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Is Poverty a 'State Of Mind'?

Debate Information

Housing Secretary Ben Carson Says Poverty Is A 'State Of Mind'

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/25/530068988/ben-carson-says-poverty-is-a-state-of-mind

Pro:
Carson — who himself grew up in poverty to become a widely acclaimed neurosurgeon — said people with the "right mind set" can have everything taken away from them, and they'll pull themselves up. He believes the converse is true as well. "You take somebody with the wrong mind-set, you can give them everything in the world (and) they'll work their way right back down to the bottom," Carson said.

Con:
Anti-poverty advocates say both Carson  is fundamentally wrong, that most low-income people would work if they could. And many of them already do. They just don't make enough to live on.


therepnorthsouthkoreamelefale5
  1. Live Poll

    Is Poverty a 'State Of Mind'?

    17 votes
    1. Yes - Carson is right
      41.18%
    2. No - anti poverty advocates are right
      58.82%
Live Long and Prosper



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    Arguments


  • thereptherep 61 Pts   -  
    Carson is right and made a very good comment on the topic of this.
  • agsragsr 881 Pts   -  
    @therep,I think this one is an interesting debate.  Another way to look at it is that we are cutting funding towards the poor and trying to convince them that it is all in their head.  The fact is both Trump and Carson are very well financially and such a message will not resonate well with those whose funding is cut.  I understand the need for sugac coding, but I also think that poverty is objective based on financial criteria.
    AlofRI
    Live Long and Prosper
  • ale5ale5 263 Pts   -  
    I love that a rich person is telling the poor that they are not really poor and just imagining it.  Really?
    AlofRI
    It's kind of fun to do the impossible
    - Walt Disney
  • islander507islander507 194 Pts   -  
    @ale5, I don't think he is telling them they are imagining it, but telling them it is up to them to do something about it and get out of poverty.  Everyone needs to take accountability for their own future, government shouldn't be expected to make everyone successful if they are not even trying to get education or a job,
  • northsouthkoreanorthsouthkorea 221 Pts   -  
    Yes, it's all mental or a large portion.
  • SuperSith89SuperSith89 170 Pts   -  
    Being over in Tanzania for a missions trip, I saw poverty first hand.  I have also seen poverty here.  What was the difference?  They were happy with what they had over there, and believe me, it was very little.  I mean really, they were extremely happy and shared what little they had.  

    We were doing a craft with the kids that involved paint.  They had let their stuff dry for a bit and I got a chance to get a wipe out to clean off my hands.  Before I could, some of the people in the village came over and gave us water to clean up with.  This water is only available to them once a week at a pump near their village.  The military only allows that water, though a pipe runs right through the village, and they just have to fill up as much as they can along with many other villages.  Yet they used it for us to clean up.  

    Over here, you have many people who do not work and don't have an education demanding that McDonald's pay them as if it was a job meant to provide for a family and then demands free stuff.  Where does that free stuff come from?  We who work 40 hours a week and then have 1/4 of our income go to them.  I know, there are people who aren't like that, but the majority are pretty whiny.  

    Yes, it is a state of mind.  You can be in poverty and live a happy life.  
    melefagsrVaulk
  • melefmelef 69 Pts   -  
    @SuperSith89 , great story! It's amazing that you went on a mission trip and I'm sure you made a great impact on the world. Thank you for that. I used to think that it wasn't a state of mind, but after hearing your side, I believe that it is. Thank you for persuading me.
  • agsragsr 881 Pts   -  
    @SuperSith89, great point. It is also great to see the work you are doing.  
    One big difference is sense of entitlement. They never had more and didn't see their neighbors have more.  
    Live Long and Prosper
  • SuperSith89SuperSith89 170 Pts   -  
    @agsr I mean they did.  The army camp wasn't far away and they got all the water they could ever want.  The pipe literally ran under the village and you could see it in a ditch close to them.  They also lived near the city which had some rich folks there.  Some of them may have chosen that life, but otherwise they knew.  
    WhyTrump
  • WhyTrumpWhyTrump 234 Pts   -  
    @SuperSith89, that is an amazing point.  You get my "persuaded"
    WhyTrump - a good question
  • ale5ale5 263 Pts   -  
    @SuperSith89, you are making a great argument and I also agree that it is a state of mind. 
    I dont agree however about cutting funding for underprivileged.
    It's kind of fun to do the impossible
    - Walt Disney
  • SuperSith89SuperSith89 170 Pts   -  
    @ale5 I do think many do need it, especially those disabled who cannot work, but the majority have taken advantage of it.  Maybe instead we can put our money into organizations like the Red cross who can provide more hands on help for those who need it.  Doing so would help the middle class, which is under attack by the government babying people, and it would show who can't work and those who do but expect everything to be given to them.  
  • agsragsr 881 Pts   -  
    Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they’re light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries.

