Why are there millions of poor people in America?

@BrandNewMan in a lot of ways you are right.. lets start at the beginning ... and when i mean that i am talking bout schools .. first they need to teach the children on how to learn and that takes a teacher willing to do that. so good teachers need hiring and schools need money to do the hiring. now some in the back hills of the south dont the tax to do the hiring of good teachers.. some in the richer states do.. so part of it is where are you born.. with out training as a child they can not learn as a teenager.. now take away funding for school grants will not make that better. so lets go past high school and trade school . where are the poor to get money for those.. student loans . now that might be cut also. let alone for college ed. .. at one time the draft did well in helping those to get a start and now its not the case.. there might be openings however ya need the skill to do those jobs.. so i think the companys now should start doing the training and they wont.. or most will not..

so some are excuses and some are just hard luck .. just my thought
i went to a trade school with a grant and then bought my own business . my problem was timing tv repair and a few years later solid state came out and tv repair died.. my trade became old like the tubes i still have..

@markinkansas My wife is an elementary school teacher.
The best of teachers are seriously hampered by the complete lack of parental involvement and behavior issues with their students. I didn't have all wonderful teachers in a lower middle class area .. but I had
the focus of my parents that ensured I was accountable. You could load schools with great teachers and make little progress with students/parents that dont give a damn about education.

Three of the smartest and most successful people I know are black. All three came from poor families, but their parents supported them and pushed them to not just stay in school but to excel. All three went through college on scholarships and are among the most successful people I've ever known. It can be done, but it takes the effort of those who would benefit above and beyond all other factors.

@BrandNewMan Interesting: I conpared this with UK experience that may happen in other countries too.

Although you won't survive very well on unemployment benefits in the UK. They are low, now called the "Job Seekers' Allowance"; and very few people want to live like that.


What happened here for years was a widespread idea that the only way to "get on" is to obtain a Degree (yes, but in what, for what?) and work in IT or money-trading (how many do those trades need?)

Or entertainments, where it seems if you are lucky, the less talented you are the better your chances of The Big Time - though orchestras still need their proper musicians, theatres and film-studios still need skilled technical staff.

While at the same time, craft trades like plumbing, electricians, machinists, welders, etc have long been seen as second-best, dirty work best avoided, and manufacturing best farmed out abroad. Too many Britons have no idea what is an Engineer - they think it's someone in oily overalls replacing car brake-pads, or mending washing-machines. Not the car's or appliance's designer. Let alone know what Chartered Engineer means, or know that his or her main tool is Mathematics, not Spanners..

So schools and colleges cleared out their workshops, replacing craft lessons with something called "Design & Technology" which appears to be using CAD to draw things they might or might not make - more style than structure. Similarly, too many industries stopped taking on apprentices, though that is now changing and the number of trainees overall is increasing.

Back in the 1990s I think it was, Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government embraced something it called the "Knowledge Economy" that seemed to mean just being a PC-jockey in Canary Wharf, and wanted at least 50% of school pupils to gain the qualifications to enter University - to be what? Coffee-shop staff serving money-merchants? No mention of skilled manual work despite Labour's history.

Whereas in Germany the title of "Engineer" is professional, equivalent perhaps to the Chartership - more the applied-scientist than the maker; though they should still have practical experience. I think France has similar respect for Engineers.

..
Have you observed similarly in the USA or is it very different there, beyond detail differences between natioanl educational system?

@BrandNewMan i understand. its a hard thing to figure out why a parent would not help there child.. look back at how that parent was raised . was he taught the things your parents learned . and for every few like you or me . there is so many more that did not have that support.. thanks for the reply

@BrandNewMan One has access to the public education that is available, and not all schools are well-funded, unfortunately. I agree that there needs to be more affordable (or free) job training programs available to people, of all ages. More opportunities for a college education, too. Other countries do that—they invest in their citizens.

I’m not sure when or how college became so expensive. I worked part-time jobs to help my parents pay for my college education, and later I paid them back. They hadn’t requested that, but it was a point of pride for me to be able to do so.

@BrandNewMan I am not sure how further-education college course are funded in the UK, but looking at my local colleges' prospectuses the range of subjects has decreased over the years. I think the student (or an employer) has to pay unless studying for the "Advanced Level" examinations used as the university entry qualifications: that is essentially an extension of school.

Schools are free (to the parents), with the exception of the private ones called "public schools" (That looks odd but it refers to how they originated, centuries before the State system.)

University students used to be given grants, from the tax system; but that was changed some decades ago to loans. You repay these only once your salary has reached a certain threshold: I am not sure what that is. The problem is you are then lumbered with repaying a loan at around the time you are trying to save the deposit for a home - or repaying the mortgage - hoping to add to your pension contributions, and generally trying to establish your next several decades of life.

The difficulty is finding sufficient skilled people in so many practical trades, because the bias has been far too much to highly-academic or IT-based work.

@markinkansas I understand that. Yet, we spend more now than many countries and get less return from it. We've been spending ever more for years and continue to see student performance decline the last decade. Just throwing more money at teaching salaries will not cut it. School taxes here exceed $7k per year, on top of property tax, for our home. We paid out of pocket for both our kids at public universities and one joined the National Guard to avoid loans. With inflation .. there is precious little more I can give and meet my own responsibilities .. and I have a damn good job.

That's not lack of empathy or love for others or this other bleeding heart b.s. .. its fecking high school level math.

Our govt mismanages our taxes, we give too much to other countries who in part fund their social programs on the backs of our support, as we are their backup plan vs fully funding their own military protection needs. A lot more has to change than just spending more.

@ArishMell I'm in the US and borrowed over 60% of my college costs. It took me 13 yrs to repay it at an accelerated pace .. in part because I took on extra jobs for part of that time. My degree was also in a higher paying field. My employer paid my masters degree earned part-time while working.

@BrandNewMan Well, congratulations for it!

One of my work colleagues was working for a Degree via the Open University. I don't know if he able to claim the fees via our employers' training-budget, as the Degree he wanted would have been for their benefit as well as his.

The OU is for people unable or not wanting to attend full university courses, and is mainly by correspondence, Internet and occasional tutorials that might be held in a college more local for groups of students.

It used to use late-night tutorial programmes on BBC TV, and these attracted a sizeable side audience of people not actually taking a course. When still living with my parents my mother and I often enjoyed these!

Although my colleague wanted his Degree for professional purposes the OU does also have many students studying purely for pleasure, including as retirement hobbies.

@ArishMell That OU sounds more like our online prograns or even community college system.