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« on: January 15, 2017, 08:02:25 AM »
I think I heard Neal Boortz say they should only be allowed to buy dry beans with food stamps. I don't go that far, but I agree with the sentiment but only as a knee jerk emotional reaction. In reality, it would accomplish nothing and might have unintended consequences, like more riots.
The real problem is the lack of jobs in the inner cities and as Anthony pointed out, a couple of generations that know no other lifestyle. Even if there were jobs, who knows if they'd take them when you can make so much more money being a drug pusher. The war on poverty is a failure and the war on drugs is a failure, and only created a black market in drugs to feed to prison industry.
I'm not optimistic that even Trump can bring manufacturing back to the inner cities. The idea to educate these people with the hope that they'll all become doctors, lawyers and engineers is an equally false pipe dream. The exceptional individual may climb out that way, but not the majority. When desegregation took the ambitious and intelligent out of the inner cities, it took the main source of cultural stability and small business employers. Those who remained could survive with factory jobs but when that left, they were left with only two choices: push drugs, or be on the public dole.
And I'm not picking on black ghettos; white hillbillies have a similar situation. Manufacturing or industry processing plants that existed in rural white areas, such as furniture, textiles, logging, mining, food packaging, have evaporated, leaving young whites in these areas with the same two choices. It's easy to say to either of these, "Well move somewhere where there's a job," but that's easier said than done when you've been raised in an atmosphere of despair. In reality, these young people cannot escape unless luck provides them with a mentor on the outside to reorient their whole outlook. This is the "hand up" you're talking about Lucifer. But it requires the existence of a job somewhere, as well as someone willing and able to be this savior. Both are in way too short supply.
It's easy to preach about individual choice and moral accountability when you aren't part of these demographics, but they really are products of society and the system. (Having said that, I will shoot any criminal who threatens me or invades my property, I don't care if society is to blame for his behavior. I'm not with the SJWs who use this fact to excuse behavior. It isn't his fault, but he is a monster nonetheless, and I've a right to defend myself.)
Given the incredible stress of these lifestyles, the sugar soda probably provides a needed dopamine high. Any who avoid the drug and gang scene probably need it, or think they do. My opinion, it would be crazy to try to solve the massive problem of poverty by silly rules like no soda with food stamps. It would be like sticking a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging amputation.