Chapter 6

"The most insightful way to think about poverty, in this country or anywhere else in the world, is as a dearth of human capital. True, people are poor in America because they cannot find good jobs. But that is the symptom, not the illness. The underlying problem is a lack of skills, or human capital" (129).

This passage caught my attention because Wheelan described the reason for unemployment in a way that was easy to understand. I never thought about poverty this way, I didn't realize that the main problem/cause for poverty is human capital and that it is economics. Wheelan brought up that "Excellent trial lawyers are scarce; burger flippers are not" (129). Excellent trial lawyers are scarce because it takes money for law school, motivation, and all these other factors which some are based upon luck (if you are born in to a family with money, etc). I liked how Wheelan used "symptom" and "illness" to describe lack of jobs. It helped better illustrate the idea.