The study was done by brookings institute... it's a left wing think tank.

And not having children would save you a ton of money obviously, but that's a tall order for a lot of people, so if you're planning on having children (which most people are) it makes sense to say at least wait until you're financially secure.

Oh, I know, that would conflict with conservative ideology, which is what this is obviously really about. — Baden

Is "Don't have children" then leftist ideology? I don't think it is.

Besides, people are having less children later, which I guess is understandable when both in the family usually study longer, both go to work and start a family later than their grandparents.

Depends on what we mean by "middle class" and "poverty." It can be as misleading as the unemployment statistic.

Yes, by some agreed income cutoff, following those three things probably does make it less likely that you fall below that cutoff.

Personal responsibility and choices you make in life are indeed important. You don't "need to explain this" because no one is arguing against it. You continue to devise Scarcrows.

The point I'm making is a simple one: your emphasis, when looking at class, poverty, income, etc., tends to be the personal responsibility of the poor and working classes. You place the onus on them while largely ignoring (but not denying) the role of the system in which they live, learn and grow. But that's a very narrow analysis.

Did slaves have some personal responsibility? Sure. They could have tried to escape, tried an uprising, killed themselves, etc. The factory girls of the 1800s -- they had personal choices too.

Everyone has some responsibility for their lives. Today's wage slaves, like yourself, have many options and choices. As do I. Others are less fortunate not only in the class they were born into, but in the social and material environments in which they developed, the time they got to dedicate to educating themselves, the availability and affordability of healthcare, libraries, etc.
and so on. In some parts of some states, there are things called "food deserts" and "pharmacy deserts" and, if you don't have a car, you're stuck.

If you're raised in severe poverty, can't focus in school and so drop out, have parents that are abusive drug addicts, surrounded by gang violence and police discrimination, etc., do you have a level of personal responsibility? Absolutely. Even here. And it's also important to say, because it's not about convincing people they're helpless or that they're victims. But again, these factors aren't simply "excuses" either.

You get my point, I hope. There are multifarious, complex reasons for why people live the way they do. A major predictor of teenager pregnancy is level of education. As education increases, unwanted pregnancies go down. That pertains to #2 on your list, for example.

So in that case, should it be any wonder that those with less educational resources have higher rates of unwanted teenage pregnancy? Should we, as fellow citizens -- if we care at all -- simply say it's a matter of choice and personal responsibility, case closed? Or do we have an obligation to at least improve the environment and institutions?

I feel we do have that obligation, and that's it's in our rational self-interest to care about these problems. The world is connected, and as trite as it sounds "We're all in it together." This can't be more true these days. What happens in poor inner city communities, or what happens in Wuhan, China, may seem easy to ignore or easy to dismiss with superficial analyses and platitudes about personal choice, but as we see over and over again, we end up paying a price as well -- whether in tax dollars or contagion.

The fact that you minimize these other factors is itself revealing of your psychology. That was my point.

The point I'm making is a simple one: your emphasis, when looking at class, poverty, income, etc., tends to be the personal responsibility of the poor and working classes. You place the onus on them while largely ignoring (but not denying) the role of the system in which they live, learn and grow. But that's a very narrow analysis.

The reason why I do this is because microeconomic and personal decisions (say, regarding addiction for instance) affect everyone. They do so in often a direct and concrete way. There is also way, way more consensus on personal finance. The choices are an every day thing, and everyone must deal with them. This is just how I view things. I find it odd when people immediately point to complex, big picture items which may only affect some small part of the population in an unclear way and point that that above all else.

If you're raised in severe poverty, can't focus in school and so drop out, have parents that are abusive drug addicts, surrounded by gang violence and police discrimination, etc., do you have a level of personal responsibility? Absolutely. Even here. And it's also important to say, because it's not about convincing people they're helpless or that they're victims. But again, these factors aren't simply "excuses" either.

I absolutely acknowledge that some people are dealt bad hands. In this case their goal isn't to become rich... it's to survive. Maybe by the time they're an adult they could make it to the lower middle or middle class but note that if it's not a priority for them then it's not a priority... that's perfectly fine. Not everyone defines success with wealth and that's fine. I'm not here to push the idea that wealth = success across the board.

I am not saying that everybody is directly responsible for their own poverty. I'm not even saying that people are morally obliged to try to climb out of it/that poor people are morally inferior. I'm just saying that if you're seriously looking to help people it helps to first focus on individual life choices and decisions and then we can move onto systemic factors.

