Comparing Rich with Poor: Moral Bankruptcy

[SAYIT]

It all comes down to OPPORTUNITY. Hard work is great. But without opportunity, it is not going to lift a family out of poverty.

If hard work created opportunity........we'd have very few poor people in this nation. This is a hard working nation.

Last I looked, everybody had the exact same "opportunity" to create Facebook, invent the light-bulb, start their own business, or write a book that sells a million copies.. Failure to do so is not a lack of opportunity, economic status, or anything else.

Yeah, right. It's just a coincidence that Gates came from an upper middleclass family. Really, he's a rags to riches story. They all are.

No, we're not.

 

[SAYIT]

The accurate picture can be gleaned from tracking people over their "working" lives. Most people have been in the infamous "bottom quintile" at some point, and have worked their way up to the middle or higher. I'm speaking now of people who have what used to be called, "middle-class values," and believe in education, hard work, and personal responsibility. The examples are countless.

But we also have, as DPMoynihan pointed out, "The Underclass," which scorns middle-class values, looks to government and charity for its needs, and sees wealth as something to be resented rather than aspired to.

Them folks ain't goin' nowhere, are they?

Not unless the rest of us drive them.

 

[Samson]

Except that Sowell didn't say anything remotely like that did he. You didn't read his essay did you.

Perhaps YOU didn't read the essay:

These young people do not yet have enough experience to know that posh surroundings are neither necessary nor sufficient for a good education. Is anyone foolish enough to think that making poor kids feel disheartened is doing them a favor?

And the outrage continues as he cherry picks:

When the low-income youngsters visited the posh private school, "they were just overwhelmed" by it, according to the New York Times. "One kid ran crying off campus." Apparently others felt "so disheartened about their own circumstances."

I'm usually not impressed or influenced by the opinion of writers for the New York Times.
Color me cynical.

[MENTION=16165]alan1[/MENTION]

Sowell and [MENTION=6847]Foxfyre[/MENTION] follow them closely when NYT quotes can be cherry-picked to support their own POV's.