21768: Hess: Re: 21765: Walton: RE: 21746: erasmus: Re: 21738: anonymous: Re: 21730: ... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: DougRHess@aol.com

Bob Walton wrote:
"If neighbors join the effort, though they remain poor, they will not need to
live like pigs.  People make slums.. and can un-make them."

What are you talking about? Many people in Haiti make enormous efforts and
take great risk to improve their situation.  Plus, people do have to spend time
trying to pull together some money for living each day. Poverty, after all, is
what forced them to leave the countryside and flood the city's slums.

If people didn't work to improve their situation, it would be worse and you'd
make the same point. If they worked three times as hard, the situation would
still be horrible and you'd still say they don't do enough to not live "like
pigs." The very old and unoriginal idea that the poor are responsible for their
situation, as opposed to able to make certain efforts to change it (which
many Haitians do), is easily disproved. In the US, for instance, one just needs
to look up data on income mobility.

Doug Hess
Ph.D. Student,
School of Public Policy & Administration,
George Washington University

Home address:
2114 N St., NW Apt. 23
Washington, DC 20037
202-955-5869
(cell 202-276-4807)