    Source: book, abudance: the future is better than you think
    SuperSith89
    Live Long and Prosper
  • VaulkVaulk 813 Pts   -  
    I agree with @SuperSith89 , poverty is mostly a state of mind. 

    Look at Benjamin Franklin - He was 15th of 17 Children, his Father and sole breadwinner was a candlemaker (Poverty class skill).  Ben had 2 years of formal schooling.
    How about Ralph Reuben Lifshitz, his parents were immigrants from Belarus, Father was a house painter, Ralph worked after school every day as a stock-boy to help his family make ends meet.  He shared a single bedroom with his Mother, Father and 2 brothers, he is now known as Ralph Lauren and is the 76th richest man in American.
    Or maybe Frederick Douglas, born into Slavery in the U.S., taught English by his Master's wife, sold to a cruel slave owner after being caught practicing the alphabet, risked his life by escaping to Massachusetts where he became an outspoken abolitionist, spectacular orator, best-selling author and newspaper publisher.  After the Civil War he became president of the Freeman's Bank Savings, Marshall of DC, Minister and Consul-general to the Republic of Haiti.  During the 1888 Republican convention he was the first Black Man to receive a vote to be nominated for Presidency.

    The list goes on and on.  It would actually seem that people who have it harder...somehow manage to produce the most brilliant minds in History.  It's almost as if strife and hardship breeds the need for ingenuity, creativity, willpower and the drive to persist no matter the odds.  I honestly think in today's society...people are unhappy with themselves because they have too much.  I spent over 4 years in Iraq watching Children play in trash heaps...4 little boys outside our compound used to play in a scrapped tub that sat at the top of a pile of scrap metal...pretending to sail a ship.  They were the happiest little street urchins you've ever seen.  People worked from dawn until dusk to provide for their family...which usually consisted of 3 generations all in one house.  They slept on their roof in the summer because it was too hot to sleep inside, dealt with little to no electricity and had no running water in their homes.  But they were all truly happy...happy to just be alive and to spend time with those that were close to them.
    "If there's no such thing as a question then what kind of questions do people ask"?

    "There's going to be a special place in Hell for people who spread lies through the veil of logical fallacies disguised as rational argument".

    "Oh, you don't like my sarcasm?  Well I don't much appreciate your stup!d".


  • SuperSith89SuperSith89 170 Pts   -  
    I'll admit this.  Being poor exists, but poverty is another thing entirely.  Just in case someone thought I was saying all poor people aren't really poor.  
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    As someone who has seen the both ends first-hand - extreme poverty and extreme wealth (for the latter, I have never been extremely wealthy myself, but my family has several multi-millionaire friends, and I have seen how they live and think from the inside) - I will say that the answer is... complicated.

    There is no denying that rich people tend to have a very pragmatic and optimistic mindset. Talk to any self-made millionaire - they are all people of action, they constantly look for opportunities to improve their situation, they rarely blame anyone for their issues and just look for the best course of actions at the moment. They also raise their kids similarly: they teach them the concepts of individual responsibility and pragmatism, and it is not rare for the children of self-made millionaires to try their own luck in enterpreneurship as early as in mid-teen years.

