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

I think that they're immigrants who came over with more capital than poor americans have.

 

I agree. But the evidence strongly suggests that the idea that we -- the not impoverished -- can "solve" black poverty via policy isn't that far removed from preposterous, either.

 

Solar panel production is a sure path to wealth, jobs and SBA loans. To heck
with donuts.

 

Reagan was President on December 8, 1993?

 

Refugees, from some of the poorest countries on earth, who fled revolution, or communism, or other terrible situations, came over with pockets full of money, huh?

Read Nicholas Gage's Eleni:

http://www.amazon.com/Eleni-Nicholas-Gage/dp/0345410432

Tell me his family came over with pockets full of money.

 

I guess it was Clinton. It's been a while. Boy his legacy as first black president
was fairly damaging to the black community when you really drill down.
NAFTA, End Welfare As We Know It, War on Drugs.

 

OK, that's funny.

 

What are all the ideas as to how "the impoverished," who make less than $12,000 a year by definition, can solve poverty?

My brother lives near the poverty line. Assuming he spends 80 percent of his income on basic living expenses for him and his family, he'd have to save everything else, every year, for 30 years in order to be able to afford startup costs on a food truck - costs for a Dunkin Donuts franchise would take several generations to accumulate.

 

Instead of buying a new car every year you should lend him some seed money

 

Yes.

 

The Caribbean immigrants who own the Dollar Vans in Brooklyn and Queens probably came over with pockets full of money.

I mean, who else but an incredibly rich person could launch a high end, capital intensive business like a Dollar Van business. A passenger van is way beyond the means of a poor immigrant.

 

You know YF (and others 'round here) ... capital ain't just money. I could give away every bit of tangible capital I have -- the IRA, the equity in my house, my collection of vintage Budweiser pint glasses -- and I'd still be pretty damn well-capitalized. I think the skepticism of DW et al. re: the entrepreneurship-to-solve-poverty narrative is justified, but not for the reasons that have been proffered to this point.