 We're told we can get ahead through hard work But how do you do that when your wages are too low to save too low to afford college or trade school? Too low to do anything but barely pay the bills. Damn seems like getting out of poverty is hard But wait, what's this? Three simple rules poor teens should follow to join the middle class. Getting out of poverty must be super easy Barely an inconvenience. So what are these rules? One, finish high school, two, get a full-time job Three, don't have kids unless you're married and at least 21. That's all it takes. According to the Brookings Institute Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules Only about 2% are in poverty and nearly 75% have joined the middle class. Ever since this article came out This three rules to escape poverty thing has become a huge talking point for people who want to sell you the idea That poverty is easy to overcome. So if you're poor it must be your own fault. Is capitalism causing poverty? No, it's the poor who are wrong. You don't want to be permanently poor in America It's very very easy. You only have to do three things. You only have to do three simple things You only have to do three things to not end up in permanent poverty. That's it You do those things you will not be permanently poor in the United States of America The reason for poverty is because people do not follow these rules. Mm-hmm. We'll see about that. Finish high school Get a full-time job. Wait to get married to have kids Look at the language. It says that 75% have joined the middle class The word joined suggests upward mobility that people in poverty moved up and became middle class But that's not what the research says It says that of American adults following these rules nearly 75% are at least middle class But it says nothing about where they started. I repeat it says nothing about where they started So to say that 75% of people following these rules have joined the middle class is completely inaccurate misleading bullshit According to the Brookings Institute 75% of Americans who have followed these three simple rules and started off in the lowest quintile in America's economy have moved into the middle class Now that that's cleared up we should also take a closer look at the data in this study Here's a chart summarizing the research So I feel like it's easy to read this chart wrong when you look at it You're like okay for poor people under the column for following all three rules It says 2% and under the column for following none of the rules. It says 76% Does that mean that only 2% of poor people follow all three rules and that 76% of poor people follow none of them. No, that's not what it's saying To make things clear you have to look at the bottom row where it says total So the population as a whole when you look at that row You see that only a tiny portion of people just 1.4 percent of the population follow none of the rules So it's not saying that 76% of poor people follow none of the rules It's saying that of the 1.4 percent of the population following none of the rules 76% of that 1.4 percent are poor and likewise of the 64.8 percent of the population that follow all three rules two percent are poor when you do the math on this You see that there are actually more poor people who follow all three of the rules than there are poor people who follow none of them This chart has the same data But it's been recalculated to reflect what percent of people in each income bracket are following the rules among poor people 9.3 percent of them follow none of the rules and 11.4 percent of them follow all three That's more than 4 million people who these rules are not working for more than 4 million who did all the right things But are still poor another thing to consider is that this research used data from 2007 just before the great big crash of the great recession if they had to use data from during the recession the percent of people who Follow these rules, but still live in poverty would have been even higher And that's just a perfect example of how people can be pushed into poverty by forces outside of their control We do have to admit that following these three rules does give you a better chance of escaping poverty But will everyone who tries to follow these rules be able to to what extent are they within your control like having a full-time job? There are millions of people who want a full-time job are looking for a full-time job But they can't find one maybe you live in a city like Flint That's in a constant economic depression and you can't afford to move to where there's jobs What if you have a disability that prevents you from working or makes employers not want to hire you? What if you're a single parent maybe you can't work full-time because you need to be at home with your kids But that brings us to the next rule. Don't have kids unless you're married seems pretty easy Just don't put that thing in that place without that thing on it. Well, okay, but what if you're too poor to afford birth control? What if your birth control fails and you can't afford an abortion? What if somebody rapes you? What if you were married before you had kids? But then your spouse dies or they divorce you or what if you want a divorce and you're supposed to cheat it on you? Or they abuse you or they abuse the kids or they just plain make you miserable or what if like me? You have an obnoxious personality and nobody wants to marry you in the first place. I Think we should live in a world where people are free to have any family arrangement They choose without being punished by poverty the last rule is finishing high school and for some people That's a big challenge like if you go to a shady school where it's just normal to drop out and the classes are So chaotic that it's like impossible to learn or if you have to move a lot like in the middle of a semester And so you don't get your credits or if you have to get a job to help pay the bills and don't have time for your studies Or if your school's like really violent and you're scared to go or if you're getting bullied none