right people. They did not argue that this was unfair. The thing I was trying to say was that when these two ideas were brought. They can both be seen as unfair. Only one was picked up by people in the class. That one dealt with race.
The rich stay rich because they understand economics and the value of money. The poor stay poor because they do not. Too many "poor" people are materialistic and believe that having stuff will bring them comfort and self-worth. To become rich you must first understand the difference between a need and a want. Automobile, need or want? For those who do not live in big metro areas it is a need. Even though it is a need a cheap car can satisfy that need, you don't "need" to buy some $40K monstrosity, that is a want. Food, need or want? Food is clearly a need. You need food to live. Eating out all the time and buying fancy cuts of meat is a want. Billions of people in China get by just fine with rice as a staple of their diet, you can do it in this country too. The list goes on and on.
Do you really think that is all there is to becoming rich or poor? Saying the poor stay poor is because they do not understand the value of money is ludicrous. Yes, some poor people buy stuff they don't need but do want. This is true for all people. All of what you said in this statement is such nonsense. You are basically saying," Well, they are poor because they are a bunch of hedonist."
Well it's true. Most millionaires get that way by saving their money and forgoing wants.
I misread part of your statement. I do believe that to become rich you need to stop spending money on things you do not need. I do believe there is much more going on with poor people then just the fact they spend all the money they don't have.
Recent research has shown that people raised in poverty have an entirely different set of values than those who have not. More often than not, those values are inconsistent with prosperity.
Could you explain what you mean by this? What "set of values" are you referring to?
Could you explain what you mean by this? What "set of values" are you referring to?
Sure. At the risk of oversimplification, people raised in poverty tend not to plan like we do. Their life tends to be more day to day than ours. They don't plan in order to make more money to have a bigger house, take a nice vacation, etc. Rather, they value relationships. The middle class values self sufficiency. If a poor person won a million dollars, they would tend to give it to their friends in a "you lean on me - I lean on you" mentality. That's because when times are tough they lean on each other, rather than focus on accumulating just for themselves.
That's why throwing money at the problem does no good. Only now people are starting to realize that you have to address the self-destructive aspects of the value system.
If they won a million dollars, they would tend to give it to their friends in a "you lean on me - I lean on you" mentality.
If I won a pile of money I would definitely give a lot of it to my friends and family. However, I would be sure to keep just enough to make sure I never had to worry.
Comments
Your comments about the woman getting pregnant are at best insensitive. Your problem is that you are assuming that everyone who chooses to have a baby shares your value system and has had the benefit of your upbringing.
What about the woman that was raped? What about the woman that was severely beaten as a child and now just yearns for something in her life that will love her unconditionally? What about the woman who was molested as a girl whose ideas about sexuality are all screwed up? Do you mean to tell me that these people are able to sit down and make a rational decision about having children?
These people are not "squandering an opportunity." Someone else decided to squander it for them. So why blame them?
I understand your point, but you have to realize that your experience isn't everyone's experience.
And you know it's bad when I'm taking the liberal viewpoint!
See this quote:
"Carl Schramm, president and chief executive of the Kauffman Foundation, said one reason the United States has twice the rate of capital formation as that of almost every other developed country but Israel is its bankruptcy laws, which encourage and protect risk. Encourage and protect risk. Did you hear that?"
And like I said... you know it's bad if I'm adopting a traditionally liberal viewpoint!
1) Move back in with a family member?
2) Move in with a friend?
3) Find a man that wants a 'ready made family'?
4) Take a good hard look at what she needs as opposed to what she wants?
I don't know her particulars but I have no sympathy for someone who continually makes bad choices.
Like WIP said, if you remove the negative aspects of failure you will also remove the incentive to achieve.
If someone truly is making bad choices, then I don't have any sympathy.
On the other hand, if there are factors that show that their ability to make a good choice was compromised, we should try to fix the problem.
Speaking for myself, I joined the Army at 18 to get out of my broken home. If this woman is that hard pressed she can try and go that route. The Army takes care of its own (while you are alive) and you can get $500K of life insurance for dirt cheap while you are in. That way, if you get killed, your kids will have enough money to survive until they are 18.
