I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

You sound like a Gannett editor writing a post-layoff column on repurposed Information Centers.

 

What about the family member who doesn't dream of saving up all his or her money to bake donuts, regardless of how much money they make doing it?

 

The evolution of this thread, all the way to how much a coffee shop franchise costs, is pretty ridiculous.

 

You some kind of creationist?

 

Some KKK members were actually cool with Indians
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151037079/the-artful-reinvention-of-klansman-asa-earl-carter
Or did you mean the other kind of Indians?

 

I think Dunkin Donuts came on the third day. It's in the Arabian Coffee Scrolls.

 

Actually, and this is recorded, LBJ said the Civil Rights Act would give the Republicans the South for 25 years. That pretty much happened.

The politicans who are trying to stop minorities from voting since 2012 are pretty much exclusively Republicans.

Before the 1970s, there were segregationist Democrats but even some of those supported programs to help lower-income folks - who were also white.

From 1965 and through the 1970s, there were more African-Americans going to college and getting better jobs. LBJ's impetus to help the poor came from his experience teaching poor Mexicans in the 1930s.

The War on Poverty ended with Ronald Reagan, who instituted a War on Poor People. When Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, that sent a message that things were completely favored large corporations.

The idea that marriage will help bring economic security is backward. People are more likely to get married when they feel more secure economically.

 

When you look for reasons of middle class jobs disappearing, look no further
than the NAFTA bill. Estimated that a million middle class jobs moved south to
lower wage Mexico.

Another damaging legacy of The Bush Family.

 

NAFTA was signed by Clinton

 

As delightful as I find the idea that the American inner-city is going to rise from the ashes on the backs of a Dunkin' Donuts on each corner, it's simply not a sustainable solution on any kind of large scale.

YankeeFan is making the mistake of confusing a solution for individuals with a solution for an entire population of the uneducated and impoverished. You give me enough time with most individuals, along with some background in teaching, and I can probably guide that person to some level of productivity within our society. But as presently constituted, our economy only has so many opportunities available.

Let's assume away every obstacle that might prevent someone from casually pooling together the family's $500,000 seed money. Let's assume that the economy can sustain 1,000 more Dunkin' Donuts. Or even 2,000. Great, 10,000 people, lifted from poverty. Only 50,214,000 to go, by my back-of-the-napkin calcualation.

Sustainability problems aren't confined the impoverished. A few years ago, every other rich kid in America was going to law school. Those who went to a high-ranked school received one of the hundred-plus six-figure jobs that corporate law firms were tossing around like so much parade candy in those days. Starting salaries rose from $70,000 to $160,000 in, not kidding here, like 10 years or less. Today, law school enrollment is plummeting. Like journalism, there just isn't enough work available to sustain the old numbers. Can you imagine if we ever get it right in America and figure out how wasteful litigation is, and start fixing the system?

The encourage-poor-people-to-open-a-Dunkin'-Donuts plan to solve American poverty might work for a finite number of receptive individuals and families. But it's not a magic bullet. Entrepreneurship isn't a magic bullet. And saying over and over again that people should take Personal Responsibility and become entrepreurial certainly isn't a magic bullet.

I know that completely dismantling the social safety net is every conservative's wettest, wildest dream. But if you really want to be part of the solution and not the problem, then you need to begin understanding that the impoverished, at this point, are simply not equipped to become entrepreneurs on the scale that would really change things, and the current economy is not equipped to facilitate their mass conversion from drug-dealing and prostitution to pastry-making.

 

Reagan, actually.