BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
The World Beyond BetterMost => Anything Goes => Topic started by: injest on April 28, 2008, 12:33:23 am
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full)
an interesting theory...
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"Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. Social liberals have countered by blaming racial prejudice and the crippling conditions of the ghetto for denying the poor any choice in their fate. Neoconservatives have argued that antipoverty programs themselves are to blame for essentially bribing people to stay poor."
I don't know of any social conservatives who opine that the poor lack smarts.
I do know of conservatives who argue that antipoverty programs are partly to blame for the cycle of generations of the poor on welfare.
The term "neocon" is much misused in today's politics, the reference above is one of the few times that I have seen it used correctly again.
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I thin for every one there is one who lacks the smarts there is one of the other who is prejudiced in some way...
I very much skimmed read this as I never have the patience but I think its certainly got an element of truth in it.
And have these people who debate this have never ever had to worry about what they might eat tomorrow or whether they can afford to go to college.. I often find it hard to see how they can debate what they dont really know...
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"Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. Social liberals have countered by blaming racial prejudice and the crippling conditions of the ghetto for denying the poor any choice in their fate. Neoconservatives have argued that antipoverty programs themselves are to blame for essentially bribing people to stay poor."
I don't know of any social conservatives who opine that the poor lack smarts.
I do know of conservatives who argue that antipoverty programs are partly to blame for the cycle of generations of the poor on welfare.
The term "neocon" is much misused in today's politics, the reference above is one of the few times that I have seen it used correctly again.
I do.
Other people just cannot bring themselves to believe that all people aren't smart enough to become a programmer or surgeon or engineer or lawyer or MBA. THEY did, so they seem to imagine that everyone can do the same if they wanted to and if they haven't or won't it's because of sheer laziness and thus poverty is their own fault.
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We teach our kids more than we realize just by living our lives. If we're on welfare, they learn by example how to work the welfare system. Why believe in the Puritan work ethic if nobody you know has ever made it work? If we're salesmen, they learn how to sell. If we trust the stock market and invest, they learn to trust investing and something about how to invest in stocks and bonds.
And this doesn't have to be taught by us sitting down and lecturing, it can be learned day by day, just by our kids watching us live and listening to us talk about how we make it in the world. It tough to teach your kids something if you don't know it yourself.
The problem is, we don't all grow up with the same advantages. The rich grow up learning how to be rich. The poor grow up learning how to be poor.
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I would agree with that.
I have relatives that have been on welfare all their lifes....I am thinking of one in particular....his father passed away when he was very little...his mother was on welfare all the time he was growing up. I think he just thinks that IS life..to sit around and wait for the monthly check to show up. That is what he has been taught.
Yeah, me too. One of my dearest friends was raised to believe that you got one shot at life. When he blew his big chance, he gave up. Never could get him to understand that you get as many chances as you're willing to take.
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I do.
Other people just cannot bring themselves to believe that all people aren't smart enough to become a programmer or surgeon or engineer or lawyer or MBA. THEY did, so they seem to imagine that everyone can do the same if they wanted to and if they haven't or won't it's because of sheer laziness and thus poverty is their own fault.
All people do not have the inclination or training to become a surgeon. It is silly to think that everyone does. And that isn't the point. The point is most people can have control of their own destinies, there are exceptions to this, but overall people can become a success according to their own or even society's definitions.
If people are sitting around waiting for a welfare check, or if they give up because their car breaks down, then that too is their choice. They are choosing the destiny with which they are comfortable. They may gripe about their limited opportunity, they may gripe that they are not making $100K per year while sitting in front of their TV sets stuffing their faces with Twinkies while watching Oprah cry, but ultimately, they made the choices in their lives to allow the system to control them and not the other way around.
What the present welfare system does is give these non productive people a easy landing into their sloth.
Social Worker to Welfare Victim:
"Its OK honey, why you are a just a VICTIM, you are not responsible for your life or the lives of the 4 children in your house who all have different fathers none of which you are married to. You need to just sit down fill your mind with crap off the TV and we welfare / social workers will just take care of everything. Oh and be sure to register to vote so that WE can keep those nasty old Republican racist / misogynist / meanies from harming you further!"
and the tragedy of the welfare cycle goes on and on and on.
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Speaking only for myself, because two years ago I saw Brokeback Mountain and suddenly nothing else mattered.
Go to Wyoming, no problem, go to Alberta, no problem, Taxes, what taxes........
But its coming around. ;)
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If people are sitting around waiting for a welfare check, or if they give up because their car breaks down, then that too is their choice. They are choosing the destiny with which they are comfortable. They may gripe about their limited opportunity, they may gripe that they are not making $100K per year while sitting in front of their TV sets stuffing their faces with Twinkies while watching Oprah cry, but ultimately, they made the choices in their lives to allow the system to control them and not the other way around.
I think this is spot on.
The original thesis by the author was as sad commentary on the human condition. He suggests that six bee stings (many problems) just go unattended to by people because it is just too hard to deal with more than one bee sting. I wonder if the men fighting at D Day felt that way? Clearly not. Or the astronaust in apollo 13? Don't think so. Or any of the millions of poor kids who make it big. Probably not.
I find the thesis to be yet another attempt to excuse behavior that has led to unproductive lives. A previous poster indicated a suspicion about commentators on poverty if they have never been poor; excellent point. But, the other side to that coin is how many more of us HAVE been poor (as the poster indicated...unable to pay for college, not knowing where the next day's food or housing would come from, etc) and pulled up the boot straps and dealt with all six bee stings.
