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We will always have the poor because there will always be somebody at a starting point, but what is often overlooked is that the poor which exist today aren’t the same poor which existed yesterday. The more education one receives, the harder one works and the more that one’s family remains in tact, the more likely that a poor person will leave poverty behind.
In the United States in particular, poverty is not a permanent class status, it’s simply a stage of life, which is what makes America so exceptional. The reason being that America built an environment in which anyone could become wealthy. Wealth wasn’t determined by a person’s parents or a child’s social climate, rather the individual was afforded the incentive and opportunity to prosper because of low taxes, the rule of law and the protection of private pursuits. This is a major difference between this country and other countries, including European countries, where the tendency is that if a person is born poor he will likely remain that way for generations.
One of the threats to this, however, is the tendency of government to create policies which undermine these pillars of prosperity. For example, when the government prevents tax payer money from following a child to any school that the parent chooses, in the form of a school voucher, it creates a government run education monopoly particularly in poorer communities and this always results in lower quality schools and education, from which these children can not escape. And when children receive a poor education it limits their options and ability to break free of poverty.
President of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, Star Parker
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