I'm an educated man, Dave, and a student of scientific method. But we aren't talking about sunspots and the price of wheat here. The causal relationship behind the correlation between poverty and crime is not at all mysterious. It includes such indisputables as despair and hunger.
I'm an educated man, Dave, and a student of scientific method. But we aren't talking about sunspots and the price of wheat here. The causal relationship behind the correlation between poverty and crime is not at all mysterious. It includes such indisputables as despair and hunger.
I went to a vocational high school with kids from the projects. Poor or impoverished I can't say. They were there to get a marketable skill. Some ended up defeating themselves with "why you tryn' to be white studyin'" others succeeded. Attitude and desire, they all came from the same shithole.
I was from a bottom of the middle class/poor, up to you what you want to call it, neighborhood. There was another way out, the military. That is something some were willing to do, and others weren't. You might be lucky and get a skill but there was GI Bill educational benefits if you did or didn't. There was a price. One guy from my neighborhood was killed in Vietnam and one who didn't enlist or get drafted was killed in street violence. Two came back amputees, three who stayed behind went to prison. Some of us got out, some didn't.
You could stay local to family, or you could move away. There's a price and I paid it, being separated from my extended family for most of my life.
I understand the old saying, "Wherever you go, there you are" but some who want to make a better life for themselves do by doing whatever it takes to escape their toxic environment.
Poverty? I walk past it every morning on my morning walk. Homeless encampments. People with no roof over their heads and all their stuff in a stolen grocery store cart or baby buggy. I politely greet them and most of them return the greeting. But the Neighborhood ap has daily reports of burglary and children's bicycles being stolen, assault, strong arm robbery, etc. Is that criminality associated with that poverty? Of course it is. But as best as can be determined they are mostly homeless because of drug addiction. I understand that some people are more prone to addiction than others. Without getting too personal, I'll just say that I know the tragedy of drug addiction all too well. Other than killing all drug dealers where they are found without a trial, that problem isn't going away.
My point is that I understand the association of poverty and crime quite well, maybe more than you on a personal level, I don't know, but it is not an unbreakable shackle. I'm in no way saying that it is always easy or equally accessible to all. But if you don't try and sometimes make hard choices, that is an unbreakable shackle.
Race? It's often easier to be a white man in America. That's always been common knowledge although largely not given thought to until the 60s. But I know black people who have been more successful in life than me. They worked for it and made good choices.
Life is hard, but it is harder if you choose to hold onto an excuse for your failure instead of doing the work to succeed.
I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not but I certainly don't believe that poverty is a highway to a life of crime with no exit ramps. People react to identical circumstances in completely different ways.
A few hundred feet from my house here there are people living under roofs of corrugated steel and walls of sticks. They don't even have doors. Poverty at this level is unimaginable to me.
When I mentioned this conversation to my wife, her comment was that her childhood had no doors. Unsurprising since she also had no shoes.
She told me something that I didn't know. The home that her sister lived in when I first met her and that her father lived in when I last saw him were on government land. They were allowed to build a house and pass it on to their heirs, but they could not sell it. Termites ended up collapsing her sister's house and she moved away. None of her children wanted it. When her father died, her sister didn't want to live there because she is afraid of ghosts. We would have built her a better home on that land than the thatched hut her father lived in, but it went back to the government.
I actually think that family plots that will never go to developers is a good way to let the poor own a home.
My mother had a home under the 235 Program (most people thought that you had to be black for that, but you just had to be low-income to qualify). One of the things that I noticed, both in her neighborhood and in the black 235 neighborhoods that I saw when I lived in Georgia was that they were well kept compared to low-income rental neighborhoods. I think that it was about pride in ownership.
Now that home ownership is becoming less possible for many, the vultures are buying up homes, fixing them up a bit and renting them out. The rent is higher than any house payment I ever had so they have two family renters trying to avoid living in apartment complexes. It does not bode well for society.
