I had to leave it for awhile because the sublime ignorance of the
original statement shocked and distressed me.
I would like to think that I've earned enough credit on this list so
that if you think something I've said is ignorant, you might check with
me and see if you've misunderstood me. I thought it was clear from the
context--money as a criterion for acceptance into an intentional
community--that by "skills and experience" I was referring to
marketable skills (exchangeable for money, right?) such as carpentry,
web design, office management, something that would help an intentional
community survive in an otherwise unfriendly culture. If from my
writing the word "skill" (check your dictionary) anyone leapt to the
conclusion that I meant a person's ability to learn, or their "human
warmth," and then leapt to yet another conclusion that I was
denigrating the poor and concluded I was displaying bigotry, then you
might want to reassess your logic, and ask why you're making such
judgments.
Here's how uncontroversial my statement is: If I'd said, "often, people
who have no marketable skills or experience have no money," it would be
trivial and obvious. And unless my understanding of grammar and logic
has failed me, this particular correlation goes both ways. There must
therefore be a (sadly, large) group of people with no money who have no
marketable skills. Or try this one: people with money often have
marketable skills. Is that offensive? Or is it only the poor who are
off-limits?
So if we then use the relevant set of Gaiden's substitutions, such as
"single mothers without money often lack marketable skills," we don't
have a bigoted statement. We have a simple, ugly truth. People
marginalized by our culture often don't get a lot of job training.
(Which is my original statement in different words. Is it offensive?)
Or is it that you don't think my statement is true? Okay, let's plod
through the evidence. There are, in my country (US), about 55 million
people living below the poverty line. These people fall principally
into two categories: the voluntary, and the involuntary poor. Many of
the people on this list, like me, and perhaps people like the noble
permaculture aid worker Gaiden mentions, are voluntary poor: from
financially secure, privileged backgrounds, with marketable skills or
the ability to get them, who have chosen to be low-income, and work in
service or aid positions if they "work" traditionally at all. In an an
emergency most of this group could get a well-paying job or the
schooling to get one, or borrow money from a relative, and have any
number of options not open to the involuntarily poor. We all hang out a
lot with that group; we all run into lots of "poor" people from that
group with outstanding skills, as Dwayne and Gaiden have said. But this
is a microscopic minority of low-income people.
For the vast majority--the involuntary poor--the proximate cause of
their poverty is often a lack of marketable skills or work experience.
The ultimate cause of that poverty, of course, is racism or other forms
of social injustice that have prevented them from getting a decent
education or training (you know ultimate and proximate cause, right?).
None of that has any bearing on their worth as human beings, obviously.
And these people can't decide, like Dwayne, "well, it's time to get a
job now." They probably have job applications at Wal-Mart and
McDonald's and every other corporation that preys on the vast army of
unskilled labor. And let's not forget the several million who have
simply given up looking for work (or lost the "willingness to
persevere" I referred to). There are, of course, other causes of
involuntary poverty: direct job discrimination, old age, etc. But if
you do any digging, you'll see that the principal direct cause of
involuntary poverty is the inability to gain decent employment because
of lack of marketable skill. Is that really a surprise? Or is it just
bigotry to point it out?
Other posts have referred to the reluctance of Pc people to confront
controversial subjects. This thread is a good example of why that
happens: If someone strays outside of politically correct conventions,
there's a collective gasp, cries of ignorance and bigotry, and off-list
whispering about how offensive that person is, instead of anything
resembling a genuine attempt, as Jamie kindly suggests, to comprehend
that person's meaning. If you've had a violently emotional reaction to
my statement, and leapt to the conclusion that I think people without
cash are useless human beings, it says to me you've got a lot of
baggage around the unpleasant truth of involuntary poverty. And for us,
the voluntary poor, to compare our state to that of the involuntary
poor is the highest and most indecent form of hypocrisy.
If anyone cares to truly grasp my meaning, what prompted my original
post was some thoughts I had about of a subset of the privileged
voluntary poor (my experience is that the involuntary poor rarely apply
for positions at intentional communities). I've observed that
intentional communities often get applications from young people fresh
out of college with an undergraduate degree in, say, whole systems
design or biology, who also have no savings and no skills of use to
that community other than a strong back and a willing heart. And it is
often difficult for a community to find a useful role for people like
this. And often, by the time these same folks have saved up a little
cash, they have also gained some useful skills. These observations led
me to the more general observation that "often, people without money .
. ." since I observed a larger, obvious correlation between marketable
skills and financial position.