How Come The Poor Are So Poor?

Fareed Zakaria, an opinion writer in the Washington Post this morning has an editorial about the lack of upward mobility in this country as compared with Canada and most European countries. The most important statement in the editorial was a quote that said "The ZIP code you're born in shouldn't determine your destiny, but too often it does". He also points out that, surprisingly, our welfare state spends very little on the poor - who don't vote very much - lavishing attention on the middle class". Do you agree with that? I mean, just listen to politicians grumble about the professional poor.
They're just lazy. Living on the government. The thing is, all the poor I know, which is only a few, I admit, are hard working people who just can't seem to get a break. I guess I don't know the right poor. But the point is that the poor stay poor, the middle class stay there and the rich still stay there, for the most part. So if that's true, then how come? Well, experts say it has to do with lack of good nutrition, good health care and good education. It seems we're not doing so well in these areas. See, if a rich child needs extra help, they can hire legions of tutors, if a middle class youth needs extra help, the family scrapes together the money to hire a tutor, but if a poor child need extra help, ???. Not only that, but rich folks can afford to send their children to exclusive private schools. Middle class families live in middle class towns and neighborhoods where they have the best equipped public schools and best teachers. But in the poor neighborhoods, the tax base doesn't allow for the best of anything. In fact for the most part, try as those districts do, they can only afford the bare minimum. The problem with that is that you wind up with a welfare state or a large criminal element or more likely, both. That is expensive for the rest of society. It would be cheaper in the long run, to provide the excellence in all categories that the rest of society has become accustomed to. Now I haven't joked around in this entry, but that's because it ain't very funny.