The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
Why are the poor, poor?
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: seriouscrayons on May 02, 2008, 08:40:17 pm ---And as for the "prison farm system," no need to revive it -- it is already alive and well at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a working farm and, according to Wikipedia, once known as "the bloodiest prison in America." I don't think this would be quite the appropriate place for deadbeat dads, though. The average inmate in Angola, and 50 is considered a "short" sentence. Many die of old age there. In a famous incident in the 1950s, 31 inmates slashed their own Achilles' tendons to protest the hard work and brutality.
--- End quote ---
I don't advocate the type of brutal prison farm system that used to be in effect 50 years ago in LA or here in TX. (think of "Cool Hand Luke" :'().
the present prison system simply incarcerates and accomplishes nothing, rehabilitation is a bad joke. with a humane prison farm, or prison work shop system the products produced by inmates, who would otherwise be idle, can be sold and used to support the families the men are refusing to support. men in those prison systems can also be allowed to save money to be used when they return to the civilian world. I would also add opportunities for the men to learn marketable technical skills and basic English and math skills, and a placement program to aid them when they emerge from prison. like the welfare system, the current prison systems just perpetuated the underclass and the burden they foist on the tax payers.
the penal system is just one more item on a long list of public programs that must change.
Artiste:
Broketrash and others:
check out about such men taken to prison if they do not pay for child - that is now the thing in Ontario, Canada;
see if any results ?
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on May 02, 2008, 08:23:11 pm ---Quote from: injest on Today at 08:32:31 AM
Quote from broketrash
*Ahem*
The below is from the same website:
NOW MORE THAN EVER, America needs to get back to the conservative principles President Ronald Reagan believed in. That’s why The Heritage Foundation, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are challenging Americans to consider, What Would Reagan Do? (it has WWRD out to the side - like a What Would Jesus Do?)
View video greetings by Sean and Laura below.
So, from that alone I think Jess has a legitimate critique about this website's bias.
--- End quote ---
the question is not one of "bias", but how much research or serious scholarship is a part of the articles which scholars produce as a part of their work for the Heritage Foundation. If the research is done well and is noted by other serious scholars as being worth discussing, then blanket condemnation without an attempt to understand the context is out of place in a serious discussion.
"WWRD" may seem weird to you, but that is because you are not a conservative. Conservatives have very happy memories of Reagan, and think that many of the solutions which he offered back in the 1980's if fully carried out would solve many of the problems with the federal gov. The Heritage Foundation is not a stealth conservative organization, it is frankly conservative, and free market oriented. If there are those that do not wish to even wish consider that approach, then there really is point in having a discussion. If I were unwilling to even consider that gov at any level has a role to play in this issue, then there would also be no reason to have a discussion.
It is certainly a part of any ongoing debate to consider the sources of information, but to use blanket labelling and demonization is not a part of a serious discussion.
My point being, I simply will not engage discussion with anyone who can not take a discussion seriously, but insists on offering emotional anecdotal exemplars. There can be a place for that type of trivial debate, but not with a serious topic.
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on May 02, 2008, 08:52:12 pm ---Sorry, Broke. Wthin a page and a half of reading, the article already made an assumption from the Census' records that it didn't state:
e.g.
From the article: "Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio."
One column down, the article says:
"Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning...His home is in good repair and not overcrowded..."
Huh? ??? Excuse me? How did the article writer know that? Not from the Census bureau based on the information shown so far. According to the article to this point, the Census Bureau only reported that a percentage of the poor owned their own homes. It said nothing about the condition of said homes. And unless the U.S. Census is in the business of property inspections, I'm not sure how they would know.
I like the chart about the "Ownershp and Property of Consumer goods". Hey, 91.3% of poor people have phones. I know some who do. They don't have service for those phones, but they have them.
Is the rest of the article going to have such misleading statements and useless charts as this? I'm only one 1.5 pages into it and don't want to waste my time.
WARNING PERSONAL ANECDOTE:
My mother's cousin is poor. But hey, she owns her own home. The roof is falling in and she can't afford to fix it and the city is threatening to condemn it. But she has no where else to go if they evict her. She sank all her money in that home when she had some coming in and now she doesn't.
i.e. She didn't start off poor, but she's ended up that way.
EDITED: OK, at page 9 and the article states that the American Housing Survey tosses off structural instability and people living in hovels they're unable to repair with one sentence:
"However, the problems affecting these units are clearly modest...upkeep and the use of unvented oil, kerosene or gas heaters..."