When my wife first came to America, we visited my mom in Saint Louis and drove past the projects. She couldn't comprehend an apparently new building with broken windows, curtains hanging out and trash everywhere. Stick a bunch of poor people in a high rise, sprinkle in some criminals and drug dealers and you destroy all hope of pride. Inspiration for James Brown's "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
In several of the countries that I've been in in Asia, there were high rise apartment buildings, where people bought their apartments. They too were better places. I lived in several four family flats (rentals) as a child, a step up from bedbug row, but not by much. While I'm not a big fan of many government programs designed to fight poverty that don't work, I would like to see something that gives more people their own home. I think that that really does help.
Not arguing, Chris, just clarifying since my previous comment may have been misunderstood. I think that we are in basic agreement.
During the war there was a huge refugee area near Danang like that. Americans called it Dog Patch. Since places like that have some semblance of permanence (for better or worse) they can construct those shanties. Years ago, in Japan, I saw a trash and litter free homeless encampment under an overhead that consisted colorfully decorated cardboard. I was told that they were allowed to stay because they created no public nuisance.
After typing this I'll go out for my morning walk around the park where there are homeless encampments. Impermanence since they periodically get dispersed by the police. No doors, no walls, no roof. To their credit they use the public restrooms rather than crap on the sidewalks like in San Fransisco. They often discard clothing when it gets filthy. We gave a big bag of my wife's old clothes to a young homeless woman about a month ago. While I consider the crime, they bring to the neighborhood to be a nuisance we've managed to hold onto some compassion.
Meanwhile in Vietnam people will drop their styrofoam garbage on the ground with a trash bin literally within arm's reach. A housekeeper walks out of the house with a dustpan of litter, mostly plastic, walks (smiling) past the same bin and across the street ... and dumps it in the grass.
Once I made a pole with a nail sticking out the end and walked around near my house picking up the trash and tossing it in a bag. The neighbors were probably thinking "stupid foreigner" (ng╞░с╗Эi n╞░с╗Ыc ngo├аi ngu) but the shame must've cut through because after a week or two they all got a lot more conscientious about keeping the 'hood clean.
I'm an educated man, Dave, and a student of scientific method. But we aren't talking about sunspots and the price of wheat here. The causal relationship behind the correlation between poverty and crime is not at all mysterious. It includes such indisputables as despair and hunger.
I'm going to end up writing more than I care to.
I went to a vocational high school with kids from the projects. Poor or impoverished I can't say. They were there to get a marketable skill. Some ended up defeating themselves with "why you tryn' to be white studyin'" others succeeded. Attitude and desire, they all came from the same shithole.
I was from a bottom of the middle class/poor, up to you what you want to call it, neighborhood. There was another way out, the military. That is something some were willing to do, and others weren't. You might be lucky and get a skill but there was GI Bill educational benefits if you did or didn't. There was a price. One guy from my neighborhood was killed in Vietnam and one who didn't enlist or get drafted was killed in street violence. Two came back amputees, three who stayed behind went to prison. Some of us got out, some didn't.
You could stay local to family, or you could move away. There's a price and I paid it, being separated from my extended family for most of my life.
I understand the old saying, "Wherever you go, there you are" but some who want to make a better life for themselves do by doing whatever it takes to escape their toxic environment.
Poverty? I walk past it every morning on my morning walk. Homeless encampments. People with no roof over their heads and all their stuff in a stolen grocery store cart or baby buggy. I politely greet them and most of them return the greeting. But the Neighborhood ap has daily reports of burglary and children's bicycles being stolen, assault, strong arm robbery, etc. Is that criminality associated with that poverty? Of course it is. But as best as can be determined they are mostly homeless because of drug addiction. I understand that some people are more prone to addiction than others. Without getting too personal, I'll just say that I know the tragedy of drug addiction all too well. Other than killing all drug dealers where they are found without a trial, that problem isn't going away.
My point is that I understand the association of poverty and crime quite well, maybe more than you on a personal level, I don't know, but it is not an unbreakable shackle. I'm in no way saying that it is always easy or equally accessible to all. But if you don't try and sometimes make hard choices, that is an unbreakable shackle.
