They are already offered the same free "choice" as everyone else: a free public education that equips them with all the necessary tools to get a job (math, reading, writing). From there they can EARN their way towards college, apply for a few scholarships, or choose the military for the means to afford a more skilled education. The catch? They have to work hard and apply themselves. Do you honestly expect the more responsible people to pick up the tab for those with no initiative of their own to LEARN how to succeed in life? We each "choose" how successful we want to be, based on our willingness to educate and apply ourselves. You also begin to learn, when life's own experiences teaches you what opportunities are left for those who happen to turn away from that pursuit of an education.
Government in no way helps the poor by cradling and nurturing them whenever someone fails to take an active, accountable and a responsible role for their OWN life. Government is the enabler to poverty, with all their free government programs and offers (like cell phones). It's a form of entitlement reward that takes away the need to really have any personal initiative - creating a "government will simply do it" mentality.
One of our Founders sums it up best:
I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
- Ben Franklin
After all that it shouldn't be hard for you to name the societies that have solved their poverty problems by keeping the government out of the business of helping the poor.
Give me that list.
Oh I'm sure there will still be some form of poverty, it wont be gone completely. However, that shouldn't be anyone ELSE'S problem but the "individual" to take on that role of responsibility. That is the whole point behind the freedom found in the "
pursuit of happiness". Where does it state that such happiness would be guaranteed to every citizen? Are we not responsible adults capable of making our OWN choices in life, or not? We have been given free education, and we were each given free opportunity .... a clear choice of how we are to live out our lives. Where there is freedom comes individual responsibility, as well as personal consequences if such free individual opportunities are rejected. However NYcarbineer wants to lead them by the hand, when they fail to take on that role of personal responsibility.
Fair enough. If you feel Ben Franklin is incorrect, and government IS the true solution to poverty, prove it!
With all the BILLIONS of government dollars thrown at the poverty issue, it should be very easy for you to locate and provide some factual bit of evidence to support your argument. A government statistic where all their assistance programs have actually REDUCED the poverty rate in the last 20 years? That can't be too hard to ask of you, now should it??