I don't consider inability to keep up a home - a "modest" problem. I wonder how low one has to go to be considered suffering and poor by this writer's standards? Heating your food by a fireplace? The only heating/cooking source in some people's homes being a Coleman kerosene lamp isn't apparently a sign of poverty. ::)
--- End quote ---
I would suspect that it would depend on individual community standards of habitation. Some communities have stricter standards than others.
:) Certainly, you are not forced to read the 19 page report! It is an option which I presented because you asked about the sourcing of the article. Open minds make for better discussions, however. And I have found that people who are looking for something with which they can disagree with, usually find it. Census statistics are always open to manipulation and interpretation, I know that from running political campaigns.
One time both myself and a lefty Democrat woman with whom I shared campaigns took the same TX state issued report from CPS and made two entirely different presentations based upon our individual interpretations of the data. We laughed about that, and we later got the contract to represent the client. :laugh: I know I can parse just about any leftist report out of one of the left think tanks, and parse them to death as well. So, what would I accomplish by doing that? Nothing, but if I look for ideas that may be useful, then I gain a new perspective. If your goal is just to make debating points, enjoy, its painless.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: broketrash on May 03, 2008, 06:46:17 pm ---When the War on Poverty was introduced in 1964, the U.S. poverty rate was 19 percent. Over the following decade, it dropped to 11 percent, and currently hovers around 12 percent."
1964 LBJ War on Poverty starts and poverty rate is 19%. Curently it hovers around 12% lets see ( 19 minus 12 = 7 ) sure looks like it came down a full 7% points from the 1964 numbers, and for the trillion dollar tax investment, that is sorry!
--- End quote ---
It's $5 trillion, but who's counting?! :laugh:
Anyway, my point was that in the decade after the WoP was instituted, the poverty rate fell by 8 percent. That, from any perspective, is progress. The poverty rate came fairly close to being cut in half.
So after that, it stabilized -- but at 7 to 8 percent lower than where it had been before. If a program helps a situation and then stabilizes it, but doesn't fix the situation entirely, it's still better than having no program at all. Without the WoP, presumably, we'd still be at 19 percent or higher.
If you're sick, and you take some medicine that makes you only half as sick but doesn't cure you, do you stop taking the medicine altogether? You might, if you've got some other medicine that would completely cure you, but you can't take them both at once, and you know the other one will work better. Do you have such a medicine, broketrash?
Anyway, none of this is taking place in a vaccuum -- any number of other factors could effect the situation, in either direction. Maybe the poverty rate would have plummeted between 1964 and 1974 anyway, even without the WoP programs. Or maybe other factors jumped into play after 1974 (stagflation maybe, or that horrible destructive Carter adminstration ;D) that kept it from realizing its full measure of success.
In any case, since the WoP has improved the situation but hasn't cured it, by all means let's keep looking for ways to fine-tune it or try new things.
--- Quote ---private sector company with that kind of track record would have gone out of business a long time ago.
--- End quote ---
Why do conservatives always insist on making this comparison? OK, sure. A private-sector company that spends a bunch of money on a charitable program and doesn't at least break even goes out of business. But government in fact ISN't a private-sector business -- the public and private sectors have different purposes. A private-sector business that spent a bunch of money on roads and bridges without any immediate payback would go out of business, too. A private-sector business that funded schools and libraries and parks and police and fire and gave tax breaks to other businesses and supported farmers and paid social security benefits and mortgage deductions and shipped food to starving people overseas and funded a war in the Middle East so on would go out of business, too. That's why we HAVE a public sector, and don't just rely on the private sector to take care of all our needs.
However, if there ARE any private-sector businesses that want to step forward and solve poverty, have at it! Who's stopping you? Know what? I'd even buy some stock and not complain too much if the stock price didn't soar up from one year to the next.
--- Quote --- the only thing which will permanently lower the poverty rate and keep it lowered is economic opportunity for the underclass, and that will never happen as long as the gov poverty pimps have the poor by the throat.
--- End quote ---
Um, and tell me again why the two are mutually exclusive? Is it because businesses, despite all the tax breaks they do get, are nevertheless so burdened by taxes that they aren't able to offer all the economic opportunities they are just itching to provide for the poor? Or is it because businesses try and try to offer jobs to poor people, but those lazy poor people are so used to living on the dole they won't take the plentiful economic opportunities that are handed to them?
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