As an institutionally wealthy person descended from industrialists who has never had to do a day's work in my life (I have, I just haven't had to), this is exactly what my family wants poor people to think. I have to say, I totally disagree with you, even though we've come from pretty much opposite backgrounds and I have no frame of reference for your experiences. Your hard work, along with that of all the other poor people, is what keeps my investments growing. I'm not even an active investor, I'm just sitting back and letting my family's wealth management team invest in growing companies that rely on the labor of people like yourself, and it's been that way for many generations.

From my perspective, I don't want riff raff spilling over into the areas of town where I live. The most logical solution to this is eliminate riff raff. Eliminating riff raff, like the drug dealers and petty criminals you mentioned, is difficult. The current system of mass incarceration works only to a degree, and in my opinion, though this is a matter for debate, creates more problems than it solves. I live in London some of the time, which is a much safer city than New York or LA, and I chalk this up to less aggressive, more professional policing by the Metropolitan Police, but also to the fact that so many of the idle poor are on state benefits. You see, I have to pay for these people's existence whether they're in the prison system or in council/public housing. I would personally rather see much higher benefits for poor people: it might cost more in the short term, but would likely balance out in the long term, as there would be less incentive to turn to robbery, money laundering, and drug dealing.

You can say people need to try harder, but that's a bit silly if you think about it for a second. You're just one voice in the wind. What you say, and what people like you have said for the last century and more, has simply not worked: you can't attribute poor people's turning to crime to a moral failing or a lack of work ethic. That creates a dichotomy, where poor people have to be productive citizens just to survive, while people like myself only have to sit back and reap the rewards of your labor, all the while doing way more cocaine and marijuana than any poor person could even dream of (the way my cousin in California smokes, I'm surprised they have any left). My family have been pretty much sorted money-wise since the 19th century, and really going back much further, and there is almost no work ethic there, except maybe in the arts in a few cases. This is not the kind of society we want to live in, is it, where there's such a broad cultural gap between the institutionally wealthy, country club set, and then everyone else, the poor or temporarily rich? One group lives life doing whatever catches their fancy, or whatever they find meaning in, while the other, underclass has to live up to rigid moral standards and a strict work ethic just to compete to survive. Personally, I think it's a bit unjust the way we're allowed to live, at least while some people grow up in such terrible, unhuman conditions. Everyone should be held to the same standards, as we do have a democracy and a constitution. But again, it has been the same case for over a hundred years.

Switching to a more benefits-driven system to control crime and extreme poverty seems like a very good idea to me, as the prison system has become quite expensive, not to mention law enforcement, to a degree that I don't feel like I'm saving anything by not paying much for poor people's benefits. I'd rather just pay the benefits, and then not have areas of cities, or even whole cities (like Baltimore) that look like they were plucked out from under the Iron Curtain some time in the late '70s. It's a sad state of affairs that Utrecht, Netherlands is a safer, more desirable place to live than Baltimore, MD. I'd feel more pride in my country and my heritage if such areas didn't exist. It's important to stop for a moment and see how far we've come in the past 100 years, and in what direction we've been going. If you think people are going to read what you've said and what others like you have said, and that that is going to affect any meaningful change, you simply lack historical perspective, because we've been doing that for over a hundred years and it hasn't worked. Maybe some people will listen to you, and take a more "by the bootstraps" approach, but then that has also always been the case, and it has always worked for some people, but never enough: your behavior is in some part a product of other people who posited the same ideology for the working class that you espouse now. And yet most impoverished people don't follow that path, or at least a very significant number do not. I just don't see it working, and my memory goes back quite a long way. On the other hand, some of the more "socialist" policies that people have in England and Europe seem to create a less caustic environment, less crime, and less noticeable poverty. I have to say, the notion you propose of a working class where there's no room to screw up, and constant hard work and moral correctness are mandatory at all times with no leeway, doesn't make me feel safer. Frankly it reminds me of countries like India and Pakistan, which I know to be third world holes unless you're very wealthy. Definitely not even close to the kind of country I want to live in. Obviously your experiences have been very different from my own. I'd be very interested to hear your response, as this reads like something a wealthy person would say about poor people and is the generally accepted view among wealthy circles in the US, but a view that I find misguided, verging on pointless.

p.s. I realize I will get flak for the 70's Iron Curtain comment here on r/baltimore, but I have actually visited communist Prague and Budapest, which I'm willing to bet most of you haven't, and it was really a lot nicer, as drab as it all was back then. And without question, significantly safer with, surprisingly, a lower per centage of incarcerated people.