Her mother wants to succeed but doesn't have the tools to do it at her disposal. She may not have been taught personal financial management in high-school (I know I wasn't). Maybe the only person she had to talk to about her mortgage was the person selling her that mortgage, now she's in a 30 year contract. I was told I could have up to 60% of my income going towards debt when I bought my home . . . that's insane. This is all hypothetical and I don't want to get away from the real issue here by building the perfect anecdotal evidence . . . because that's not what we need.
I think most of us would agree that things aren't that bad right now for most people in our country (compared to our countries past and/or the rest of the world). I think we would also all agree that something needs to be done. All I'm trying to point out is one flaw in one meme in one society that I believe causes people to ignore these people.
It comes down to this: I think it's wrong to abandon someone who's looking for help. I think it's a tragedy when a society abandons children based on their parents choices. How to implement this on a grand scale . . . well . . . that's trial and error. We can't take care of everyones children through paying for college or censoring speech, we also can't go to Socialism . . . my core value structure still stands.
The 'insensitive at best" attitude that kilarney mentions is something that doesn't mesh well with the ideas of diversity. If you do not empathize with another human beings experience, then you certainly will not empathize with another classes or cultures experience. You can be tough on the bottom rung of people without loosing compassion for their experiences.
Here is the bottom line...
Recent research has shown that people raised in poverty have an entirely different set of values than those who have not. More often than not, those values are inconsistent with prosperity.
They got these values through luck of birth and through upbringing. It's not a "choice" they made.
So let's not punish someone for having self-destructive values. Let's get to the root of the problem.
I'll give you one example of a great idea that gets to the root of the problem...
In Vermont, if you collect welfare, you now have to work. Even if it's volunteering. The State subsidizes daycare so you can work. At first, I thought this made no sense. The State is paying daycare so someone can volunteer? Then it was explained to me. The point isn't so much the work. It's having the welfare recipient's kids seeing mommy work. Just that little change results in HUGE changes in their outlook when they become adults.
The leading edge research has shown that changes have to be done on a generational level. Helping "mommy" is just going to lead to more "mommies" who need help in 20 years. So now we help mommy, but with an eye toward helping the kids. The big push is to get services in place when the kids are really young. In other words, to intervene before the damage is already done. We also put incentives in place to get mommy to make healthy and productive decisions. (e.g.: Give mom slightly more welfare if she cooperates and is able to get child support. The State collects $200/month in child support and gives mom $50 of that. The kids see that Mom was willing to pursue child support and the state comes out $150 ahead. Not too shabby!)
CIP: I know a single mother with two kids. One of the girls is in my daughter's Brownie troop. She is on disability and can not work. Not "will not" work but "can not" work. She suffered some sort of back injury and she is on a ton of pain killers and has a ton of doctor appointments.
She puts her nose to the grindstone everyday and networks her ass off to find deals and programs. She gets tons of stuff for free, including education. She could "choose" to sit back and complain and get into debt and make other bad choices but no, she "chooses" to bust her ass to make her and her kids lives better.
I help her out when I can (babysit and what not) because I see she is trying to dig her way out and busting her ass doing it.
I have another friend who is straight out of the movie Idiocracy. They are having their third kid and they can't even afford the two they already have. The kid is due in a month or so and she is still smoking!
Ignoring the fact that smoking while pregnant is stupid both her husband and her smoke. They are deep in debt and had one car repoed last year. they cashed out the husbands 401K last year to pay some credit card bills and they have very little money. But they sure have enough money to buy TWO cartons of name brand smokes every week!
Two months ago they spent $2K to buy a dog. A dog they kept in a cage in their (rented) trailer and then gave away because it was getting too big for the cage. The dog could barely turn around in the cage!
I have NO sympathy for them because they are their own worst enemy! They do not even do the simplest things to better their lives. Know what the real funny thing is? The husband is a store Manager for CVS and makes about $50K yearly. She was working part time for another $10K. Collectively, their take home pay is very close to mine yet I own my house (almost paid off the mortgage) and own two cars (all paid off). I have a sizable retirement account (as does my wife) and I have enough money in liquid assets to pay off ALL my debts if I chose too. I don't because the interest rate on my debts is lower than the interest rate on my investments.
Affirmative Action is racist.
