ctk495 said:
I’ll try to emulate my Professor. I am sure that when I show him this post he will refer me to some statistics, in order to make these points stronger. I want to improve my debating skills so I thought I should answer myself without his help.
1 We are talking about the upmost poor in America. I recommend this documentary:http://www.foodchainsfilm.comI will have to fact check on starvation. But other than that, again your ‘experiential knowledge’ does not qualify you to make any conclusions. In fact you lived “pretty nice middle class small city.” Which further disqualifies you from suggesting that your experience can accurately reflect those that suffer the consequences of poverty. 2. Black and non-English speaking Hispanics will suffer many more difficulties, kids whose parents are non-english speakers/1st generation Americans. You are very much Americanized, by the fact that you went to a public school and learned to speak Standard English (unlike African American vernacular or other dialects.) These people can’t get jobs due to prejudices against those dialects. 3) You are still basing yourself on your subjective experience you can’t answer on behalf of the poor if in your specific community people were motivated and talented. Only statistical evidence can provide an accurate reflection on how most poor people think and feel. 4You are basing yourself in a new sample, yet you are not seeing that the same rules apply, how many Chinese/Asian/Indians end up in Foxxcon or a big corporation that exploits them as opposed to the rare genius who can come to America due to his talent? Say that 1 for every 100. Then for every 10, 1000 will stay in poverty. All the foreigners that ‘make it’ are exceptions. Also you display a lack of compassion for people who are pursuing their passions “they must feel the consequences.” This means 4.1) Capitalism has turned your mindset into one that favors profit over people. 4.2) Capitalism is less free than other systems because you can’t pursue what you like but what makes money. So student, it is not that I am underestimating the poor but rather that you rely on personal experiences, generalizations and seeing details and not the complete picture. You scrape by poverty since you capitalized on factors working for you (speaking SAE, going to school, passing as white-I doubt that having a Spanish last name made you a target for racial profiling) therefore, you don’t see who compromises the American poor (illegal immigrants, blacks, disenfranchised minorities) or who compromises the ‘foreigners’ (rare exceptions within the hordes of people) you talk about. I agree that they have other obstacles-hunger, lack of resources that undermine then. American culture is much more creative than those other cultures. Those cultures you speak about work in a process of elimination where too much value is placed on STEM and everyone who fails is left behind. Just take a look at the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan. What can be done for the poor? Affirmative action, integrating new dialects in school, stopping racial profiling (which leaves black families broken.) |
1. A documentary is not emprical data, professor. It is just as much experential as my anecdotes. Where are your sources? Again, just as a thiest is burdened with his proof of God, so are you with your declaration of famine and starvation in the United States.
2. Is this not true for immigrants in any country? What is special about the United States in this regard? An immigrant in Germany who doesn't speak proper German has a hard time, if not moreso. This is a cultural issue you brought up, not an economic one. I don't see how it is pertinent.
3. I didn't live in any one community, so I think I have a wide-range of experiences. But again, where is your empirical evidence?
4. This seems contradictory. In the aforementioned systems socialism is rampant (particularly in the case of India, where central planning still exists.) So even in these systems these problems exist, as you noted. How is this then a fundamental issue of capitalism? Additionally, in the systems you are presupposing to be superior to capitalism, how much freedom do people have in choosing their occupation? In which world are people free to pursue their passions without the effects of scarcity? We are discussing the real world here, professor. Money and financial viability certainly shouldn't be the only decision in choosing a major, but it is a strong one. There is a supply and demand for what is needed, and that equillibrium needs to be met, in any country with any system.
Again, you are making assumptions. I never passed as white. And I already noted that I lived in an interracial family, which arguably is viewed upon less well than mono-racial minority ones. My point is that it is due (partly) to the merit of these individuals that they removed themselves from their destitution, in the United States destitution (absolute poverty) does not exist. The empirical data and statistics support my claim, by the way.
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc12-eng-web.pdf
^ Notice that this is comparing the poverty level to the median income in OECD countries. Also notice the graph that is adjusted for purchasing power parity.
I would not disagree with you that reducing racial profiling would benefit the poor. Is it not even more imperative though that the war on drugs should end? Would this not have the largest effect on these minority groups you speak about?