Some people are weak and incapable of dealing with one bee sting, much less six, agreed. But the safety net that was put in place to help the truly incapable has become a hammock for millions of folks who just find it easier to run to ER for the bee stings than apply some remedy on their own.
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You are not responsible for your life or the lives of the 4 children in your house who all have different fathers none of which you are married to.
And God forbid we should do anything to help keep you from getting pregnant, other than to tell you to not have sex, which you won't listen to anyway because people have been ignoring that advice since the beginning of time. ...
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I think this is spot on.
The original thesis by the author was as sad commentary on the human condition. He suggests that six bee stings (many problems) just go unattended to by people because it is just too hard to deal with more than one bee sting. I wonder if the men fighting at D Day felt that way? Clearly not. Or the astronaust in apollo 13? Don't think so. Or any of the millions of poor kids who make it big. Probably not.
I find the thesis to be yet another attempt to excuse behavior that has led to unproductive lives. A previous poster indicated a suspicion about commentators on poverty if they have never been poor; excellent point. But, the other side to that coin is how many more of us HAVE been poor (as the poster indicated...unable to pay for college, not knowing where the next day's food or housing would come from, etc) and pulled up the boot straps and dealt with all six bee stings.
Some people are weak and incapable of dealing with one bee sting, much less six, agreed. But the safety net that was put in place to help the truly incapable has become a hammock for millions of folks who just find it easier to run to ER for the bee stings than apply some remedy on their own.
Yes but not everyone who is poor or on welfare are there cos they can't be arsed. Yes many are, but many are not. They try to fight but they just cant get out. It happens.
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And God forbid we should do anything to help keep you from getting pregnant, other than to tell you to not have sex, which you won't listen to anyway because people have been ignoring that advice since the beginning of time. ...
unless I misread the law of the land and in the various states, a woman's body is her own, it belongs to no one else, no one has claim on it, even the (baby/fetus/embryo) within. so, then why should anyone feel compelled to provide anything to keep that woman from "getting pregnant". Wouldn't that violate the her autonomy?
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Yes but not everyone who is poor or on welfare are there cos they can't be arsed. Yes many are, but many are not. They try to fight but they just cant get out. It happens.
"arsed"?
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unless I misread the law of the land and in the various states, a woman's body is her own, it belongs to no one else, no one has claim on it, even the (baby/fetus/embryo) within. so, then why should anyone feel compelled to provide anything to keep that woman from "getting pregnant". Wouldn't that violate the her autonomy?
Did you accidentally miss the "help," or was that deliberate?
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Did you accidentally miss the "help," or was that deliberate?
it was an accident: I can rewrite that with "help" included.
not that I see it make any difference, it still amounts to the same concept. if the woman in question has autonomy then she is the one who is responsible for any "help" in preventing pregnancies, not the tax payers.
private organizations, charities, churches, "helpful" individuals are another matter. more power to the private charities and religious organizations which voluntarily use their funds to advance their favorite social cause. I simply object to my tax dollars being extorted from me, and used in order to rectify someone else's private decisions made within the context of their own autonomy.
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"arsed"?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arsed
According to Wiktionary, vulgar (sorry, Kelda) U.K. slang for bothered, as in "can't be bothered" to do something.
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it was an accident: I can rewrite that with "help" included.
not that I see it make any difference, it still amounts to the same concept. if the woman in question has autonomy then she is the one who is responsible for any "help" in preventing pregnancies, not the tax payers.
private organizations, charities, churches, "helpful" individuals are another matter. more power to the private charities and religious organizations which voluntarily use their funds to advance their favorite social cause. I simply object to my tax dollars being extorted from me, and used in order to rectify someone else's private decisions made within the context of their own autonomy.
Go back and re-read what I wrote again. I said, "God forbid we should do anything to help keep you from getting pregnant." I said nothing about abortion, and that's clearly what you are implying when you write about rectifying someone else's private decision. Abortion is locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. I was making an I-thought-clever swipe at government programs that only countenance counseling abstinence, not discussion of any other practical means of preventing pregnancy. I guess I was being too obscure. I apologize for that.
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According to Wiktionary, vulgar (sorry, Kelda) U.K. slang for bothered, as in "can't be bothered" to do something.
thanks for looking! I'll use that over supper tonight when DL inevitably will be so "arsed" he will forget to pick up the shrimp on the way home whch I need in order to make the dish he will want to eat. :laugh:
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Interesting discussion but it seems to be focused on the so-called "welfare-bums". There will always be a certain percentage of the population that will take advantage of the safety net. I don't think it involves that much money in the grand scheme of things. Especially when you consider how much the the Iraq business plan has been costing tax-payers. Sorry I couldn't resist. People get all up in arms when some poor shmuck is able to wrangle a couple of hundred extra bucks a month from the system while white-collars & politicians steal billions and they are practically hailed as heros.
Anyway, let's forget about the Welfare abusers, what about the working poor? Those who work their asses off at jobs that don't pay a living wage? How obscene is that? I know! Let's lower or better yet, do away with the miinimum wage! ::)
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According to Wiktionary, vulgar (sorry, Kelda) U.K. slang for bothered, as in "can't be bothered" to do something.
yup arsed = bothered its just a colloquialism...
