Well for one thing either you and your sister were older or there was other help and, quite critically, you had both parents, neither of whom was sick or incarcerated.

Still though I don't want to give the wrong impression. Right now I think America does well by those in poverty. We do give them the help they need, at least monitarily, between minimum wages and other support. (on that note in a lot of America a car isn't optional. You need it to work. Though I guess you could get a moped or something)

It's that I think we should address the underlying issues, such as baby mammas, instead of just calling them lazy and then having to continue to pay up for the next generation of baby mammas. That isn't doing anyone any favors.

Um, no. First of all you seem to be operating under the assumption that the problem is that there are far to few crappy jobs to go around. This is not the case. The poverty issue is that people raising kids on a crappy job(or two) are below the poverty level. Again particularily the single mothers.

The point being that as wages fall significantly more would not be produced. Well, unless you declare "look the other way Mondays" on the Mexican border. That would get production up.

Also I don't see where you get the idea that wages would then rise up. That comes from a worker shortage, and as the wages rise any jobs that got created via lower wages would dry up. I suppose your belief is that a temporary wage drop would supercharge the economy such that it could then sustain itself paying even higher wages.

But again starting from the "significantly more is not being produced" angle I don't see where that would happen.

__________________
There are only two things wrong with this great nation of ours, democrats and republicans!

Not necessarily in that order.

Welfare is the price paid to discourage civil unrest.

Why do we have poor people? Because we have encouraged the export of manufacturing jobs and replaced them with low-wage service jobs. The American mantra is no longer, "we can build anything!", it is " Do you want want a coke with your Big Mac?"

And things are rapidly deteriorating. What will replace the frenzied debt ridden consumer consumption of the past 20 years? The piper must be paid. You cannot become wealthy on an hourly wage.

So what about the bit of help provided to really poor households? Yeh, we could go the way of Mexico: take away the remaining safety nets. The affluent could live in gated communities with private security and the middle class, or what is left of it, could build walls around their homes with glass chards and Rottweillers within.
HERE IS THE QUESTION:
Is that an appealing scenario? Is it a better arrangement than the crusts of bread we now give the working poor?

There are two problems with that theory! Well, there's more than two actually, but we'll just hit the big ones. First, America has always had poor people and the number of poor people, give or take, has been fairly constant since we started tracking it. There were poor people before the industrial revolution, poor people during its peak, and poor people as it started declining. There were poor people 1825, 1875, 1925, 1975, and 1990. And there will be poor people in 2020. Why? Because in a capitalist country wages are governed by supply and demand and some people will always be in the wrong bucket skill-wise. And many of those people will never, for whatever reason, do anything about it.

Second, median personal income data simply does not support the notion that all of America's jobs a "low wage service jobs". Median incomes grew under Clinton and have been more or less flat under George Bush. That means people in the aggregate are not trading high wage jobs for McJobs. Otherwise the numbers would show declining median wages. Macroeconomic data is not to be confused with any individual person, however. Some people have traded high wage union jobs for low wage non-union ones. But as a country that isn't the case.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

If your willing to budget your income, curtail unneeded spending and invest in your retirement, then what you said is absolutely 100% incorrect. I've been working for hourly rates my entires life until the last year and during all of that time I was able to save, even if it wasn't a lot, it was something. Not only that but I put forth the effort to apply for grants and funding to help me finish college. So if I can do it, it can be done. The only things between anyone and wealth is air and opportunity

Being poor is a choice... you choose the life you live and in the end no one is to blame for where you are but yourself.(excluding children and the mentally/physically disabled)

__________________

while there is nothing above with which i disagree, zoe posits something that is worthy of consideration:
if the poor have no stake in our economy and no expectation for improvement of their condition, despite their efforts, then when civil unrest presents itself those having nothing to lose have no reason not to light the torches and destroy what is around them

__________________
“Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth.”

[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]

There is two reasons. First, everything is produced here, everything is shipped here, and because of that, everything is cheaper here. Can you buy a good computer for $250? I can. You easily buy all the clothes you need, housing and food on that minimum wage job. The only reason people run into trouble is when they have to support other people or buy expensive needless things. Sadly, our welfare system practically encourages people to be a single parent - you get more money for being a single parent - and the more you have the more your get.

The second reason is an economic reason. As the government raises the minimum wage, companies and businesses start hiring less people. So people actually begin to work less and the poor get even poorer as a whole.

Minimum wage increases do more damage to people making minimum wage than to the companies paying them. If we indeed lived in a free market system there would be no minimum.

__________________

Then why is there poverty? If you work a minimum wage job for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for $6 an hour you're going to make 12k. The poverty line for a single person is 10.4k. That puts the person above the poverty line. I'm not talking about the single mothers. I'm saying that if a single person can work a minimum wage job and be above poverty, then why are there single healthy people below the poverty line? Someone claimed that it was because Asia was taking the jobs - that clashes with your argument. The way to combate Asia is obvious.

That's partway true. It depends on the perspective. If I work a minimum wage job, I obviously want it to be higher, but if I can't even get a minimum wage job, I obviously want it lowered. There is always an equilibirum, and if the government sets it too high, it does hurt the community as a whole.