I'm sure for some small percentage of homeless/poor people, you're right in that they've made bad choices and that's how they've ended up there.
But if you're suggesting that this phenomenon is somehow common, then you need to back that up, since it flies in the face of prevailing research on the subject.
Its a bit like arguing causality and determinism, but how does a person come to make bad choices, if the path before them, their past experience, and their current environment does not precipitate them to make that choice? One would have to go deep into philosophy, but still will find competing answers - when does the decision become "morally" wrong, or become the fault of the person?
I feel this is irrelevant for this discussion, because none of what I or anyone else is arguing is that "it's their fault they're poor so screw them" as so many people here seem to want to conclude.
All I said was: Some people have bad work ethic. This means people they decide to not work when they should work, which causes them to end up in poverty. Therefore, to reduce poverty, part of our strategy should be doing things that improve work ethic (in addition to doing other things to solve mental illness, etc).
Nothing about that implies or requires any conclusion about whose absolute fault it is that some people are poor.
And it can't anyway, because as you've noted there is no objective answer to such a moral question.
It's incredible that for someone stressing work-ethic and the implicit "responsibility" associated with them, you won't even take responsibility for your own words.
In multiple child comments you've now claimed things like what you say here:
> All I said was: Some people have bad work ethic
No, that's not "All you said". The proof is right there in your original comment. You actually said
> a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic.
and
> Work ethic is a huge part of the problem,
And the point people keep making to you is that this is false. And I can't speak for others, but the reason why it bothers me so much to see people repeating it is because so frequently the people I've seen who are the loudest at saying it and repeat it the most, often have just as bad and often worse "moral failings".
I don't know you, and I won't judge you from what you've posted here - however I do have to say that the fact you keep attempting to shirk from and minimize away from your own comments isn't exactly breaking that trend to my eyes.
Society is complex - and the claim that the reason the poor are poor is mainly/mostly/primarily due to moral failings is flat out false.
>"a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic."
restated as >"Some people have bad work ethic"
And to you that restatement constitutes "attempting to shirk from and minimize away from your own comments". Seriously? It's the same thing with a difference in degree. The degree word "some" overlaps with "huge amount".
So my great crime is replacing "huge amount" with "some", and connecting it to poverty?
Meanwhile, you go ahead and restate what I said as "the reason the poor are poor is mainly/mostly/primarily due to moral failings."
Which is an utterly different, wild, moralistic, absolutist statement that I obviously never made and don't believe. And hypocritical, given how sensitive you seem to be about accurately re-stating what someone has said.
Let me disabuse you of the anti-charitable notion that you've invented in your head implicitly attributed to me: Just because someone has bad work ethic, doesn't mean it's their fault. I've specifically said in this thread that work ethic is changeable by policy and cultural factors. And, I think bad work ethic often isn't the fault of the person with it, but is rather the fault of people you who gaslight the poor into believing that all they can do is wait to be saved by Wise Rich White Leftist Social Engineers.
A huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. A huge proportion of that bad work ethic stems from the cultural effects of messages like yours.
Neither of the previous statements present any moral attribution - they are simple statements of objective, measurable cause-and-effect. (Yes, work ethic is measurable; the effect that your messages have on it could in principle be estimated via survey or experiment).
Honestly, you really seem to want this to be about morality. You want to see evil in people with whom you disagree because it makes you feel more secure in your own beliefs - a world where good people question your morals with powerful arguments is just too uncomfortable. You continue to apply the exact opposite of the principle of charity. It's unfair to others, and unproductive.
But if you're suggesting that this phenomenon is somehow common, then you need to back that up, since it flies in the face of prevailing research on the subject.