But its used in the negative - ie
I can't be arsed but not I can be arsed. Or arsed on its own!
A lesson in Uk slang for you!
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yup arsed = bothered its just a colloquialism...
But its used in the negative - ie
I can't be arsed but not I can be arsed. Or arsed on its own!
A lesson in Uk slang for you!
I see then so I should have written the sentence below this way, "DL inevitably won't be 'arsed' and he will forget to pick up the shrimp...
is that how it would be used?
thanks for looking! I'll use that over supper tonight when DL inevitably will be so "arsed" he will forget to pick up the shrimp on the way home whch I need in order to make the dish he will want to eat.
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I see then so I should have written the sentence below this way, "DL inevitably won't be 'arsed' and he will forget to pick up the shrimp...
is that how it would be used?
yup!
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I think that people in the US tend to confuse equal opportunity with equal ability. Success is not guaranteed, only the right to try. IMO, our system is lacking a vocational tract for those who lack the ability to be surgeons but could be acheiving more than they are. A little motivation goes a long way. This line of thinking tends to be unpopular on in the US, but I think it is a practical viewpoint. We could learn from our European neighbors. The trick is not to trap people in one tract before they or anyone else know what they are capable of.
Exactly. Not everyone has equal abilities. Not everyone has equal opportunities. We can try, but there is no success that's guaranteed. I saw plenty of people in college, A-type personalities, go-getters, super-intelligent, pro-active people, aggressively pursuing their dreams and degree plans and utterly fail to get into medical school.
Now what? They had their ducks in a row, were the creme d'la creme of academia and still failed to reach their goal.
Believe me, a bunch of people have much less drive, determination, self-confidence and intelligence than those people and to say that they 'lack the inclination' or all have a chance at success if they 'had the training' is missing the point. Plenty of people have the inclination, fewer people have the opportunity, and even fewer people have the ability.
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wow so ALL the mothers on welfare are there cause they have kids by different daddies...huh.
so there are no grandparents that have lost their children to the war and their pensions to the Enron scandals...no mothers with small children whose husbands never came back from Iraq...no war veterens for that matter too injured to work...
all there is in poverty is WOMEN....SLUTTY Women at that...
huh!
you tell me, you are the one with the endless sob story posts about poverty! look at the stats they are very scary!
the rate of single mothers raising their children in poverty is astonishing. basically the men, in these all too common situations, are dogging the women and wandering off to dog again somewhere else. apparently for this classification of males, knocking up without marriage is a sign of manhood. I propose that we save the tax payers billions and billions in welfare / WIC benefits and give each male in that category a gold plated tape measure, and a digital camera. Take a picture of his male organ, put the picture in a tasteful badge and hang it around his neck. That way he can prove his maleness without bringing more poverty into the world and driving up the tax rates for the middle classes, who are supporting this endless cycle of poverty.
What ever happened to the good old fashioned slap in the face and a "hell no" to a man who wouldn't indicate that he was able to support the kids but wanted his nookies anyway? I guess that was before the welfare state turned single mothers into a favored victim class. And a funny thing, back in the days when women would slap the fire out of a man who made "improper" moves on them, women did not have access to easy birth control or abortion, but the rate of single mothers in poverty was much much lower. But today with those birth contol remedies readily available, we still have huge and growing numbers of single women heading up households in poverty. So where is the excuse for this? Must be the mean old Republicans, couldn't be the welfare state, now could it?
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Exactly. Not everyone has equal abilities. Not everyone has equal opportunities. We can try, but there is no success that's guaranteed. I saw plenty of people in college, A-type personalities, go-getters, super-intelligent, pro-active people, aggressively pursuing their dreams and degree plans and utterly fail to get into medical school.
Now what? They had their ducks in a row, were the creme d'la creme of academia and still failed to reach their goal.
Believe me, a bunch of people have much less drive, determination, self-confidence and intelligence than those people and to say that they 'lack the inclination' or all have a chance at success if they 'had the training' is missing the point. Plenty of people have the inclination, fewer people have the opportunity, and even fewer people have the ability.
its not an issue of defining success as "admission to med school" or law school. success can be measured by just getting the bills paid without having to depend on the charity of others and the welfare state. there are so many instances in this country of honest proud working people with limited educations and abilities who refuse to think of themselves as victims, so they work at honest jobs rather than whining. the people who persevere tend to think of themselves as winners and have no interest in the social net. they have the dignity to make decisions with their lives and with their autonomous bodies which do not bring more poverty, and taxes into the world. there are many paths to success, but when people are turned into victims they will never find that path. and maybe it is the intent of those who advocate the welfare state to perpetuate a permanent class of victims. maybe they need victims, because if the victim quota dries up, most of the welfare advocates wouldn't have jobs.
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its always the woman's fault isn't it?
and I notice that for each of my 'endless' posts you have just ONE stock answer that doesn't address the issues I raise. It is easy to say that girls should keep their legs crossed and the world's problems would be solved. Unfortunately life isn't that simple.
I have an answer that you don't wish to hear. You are interested in a pity party, not real solutions. The pity party in this country for those on welfare is over. Look at it this way, the rich pay very few taxes, the poor pay none at all.
It is hard working middle class parents, families where the father isn't dogging all the neighborhood women and the woman is not on an endless breeding welfare cycle, who are actually paying for all of the:
food,
shelter,
medical care,
dental care,
clothing,
legal aid,
educational loans and grants,
given to single parent families.
