The Truth and Non-Truth About Poverty in America

Just ten observations:

1.  Oddly, as much as people see and perceive this great 'darkness' hanging over the nation in terms of poverty....every single day, people are finding legit and non-legit ways of getting into the nation, and be part of 'something'.  If this were so bad, they wouldn't make the effort to enter some giant poverty 'pit'.

2.  Poverty in California means that the income levels required for just a marginal way of life....are not possible.  Yet if you drove over 500 miles and escaped the state.....you'd find jobs, the income level, and local costs to be within your capability.  That means all poverty....is not the same.

3.  Thousands upon thousands of people throughout the nation are happy getting some government 'aid', while in this state of poverty, and see no real reason to exit the free deal.

4.  For about half-a-million Americans....if they had a choice of a start-up job at some pizza shop, or a week's worth of Fentanyl....they'd take the Fentanyl.

5.  People who are motivated to escape poverty...usually escape it.  People who lack the motivation.....stick with it.

6.  There are couples out there, pulling in $250k a year combined....who are one single month of zero pay from being in poverty.  What kind of idiots get themselves in that shape of poverty?

7.  The number of kids exiting college with $70k or more in debt, and really no great plan on the future and how they will pay the money back?  In some ways, they are attached to the poverty-scene and unable to really to see anything much until they pay off the debt.

8.  Aren't people in each advancing generation....escaping poverty?  That is part of the dilemma that experts can't seem to wrap their hands around.  Some are finding success and motivation appears to be part of the story.

9. The sadder part of this story is that hundreds and hundreds of political people have worked for fifty years....to end poverty, and basically....the bulk of their work has amounted to nothing.

10.  So you come to the end....an Indian guy has procured a visa and will arrive today in Dallas, and be picked up at the airport by his cousin.  In five years, he'll own a hotel (maybe a crappy Motel-6), and stand for a photo before it with his wife, and tears will flow down his face because he entered the country with less than $1,000 and is now a business owner five years later.  How is this possible, with all this poverty-chatter?