His advice is valid/good but not applicable to all in the same fashion Finish high school? But 60% of your neighbourhood didn't, why should you? Sure its easy in white suburbia, where biggest problem you have is not being the popular kid..
Neither of your parents have any money or you might not even have parents, and food is scarce. What do you, work for minimum wage to barely eat? Hope that one day when you're 30 you might be able to move with your hard-earned and saved capital? Odds are you'll still be living in the same shithole and be robbed of your grocery shopping from a crackhead or some stickup kids as a regular occurence
Stay away from drugs? Easy to say, but if your life is full of shit, and the majority of your friends do drugs, some of them being drugdealers, add in peer pressure, then the situation suddenly doesn't look as rosy.
No children before getting married sounds like good advice, but getting a girl pregnant can happen to anyone, to use myself as an example, I used to be very lazy with using condoms, shit happens, in the ghetto some women use getting a kid as a way to get a provider for themselves.
In the end, no matter how you put it, how does the biggest economy in the world offer inferior healthcare to Cuba?
Just to get this out of the way quickly -- Nobody goes to Cuba if they want the best health care. They come to the US. Forget the stats that come out of a government controlled Communist society.
As far as your arguments, this is where personal responsibility comes into play. 60% don't finish high school. So what? You're going to be part of the 40%. It doesn't take much effort to finish high school. Just some effort. Taking some responsibility for your life.
I had a miserable childhood. With a family of nine there was never any food in the house and I constantly had welts from the belt that was liberally used in my time when the government didn't arrest you for slapping your child let alone beating them, sometimes unconscious, like they do now. The thought of using drugs to help me cope was never even a thought. I got a punching bag and used it every night. Every damn night. And I grew up in a culture where pot is more common with the young folks than smoking cigs. Still is today.
When I moved to Cali while still a teen and I lived in a ghetto (Crip territory) and was the only white person (well, non Black) in my neighborhood. I had no preconceptions about inner city Blacks as I had zero experience with them growing up and just looked at them as I did Samoans, Tongans, and Hawaiians. My opinion on that has changed radically. I know crime first hand and saw a city burn as the cops fled. Still, I worked three jobs, 7 days a week, and put myself through college. Not a cent from my parents and all student loans paid.
And getting a girl pregnant does not happen to everyone. I was never "lazy" about using a condom and yes some women get pregnant knowing that someone else will be paying for it. That's one of the things republicans want to end. In Cali they had a bill that you get the first one free, all others is on your dime. When you subsidize a certain behavior you will get more of that behavior.
Nothing in life is a sure thing. You can always make excuses as to why you have to use drugs, can't graduate high school, or you get a girl pregnant. But at some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions. These five rules are not unrealistic, unachievable goals. You have to decide for yourself if you want to be a loser your whole life. And if you do, then sleep in the gutter and stay out of my way. When your choice is between starving to death or washing cars or loading trucks (both which I have done) then maybe you'll get your act together. There should be real consequences for your actions.
I sympathize with your beliefs. You're a good guy with a good heart and don't like to see people suffer. It's just not right. Chimps is the same way. I have a soft spot for people with good hearts. I was the same way until I got out on my own and realized life is not a bowl of cherries. There's very real consequences to your actions and the choices that you make. But as Winston Churchill once said, "If you are not a liberal when you are thirty, you have no heart. If you not a conservative when you are forty, you have no brain."
