21802: Hess: Re: 21780: Kathleen: Re: 21768: Hess: Re: 21765: Walton: RE: 21746: era... (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: DougRHess@aol.com

""poverty, after all, is what forced them to leave the countryside and flood
the city's slums" - actually, historical accounts of Papa Doc's bus-ing in the
peasants from the countryside to vote for him, and then not providing a means
back, accounts for a great number of the ancestors of today's slum dwellers,
into their third and fourth (multiplied) generations."

When I worked in Cite Absalon (across the road from Cite Soleil) most of the
adults I spoke to were recent migrants to the city. I think the migration to
the city of peasants in many nations due to poverty is well documented. In any
case, the busing issue is not entirely contrary to the idea that poverty from
the countryside forced, or kept, people in the slums.

"The very old and unoriginal idea that the poor are responsible for their
situation" has been replaced by many (well-off) demagogues with the idea that the
poor are somehow morally superior to those who, no matter how they started
out, are no longer poor."

I wouldn't say replaced. The idea that the poor are responsible for their
situation is still the dominant belief. (Also, the discussion isn't about moral
superiority. Regarding Haiti, there is very, very little income mobility
(upwards at least). So the issue isn't about those who "no matter how they started
out, are no longer poor.")

"A far more accurate position, brought out by studies on backgrounds of
criminals and sadists, is that the bad and the good are pretty evenly distributed
among the classes; i.e., you can't judge a person's morals by how much money or
property he or she has."

The debate was not about who is moral, but if the poor can easily just pickup
after themselves and stop living like "pigs" (using Walton's term).


Doug