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Thomas Sowell...The BRUTAL Truth Why The Poor STAY Poor · Gil I Am

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Why do the poor stay poor?
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Spare me the fairy tales spun by politicians, activists and
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: media clowns. Poverty is at a steel trap, welded shut
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: by systemic racism, predatory capitalism, or a government too tightfisted
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: to care. That's a soppy yarn for rallying votes, raking
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: in donations, or filling airtime with sanctimony. The brutal truth
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: cuts deeper and bleeds harder. Poverty, especially the generational kind
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: that change families to misery for decades, thrives because of choices,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: warped incentives, and boneheaded policies that pay people to fail
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: while punishing the virtues that lift them out. Families shatter, schools,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: crumble work, Ethic dissolves, and we've engineered a machine that
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: greases the slide into dependency, then calls it compassion. History
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and data don't just poke holes in the excuses they
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: torched them.
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  Speaker 1: Let's rip into it.
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  Speaker 2: Start with the cold, hard numbers, because they don't grobble
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  Speaker 2: to anyone's dogma. In nineteen forty seven, America's poverty rate
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: was thirty two percent. By nineteen sixty five, before Lyndon
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Johnson's Great Society turned welfare into a sprawling octopus. It
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: had shrunk to seventeen percent. For Black Americas, the plunge
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: was steeper, from over eighty seven percent in nineteen forty
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: to forty seven percent by nineteen sixty.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: This was no utopia. Jim Crow ruled the South.
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  Speaker 2: Lynching still scarred the landscape and no colored signs dotted storefronts.
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  Speaker 2: Yet people climbed why. Economic growth helped, but so did
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a culture of two parent homes eighty five percent of
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: black kids had them in nineteen fifty and a work
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  Speaker 2: ethic that didn't bend. Then the welfare floodgates opened. By
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, black power he was down to thirty two percent,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: but the drops slowed. Today it's nineteen percent, with child
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: poverty and single parent homes stuck at forty six percent. Nationally,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: povertyes hovered between thirteen and fifteen percent since the nineteen seventies.
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  Speaker 2: Progress stalled not because doors slam shut, but because we
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: handed out crutches and called them ladders. Family collapses the
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: jagged edge of this mess. In nineteen sixty, out of
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: wedlock bursts among Black Americans were twenty three percent. By
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety After Welfare's big bang, they hit sixty five percent.
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  Speaker 2: Today it's seventy percent. Whites from three percent to over
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  Speaker 2: thirty percent. Hispanics jump from fifteen percent nineteen seventy to
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: forty percent. Now this isn't a quirky social trend. It's
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  Speaker 2: policy with a paycheck aid to families with dependent children,
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  Speaker 2: launched in the nineteen thirties but supercharged in the sixties,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: tied benefits to absent fathers, making single motherhood a government
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: subsidized gig. The wreckage is brutal. Kids in single parent
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: homes are five times more likely to be poor than
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: those with two parents. Median income for single parent families
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  Speaker 2: is twenty nine thousand dollars, For two parent homes it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: ninety three thousand dollars. Employments of chasm sixty percent of
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: single mother's work versus eighty two percent of married ones.
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  Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven percent of black kids lived with
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: one parent. By twenty ten it was fifty percent. Among whites,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: has gone from two percent to twenty percent. Welfare didn't
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: patch the family, it dynamited it. Now stack that against
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: groups who've punched through poverty, ceiling Jewish immigrants washed up
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: in the eighteen nineties, dirt pool mocked as Kikes crammed
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  Speaker 2: into Lower East Side slums. By the nineteen twenties, their
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: incomes beat native born Whitesian Americans today, many fleeing war
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: or tyranny, hit a median household income of one hundred
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars, tops in the country. Japanese Americans looted and
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: locked in internment camps during World War II, rebuilt from
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  Speaker 2: ash by the nineteen seventies, their kids out earned Whites.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: The Irish gaunt and ragged from the eighteen forties famine,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: dug ditches and scrubbed floors. By nineteen hundred, they were
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  Speaker 2: clerks and cops. Nigerians landing since the seventies pulled sixty
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars a year, neck and neck with whites.
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  Speaker 2: Cubans exiled after Castro turned Miami into a powerhouse meetian
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: income now fifty five thousand dollars. Vietnamese boat people arriving
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  Speaker 2: with nothing in the eighties hit seventy thousand dollars by
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  Speaker 2: twenty ten. No silver spoons here, just two parent homes.
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  Speaker 2: Eighty five percent for Asians, ninety percent for Jews. In
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  Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, education as a religion and worked the broke
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  Speaker 2: backs before it built wealth. In nineteen hundred, Jewish kids
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  Speaker 2: attended school at ninety five percent while parents sowed rags
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  Speaker 2: till midnight. That's not systemic favor. That's grind. Racism's the
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  Speaker 2: sacred cow, and it's got Hoof's Slavery's lash, Jim Crow's boot,
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  Speaker 2: red linings inc stained this country bloody. But does it
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  Speaker 2: lock poverty in place today? Not if you squint at
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  Speaker 2: the evidence. In nineteen forty eight, young black men under
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: segregation's yoke worked at ninety one percent higher than whites today,
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  Speaker 2: with laws flipped in equity on every tongue black mail.