Race? It's often easier to be a white man in America. That's always been common knowledge although largely not given thought to until the 60s. But I know black people who have been more successful in life than me. They worked for it and made good choices.
Life is hard, but it is harder if you choose to hold onto an excuse for your failure instead of doing the work to succeed.
I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not but I certainly don't believe that poverty is a highway to a life of crime with no exit ramps. People react to identical circumstances in completely different ways.
A few hundred feet from my house here there are people living under roofs of corrugated steel and walls of sticks. They don't even have doors. Poverty at this level is unimaginable to me.
When I mentioned this conversation to my wife, her comment was that her childhood had no doors. Unsurprising since she also had no shoes.
She told me something that I didn't know. The home that her sister lived in when I first met her and that her father lived in when I last saw him were on government land. They were allowed to build a house and pass it on to their heirs, but they could not sell it. Termites ended up collapsing her sister's house and she moved away. None of her children wanted it. When her father died, her sister didn't want to live there because she is afraid of ghosts. We would have built her a better home on that land than the thatched hut her father lived in, but it went back to the government.
I actually think that family plots that will never go to developers is a good way to let the poor own a home.
My mother had a home under the 235 Program (most people thought that you had to be black for that, but you just had to be low-income to qualify). One of the things that I noticed, both in her neighborhood and in the black 235 neighborhoods that I saw when I lived in Georgia was that they were well kept compared to low-income rental neighborhoods. I think that it was about pride in ownership.
Now that home ownership is becoming less possible for many, the vultures are buying up homes, fixing them up a bit and renting them out. The rent is higher than any house payment I ever had so they have two family renters trying to avoid living in apartment complexes. It does not bode well for society.
When my wife first came to America, we visited my mom in Saint Louis and drove past the projects. She couldn't comprehend an apparently new building with broken windows, curtains hanging out and trash everywhere. Stick a bunch of poor people in a high rise, sprinkle in some criminals and drug dealers and you destroy all hope of pride. Inspiration for James Brown's "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
In several of the countries that I've been in in Asia, there were high rise apartment buildings, where people bought their apartments. They too were better places. I lived in several four family flats (rentals) as a child, a step up from bedbug row, but not by much. While I'm not a big fan of many government programs designed to fight poverty that don't work, I would like to see something that gives more people their own home. I think that that really does help.
Not arguing, Chris, just clarifying since my previous comment may have been misunderstood. I think that we are in basic agreement.
During the war there was a huge refugee area near Danang like that. Americans called it Dog Patch. Since places like that have some semblance of permanence (for better or worse) they can construct those shanties. Years ago, in Japan, I saw a trash and litter free homeless encampment under an overhead that consisted colorfully decorated cardboard. I was told that they were allowed to stay because they created no public nuisance.
After typing this I'll go out for my morning walk around the park where there are homeless encampments. Impermanence since they periodically get dispersed by the police. No doors, no walls, no roof. To their credit they use the public restrooms rather than crap on the sidewalks like in San Fransisco. They often discard clothing when it gets filthy. We gave a big bag of my wife's old clothes to a young homeless woman about a month ago. While I consider the crime, they bring to the neighborhood to be a nuisance we've managed to hold onto some compassion.
Meanwhile in Vietnam people will drop their styrofoam garbage on the ground with a trash bin literally within arm's reach. A housekeeper walks out of the house with a dustpan of litter, mostly plastic, walks (smiling) past the same bin and across the street ... and dumps it in the grass.
This country really needs a Lady Bird Johnson.
Sadly, the problem has become all too universal.
Once I made a pole with a nail sticking out the end and walked around near my house picking up the trash and tossing it in a bag. The neighbors were probably thinking "stupid foreigner" (ng╞░с╗Эi n╞░с╗Ыc ngo├аi ngu) but the shame must've cut through because after a week or two they all got a lot more conscientious about keeping the 'hood clean.