of these things make it Impossible to graduate, but these are some big serious obstacles three simple rules that all depends Some will find them simple others will find them difficult and some will find them impossible or damn you're it But okay, let's say you managed to follow all three rules and state of poverty But at any moment something could go wrong and now into poverty you fall just one of countless examples of this is Vicki Shannon Allen an Amazon warehouse worker who injured her back her health care costs went up and on many days Her injury makes it impossible to work as a result She's now homeless and living in her car. That's right here. This is my home See that This is my home now Most of us are just one small disaster away from being homeless one stroke of bad luck away from being poor Following a set of rules cannot protect us Okay, now let's imagine that somehow every single poor person managed to follow all three rules with that cure poverty Nope, how do I know because of the Brookings Institute? Yes, the very same Brookings Institute that did the three rules research in the first place by their own analysis If all poor families followed these three rules plus an extra fourth rule of having only two kids per family America's poverty rate would be three point seven percent. That's over 12 million poor people And actually it would be even more the Brookings Institute as underestimating and they admit it in their own words If work-related expenses were subtracted from income the effects of poverty reduction would be somewhat less dramatic For more details see a hand up for the bottom third. Well, guess what? I took them up on that suggestion in their own research They admit that if everyone had a full-time job then a lot of families would you know They'd have to hire child care and that costs thousands of dollars per year Even though you're making extra money from working more you're also losing some of that money from paying for child care They're they'd actually didn't factor that in to that three point seven percent of people would still be poor Conclusion they just had a little bracketed off sentencing. Oh by the way It would probably be higher because of these extra expenses, but you know, they didn't bother to factor that in so Who knows how much higher the poverty rate would actually be So far a discussion of poverty has been sticking to the official federal poverty line But this measure of poverty is not really accurate because it doesn't account for the local cost of living Let's say you make 14,000 a year That's above the poverty line for a single person But in many cities rent is so high that even a small basement apartment is like 1250 a month Which is 15,000 a year. You're not even able to afford rent, but hey Officially you're not poor Congratulations, you've made it To a homeless shelter the Economic Policy Institute did research on the cost of living in 615 cities and regions across the United States And what did they discover for a two-parent two-child family an adequate but modest standard of living costs anywhere from about 48,000 to 94,000 dollars depending on what city you live in but in the year This research was done the federal poverty line for families this size was twenty three thousand two hundred and eighty three dollars That means you can technically not be poor But to live comfortably and adequately meet your needs would require anything from two to four times more money Some people in the lower middle class Actually have it worse than some people in poverty because they're just at that point where they have too much money to Qualify for welfare or Medicaid but not enough money to afford the things they need They skip meals to save money so they can afford health insurance or they can't afford health insurance And so they endanger their health and their life because they can't afford necessary medical treatment They never see their friends because they can't afford to go out with them to lunch or movies or whatever And so they become isolated lonely forgotten It's a shitty life if you're unable to afford the basics or can only do so by making big sacrifices That should be counted as poverty if we measured poverty in this much more rational way How many more people who follow the rules would qualify? So just following these three rules enable you to escape poverty Let's review the statistic that 75% of those who follow these rules have joined the middle class is not true Also, there are more than four million Americans who follow the rules But are still poor some people are unable to follow the rules Even if you follow the rules the stroke of bad luck can push you into poverty Even if every American followed the rules there still be an estimated 12 million poor people But 12 million is an underestimate and on top of all that millions who are not poor officially are poor in practical terms So to Ben Shapiro and others like him, please stop using this article to convince people that we can end poverty Just by poor people making different choices. It's not that simple Hello, the reason I do YouTube is because I want to make the world a better place I know that's not unique But I just hate how much suffering there is and I want a world where everyone's life can be good I started my YouTube channel last year, but before that I actually spent many years writing scripts for videos I have rough drafts for literally like a hundred videos on capitalism alternatives to capitalism revolution building revolution and organizing the videos I've been making and will continue to make for a while are not these videos Before I make these videos I want my channel to grow and subscribers and views because I want these videos to reach beyond the leftist bubble So to do this I need your help If you can please tell people about my YouTube channel share my videos online And if you haven't already subscribe and click the bell to get all notifications liking and commenting help, too Thank you so much for your help and from deep within my heart. 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