Not his exact words, but that's what it boils down to. If you're not rich, or if you don't have a job, blame yourself. Which is a gross generalization if I've ever heard one.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Poor
Labels:
2012 Presidential Election,
Herman Cain,
Jobs,
Poor,
Rich People
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Unless there is a disability involved, everyone makes choices about their life and career.
ReplyDeleteI choose to be a teacher, so I will not be rich. Others choose to be social workers, nurses, garbage men, work at casinos and they won't be rich.
People can chose different careers that can make them rich financially or rich in the heart. Further, people make choices that will affect their lives when they arfe young- skip classes, commit crimes, drop out of school, become pregnant, use drugs etc. These people made bad life choices and they lost. Too bad, they caused their own problems.
It's still a gross overgeneralization. It makes it sound like every rich person is self-made and had no help, no advantages, no luck. And every poor person (even with your qualifier of a disability) a layabout who should have worked harder, and they could be employed and/or rich.
ReplyDeleteSome of the hardest working people I've known have also been poor. Sometimes working 3 jobs, just to scrape by. To say they're lazy or not driven enough is greatly insulting.
Also, even people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who DEFINITELY were visionaries, with great ambition and drive did not start in a ghetto. They started from comfortably upper middle class lives. Which DOES confer advantages. And of course then there are people like the Koch Brothers who got rich the old fashioned way: they inherited it.
Right on the money Dan. I am 65 and have worked my whole life. Worked through grammar school, picking beans in the fields, cleaned out houses after contractors, cut grass, Through high school as an Electrician, still cutting grass, worked at an amusement park. Joined the Navy at 18. Electricians Mate EM2 after 4 years. Got out and went into medical supply sales, came down with cancer at 22, 30 days out of the Navy. Could have gone on 100% disability for life, went to college in Psychology instead, worked in group homes. Got my Masters Degree in Counseling. Disability dropped down to 30%. Worked in Psych hospital as counselor. Started my own business as a carpenter. Started a second business 3 years later referring contractors to Homeowners to remodel and build their homes. Sold the business after 27 years. Drove a taxi for two years in Norfolk Va before moving to Hawaii while waiting to sell our Homes. Got to Hawaii and the folks I sold the business to stopped paying. I forgave the debt. 3 weeks of vacation and it was time to become productive again so I took a job in security supervising 14 security guards, no real experience there other than working in psych field. Took next job as a bellman for 3 1/2 years and loved it. Then started my 3rd business sharpening knives for chefs and homeowners here in Hawaii. Driving all over the beautiful Island of Oahu. We all make choices. Be sure to make the best choices you possibly can. By the way Mr James L Greelee my family started my life in Washington Village in Asbury Park New Jersey. You should google that one and take a look at the ghetto my family and I hail from. Right next to the Salvation Army center. Bought Condo in 2006 in Waianae for $195,000 just before the demoncrats took over congress. Now with 5 years of demoncrat rule in congress and 2 1/2 years of President Obama that condo is worth less than $80,000, Thank You Demoncrats and President Obama. God Bless Herman Cain and God Bless America, the most blessed by God Nation in the world today. Here on Oahu there is a man that makes $50 to $70 dollars a day picking up glass bottles and beer cans. There is always a way to make a buck if a person will just make the decision to do something until what they want to do happens. Go gettum President Herman Cain and 1st lady Gloria..... Tommy
ReplyDeleteTommy,
ReplyDeleteGood for you for working hard. But your experience is not universal. Not everyone who works hard becomes rich (or even not poor), and not everyone who is rich worked hard for it. And I call a HUGE bull pucky on the housing collapse having anything to do with who was in charge of Congress at the time. Those dominoes were set to fall regardless. It's way more complicated than that. As for God? Well phooey on that one too. If we're so blessed, why did he let "Obama and the Demoncrats" make the economy fall?
If the pizza guy wins, I'll be stunned.
Jamie, the problem is that yes, some of the rich do get breaks and surprisingly, many are liberal Democrats.
ReplyDeleteBut most of the rich start off small, without their millions. They worked very hard, hardly had a home life and became rich through hard work. Luck? Well, if you win the lottery, I suppose. But for most of the rich, they made their own breaks.
Most rich people are not like Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy clan- they work hard for their money all their lives. This goes for athletes and entertainers as well. They worked very hard on their craft.
This is why I oppose taxing the rich even more. Most are very hard working people who earned everything they got. And if a Kennedy slips in, so be it.
I saw a quote somewhere that said something like this:
ReplyDeleteHow can a person who wants to cut a teacher's pay ALSO be against taxing the wealthy?
The percentage of people who think the wealthy should be taxed more (and not CRAZY more, just Clinton-era more) is trending in the 80-percentiles.
Yes some rich people work very hard. So do some poor and lower-middle class people. And some rich people sit on the veranda, collecting their dividends, and some poor people are shiftless and on the dole. As I said, Cain's "it's your fault if you're poor" statement was a gross generalization.
The luck I was speaking of was not lottery-luck. I mean the luck like starting one of the 10% of restaurants that survive, and not the 90% that fail.
Actually if you look at many of the RICHEST people in the world, even here, most of them are not the neo-rich hard workers you speak of.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Herman Cain made a gross over generalization. I find it insulting to say that if you basically aren't living the high life you are lazy and its your fault for being not rich. In what reality does that truly make full sense when applied to the general public. Many of the wallstreet protesters are upset over the misleading nature of banks and the random charges for handling their money. Personally my gripe is that the banks would often mislead people into believing that taking a mortgage or loan was a safe plan when compared to their income. Young couples thought that with their jobs they could afford a five bedroom house when they could only afford the three bedroom on the other side of town. People are also upset over the increasing reports of banks mishandling accounts, "losing" records, and forging papers that may or may not have actually existed.
Yet I digress on that point. What bothers me most about Cain's comments is the implication that essentially it is ok to let people suffer for their mistakes. If a person never finishes school, commits a crime at age 18, and is released at age 27 they are not that same person. I have known people who deeply regret their actions, and have attempted to find work; only to have their past actions make them undesirable to be hired regardless of whether they have actually gone on to have completed school and college.
There is also an implication that disgusts me. It is as if he is saying that the people who had regular jobs for 10 or 20+ years, and lost them are the ones in need of blame. It is as if he saying Jim the former employee of GM, and Jane the former systems analyst were at fault for their job loss; and it is there fault for being in their 40s and having no one willing to hire that age group. It is as if he is also saying that Sarah ,who went to college to study a subject she loved,was at fault for suddenly finding herself without a job; yet the skills she has are being employed by those who live in foreign lands. I'm sorry that is not an acceptable stance, Mr.Cain.
It is really easy to blame someone for being poor, when you are not poor yourself, or when you are a success story. The truth is reality is complicated and to be perfectly clear most success stories are determined luck and personality.
What YOU said, Darlarosa! The most confusing thing about Cain blaming poor and unemployed people for their own plight, is that he'll decry the unemployment rate as Obama's fault in the next sentence. Which is it?
ReplyDeleteI dunno about you Dear Editor, but Darlarosa's comment might have been the most intelligent comment ever versed on these pages.
ReplyDeleteWe're moving up to the East Side, baby.