Three Goals That Keep People Out of Poverty

CLAY: I wish, by the way, somebody would just run for president… I wish there were a Republican candidate who would pick up this platform and run on it, that we need to spend more time in schools — not focused on critical race theory and demeaning and denigrating America — and just giving people tools that they could actually use. One of my favorite stats out there…

I’m gonna keep beating the drum on this on the show because I’m hopeful that people are gonna pick it up and run with it. Do you know that if you graduate from high school, if you get married and don’t have any children before the age of 25…? You do those three things. Think about that. Those are three things that almost everybody out there can accomplish. Your poverty rate in America is virtually zero no matter what your race, sex, religion, sexuality.

None of that.

None of all these identity politics things where people constantly want to find victims. Do you know if you graduate from high school — that’s something that every kid should be able to do, graduate from high school — don’t have a kid before the age of 25, and get married — if you can accomplish those three things — your poverty rate in America is zero? That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it, that we don’t just spend more time telling kids in high school, “Hey, you know what?

“It’s important to make good decisions in a lot of different choices in your life, but if you get three big ones right — graduate from high school, don’t have a kid before 25, and get married. If you can manage to do all three of those things, which virtually everyone in America should be able to manage, you will have… Can’t guarantee you’re gonna be rich, but I can virtually guarantee you’re not gonna be poor.”

Doesn’t seem like that high a standard. I’m not saying to people, “Hey, you’ve gotta go get a master’s degree in engineering. You’ve gotta go to school ’til you’re 42 years old and get triple PhD.” No, no, no, no! In reality, you just have to graduate from high school, which isn’t that hard to do — graduate from high school — don’t have a kid before 25 years old, and get married; your poverty rate’s almost zero.

That’d be a heck of a message, wouldn’t it? Personal responsibility, individual work ethic, give kids very attainable goals. I’m not saying that should be the ceiling. Certainly, I want people to graduate from high school and go on to gain much more. But if you just focus on that and give people attainable goals, once they attain those goals, they can try to climb that ladder of success even more.

But just give ’em those attainable goals to begin with. Focus on that. Hammer it home. Personal responsibility, individual work ethic, freedom. These are the tenets of American life that lead to success no matter who you are or where you’re born or what your mama or your daddy did. We don’t hear enough about that from our political leaders.