Suppose I wanted to persuade you from buying a certain brand of automobile. Suppose that, in support of my argument, I pointed out several important facts:

1. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the total number of people killed in car accidents at the turn of the millennium was 42,116, ranking just below cancer and cardiovascular disease.

2. AAA found that in 2007, Americans spent an average of 52.2 cents per mile, including insurance, repair and maintenance.

3. According to CNN Money, the average credit card debt in the American household —among those that have at least one card — is $10,700.

Now suppose that I used these facts to argue against you buying a Mitsubishi Outlander. You look at all of this information, rightfully scratching your head. “Sophie,” you say. “This is all so random! Supposition! Nonsensical conjecture! Taking statistics out of context! Cherry-picking of data! Wild speculation!” You know what? You’re abso-freakin’-lutely right, but it’s that kind of logic that is sometimes used to drive arguments against health reform, and they’re simply unacceptable in a mature debate. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about that parallels my random automotive facts.

Anecdotes from Europe are often utilized in arguing against health care reform, but these fail to account for the myriad of factors in not only Europe’s system of health insurance, but government as well. These stories are then transposed onto our system of capitalism, our system of government, much like Glenn Beck did by arguing earlier this month that we shouldn’t want health care because it was just more of the “constant obsession to be more like Europe.”

“Is it because they wear goofy little beanie hats?” he asked. “[Is it because] they have a cute, sexy accent, have more museums, or compact cars?”

See how that’s like how I transposed random data onto a Mitsubishi Outlander? What does European fashion or culture have to do with anything related to health care? It’s comparing apples to oranges.

But let’s just go ahead and jump to my favorite argument so often used: Poverty is natural. Poverty is what we all are born into, and it is by sheer determination, grit and intelligence — and those attributes alone — that we succeed. We don’t need health insurance reform because that would give people what everyone else has earned.

Bull. Shit.

How many of you, when you were born, went home to a warm home — after being housed in a warm hospital bed — a bottle or breast of milk, parents to care for you and a socioeconomic status? Far from being cold in a natural state of poverty, many of us are given privileges from birth that allow us to experience a life that many American citizens — according to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 15 percent — will never experience due to a socioeconomic status that places them below the poverty line. If you don’t believe that’s true, let me ask you two questions: First, what has Paris Hilton done to rise from nothing to her current status? Second, since she’s obviously done something, why aren’t you working harder? Why aren’t you more like her?

I hear so many talk about how poor people “just need to work harder,” how they “just need to stop making bad decisions,” how they’re “morally flawed people.” I’m sick of it. How are you supposed to make better decisions if you can’t afford an education? How are you supposed to get a job and sustainable income with no experience, education, transportation or steady health?

It’s oversimplification of a complex issue, and demonstrates the vast amount of ignorance left in the supposedly educated populace. I understand that deluding oneself with a substitute for reality is comforting, but I find it difficult to fathom individuals who spout these criticisms of the poor ever giving up their money, their belongings — even temporarily — in order to prove their rhetoric. Even if they did, I certainly can’t imagine them refusing “socialist” programs like food stamps or Medicaid.

The reality is that poverty is something of a tautology: Someone in poverty is disadvantaged because of their poverty, which, in turn, makes them impoverished. Now, some will argue that statistics show mobility from the lower to upper class, henceforth the American Dream — where we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps — is alive and well. These statistics come from income distribution studies and sound very official. But such statistics are a mess, and chock-full of people from all different backgrounds, educations, ethnicities, ages, etc. It’s not a true representation.

For example, did you know that — more than likely, as a college student — you qualify as living under the poverty line according to these studies? So when you get a job out there in the real world, congratulations! You’ve made it, climbing from nothing to success. You’ve achieved the American Dream.

In reality, the poor often fall into a cyclical trapdoor of poverty. Under a certain threshold, they are provided subsidiaries and assistance programs to help pay for necessities. Once they rise above this threshold, they are more or less told, “swim on your own, no one’s holding you up anymore.” Let me give you an example: A woman goes from earning $25,000 to earning $35,000. Sounds great, right? She’s working, driving, pulling herself up, and she’s hardly a morally reprehensible person. This is what people who argue “poverty is natural” and “we all are given the same chances to succeed” would have you believe. I don’t know how else to put this: That’s simply not true.

As Jeffrey Liebman, research associate at National Bureau of Economic Research tells the story, “She lost free health insurance and instead had to pay $230 a month for her employer-provided health insurance. Her rent associated with her section 8 voucher went up by 30 percent of the income gain [which is the rule]. She lost the [$280 a month] subsidized child care voucher she had for after-school care for her child. She lost around $1,600 a year of the [Earned Income Tax Credit]. She paid payroll tax on the additional income. Finally, the new job was in Boston, and she lived in a suburb. So now she has $300 a month of additional gas and parking charges.”

The story ends with the woman being sucked back into poverty. Her respite was only temporary, and this anecdote is far from an exceptional case. If income distribution studies could correctly track individual cases, we’d see that.

Look, poverty — and health care reform — is a complex issue; I’m not trying to pretend it’s not. I’m also not trying to say this is an excuse for people to manipulate the system. But we need to observe the world as it is, not how we wish it was.

I’m sick of the tired, old arguments that take hours to say and end up saying nothing at all. I don’t care if you feel conservatively or liberally about this issue — after all, it was Clinton, a Democrat, who “ended welfare as we know it” in 1996 with the somewhat ironically named Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act — I just care that you educate yourself.

Things really go both ways here — left and right, Democrat and Republican — and you get what you give. Want more [insert your political stance or religion here] voices to be heard? Act like an adult. In the case of health care reform — learn about health care. Don’t listen to pundits — from insane Glenn Beck on Fox to childish Keith Olbermann on MSNBC — and call yourself informed. Don’t just scream talking points like “hypocrite” from the left side of the aisle and “ObamaCare” from the right. That doesn’t educate.

Even as an editor who loves her Opinion section dearly, I say to you: Please don’t come to the Opinion section for news. Commentary and arguments are what we offer, but this is never meant to replace it.

Go, and search out the news. Go to the original source of information, if you can. Educate yourself. Maybe then we can actually talk about such a pivotal issue instead of trading empty rhetoric and insults. Maybe then we can hold constructive discourse.

Sophie Prell is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Alta.