In that process, these working middle class people are forced by the tax system to give up extras for their own children.
In other words, middle class people are punished by the rich and the poor.
This not only must change, it will change.
I'll let you get on with your pity party.
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well when I HEAR some solutions instead of stereotypes; I will be glad to listen.
someone told me the other day "You know you are on target when the searchlights go on and the flack gets heavy"
:) :)
:laugh: :laugh: bombs away.
the exact quote was, "you know that you are over the target when the search lights go on and the flack gets heavy." and I hear those SAM missles heading my way so I know I am over the target.
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its not an issue of defining success as "admission to med school" or law school. success can be measured by just getting the bills paid without having to depend on the charity of others and the welfare state. there are so many instances in this country of honest proud working people with limited educations and abilities who refuse to think of themselves as victims, so they work at honest jobs rather than whining. the people who persevere tend to think of themselves as winners and have no interest in the social net. they have the dignity to make decisions with their lives and with their autonomous bodies which do not bring more poverty, and taxes into the world. there are many paths to success, but when people are turned into victims they will never find that path. and maybe it is the intent of those who advocate the welfare state to perpetuate a permanent class of victims. maybe they need victims, because if the victim quota dries up, most of the welfare advocates wouldn't have jobs.
Well, you're talking short-term success then. You missed the point. The working poor are exactly that. They are hard-working people who show up to their jobs every day and who have children and who - at the end of 40 years of hard labor - will have absolutely nothing to show for it, living off Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and their children because those jobs they worked so hard at didn't pay them enough to buy a house, create a savings account, build a portfolio or last long enough in the business world to give their employees the benefit of a pension plan. Their jobs paid them enough to get by. Period.
Based on what you just said, the fact they have a job, do not accept welfare and have a great attitude about themselves is a form of 'success'. What kind of "success" is it that leaves someone homeless, living under a bridge or on the charity of others when they get too old or too sick to work? Thinking themselves a winner won't buy them a cup of coffee. There are a lot of dignified homeless people.
And as for and with their autonomous bodies which do not bring more poverty, sometimes those children are their backup plan against the time when they will have no where else to go and no one else to turn to for care.
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Well, you're talking short-term success then. You missed the point. The working poor are exactly that. They are hard-working people who show up to their jobs every day and who have children and who - at the end of 40 years of hard labor - will have absolutely nothing to show for it, living off Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and their children because those jobs they worked so hard at didn't pay them enough to buy a house, create a savings account, build a portfolio or last long enough in the business world to give their employees the benefit of a pension plan. Their jobs paid them enough to get by. Period.
Based on what you just said, the fact they have a job, do not accept welfare and have a great attitude about themselves is a form of 'success'. What kind of "success" is it that leaves someone homeless, living under a bridge or on the charity of others when they get too old or too sick to work? Thinking themselves a winner won't buy them a cup of coffee. There are a lot of dignified homeless people.
And as for and with their autonomous bodies which do not bring more poverty, sometimes those children are their backup plan against the time when they will have no where else to go and no one else to turn to for care.
they are certainly a back up plan to get more welfare and WIC benefits.
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you are confused Del. All the poverty stricken are girls that can't say no!
(and their offspring. )
No welfare payments go to ANYONE other than that....(and if there ARE other people on welfare we cant' discuss it here....)
;)
perhaps if they had said no, they wouldn't be mired in poverty. hunh?
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they are certainly a back up plan to get more welfare and WIC benefits.
Those welfare and wic benefits don't pay for much, and they are only allowed a few years to collect those benefits and it is off to work or else.
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they are certainly a back up plan to get more welfare and WIC benefits.
Good thing, eh? The economic world certainly won't take care of them.
Nothing to say about the rest of the post? OK.
You need to hang around more poor people. They have families. Why do you think you see these great big families living in one house or apartment? Granny can't pay for her own place and neither can the kids when they work full-time at McDonald's. What, did you think they were living like that because they liked each other's company?
Oh, and just try telling them that if they couldn't afford children then they shouldn't have had them and therefore deserve everything that happens to them and their children. That'll go over well.
A friend of mine had an ex-boyfriend who was marrying a woman - strange wedding. I met the man and his brother at the bachelor party - don't ask. The brother had a fiancee. A pregnant fiancee. She was currently living with her folks because they had had a fight where he slapped her. In the meantime, he hoped to win her back because he had a good job at the feed plant - making $8 an hour.
"That's good money, right?" I just stared at him.
These weren't your inner city stereotypical folk that you're thinking of broketrash. The man's brother had gone to college and gotten a degree in marketing. I kinda doubt the brother will ever be able to show me his stock options and portfolio. Not all the people who wind up on social programs are girls who couldn't keep their legs together.
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see it IS complicated. Which is why people try to reduce it down to a simple "Poor people are lazy and stupid and slutty". Makes it easier to feel superior and to not do anything about it.
I dont' like the 'cradle to grave' thing. I think it hurts more than it helps. But I also believe there are people on welfare that we need to support. I am unwilling to deny food to the elderly or the children.
We need concrete solutions and 'privitazation' of all social programs is not the complete answer.
It is complicated. But I do agree that 'cradle to grave' is excessive and yes, there is plenty of corruption in the system. Name a system that doesn't have problems.
