Reply #18: Good principle, but economic apartheid makes that argument hard to sell

[AirAmFan]

Wealth and poverty tend to stay in families, because families tend to cluster in economically-segregated communities.

If you grow up in a prosperous suburb and go to excellent public schools, no matter how stupid or lazy you are it's hard for you to fall very far from living in the manner to which your parents accustomed you. Parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and neighbors are tied into rich networks of people who can GIVE you good jobs whenever you need them. Excellent health insurance and preventative care go along with living a comfortable middle-class or better existence. And it's easy to vote, because your community can afford accurate and plentiful equipment on election day.

But if you grow up in a poor community, not only is it hard to get a good education and well-paid employment, it's EASY to fall prey to rampaging zero-tolerance policing, to be branded a criminal, and to have your life prospects severly limited at a young age. ALMOST HALF of young men in Minneapolis are arrested and booked by the police EVERY YEAR. 20 percent of these young men cannot vote because they are currenty caught up in criminal cases on Election Day. And the rest of the poor community throughout the country has trouble voting because they have little flexibility at work and their cities can only afford a few pieces of used and often broken voting equipment for their precincts.

Unfortunately, the poor and the sick tend not to be "US" but rather "THEM", as long as most voters' consciousnesses are limited by their comfortable middle-class surroundings.