[tmg19103]

Some complain that a "culture of poverty" with its ensuing violence that you see in parts of Philly has encouraged a sense of dependency on government in the form of a welfare state, and to an extent I agree. Of course, in recent months, this same bureaucracy - the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - has generally ignored the struggles of middle class homeowners, but they jumped right into action, inclusive of printing hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air, to save multi-millionaire Wall Street bankers from their own disastrous bets, allowing them to keep their yachts, lear jets and second and third homes. When Bear Stearns approached bankruptcy, the Feds orchestrated JPMorgan's acquisition of it. Here's what mega-rich Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz told his already wealthy employees last month after his firm, one of the largest investment banks in the country, almost went under due to its own bad business decisions: "We here are a collective victim of violence". Yup, just another case of the Man keeping the Man down.

Part of the reason we don't talk much about poverty is that no one really knows what to do about it. The left wrongly wants to blame poverty on evil Republicans and to advocate more redistribution of wealth and spending on social programs. The right, meanwhile, tends to blame bloated welfare programs for keeping the poor trapped in their condition, as well as the culture of poverty with its deeply entrenched social problems—which, all too often, translates into blaming the poor themselves. After Katrina some right wing pundits referred to the New Orleans poor as ''sheep" and ''parasites."

Most decent people, whatever their politics, should distance themselves from such crap. Some people are poor because of bad luck or catastrophic illness, but chronic, multigenerational poverty that goes back to the days of slavery is another matter that I don't think can be easily explained.

It's a touchy subject. One can easily come across as patronizing and condescending, as preaching to the poor from one's middle or upper class perch—or, worse yet, as bashing the poor for their lack of good character. I personally don't think that good cultural habits are a matter of inherent virtue. Most of us, if born into bad circumstances of a culture of poverty in West Philly, would have quite likely ended up trapped in the same self-defeating, self-destructive, violent patterns.

Spending more money won't cure poverty, and reforming culture is something that's easier said than done. On the public policy standpoint we can look to improve the schools and keep criminals locked up while having more parole officers to keep ex-cons in line. I am personally not for welfare handouts, but I do think there needs to be more opportunity in these impoverished areas so youngsters can see a future so they don't go out and commit crimes or get pregnant at such young ages. As it is now, they see no hope for their futures so they just don't care. If anyone can change the culture of poverty, it's community activists working in the trenches. And such change is likely to take a long time, if get accomplished at all.

No easy answers, but easy to put your foot in your mouth on this issue. I happen to have an interesting perspective on this. A white guy who lived at 40th and Lancaster in the heart of the West Philly ghetto for two years (rent was right as I paid my way) when he went to the Wharton School. Many of those trapped in the ghetto I met were good people who worked hard to barely get by. Those who were on the wrong path I could not really blame though they were and are responsible for their actions. On the other hand, I have zero patience for a rich kid who went to Wharton who destroys the middle class buy keeping their wages down so he can now get paid 362 times his average worker with him as CEO. There is a distortion here at both the top and bottom, and one can argue that those at the top, by only helping themselves, are destroying the middle class while perpetuating the culture of poverty at the bottom as they themselves have no social conscience.