If one is serious about helping people succeed, then we have to get
serious about undoing what has caused so many problems.

I'm not certain "undoing" is the right approach... "change", certainly. Maybe semantics, but I think there's an important difference.

Welfare policies have destroyed the black family.

While I would agree that welfare policies have been harmful, I only think its one of several problems that have harmed socio-economically disadvantaged people in America, including poor whites.

It wasn't slavery or Jim Crow.

Slavery had a tremendous impact. So did antebellum-to-civil-rights-era Jim Crow.

You have a welfare state bureaucracy, which has replaced the family as the primary means of support in a lot of minority homes.

Agreed... but again just one of several factors.

Stop treating people like victims.

We effectively handicap people when we do for them what they could do for themselves... yes. But don't ignore the fact that some people are in fact victims.

They need self respect that comes from a good family and a good job.

Totally agree people need self-respect that comes from a good family and a good job. I don't know how you fix the family without the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't know what government policy or group of policies can repair the family. But I do know we can definitely do something about jobs.

Specifically regarding jobs, when the government stood by and watched greedy corporate America move nearly all our manufacturing jobs outside our borders it was a terrible blow -- maybe even a KO -- to middle-to-low-income America. Really as harmful as almost anything else we've done wrong. The lack of decent-wage vocational-to-unskilled labor jobs in this country has been incredibly harmful to us as a nation. It effects everything.

To all the prognosticators who tried to sell America on the idea that "it'll be okay, your kids just need to go to college and everybody will be fine... besides technology will save us" -- you were full of crap. Today in America the average level of education has increased while mean income as decreased. If you come from a broken family, don't have priveledge, it is incredibly difficult to find meaningful, honest work and get by.

It's hard for some people to wrap their heads around this, but sometimes ambition and hard-work aren't enough in America anymore... and that is perhaps one of the biggest tragedies of all.

So the next thing you do is boot out all the corrupt democrats that run big cities and their pals on the school boards. They are responsible for the poor public schools.

I couldn't agree more. If you look at the cities with the biggest socio-economic problems in this country, the majority (by far I think) are run by democrats. Maybe causality can't be proved, but it's pretty telling.

I hate our education system, teachers unions, school boards, and the way most school districts in America are so ineptly run. It's crazy we have allowed it to continue. Pure insanity.

People succeed when they have self-respect, training, and opportunity IMO.

It's not as much a guarantee for success as you might think, but I agree.

It is hard for the government to give these things to people but the government has certainly taken them away from minorities over the last 50 years. So stop doing so much damage is where I would start. Can we replace the bums that run these cities with good politicians? Probably not, but I have identified for you major sources of the problems. Not sure that we can do a lot to fix the problem to be honest.

I generally agree, we don't want a welfare state.

But I want to caution you about one thing. Somehow the right has bought into the idea that "...government shouldn't be responsible for the poor, the needy, disabled, etc., this is all better handled by private charities and organizations. Don't tax honest, hardworking people in order to take care of the lazy bums on welfare."

This is only partially true. Partially true enough that people buy into the thinking, but wrong enough that in practice it just doesn't get it done.

The truth is that private organizations, charities, the good-will of those who "have" are effective at doing many things, but they leave far too many legitimate gaps.

There are people with legitimate, real needs that fall through the cracks.... and I happen to believe the government can and should be looking out for these folks... there need to be safety nets. We certainly don't need a welfare state, but it's just naive to believe safety nets are not needed.