This is a part of the learned helplessness of poverty - waiting for others to provide.
It is not the responsibility of the individual to work when such work is disadvantageous to their overall well being. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with helplessness, and everything to do with them making the optimal choice.
> Is it not the job of one to take advantage of the opportunities that exist? (e.g. schooling, self-education, moving to areas with higher opportunity, etc.)?
Everything you've listed has a non-zero cost to the individual. And the only affordable thing out of those listed to someone subsisting on welfare is self-education.
Sometimes one is able to get out of poverty on their own, but that often requires, besides hard work, plenty of luck. Many people end up pennyless or homeless trying to move to areas with higher opportunity, for example.
Key graph: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... (THESE NUMBERS ARE ADJUSTED FOR PURCHASING POWER.)
Sometimes one is able to get out of poverty on their own, but that often requires, besides hard work, plenty of luck.
The role of luck is overstated. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we import 1 million Gujuratis, all of whom have income below the 95'th percentile of India. Fast forward 20-30 years. Do you still think that this group of a million people - having an average level of luck due to the law of large numbers - will have the same level of income as a similar group of American poor people?
Actually it's not a thought experiment. http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21683983-se...
We've done this experiment with Chinese, Gujuratis, Punjabis, Bengalis, and all sorts of other folks. Mostly they don't stay poor.
2. Self-selection bias. The ones who import themselves are not a random sample, they move because they see an advantage for themselves.
3. From your link: "Furthermore, this was achieved mostly by just one group, essentially an extended family, the Patels" and "Traditionally, most of the finance to start a business comes from within the family, or at least the community." Most poor people do not have such good connections or ability to borrow money.
You are correct that pretty much everyone sees an advantage for themselves from moving to the US - that's because the US is a vastly wealthier country.
Bit of a survivor bias here, don't you think? Of course you haven't met anyone that died.
(Dying is not the only problem, of course - one could live cheaply in a dangerous neighborhood and without heating on the winter and so on.)
I'm interested in the links you posted, however - I'll have to read through them.
His mother, in particular, is interesting, mostly because her case is typical among her Gujarati friends who she practices Yoga as a religious practice with. She's a high risk OB/GYN.
Adjusted for PPP, she is wealthier in India compared to the relatives she left behind. So are most of her friends in her Yoga group.
His sister, also a doctor with a similar professional stance that makes as much, wouldn't be
In no way is this surprising. Nearly all of his parents friends are Upper Caste, and speak excellent English. Nearly all immigrated here when there were actual shortages of certain types of professions. Almost all brought over important relatives, (eg: his grandparents) and to this day are wealthy enough to go back.
Structural changes in those jobs, however, are leaving their "earlier" children economically behind. Despite the fact that both he and his sister are both Born American citizens (unlike their parents, who are naturalized)
His sister will never have that same PPP. Nor do any of her friends, mostly the early born children of said same immigrants, almost all of whom have felt (and in many cases caved) to pressure to become Doctor/Lawyer/Engineer (with the exception of those who got lucky and work for google while also in a low cost of living area)
My friend, ironically, because of the severe birth delay (almost 10 years) will out-earn his sister. He also is far more "behaviorally whiter" than any of his sister's friends. As far as I can tell, he has few, if any, friends who are Gujarati children of high caste immigrants. He also is the first to choose a non-typical career path in his family. (Department of Defense Analyst)
So fast forwarding a few years, it appears your numbers only work for gen=1, and only if gen=1 is high caste.
You can drone on and on about "personal responsibility" all you want if it makes you feel better, but at the end of the day, that isn't going to do jack shit. We need actual answers to these issues, not some haughty, Captain Hindsight, "well, you should have..." crap designed only to make yourself feel better.
It all comes down to, do you actually care about fixing these problems, or not? If you drone on about "personal responsibility", then it's clear you're only interested in assigning blame, and not interested in actually trying to fix things. Go feel superior somewhere else, and get out of the way of people actually trying to fix things.
This succinctly sums up your comment. Perhaps if you gave OP the benefit of the doubt, you'd understand he's trying to fix things in a distributed manner, rather than thinking everybody can be rescued with top-down omniscience.
Like any complex problem, there probably isn't a simple solution. Its not a binary issue of 'personal responsibility' vs 'central government', theres room for central, state & local governments as well as charities, communities, and companies to work together on this.
There's really two independent facets to this subject. One is about the immediate state of things, which in the US is regulation artificially lowering the amount of jobs available (even minimum wage does this). The blog post does a good job exploring this.
The second, which you seem more concerned about, is the trends of whether these types of jobs will continue to exist at all in the future. Which I will agree is questionable.
The US basically has an accelerated view of the effects of automation, as outsourcing to cheaper countries has identical effects. Furthermore, our poor lack the table stakes for participation in our highly-regulated economy, as explored in the original post.
I would point to broken employment and monetary policy that are actively further screwing up the economy and fostering the current go-big-or-stay-home environment. If we really have gotten much more productive, why is the standard "full time" workweek 40+ hours and not 15?
"I'm just pointing out that the jobs are here and those folks simply refuse to do them."
Problem is that this is a phenomena you see everywhere regardless of system but in all liberal markets.
The only thing thats consistent is the technology.
The problem when you remove regulation (uber) you end up with lots of jobs that pay less until as with Uber they will all be automated away.
This is the problem and ignoring it by trying to use the typical "there are plenty of jobs" as the Author does is simply refusing to deal with the reality as it is IMO.
So are these problems solved there? Since education is available to Americans, why haven't they all used it and acquired higher wage jobs?
[1] See table 3, http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...
[2] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... THESE NUMBERS ARE ADUSTED FOR PURCHASING POWER PARITY
Tell me, when are you going to find the time to visit the library or these free schools (which do not exist everywhere, only in a few places) when you're working two jobs trying to make ends meet?
Further, the amount of money an American has compared to an Indian IS NOT RELEVANT IN THE SLIGHTEST. It's called "cost of living". Look it up. $15k buys you a fuckload of stuff in India. Look at how much it buys you in the US.
Seriously, you have no idea what you're talking about. A high school education is available to all Americans. That's it. And high school education does not translate to high wage jobs. One needs higher education for that, which is not available to all Americans.
Did you somehow miss the sentence in all capital letters that I put right after my second reference? Not to mention the axis labels in my second source, as well as all the text in my second source addressing this point?