A full time job is 40 hours per week. Your mother works 17 hours a week according to you.

Money, you see, is exchanged for goods and services. In this case, services being rendered in the form of a job. If you are only working 17 hours per week, you will earn less than half of someone who is working full time.

Ergo, your mother is poor because she's only working 17 hours per week.

I'm sad to here that.  So going back to what I posted earlier -- if you're consistently poor but not disabled you're probably not bright.  Your mother is partially disabled which limits her ability to work I presume?

But at the end of the day, if you work full time, it's pretty difficult in the United States to be in poverty. Even someone flipping burgers at McDonalds makes somewhere between $7 and $9 depending on geography. That's around $16,000 per year. Hardly poverty.  But you do have to work full time. If you aren't working full time, then you will be poor.

There are a lot of jobs out there to be had.

She has been sending applications for "5 to 6 years" (length of time you said she's been in poverty)? Do you realize how that sounds?

The KEY phrase in the discussion is CHRONICALLY poor. Or CONSISTENTLY poor. Or PERSISTENTLY poor. That's a key qualifier. I know you're kidding but I did make that qualifier very clear since many people, through birth or circumstance can find themselves poor.

It does vary. I looked up some online today and there are BK jobs that range from $6.50 an hour to $8 an hour. Bear in mind that those are the ultimate entry level job. One would expect a 40 year old to have enough experience to be a supervisor at a BK at the least (now you're at $9 to $11 an hour). 

Even a full time job at $6.25 is still over $12,000 per year.  You CAN live on it. But it's not relevant anyway as we return to the question: What kind of person has a career working at a burger flipper?

If you are 40 years old and are only qualified to be a burger flipper, then what would cause that? Talk to the average poor person and it's "not their fault".

What's really ironic is that this article was in response to an article I wrote and in that article I wasn't really tlaking about intelligence. I said, rather, that most chronically poor people (key word most for the Lucas's of the world) are either disabled or just losers.  JoeKnowledge got me to accept his strawman that it is based mostly on intelligence (shame on me).

I'm not an asshole. I'm a jerk. There's a difference. There's no malice in my beliefs.

But I am not sure you'll understand the difference because you seem completely unable to render a judgment. A decision.

So poor people just got poor by bad luck in your book? No real thought as to what causes people to be poor? Oh, that's right, you can't think about that because then you might have to generalize and if you generalize, you are doing a bad thing even though generalizing is required in order to find a solution.

When I was a newly graduate of highschool I read a billboard that said that "1/3 of criminals in prison didn't have their highschool diploma". So conversely 2/3's of criminals in prison do? It's perceived logic like this that faults peoples viewpoint of the world.

That you fail to see the logic in that statement speaks volumes.  What % of people don't finish high school? The best I could find in a hurry was from way back in 1990 (and the trend is declining) where it was 6.2%.   Therefore, people who don't finish high school are much more likely to end up in prison.

But getting back to the point, if you go through life thinking no one is responsible for anything, then it's easy to show endless sympathy because nothing is anyone's fault.  I shouldn't condemn poor people because I'm wealthy right? And the reason I'm wealthy is luck right? Because with just some bad luck, I could be living in poverty and so therefore I shouldn't be hard on other poor people since I was just lucky enough not to be one of them. Isn't that your line of thinking?

How old are you Dan? I'm curious.  I mean, your logic is wayyy off here.

First off, I never said wealth or success is based on intelligence.  I have said that being stupid is an ingredient for being consistently poor. That doesn't make the reverse true.

Given that wealth of evidence that demonstrates a connection between poverty and intelligence (heck, the infamous book, The Bell Curve, explores this data considerably).

It's not an argument that the poor, on average are dumb. It's a statistical fact. If you take 1000 people living in poverty and take 1000 middle class Americans and have them take an IQ test, you'll find that the ones living in poverty are significantly less intelligent. Period.

However, being dumb is not the only ingredient to being chronically poor. You also have to be unmotivated as well.  A motivated dumb person can still do pretty well.

The problem dumb people have is that they tend to make poor decisions and have a tougher time acquring skills. 

The problem with your position is that you desync intelligence from the ability to acquire skills needed to work.  That we are all equally capable of acquring the skills necessary to succeed in our society. And that's clearly not the case. Intelligence, ambition, motivation, etc. are all key ingredients that help us determine whether we can obtain those skills.  Those who don't learn those skills end up impoverished.

(rubs forehead). 

Poor people tend to be stupid.  But that doesn' t mean that rich people have to be smart. 

BTW, as I said, I wouldn't ban you. The most I'd do is black list you from participating on my particular blog writings.

You do seem to have some fundamental logic issues. Or, at the very least, you like to make strawman arguments (i.e. if I say that the peristently poor are generally dumb that somehow also means that I think that rich people are smart which is a logical falacy, one does not imply the other).

I asked for your age, btw, because I was trying to figure out whether you were a naive young person or a foolish old person. Thank you for answering.

Well it gets back to what you said earlier:

What makes someone poor is that they lack the skills necessary to function in society. I think that part you nailed.

The problem is that THAT isn't a root cause. That is a symptom of the root cause which is a lack of intelligence.

People who lack intelligence tend to not be able to consider the consequences of their actions, to look ahead and see what they should do. 

That is how you end up with people who are on drugs or are having children they can't afford. They aren't considering the consequences of their actions.