Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (107914)	6/10/2001 10:25:23 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

i'm speaking about macro FACTS. a micro view is something entirely different. The tools that someone needs to employ to escape poverty operate on both a macro and micro level. The only ones they themselves have control over are micro. In this country, at this time in history, the opportunity for someone to jump out of that probability curve exists at a higher level now than it ever did in recent history. Even so, it's still very difficult to escape poverty. Some people have to leave behind everything they know and people they love in order to make a substantial change in their lives. For some it isn't worth the effort if that's what it takes. being adopted at a very young age, i realize that i was extremely close to growing up in a similar type environment. i feel fortunate that i was lucky through no doing of my own. wrt developing a strong desire to succeed and overcome obstacles, good for you. you had the right approach and it sounds like you benefited from it. Perhaps if you had grown up poor you'd know that there are worse fates. It has been my observation that those people who are most afraid of being poor are those that never have been. I find the people from the upper middle class to have some of the most neurotic attitudes towards money. One could go so far to say the whole country is sort of suffering from a dysfunctional relationship with money. exactly! good fortune shined upon you. there is nothing wrong with that. but it is true and ought to be acknowledge, imho, by acknowledging that not all others are as fortunate. People are motivated by any number of things to make big changes, sometimes it's a good teacher that gets through to a kid, sometimes it's a trip to jail one too many times. What I do know is that the change comes from the inside not the outside. Otherwise you could solve poverty once and for all by writing one really big check for each impoverished person in the country. Go check out some of the lives of the big Lotto winners to see how these people's live are fundamentally changed for the better....Ha! however, what works with one person can't always be applied to tens of millions of folks. Yes, and if you were watching the macro view you'd notice that the number of needy people seemed to rise at a rate just ahead of the government programs created to alleviate poverty. Funny how that works. What is truly tragic is that the well meaning people that created these programs don't see the connection between the two. Someone has to be responsible and it couldn't possibly be them because they were trying to do good. Doing good never winds up causing harm now does it? How could helping someone hurt them? So the logical conclusion is that it must be the evil corporations or the rich that are making these people poorer. viewing various populations in terms of success probability distributions is both reasonable and rational, imho, and much can be learned about why certain outcomes occur more frequently in certain groups than others. this is data based learning. anecdotal evidence is put forth as proof of a particular agenda far to much. this approach is neither reasonable nor rational, but it is quite easy and popular. I know you've heard this but I'll repeat it for you: Lies, damned lies and statistics. If you are going to put a model across a population and then judge results over years you have to have some common objective criteria with which to judge. How do you define something as subjective as success? Most of these studies revolve around income or net worth which pretty much assumes that the only purpose for being on this good Earth is to die with as much money as possible. I've lost track of the number of times I've explained to wealthier friends of mine that some poor people care more about family than they do about money. My middle class friends always say to me, "Why do they keep having children when they can't afford them?" To them this is the ultimate abuse, yet I'm horrified that some of these same people almost never mention their college age children without remarking how expensive it is to send them to college.