[supreme_sublime]

>Having problems fixing poverty? Really it's the fact that no good jobs will hire us.

There are only 3 things you need to do in order to not be permanently poor in the US -

1. Graduate High School 2. Don't have kids before you're married 3. Get a job, it doesn't have to be a "good" job.

Specifically with black America, it is very obvious that the vast amount of fatherless children is a huge problem. Single motherhood is associated (if not causally linked) with many very negative outcomes. This is a problem of culture and a lack of personal responsibility. Society does not make black Americans have kids disproportionately out of wedlock. Though it could be argued that the welfare programs enacted in the 60's have encouraged this behavior.

[sctb]

We've asked you several times to stop using Hacker News for ideological purposes and you haven't, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at [e-mail] and we believe you'll post according to the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[frgtpsswrdlame]

The Success Sequence is bunk, here's some reading on it[1] but the basic idea is that in those three points you laid out number 3 does basically all the explanatory work, number one does a little work and number 2 does almost nothing.

>This is a problem of culture and a lack of personal responsibility.

Okay then where does that culture problem come from? Does it just emerge from the ether to grab black people and wipe away their "personal responsibility"? No, that culture emerges from the same society you're desperate to exonerate. There are many factors that influence that culture and systemic poverty is a huge one. You want to fix poverty in black America? Great, then hire them.

[1] http://www.demos.org/blog/8/5/15/economic-institutions-shoul...

http://www.demos.org/blog/8/13/15/success-sequence-extremely...

http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/31/the-success-sequence-is-ab...

[neoburkian]

So the conclusion here is that failing to graduate high school and becoming a teen parent has little impact on life outcomes? I'm sure Bruenig is right when when he says that the ability to stay out of poverty is mostly determined by the ability to hold a job. But thats basically a tautology.

Did AEI shoe-horn in their pet theories into the analysis? Sure. On the other hand, does Bruenig (or anyone) believe that holding a job is casually independent from the sets of behavioral traits that lead people into failing high school and becoming teen parents?

> that culture emerges from the same society you're desperate to exonerate

Accusations of motivated reasoning cut both ways. He could say that you seem just as desperate to implicate society as he is to exonerate it.