McQ asks the question “How can you actually avoid poverty?”
Well it has nothing to do with government or government programs even if the Democrats are presently engaged in trying to expand a children’s health insurance plan for the poor to include much of the middle class.
Instead, avoiding poverty can be as simple as finding and holding a job and getting and staying married:
One thing we probably won’t hear much of in this regard, however, is what the government can and should be doing to encourage the two most effective antidotes to poverty: work and marriage. Many government programs do little if anything to encourage the poor to get and keep jobs or to encourage fathers to marry and support the mothers of their children. Too often, government programs are actually hostile to these core values of building successful families and communities.
The data here are rather startling. As The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson point out, the typical poor family works only 800 hours per year. Just by expanding the hours worked to the full year of 2,000 hours — that’s one adult working 40 hours a week — Rector and Johnson estimate that three of every four children officially classified as in poverty would be lifted out of that status.
Similarly, based on Census Bureau and other federal data, the scholars at the conservative think tank estimate that if marriage became the norm among poor couples rather than absent fathers, two-thirds of the children in these communities would be lifted out of poverty.
It would seem to me that if those in government or running for office are truly concerned with poverty – real poverty – they’d be advocates for both work and marriage. I mean real advocates, not just give each merely lip service while subsidizing not working and single parenthood.
Just so.
What he is suggesting, has become known in the vernacular as “family values”. Interestingly enough, it is those which the left has turned their back on in the name of “freedom”.
That rejection is precisely why we have the number of poor that we do. Of course, the effects are not merely financial, but they are social as well . In other words all of this is precisely what the social right has been saying for 35 years and longer. These are all ideas that have been shot down by the left on every single occasion they’ve come up. The study cited, would seem to suggest that that was buried in those ideas, after all.
I think also that I should be pointing out to you that these are cultural values that are the very reason why America has been a success and has been up until recently. I say that because of a quote in the story which I will break out here again;
One thing we probably won’t hear much of in this regard, however, is what the government can and should be doing to encourage the two most effective antidotes to poverty: work and marriage. Many government programs do little if anything to encourage the poor to get and keep jobs or to encourage fathers to marry and support the mothers of their children. Too often, government programs are actually hostile to these core values of building successful families and communities.
I have said in this space repeatedly over the years that the primary purpose of any government that wants to last for a naming of time is to reinforce and if possible expansion influence of the culture that gave that life. These are, after all, cultural values that we are talking about, here. its tiny consider that there is a reason why those cultural values involved; they work.
The direct impact of those cultural values, and the following of them or the lack of following of them, can clearly be seen, here. The solution to our current problem should be, as well. Maybe somebody should tell John Edwards. You can bet, that unless forced into it, he’s not going to support traditional work ethics and family values. So much for his claim about wanting to “help the poor”.
Tags: BitsBlog, Social Issues