I will acknowledge systemic factors, by the way. But there is many of these and instead of trying to, I don't know... ban charging interest or something ridiculous like that which would have enormous economy-wide effects... maybe instead focus on the small and gradually build up.

What happens in poor inner city communities, or what happens in Wuhan, China,

In the case of inner city schools the issue is complex. It's not just a simple matter of giving them more money. Is there gang violence in the area? Could these kids even afford to go to college if they made it? What is their parents role in their life? With China we have even less actual control when we live in the US. We might have some nice ideas about what they should do but our actual ability to enact change is not high.

The study was done by brookings institute... it's a left wing think tank. — BitconnectCarlos

Ron Haskins: The guy who wrote the study:

"Beginning in 1986, he spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee and was subsequently appointed to be the Senior Advisor to President Bush for Welfare Policy.... Haskins previously co-chaired the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission appointed by Speaker Paul Ryan."

https://www.brookings.edu/experts/ron-haskins/

A conservative, and not just any conservative, an activist anti-welfare conservative who wrote, amongst other things, a book called "Work Over Welfare".

I'll just charitably assume you were ignorant of all that when you tried to pass this off as left-wing.

American conservatives are not allowed tell people not to have children or not to get married. It goes against Family values™. Hence why this is ideologically-loaded garbage.

(My rules for staying out of poverty:

1) Don't have children
2) Don't get married.

It's that easy.)

Oh, and @BitconnectCarlos, Brookings isn't left-wing, it's not even liberal.

"Brookings states that its staff "represent diverse points of view" and describes itself as non-partisan, and various media outlets have alternately described Brookings as "conservative", "centrist" or "liberal".
...
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Brookings describes itself as independent and non-partisan. A 2005 academic study by UCLA concluded it was "centrist" because it was referenced as an authority almost equally by both conservative and liberal politicians in congressional records from 1993 to 2002."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution

I'll put that down to ignorance as well.

From a certain perspective, centrism looks leftist.

if you're planning on having children (which most people are) it makes sense to say at least wait until you're financially secure. — BitconnectCarlos

If you wait until you can afford children, you'll never have them

If you wait until you can afford children, you'll never have them

Sure, then go have 3 kids when you're a single mom working as a part time barista. Those are tomorrow's problems anyways.

I'm obviously not saying you need 250k in the bank right then and there.

It should be clear that having children - especially many of them - before one is financially stable should be avoided if your priority is to avoid poverty. I don't know how you can argue against that. Same thing with high school education. — BitconnectCarlos

If you bothered to read the article I shared you'd see that having a full-time job does most of the work here. Unfortunately, even a full-time job doesn't guarantee anything. Despite record employment rate, 44% of full-time workers are in low-wage jobs, with a median annual earning of slightly lower than $18K. Here's a Brookings Institute report on that. Graduating High School is largely irrelevant since the High School dropout rates are extremely low. Waiting until you are over 21 to get married and have children is also superfluous.

Anyway, weren't we talking about Bernie? It could be all over for him in a few hours.

Even if tonight is a trainwreck for Bernie there's no sense dropping out because 1) the majority of primaries have yet to take place and 2) Biden can royally fuck up the upcoming debate on Sunday

Imagine calling someone a communist for supporting universal healthcare during a pandemic event that does nothing but boost the stocks of privately owned pharmaceutical/health product producing companies (and as always, Campbell's soup), while depressing literally everything else in preparation for mass buyouts by those highest on the economic totem pole.

The fact that America's healthcare system cannot properly respond to this (and because the half-assed response it is preparing to deliver is going to cost us out the uninsured wazoo), wouldn't nationalizing healthcare and shoring up our priorities (i.e: not private profit) and cutting out the insurance middle man be a good thing?

And yet, here we sit, getting ready to thrust a daily-gaff-generating machine who reliably promises to do right by corporations, into the ring against the ultimate clown-foil (the clown who wound up being preferable to Hillary to one to many delegates) who seems to have worse of a chance than Hillary herself...

Sure, why not? Let's cut medicare, medicaid, and all other social security "entitlement" programs for that matter... Food stamps are theft. Let's bootstrap this bitch or what-have you. No malarkey! Man the grammar phones! Stop the tickers! Did you know he worked with Obama?

There's no reason to get mad. You've spent a lot of time and energy talking about the brookings institute when my main point all along is just that people should wait to have kids.... presumably until they're a little more financially secure. Is this point really that offensive?

This isn't about ideology either. I'm asking you a direct question.

If money's their aim, they should never have kids, never marry, and never hire Hanover to do their taxes. But no, the point you just made isn't objectionable to me.