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  Speaker 2: Unemployment for ages twenty to twenty four is twenty percent,
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  Speaker 2: double whites ten percent. In nineteen sixty, black married couple
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  Speaker 2: families had poverty rates below twenty percent. Now, single parent
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  Speaker 2: black homes top forty percent. Culture pivoted, not melanin West
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  Speaker 2: Indian Black same roots, different soil, roll in and earn
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  Speaker 2: fifty percent more than native born Blacks with seventy five
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  Speaker 2: percent in two parent homes. Nigerians and Ghandians outpaced whites.
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  Speaker 2: Seventy percent have college degrees versus forty percent for whites.
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  Speaker 2: Racism didn't stop Harlem's dunbar high in nineteen thirty where
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  Speaker 2: poor black kids ace test white schools flunked, ninety five
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  Speaker 2: percent went to college pre handouts. Today's urban schools graduation
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  Speaker 2: seventy percent. If you're lucky. In Detroit, twenty five percent
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  Speaker 2: of kids read at grade level. In nineteen forty, Harlem's
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: illegitimacy rate was nineteen percent. By two thousand, it was
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  Speaker 2: seventy percent. Systemic is in the shackle. Self sabotage is
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: who's greasing this skit? The elites, politicians, eggheads, and paper
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  Speaker 2: pushes running a poverty empire. In nineteen sixty, nine percent
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  Speaker 2: of poor families got welfare. By nineteen seventy two, it
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  Speaker 2: was forty three percent. Today, thirty three percent of US
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  Speaker 2: households one hundred million people sucks some public teat costing
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: one point two trillion dollars Yearly poverty still fourteen percent.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Lbj's War on poverty spike spending from thirteen billion dollars
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  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five adjusted to today's monster and single
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  Speaker 2: parent homes tripled eight percent to twenty five percent.
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  Speaker 1: Nationally.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Politicians harvest votes three trillion dollars in welfare since two thousand,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: yet child poverty sixteen percent. Activist pedal sob stories for cash,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Al Sharpen's worth two million dollars, Jesse Jackson's at nine
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: million dollars, while their followers rot. Professors at fifty billion
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: dollar in down Harvard turn out structural drivel. Meanwhile, their
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: grads dodged teaching in Oakland, where sixty percent of black
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: kids drop out. In nineteen hundred, New York's Italian slums
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: had ten percent on relief. By nineteen twenty, they were
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: off it working. Today, forty percent of welfare recipients linger
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: over five years. Elites profit the poor pay. Education is
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: a gutted shell. In eighteen ninety nine, Dunbar's black students,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: sons of maids and porters, outscored white schools. Ninety five
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  Speaker 2: percent went to college because teachers wielded rulers, not excuses.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: In nineteen ten, Polish kids in Chicago's meatpacking slums taught natives.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Schools taught math, not feelings. Today, Baltimore spends sixteen thousand
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: dollars per kid in twenty three, thirteen high schools had
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: zero students proficient in math twenty three had one or
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: two in Chicago's fifty percent graduation rate turns out illiterates
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: fifteen thousand dollars per pupil, three hundred million dollars for unions.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: In eighteen sixties, Boston Irish kids learned in shacks. By
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: nineteen hundred they were bookkeepers, rigabeat riches. Welfare's the final nail.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty five, FDI's aid was a bridge. Ten
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: percent of families took it. Work was the goal. By
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, thirteen percent of Americans were on benefits, half
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: staying put. In nineteen sixty, seventy percent of poor adults work.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Now it's fifty percent. Work rules torched pre.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety six reform, seven percent of welfare moms worked.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Post reform, thirty percent did, and poverty dipped.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Italians in nineteen hundred, ninety.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Five percent of Little Lily's men had jobs, factories, docks, anything,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: no net, no whining Germans. In eighteen fifties Milwaukee brewed
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: beer and built homes. Ninety percent employed no aid. Today,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: twenty percent of poor adults don't work at all. Dependencies
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: of drug and we're the dealers. The way out's old
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  Speaker 2: is dirt. For a stable families two parents slash poverty
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  Speaker 2: by eighty percent. In nineteen fifty, eighty five percent of
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: black kids had them Poverty cratered. Restore that and the
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: tide turns. Second, education that bites Germans. In eighteen eighties,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Texas hit ninety percent literacy in one room schools. Bring
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: back standards, not therapy. Third, workover handouts Cubans in nineteen sixties,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Miami went from zero to fifty five thousand dollars in
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: twenty years. Eighty percent employed Vietnamese in eight eighties, California
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: fished and sewed seventy thousand dollars by twenty ten. Scott's
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Irish in eighteen hundreds, Appalachia farmed rocks into homesteads.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: No subsidies, just sweat.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Every climber, polls Koreans Jamaicans bet on discipline, not deliverance.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: He's the brutal truth.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Poverty festus because we've rigged a game that bank rolls
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: broken homes, cradles failure, and markets entitlement, then kneecaps what works,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: family learning, labor, Politicians dodge it, their powers tied to
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the line. Media skips it. Anger sexier than truth. Activists
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: bury it. Their gigs dry up without the helpless. But
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: history's a merciless mirror. Greeks in nineteen hundreds Chicago didn't
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: win by picketing. They cooked and saved Filipinos. In nineties,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Hawaii didn't rise on pity. They nursed and built Haitians.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: In eighties New York didn't thrive on guilt. They drove
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: cabs and studied. Facts don't kneel to tears, and neither
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  Speaker 2: should we. Poverty is not destiny. It's a habit. We
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: funded