The United Way in Dallas is advertising for Director, Fincancial Stability and Asset Building. Reading through the job description it says they are looking for a dynamic professional to develop community plan to address financial stability and asset development. For us lay people who don't have much business writing experience I see this has a program to help lower income people learn to balance budget and find ways to save.
And why do I mention this job, well it goes back to my thoughts around poverty being a much larger problem than the main stream press and politicans seem to grasp. This position is a good idea and the United Way is looking to incorporate other programs. This is a small step to a much larger problem.. Actually I wouldn't mind finding a way to be in this type of position, be a bit like me putting my money where mouth is; overall though this is a very small cure step to an enormous problem. And another of my ongoing thoughts is that there are many solutions and ideas out there to solve problems, it seems noone finds the energy to implement them. Even for this program I have already heard of similar activities by an organization called Avance (accent on e), they are giving classes about family budgets to their lower income clients, and their program comes from another organization called Anthem. The ideas are out there, you could even adapt some of Dave Ramsey's teachings. Yes his ideas are more for middle income families who have a somewhat decent income to start, but with some adjustment, his programs and teachings could be used.
Yes this is a good idea, but it is only a small piece. This is the type of program that wil get some people to come and a percentage of those people will implement the ideas and get some benefit and may over time develop a bit of a better life for themselves. This falls into the category of you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Not every family will take advantage of this program, no matter how hard you try and get them there. And again a limited audience for this program, you are targeting families that have something to work with to get started.
The real issue is the snowball effect poverty is having on our society right now. And to stop this you need to change attitudes all across our society. I could write forever on the problems that are developing right now, some examples are obvious, increase in crime rate, deteriorating neighborhoods, apathy towards education and its importance, and general sense of contributing to the society at large. These are always by products of poverty, but with it growing so rapidly under the radar there is going to become a time when we will lose control and left wondering what happened. Is this a doomsday prediction, actually no because the world always seems to move on, but life as we know it especially the life the Republican elists keep trying to say we have will disappear. And frankly I like our country and the hope of opportunity so I fear drastic change to us will occur unless we find more dramatic ways to address the war on poverty.
We cannot have our government spend our way out of poverty and I have mentioned this before, but we cannot ignore it any longer. Especially with the last financial crisis that still lingers, more people are losing real income and real wealth so the ability to develop our economy is waning quickly. So what to do, well I am trying to keep my eyes open, yes the program above is not the full answer, but would help once we find ways to change attitudes, and right now our first effort should be with the children in poverty so we can at least start to remove generational poverty from our country. Keeping one more generation from falling into this trap will be one of the biggest victories for the 21st century.
Again the ideas are out there, where do we find the sense of urgency to change attitudes, behaviors, and implement them?
You cannot believe the crap coming out of Washington DC, Fox News, and then the lack of info coming from rest of the National press and think everything is okay. If you are a real American it is time to get off your couch and drive through your city, spend some time all around your town and it won't take long to realize how much of your city is slowly being eaten up by this cancerous disease called poverty.
Another idea I have is to use tax policy to address how people behave. Think about this, greed takes away resources the rest of society can use to solve problems. So if you live in a country that lets you be successful you can choose to give back to the society as gratitude for your opportunity or you can be taxed to pay for the problems your excessive hoarding of resources generates. Being rich is not evil, what you do with what you have is the determinant factor to who you are.
More on taxation and how people can give back to help our situation to come.
Some more rambling thoughts on this rainy cool Saturday evening here in Dallas.
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