I met a very nice woman once. She was divorced with two kids, working temp, hoping to get a full-time job. Her ex-husband lived back east with his new wife. You see, HE was the breadwinner in the family not HER. So, when they got divorced, she got the kids and the small child support payments from her ex- who wasn't making much money at the time of the divorce. By the time HE met his new wife, he'd gotten a better job and they could now buy a house together. Where did that leave his ex-wife and the kids? Living several states away, with no money to hire a lawyer to take him to court to increase her child support payments. So while he was constantly trying to get her to take less child support money so he could pay more on his house, their children were going without medical care - she couldn't afford it - when her girl needed glasses and her boy had asthma. She thought the national healthcare plan was a great idea. She could take her kids to the doctor. But I had to explain to her that many people thought her being unable to afford medical insurance was her own fault because she was poor and in this great country of ours, with all the opportunities for getting ahead, being poor was a personal failing and if her boy died from an asthma attack because she couldn't afford treatment, well, it was just too bad. :P
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around here you are considered to have a 'good' job if you can draw in $8-10 an hour. Good luck finding more.
yet they are only building megamansions. Who are buying these homes? and where are the $8-10 crowd supposed to live?
This is a good point. You can't get ahead, you can't save if you barely have enough money coming in to meet expenses.
We may, (and I'm doubtful here) have equal opportunity in this country, but people don't all have equal abilities. I hear a lot of people that sound like they are saying that it's perfectly alright to deny a decent wage to someone who is unskilled, even though they do jobs that no one else is willing to do .
At the same time, those same people who are denying decent wages to workers are grabbing money with both hands and doing less work for it every year.
Meanwhile the people in the middle keep silent hoping to eventually earn membership in the grabbing with both hands crowd.
Big business is notorious for being fuelled by greed. That's why labor unions came into being. That's why the minimum wage was created. That's why they have armys of lawyers to protect themselves from each other. And they think nothing of taking advantage of the unfortunate, the uneducated, or the unsophisticated. They speak as though equal opportunity somehow puts us on an equal playing field. It doesn't matter that they have more knowledge. It doesn't matter they have more experience. It doesn't matter that they have more power. It doesn't matter that their winning could destroy their opponent, while their losing would be a mild inconvenience to themselves. They have to win.
The U. S. is one of the few countries where the rich have actually been able to convince many average people to trust them.
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Those welfare and wic benefits don't pay for much, and they are only allowed a few years to collect those benefits and it is off to work or else.
one of the positive benefits that occured at both the state and federal levels in the 1990's is workfare. It is good that there is a time limit on claims cases. But, any change in "status" causes a welfare claim to be reevalutated. So, have yet another child without a father to support it, and bingo - Vanna White turned the wheel and you get a prize!
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you are confused Del. All the poverty stricken are girls that can't say no!(and their offspring. )
No welfare payments go to ANYONE other than that....(and if there ARE other people on welfare we cant' discuss it here....)
;)
I find it interesting that no one is noticing that I am putting the blame on the men and the women. didn't anyone notice that the comment about men doging the women and abandoning them when they get pregnant? to imply that my comments as "antiwoman" shows the shallowness of your argumentation.
I made it clear that men, women, and the welfare pimps (excuse me, public servants who draw a much deserved salary while administering a worthwhile program that benefits the taxpayers) are part and parcel to the welfare pathology.
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Good thing, eh? The economic world certainly won't take care of them.
Nothing to say about the rest of the post? OK.
You need to hang around more poor people. They have families. Why do you think you see these great big families living in one house or apartment? Granny can't pay for her own place and neither can the kids when they work full-time at McDonald's. What, did you think they were living like that because they liked each other's company?
Oh, and just try telling them that if they couldn't afford children then they shouldn't have had them and therefore deserve everything that happens to them and their children. That'll go over well.
A friend of mine had an ex-boyfriend who was marrying a woman - strange wedding. I met the man and his brother at the bachelor party - don't ask. The brother had a fiancee. A pregnant fiancee. She was currently living with her folks because they had had a fight where he slapped her. In the meantime, he hoped to win her back because he had a good job at the feed plant - making $8 an hour.
"That's good money, right?" I just stared at him.
These weren't your inner city stereotypical folk that you're thinking of broketrash. The man's brother had gone to college and gotten a degree in marketing. I kinda doubt the brother will ever be able to show me his stock options and portfolio. Not all the people who wind up on social programs are girls who couldn't keep their legs together.
del we can all fill up a 100 page forum with anecdotal stories of heart breaking cases on the one hand and criminal sloth and fraud on the other hand. so what? the system itself is pathological for the recipient victims and the tax paying victims. the system is a system of victimization and needs abolishment asap.
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see it IS complicated. Which is why people try to reduce it down to a simple "Poor people are lazy and stupid and slutty". Makes it easier to feel superior and to not do anything about it.
I dont' like the 'cradle to grave' thing. I think it hurts more than it helps. But I also believe there are people on welfare that we need to support. I am unwilling to deny food to the elderly or the children.
We need concrete solutions and 'privitazation' of all social programs is not the complete answer.
Well, for months now I have been reading your PITY PARTY threads and your cries for new solutions to replace a failing system. Sadly, I still haven't heard any new ideas from you. You consistently reject church and private charities and do not acknowledge the inequity of making middle class families pay to feed, clothe, medicate, and educate the poor. While the rich pay little and the poor pay nothing into the system.
