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Originally Posted by mjshira
but that has NEVER worked. people make decisions, decisions have consequences.
It is not that I personally don't have pitty for those less fortunate, I do. It is that no gov't program has or will ever be as powerful as an individual or group of individuals who take responsibility for themselves.
We are throwing good money after bad in gov't, be it on the weapons we don't need more of, or on social programs that are socialist in nature.
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You've hit upon EXACTLY!
People make decisions. That's at the heart of good social engineering. How do you get people to make good decisions? How do you get them to understand the consequences of their decisions, consequences 1 day from the moment they make the decision, consequences 10 years from the moment they put a decision in motion.
When you were 13, did you have the same decision making skills as a kid in ghetto? if you did well in school at 13, what was the result? Proud parents or getting beat-up after school. When you were 13, what opportunities COULD you imagine, that perhaps parents and parent-piers were telling you about. Does a poor kid in the inner city or deep south rural have the same imagination, the same reinforcement mechanisms at home?
The day any 13-year-old kid can equally dream is the day poverty and ignorance start to decrease. Will they ever disappear? No. But at some point, kids need a setting in which they LEARN how to make good decisions that will effect the rest of their lives.
That's breaking a cycle. When you invest in whatever infrastructure is necessary to create this setting, you'll start to see real social and economic dividends 15 to 20 years down the road.
At the end of the day, it's about ROI. There is no ROI with "fixing" adults by throwing money at their problems. There is tremendous ROI in giving kids the ability to see a future where discipline, responsibility, self-esteem are part of their lives. There is ROI in giving kids the tools to make good decisions.
Who's going to give them these tools? Church, community groups, schools. bad parents must be REMOVED from the equation, as they are the leading cause in continuing the cycle. How can a kid make a good decision when his parents continually make bad ones?