    The poor people, in contrary, tend to have a very pessimistic and self-defeating attitude. They believe that they are destined to be poor, they expect other people to drag them out of their misery, and they rarely do much to improve their situation, rarely partake in self-education in order to gain marketable skills.

    HOWEVER... These are mere trends, but they hardly exhaust the subject. There are examples, even if not very common, of people who had the right mindset and worked hard to pull themselves out of poverty, never getting anywhere. Similarly, there are self-made rich people who just got lucky at some point, who happened to be at the right place at the right moment, who met just the right people in just the right circumstances. I would say that my parents exemplify the former (they have a billionaire's mentality of self-reliance and individual responsibility, but their skills and their ability to sell them are just not quite there), and most of the Russian oligarchs exemplify the latter.

    ---

    Idealism is good and all, but such a smart person as Ben Carson surely realizes that life is more complicated than the binary "Your wealth = your state of mind". That said, I know one thing for certain: if you do not want to play a lottery and want to have a serious chance at becoming wealthy and successful - then you do have to employ the right mindset, the mindset directed at your personal success. This mindset is not nearly as hard to obtain as it might seem, and there are countless psychological books with easy and practical methods that can get you where you want to be mentally in just a few months, as long as you are serious about it.

    So, I would conclude that Ben Carson's statement is very practical and philosophically reasonable, even if not entirely correct in the absolute sense.
    Polaris95
  • TTKDBTTKDB 267 Pts   -  
    @agsr:

    If an individual commits a crime, and gets into trouble because of the crime that they committed, because before they committed the crime, they had an opportunity to get a job and or go to work and create a living for themselves, but balked at the working opportunity to go and commit a crime instead? 

    The same situation with poverty, if an individual has the opportunity to work themselves out of a poverty situation, why not work to do just that? 

    To examples of how some are making and working to better their lives, the TV shows, "Funderdome" with Steve Harvey, and "Shark Tank" where you get to see an individaul or groups of individuals who are entrepreneurs/ inventors, who are working on creating a better life for themselves and their families. 

    So if there are thousands if not millions of people who are working at bettering their lives, I guess these individuals could choose one of two mindsets to fuel their lives with, fuel their lives and mindsets with continued poverty and live with the poverty, or fuel their lives with working and work to make something of themselves by continuing that working mindset? 




  • YeshuaBoughtYeshuaBought 669 Pts   -  
    How very Christian of Him. He has not read Matthew 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the [c]holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did itto one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ 41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 “Then they also will answer [d]Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”



  • Polaris95Polaris95 147 Pts   -  
    @YeshuaBought

    Bible verses? Really? I might as well just add some out-of-context Harry Potter paragraph in here, and it would make just as much sense.
  • YeshuaBoughtYeshuaBought 669 Pts   -  
    @Polaris95 Blocked.
  • cheesycheesecheesycheese 79 Pts   -  
    TTKDB said:
    @agsr:

    If an individual commits a crime, and gets into trouble because of the crime that they committed, because before they committed the crime, they had an opportunity to get a job and or go to work and create a living for themselves, but balked at the working opportunity to go and commit a crime instead? 

    The same situation with poverty, if an individual has the opportunity to work themselves out of a poverty situation, why not work to do just that? 

    To examples of how some are making and working to better their lives, the TV shows, "Funderdome" with Steve Harvey, and "Shark Tank" where you get to see an individaul or groups of individuals who are entrepreneurs/ inventors, who are working on creating a better life for themselves and their families. 

    So if there are thousands if not millions of people who are working at bettering their lives, I guess these individuals could choose one of two mindsets to fuel their lives with, fuel their lives and mindsets with continued poverty and live with the poverty, or fuel their lives with working and work to make something of themselves by continuing that working mindset? 




    you don't understand you're pretending that people in poverty just need to work harder but the truth is that the world is uneven rich parents can send their children to good schools whine poor parents usually can't
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