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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would posit that the destruction of the nuclear family unit at lower income brackets (and more common among certain ethnicities) is more at the root of the problem than dream hoarding or unequal application of the law.  This seems to be a growing and self-perpetuating problem since like begets like.  The only fix I can see is a return to more traditional values like the importance of getting (and finishing) an education, successfully landing and sticking with a full time job, getting married before having children, etc.  There are statistics all over the place correlating deviation from these values with a lifetime of poverty and unfulfilled dreams.  What I do for my own kids has little to do with it, but the fact that I am present with DH in the home working with our kids on their schoolwork and fostering an environment that focuses on the importance of education, hard work, service to the community and financial responsibility probably has a lot more to do with how they will turn out than whether or not I fought a multifamily housing development.[/quote]

How much room do you have in your time-machine to get everyone back to the 50s/60s?  Where is this plethora of affordable education and full-time jobs that everyone with traditional values can go take advantage of -- oh, wait, higher education costs are skyrocketing, jobs are being outsourced, and the "gig" economy is on the rise - awesome for employers because they don't have to provide benefits or be liable for you!  Or people, including two-parent households, who have to work multiple jobs that prevent them from being present in the home if they want to stay in the home.  As for your "nuclear family unit" idea - why don't you do some research on the effects of mass-incarceration and the war on drugs where large segments of the population - primarily minority and/or lower socio-economic status - were sacrificed to build up the profits of the prison industry. Start with [i]Inequality for All[/i],  [i]Thirteenth [/i] and maybe go retro with [i]Harlan County USA [/i].[/quote]
You are eliminating one important aspect - choice.  People have choices.  Poor people have choices.  Puerto Ricans have choices.  Black people have choices.  Poor people may not have as many choices to select from as rich people, but you get the idea.  Your post reads like a long litany of excuses for people who have no choices of their own and have had this forced upon them by an evil state.  A good analogy would be a train car headed for Auschwitz.  Do you really believe that is what is going on here?  That these groups have the same predestined fate as concentration camp bound train cars full of Jews?  Those were people with no choices.  These people have choices and I will argue that some of the choices they are making are positively limiting their ability to attain these "dreams" that we are posting about.  Sure, some people have it better than others, but to argue that all the problems that lower class/minorities have are a result of an unfair system stacked against them and they have absolutely no choice but to end up like they are is preposterous.  IMHO, the choice to play this victim role like you are describing and using that as an excuse while waiting around for someone else to come along and make everything fair is one of the choices I alluded to that is keeping some from attaining their dreams.[/quote]
No one is saying they do not have choices, but guess what their choices are mostly different from yours and mine .
For some the choice is do I eat or do my kids eat ?
Do I go to my 2nd job so I can pay my rent or go to the PTA meeting .

When you are talking about kids with limited resources and exposure , then their choices are going to be different and probably self limiting.
I went to college because I KNEW it was a choice I had, I had parents and a community that demonstrated HOW to do it and what to do to make that happen.
Please miss me with the b**** that environmental factors and societal structures have no bearing on the choices we are all afforded and are taught HOW to make.
Some of you would rather die than admit the privilege and fortune of having educated parents or parents who at least knew how to get you educated, or taught you how to feel good about yourself or you were able to live in a neighborhood where people did not refer to you as " the poors" or assumed you did not value education or property or had morals because of you income level or race/ethnicity.
Yes, personal responsibility is a major factor in our life trajectory but you are going to get a lot of deserved pushback when you REFUSE to acknowledge the unbalanced playing field and how we as a society are responsible for doing are part in digging deep, doing the hard, complicated and self examining work of trying it to make it work well for everyone.
After all everyone includes you and I as well.[/quote]

You are grossly overstating the burden of raising a kid. The statistics on children starvation in the US are based on biased analysis of data, here's a Forbes article on the matter:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2011/11/20/are-one-in-five-american-children-hungry/#70b14950eb26

You don't need to go to PTA meetings to raise a kid. I have not gone to a single PTA meeting. My wife went to one when our child was in 2nd grade just to see what it was like, and never went again. The issues discussed in a PTA meeting are usually tangential to education at best.

I readily admit that I come from a privileged background - my parents immigrated to the US and worked very hard to put my sister and me through college. They instilled good ethics of hard work in us and even though we lived frugally ($500 a month for a family of 4 in DC, we had no AC, and shared a TV with three other families in the townhome that we were renting rooms out of), we were never cold or hungry. But my point is that it's not my fault for having this privilege, and neither will my children apologize for the privileges I've provided them. I will teach them that their grand parents and us worked very hard to provide a good foundation for them. They have nothing to apologize to the world for, and they need to work just as hard in order to provide the same for their kids, and so on. [/quote]

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