I don't think even Biden can stop the Biden juggernaut now. And he's winning fair and square, so no complaints. It's bizarre considering he's barely awake most of the time. But there you go.

If money's their aim, they should never have kids, never marry, and never hire Hanover to do their taxes. But no, the point you just made isn't objectionable to me.

I think this is questionable. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but kids will often help support you in old age and can certainly help build family wealth in the long term. A marriage can also potentially help cement a second stream of income or at the very least free up time for one of the partners as the other focuses on the chores or raising kids. Of course both of these things can go wrong too.

Sure, then go have 3 kids when you're a single mom working as a part time barista. Those are tomorrow's problems anyways.

I'm obviously not saying you need 250k in the bank right then and there. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree you shouldn't have kids outside a committed relationship, but the financial concerns aren't my primary concerns.

I don't think even Biden can stop the Biden juggernaut now. And he's winning fair and square, so no complaints. It's bizarre considering he's barely awake most of the time. But there you go. — Baden

It's still too early to call. Not even half of the delegates have been awarded, even after tonight. The media is pushing the snowball along as fast as they can possibly run. No surprise really, given the financial loyalties.

However, if Biden does win the nomination, the only way he attracts Sanders' supporters is nominating him for vp, but he won't do it. Biden will not rock the financial sectors' boat, nor will he rock the corporate one, nor will he rock the pharmaceutical one. Par for the course of the last fifty or so years, regardless of the party.

Meh...

The poorest and most unfortunate citizens/people are fucked yet once again. Four more years. And they evidently believe that Biden is better for them that Sanders. Unbelievable ignorance of the relevant facts...

Many thought Obama acted on their behalf too. Sanders needs to come out swinging and showing these people that they've been misled... sorely misled. Not sure if he would, or if all the evidence proving that would change their minds even if it was presented to them in a clear and concise way...

:yikes:

The cost might not be your primary concern, but for a single parent or two parents working low wage, dead end jobs paying for daycare and all those little expenses can add up. There is a significant cost and it's felt more and more the closer you are to the edge.

A significant chunk of those without a high school education are immigrants who moved here. We're not just counting high school drop outs in that figure.

I'm also not entirely sure if I'm hearing you right when you say that waiting until 21 to get married and have a kid is "superfluous." Are you saying teenage pregnancy is not a problem? The overarching idea here - and this really shouldn't be particularly contentious - is that people should wait until they're older and more financially secure (and ideally married as well) - before they commit to having children. Even 21 seems very young to me.

18k/year is a bit more doable when you're childless.

So, we have cultivated a nation where it makes sense to say of the poor that they ought not have kids?

I think it is much better put that in this nation one ought not have to choose between having a loving family and making a living.

This is another way of saying poor people shouldn't have kids. So that would be another privilege for rich people.

Or as a society you can try to protect kids from the inevitable bad choices assume parents make.

Man wouldn't it be nice if the poor just stopped being poor that'd be really nice but in the meantime lets cut access to family planning and education and make childcare inaccessible and then tell them that really they shouldn't have kids and if they do well I guess they deserve to be in the position they're in anyway lol fuck poor people right.

Definitely. They also should stop having an education because it doesn't help them get out of poverty thanks to crushing student loan debt afterwards.

Student loan debt? No no, first they have to pay off their student lunch debt, because making it through primary and secondary education without starving is a privilege and not a right see.

There was once a day that honest hard-working people who take pride in themselves and their work had plenty of opportunity to shine.

There are communities of people who could, would, and ought be able to come together as a team in order to take steps that increase the overall wellbeing of the nation.

Money has left worker hands and found it's way to shareholders'.

Hard to shine at the five and dime when the five and dime is a place that very few - if any - would be proud to work. If the five and dime shared the profits in real terms, then one would be stoked to secure a position there, and rightfully so.

There was once a day when a lineage of hard working dedicated people could build comfortable lives without needing to depend upon financial 'services' that are sold to the public couched in terms of good financial decision making - by those who know better - and all of that for quite a hefty service charge to boot.

That is a public disservice in my book.

There was once a day that one could save what they earned, and it would be enough. Those days are long gone by, if one is poor and trusts all those who are supposed to be providing a public service.

Which reminds me - NYC schools are reluctant to close over COVID concerns because they double as shelter fro 100k+ homeless children. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/09/closing-nyc-schools-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-last-resort-says-official-due-114000

What a shithole of a society.

What a shithole of a society. — StreetlightX

Well, some things definitely need to change. Doesn't look like enough American people know what that looks like.

:sad:

I hope they prove me wrong. It would be quite a pleasant surprise.