Is anyone familiar with Peggy McIntosh? She is very well know for her paper, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies."
http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html
Basically she says that we have been taught that racism puts others at a disadvantage and that the majority of the white population is oblivious to the fact that they have advantages, referred to as white privilege. It is worth a read. I had to read it for a class, Racism: Cross-Cultural Analysis, last semester.
Is Affirmative Action racist? Or is Affirmative Action trying to just even the playing field? I used to beleive that racism was basically not a problem nowadays. After I took that class, it changed my views. Racism is still view much present, though how it presents itself has changed. It is not okay to express yours racist views in overt ways anymore. There is a lot less racism than then generations before, but certian aspects are there whether or not the person who holds these views realizes it or not. In one of my papers I wrote about an incident I experienced in class. The class was an industrial and organizational psychology class. We were talking about affirmative action and the workplace. The majority of the people who vocalized their opinions on the subject were againist it. The reason kept being repeated, this being, " It allows underqualified people to get jobs that more qualified people should be getting and that should not happen because it is unfair." Another day in class the subject of networking is discussed a little. One of the main ideas talked about was that, " It is who your know that wil get you the job even if there are more qualified people than yourself". This basic statement was repeated many times in many different class days throughout the semester. There was no one trying to argue why that was unfair. No one brought up why this is unfair for more qualified people to be passed up then. Why is that?
Class mobility statistics. @cosmicenema. While your anecdote is just that, an anecdote, I do want to point one thing out. Why is a woman who is unable to afford an education, and has bad credit, having two children? It was her choice to have those two children. If she had chosen to not have those children, she would probably already have a degree and a higher paying job. I'm not making a general statement about class mobility here. I'll let the New York Times with their sciencey numbers take care of that. I just want to say that many people of all classes are blaming outside forces such as the government, video games, and schools for the consequences of their own poor decisions. If you have two kids you can't afford, you have nobody to blame but yourself for your situation.
I think your argument is too simple. That is a super individualistic view and things are not that simple. Does everyone here believe there are no societal effects on the individual? Some people do shout, "Society!" when it is a bullshit reason, but it is a legitimate environmental and socitel reason for a how a lot of things in your life is affected. The article, "babies and banks: the "reproductive underclass" and the raced, gendered masking of debt" by Brett Williams is able to explain an aspect of this. I can't find any portion of it online. It is in the book Race by Gregory and Sanjek. I do hate the black guy who uses the excuse," It's because I'm black isn't it!" when that is not the case. Some people are just idiots and want to look for outside reasons besides themselves to explain their failure. Not everyone is an idiot though.
In one of my papers I wrote about an incident I experienced in class. The class was an industrial and organizational psychology class. We were talking about affirmative action and the workplace. The majority of the people who vocalized their opinions on the subject were againist it. The reason kept being repeated, this being, " It allows underqualified people to get jobs that more qualified people should be getting and that should not happen because it is unfair." Another day in class the subject of networking is discussed a little. One of the main ideas talked about was that, " It is who your know that wil get you the job even if there are more qualified people than yourself". This basic statement was repeated many times in many different class days throughout the semester. There was no one trying to argue why that was unfair. No one brought up why this is unfair for more qualified people to be passed up then. Why is that? All that story says to me is that people are quick to blame something beyond their control (being the wrong race or not knowing the right people) before believing that they might not be the most qualified applicant for the job.
Of course that is just an example I thought of while I was writing my comment, so you can only generalize so much about one incident. They were not trying to blame not knowing the right people. They did not argue that this was unfair. The thing I was trying to say was that when these two ideas were brought. They can both be seen as unfair. Only one was picked up by people in the class. That one dealt with race.
Do you really think that is all there is to becoming rich or poor? Saying the poor stay poor is because they do not understand the value of money is ludicrous. Yes, some poor people buy stuff they don't need but do want. This is true for all people. All of what you said in this statement is such nonsense. You are basically saying," Well, they are poor because they are a bunch of hedonist."
I misread part of your statement. I do believe that to become rich you need to stop spending money on things you do not need. I do believe there is much more going on with poor people then just the fact they spend all the money they don't have.
That's why throwing money at the problem does no good. Only now people are starting to realize that you have to address the self-destructive aspects of the value system.
This book is the authority on the topic.