Do we all remember the "TEXAS # 1 IN TEENAGED BIRTHS" thread on this web site, these issues and many alternatives were all discussed at great length.
and, ladies and gentlemen of Bettermost for your convenience here is the link back to that lengthy and inconclusive thread.
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,14666.msg284972.html#msg284972
Injest, you should meld all of your PITY PARTY threads into one giant clearinghouse, so much commentary is ignored and forgotten otherwise. ;)
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You consistently reject church and private charities and do not acknowledge the inequity of making middle class families pay to feed, clothe, medicate, and educate the poor. While the rich pay little and the poor pay nothing into the system.
And who do you suppose supports the churches? The rich? I doubt it. Talking about shifting the responsibility from the government to private charities is just Conservative code for eliminating help for the poor, because the government can compel support--through taxation--and private charities cannot.
Eliminating the system is not the answer. We need to fix it, plug the loopholes, so that the rich pay their fair share.
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And who do you suppose supports the churches? The rich? I doubt it. Talking about shifting the responsibility from the government to private charities is just Conservative code for eliminating help for the poor, because the government can compel support--through taxation--and private charities cannot.
Eliminating the system is not the answer. We need to fix it, plug the loopholes, so that the rich pay their fair share.
And tax the damn churches! Talk about welfare, the churches are all welfare cases as are many corporations and even whole industries. Here in 'socialist' Canada, up to 50% of the biofuel industry is funded by government subsidies. That's the same industry that's being held responsible for the worldwide food shortages. (Like that was unexpected, lol!)
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(I'm sorry I am more of a smart ass than usual today)
Because they don't have money?
:-X
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(I'm sorry I am more of a smart ass than usual today)
Because they don't have money?
:-X
Sorta like why what's-his-name robbed banks? 'Cause that's where the money is? ;D
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I notice that a lot of people who criticize the poor and say they should work harder and be more responsible seem to assume that middle- and upper-class people are where they are because they work hard and are responsible. The fact is, many middle- and upper-middle class people are there for the same reason the poor are: because that's where they were born. And middle- and upper-middle-class lives come with privileges we often don't notice.
Take me, for example. Both my parents majored in journalism and became advertising writers. My grandfather was the editor of a medium-sized newspaper. So I became ... a writer! Based on a journalism degree ... that my dad paid for!
I grew up in a nice safe pleasant neighborhood, ate reasonably healthy food, was raised by college-educated parents who weren't unduly stressed, had free time to care for me, could afford to take me on trips and buy me books and art supplies. I attended some of the country's best public schools, was expected to go on to college and get a good job because ... well, because in my family and my community that's just what you did.
There was also room for error. In high school, a nearby teen clinic dispensed birth control to girls my age. We got there by driving there in our parents' cars that they let us use. Some girls got pregnant anyway, but I don't remember anyone in high school carrying a baby to term. They got abortions, I guess, because having babies would have interfered with their plans to graduate and, in most cases, go on to college and get good jobs. In high school and college, I partied and took drugs and skipped school and bad stuff like that. I could afford to break some rules, because I had the safety net of money and security and high expectations.
So suppose my background had been different. Suppose instead of being surrounded by educated middle-class people, I grew up surrounded by undereducated people who didn't work, had babies as teenagers, sold drugs, etc. Well, then I'd probably do all those things.
Of course, there are people who transcend such hardships and go on to great achievements. But many, perhaps most, people are simply not that ambitious or smart or strong-willed or confident or rebellious or whatever it would take to rise above the environment in which they're immersed. I don't think I necessarily would have.
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Do you know what broketrash - I come from a single parent family.
My mother was married twice - my elder sister has a different dad from me.
My mum was for a while on welfare. She was a school cook but did her back in, so couldn't lift the pots.
She went to college and became a nursery nurse (a pre school kids teacher). She worked harder than a lot of 'real' teachers I know.
And she still was on almost minimum wage, earning less than many on wlefare.
My mum was medicaly retired a few ywars before her real retiral date due to M.E.
She relies on the state pension to get by now.
You know what - I'm proud of where I come from.
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While the rich pay little and the poor pay nothing into the system.
Which means the rich are getting welfare, too. They may not need help paying for their food and medical care and education. But the rest of us are paying disproportionately for the roads, bridges, parks, beaches, lakes, police, military and fire protection that they use.
You consistently reject church and private charities and do not acknowledge the inequity of making middle class families pay to feed, clothe, medicate, and educate the poor.
All this blaming poor people seems a little silly, to me. Whether or not they should work harder and lift themselves out of poverty, whether they should have fewer children or not watch Oprah or whatever ... it's all moot. They do what they do because the majority of people stay in the class they were born into and behave the way the people around them behave. Simple as that. You can tsk-tsk all you want, but that's basic sociology.
But working to change their situation isn't just about feeling sorry for them. Even if you don't feel any sympathy for poor people, you have an interest in helping them. Society is better functioning with citizens who are productive and self-supporting. Not to mention safer.
That's why I'm curious, broketrash, why you would include education among the things you object to the poor getting help paying for. Education would seem to me to be the most effective way -- heck, almost the only way these days -- to turn poor people into middle-class or upper-class people. All those hypothetical poor people who could be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps can't do it without education. So to eliminate their financial aid (which of course middle-class students also receive) seems counter-productive.
To me, this isn't about pity or blame. It's about finding solutions that benefit everyone.
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Telling the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps reminds me very much of telling depressed people to "just get over it."
