Word: underclasses
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...solution to the decline of America is not to contain the underclass--the solution is to give them opportunity. They, like ever more people in America, need hope. Give them chances and they can easily become the Harvard students of tomorrow. Hope does not come from speeches and advertising campaigns. It does not arise from rap and heavy metal music. People are more practical than that...
IHAVE A FEW suggestions, pragmatic ones, that can restore hope for the underclass, if not give every possible option to eliminate such a status. It will also prevent more of middle America from being consumed by the same tragedy...
...multicultural debate are all familiar. Immigration has reached levels higher than at any other time since the turn of the century. Majorities or near majorities of students in some big-city school systems speak English as a second language, if they speak it at all. An urban underclass seems cut off from any culture, much less mainstream American culture. What is new, however, is not the facts but our attitudes toward them. Once upon a time, Americans knew what to do with people who seemed different: obliterate the differences. Today increasing numbers of nominal Americans refuse to see America...
...real innovation of The End of Equality is that it follows time-honored civic liberalism to its logical ends. Kaus maintains that the first problem civic liberals must eliminate is the persistence of underclass. If the United States can somehow raise its poorest citizens' standard of living, other Americans won't be able to justify their flight from the public sphere. The perceived threat that the poorly-educated, crime-ridden underclass poses to the children of the wealthy and the middle class will disappear, and Americans will find their way back into public parks, public schools, public transportation...
...rehabilitate the underclass? According to The End of Equality, you give up on welfare and instead guarantee subsistence-level jobs. Sidestepping economic issues entirely, the author mentions only the benefits of increased social equality. Everyone who wants to live will have to work. Without middle-class derision of "welfare mothers" and "welfare cheats," the ubiquity of work will bind Americans together...