...It's not just the education system either.  The poor in the United States are subject to a variety of institutions that foster a kind of childlike dependence, where they're put at the mercy of the arbitrary whims of the bureaucracy and where you're most likely to succeed if you internalize reactive thinking.  I suppose that after 18 years of this, where you only gain anything by doing what other people tell you to do -- and you live in a community comprised of similarly-situated individuals -- the capacity for deliberative thinking is just totally crippled.  Is it any wonder, then, that this process often produces people who are totally incapable of thinking more than a few days ahead? To bring in another example, while there's a lot of talk about the unprecedented size of the U.S. prison and jail population, the population on parole or probation is simply staggering  (<a href="http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm </a>).  Many people don't realize how difficult probation and parole is: there are random drug and alcohol tests, you have to make sure you keep in touch with your probation officer (much harder than it sounds), clear any travel with him/her, demonstrate that you're working to find a job and pleasing your boss, etc.  In my experience, roughly 5-10 percent of defendants find probation so burdensome, they'll elect to serve the rest of their sentences in prison or jail rather than worry about pleasing their probation officer (who has the power to find them in violation of the terms of parole and send them back to prison). It's a false choice between allocating social resources to the desperately poor and encouraging personal autonomy, self-reliance and deliberative thought but, of course, such an approach is liable to encourage uppity-ness. -N