I think both suffer from hopelessness, and that's hard to overcome by sheer force of will.
Mentoring programs seem highly successful in overcoming poverty. They provide the teaching that people didn't get at home while growing up and they provide ongoing advice from someone who knows how. Mentoring is expensive, but it pays off because it gives people something they pass on to their own kids.
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And who do you suppose supports the churches? The rich? I doubt it. Talking about shifting the responsibility from the government to private charities is just Conservative code for eliminating help for the poor, because the government can compel support--through taxation--and private charities cannot.
Eliminating the system is not the answer. We need to fix it, plug the loopholes, so that the rich pay their fair share.
that extortive compelling you have mentioned above is exactly why the welfare state no longer has the unqualified support of the overwhelming mass of the votes, who are mostly middle class.
I am all in favor of the rich, the middle class, and the poor all paying an EQUAL share. The term "fair" as applied to a tax is subjective. In reality the only "fair" tax is one which has EQUAL rates for everyone. This can be accomplished by a consumption tax which has no exceptions, no exemptions, and no refunds. If you and I walk into a store and buy a diet soda, we both should pay a fed tax on that item at the same rate, regardless of any similarities or disparities in our incomes. And this type of tax should apply to all of our consumption purchases in our lives. This tax will rid of the IRS and the unfairness that everyone agrees exists. The only fair system is an equal system. The present system of both social engineering welfare and IRS enforced taxation are unsustainable politically, and in my opinion unsustainable morally. The grasping hand of gov is robbing one section of the population in order to keep another section breeding and idle.
"we need to fix it" we hear that again and again about the welfare system, OK what are your fixes?
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And tax the damn churches! Talk about welfare, the churches are all welfare cases as are many corporations and even whole industries. Here in 'socialist' Canada, up to 50% of the biofuel industry is funded by government subsidies. That's the same industry that's being held responsible for the worldwide food shortages. (Like that was unexpected, lol!)
I agree! TAX the churches! Churches make income off of their investments, their real property not only makes them income but should be on the local tax rolls just like your home or mine. If we are going to keep the present extortive IRS system, we must tax the churches, in fact any "body" that brings in an income.
The biofuel industry is a major scam here in the US. I am all in favor of withdrawing the unconscionable tax subsidies which are going to multimillionaire farmers and land owners. The biofuel industry has become a disaster, it can't remain competitive without subsidies that we all pay for, and the industry has taken so much corn out of food production that there are shortages of corn world wide, driving up the prices of just about every food product. We all pay for the biofuel industry that way too.
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Sorta like why what's-his-name robbed banks? 'Cause that's where the money is? ;D
Dellinger?
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Which means the rich are getting welfare, too. They may not need help paying for their food and medical care and education. But the rest of us are paying disproportionately for the roads, bridges, parks, beaches, lakes, police, military and fire protection that they use.
I agree, that is why I am in favor of abolishing the present system of taxation, which allows the rich to pay proportionately little, and the poor to pay nothing. In fact the poor pay at a negative rate, the present US taxation system in effect transfers income from the families of working middle class people into the hands of the mostly idle poor.
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that extortive compelling you have mentioned above is exactly why the welfare state no longer has the unqualified support of the overwhelming mass of the votes, who are mostly middle class.
I am all in favor of the rich, the middle class, and the poor all paying an EQUAL share. The term "fair" as applied to a tax is subjective. In reality the only "fair" tax is one which has EQUAL rates for everyone. This can be accomplished by a consumption tax which has no exceptions, no exemptions, and no refunds. If you and I walk into a store and buy a diet soda, we both should pay a fed tax on that item at the same rate, regardless of any similarities or disparities in our incomes. And this type of tax should apply to all of our consumption purchases in our lives. This tax will rid of the IRS and the unfairness that everyone agrees exists. The only fair system is an equal system. The present system of both social engineering welfare and IRS enforced taxation are unsustainable politically, and in my opinion unsustainable morally. The grasping hand of gov is robbing one section of the population in order to keep another section breeding and idle.
"we need to fix it" we hear that again and again about the welfare system, OK what are your fixes?
Are we going to start this again? You never like our suggestions, the #1 fix is to put more money into the system to hire more counselors and agents, improve computer technology to track users/abusers of the system and tighten record keeping and to pursue and prosecute abusers of the system, make them pay back the money they embezzled, etc.
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why you have such a strong reaction to my posts I do not know but the fact that you have to label them indicates they are hitting home.
I stand by each of them.
truth is truth. YOU can call them 'pity party' posts if you like, they are true to life and if they make you cringe then...GOOD! It shows you haven't completely hardened your heart.
you have every right to post whatever you wish on subjects which concern you. you have every right to attempt to elicit "pity", "support" ,or "sympathy" for the poor on assistance. and that tactic is why I have referred to this thread as a "pity party" and other threads similar to this which you have started.
now, I have the right to not only disagree with you but also point out that we have discussed your points repeatedly on earlier threads, and that you are making the same old arguments. The thread "texas #1" is an example of this. that is why I posted the link and suggested that you might consider bumping that old thread into this new one. we lose a long train of arguments that were made at that time by not including them in this thread.
