Don't worry though, Old Man Gingrich has a plan. You see, these little ingrates just need to pick up a mop and clean toilets. To be fair, Newt isn't blaming these hobbit sized louts. Its not their fault they're freeloading an education at PS10, its their PARENTS fault, because they too are lazy good for nothing criminals who don't work 'cept for stealing from hard working 'Merican's like Newt.
Here's the problem with that. Census research that has been widely quoted around the net shows that 3 out 4 children living in poverty have at least one parent working. Half of children living in poverty have parents working full time jobs. 25% have a parent working at least a part time job. The great irony in Gingrich's theory is that if the kids go to work as janitors, they most likely will be putting their own mom or dad out of work.
Newt's assertions that kids in poor neighborhoods have no roll models is just flat out wrong. I grew up in poverty. My parents made $20000 a year between them until I was in college. They were hard working people, they weren't criminals. They taught me and my sister a work ethic that has led us both to great jobs in Social Work and Education.
In turn my sister and I work with people in poverty every day. There are some people who don't work, but for the most part the people I have dealt with are working 2 or 3 jobs to get out of poverty.
This is the fundamental flaw in Gingrich's ideas and largely the ideas of the GOP. They think that poor people choose to be poor. Nobody chooses that. They complain about the left killing the American dream, but they take no time to find out that the people living in poverty dream of getting out, dream of doing better and dream of their children in college and good jobs.
If they took the time ask a poor person if they would take a 75 K a year job, I doubt they'd say no, I'd much rather clean toilets at the school.
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