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I will go for that when you agree with a fair WAGE system. Where wealthy people can't bleed a company dry and then wander off with their 'Golden Parachute" while people who have worked their entire lifes for a company lose their life savings.
the system which you are advocating was tried in the Soviet Union. wages and prices all were set by the government. it didn't work out so well. :'(
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{{Kelda}}
and you have a right to feel proud. No matter what the Eloi say.
who are the Eloi other than characters in HG Welles "Time Machine" novel who got eaten by the Morlocks and didn't have much to say about it at all?
If you would like to say that the tax payers are Eloi, and the IRS and the poverty pimps who run the assistance programs are the Morlocks, then we are in total agreement with the analogy. ;)
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Are we going to start this again? You never like our suggestions, the #1 fix is to put more money into the system to hire more counselors and agents, improve computer technology to track users/abusers of the system and tighten record keeping and to pursue and prosecute abusers of the system, make them pay back the money they embezzled, etc.
trying to be fair, I do say that your "fix" would fix some of the abuses around the edges.
but your fix offers no fundmental solutions to a system which traps the recipients in an endless cycle and the tax payers in another endless cycle.
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true true
and here you are putting forward all these NEW ideas....you must feel like Moses crying in the desert...
I thought I saw a burning bush on the horizon! :o
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trying to be fair, I do say that your "fix" would fix some of the abuses around the edges.
but your fix offers no fundmental solutions to a system which traps the recipients in an endless cycle and the tax payers in another endless cycle.
We already have some Welfare reform in place don't we? Limited time to get the checks, the number of kids covered is now restricted to a certain number. We could improve and increase the criteria of receiving the benefits quite easily.
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I think that we get poorer because we purchase too many items from criminals, like in big stores that uses slave labour items !
Does that make sense?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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So we have read delalluvia's very specific recommendations for fixing the welfare system.
But broketrash, I guess I'm not clear on exactly what you're advocating, aside from instituting a consumption tax. You have complained that the poor should not receive assistance to pay for food, medical care, education, etc. So are you saying those programs should all be eliminated? That the poor and their children should be required to fend for themselves, even if it means starving or dying for lack of medical care? And not only that, but -- via the consumption tax -- to pay A HIGHER PROPORTION of their income than more affluent people do for these basic necessities and other goods and services?
I'm not putting it harshly on purpose. I'm seriously wondering about what you would envision as an ideal world in this respect.
Here's what I think about when this subject comes up. A few years ago, I read "Tobacco Road" by Erskine Caldwell. One of the most depressing books I've ever read, it's a novel about poor people living in the days before Welfare, Medicare and other assistance programs. They scrounge for and squabble over food. Medical problems go untreated. A grandmother is left to die -- one less mouth to feed! -- a daughter with a cleft lip grows to adulthood without that fairly simple surgery. Education is out of the question, and hope of improving their circumstances is all but nonexistent. They live like animals, and accordingly behave like animals. The book is no "pity party" -- at times it's hard to tell whether Caldwell even feels much sympathy for his characters. But in any case, it does not paint an appealing picture, to say the least, of poverty in a society without safety nets.
Of course, throughout most of human history, the poor have had to fend for themselves, at whatever cost. But my impression is that we, as a wealthy developed society, felt a certain responsibility for sharing that wealth with those who can't -- for whatever reason, from physical disability to cultural handicaps -- accumulate their own.
(For anyone not familiar with the aforementioned novel, here's a description from Amazon):
Novel by Erskine Caldwell, published in 1932. A tale of violence and sex among rural poor in the American South, the novel was highly controversial in its time. It is the story of Georgia sharecropper Jeeter Lester and his family, who are trapped by the bleak economic conditions of the Depression as well as by their own limited intelligence and destructive sexuality. Its tragic ending is almost foreordained by the characters' inability to change their lives. Caldwell's skillful use of dialect and his plain style made the book one of the best examples of literary naturalism in contemporary American fiction. The novel was adapted as a successful play in 1933.
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I am a sometime believer in the philosophies of Ayn Rand, which bear a lot of resemblance to natural selection/survival of the fittest.
I'm not a believer in Ayn Rand, but I am a believer in Charles Darwin, and I get your point. However, as I was trying to say in an earlier post, the members of more affluent classes aren't necessarily the "fittest" -- often, they're just the luckiest. And the reverse is true of poor people. Some of them undoubtedly aren't all that "fit," but others just have no escape hatch. And while evolution is entirely lacking in compassion, we humans supposedly aren't.
But I agree with you that it is a complex moral situation with no easy answers and points to be made on both sides.
Moreover, the poor in the US are not truly poor compared to poor elsewhere in the world. So do we keep it within national boundaries, or do we recognize the increasingly global community in which we live and try to help all people?
I say we do both. God knows how we should apportion it. But people are people.
I was just watching a slide show about Darfur on Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2188981/ (http://www.slate.com/id/2188981/) and thinking about it in terms of our discussion here. Compared to the people in those slides, the average housing-project resident here lives on Easy Street. What makes the poor American's situation poignant is that s/he is surrounded by vast wealth, an example of which I also ran across this morning on the Reuters website:
http://blogs.reuters.com/blog/2007/06/13/blackstone-ceos-3000-food-spree-and-40-crab-claws/ (http://blogs.reuters.com/blog/2007/06/13/blackstone-ceos-3000-food-spree-and-40-crab-claws/)
Blackstone CEO’s $3,000 food spree and $40 crab claws
June 13th, 2007, filed by Michael Flaherty
As Blackstone settles into the pre-IPO “quiet period,” a Wall Street Journal article made a loud bang on Wednesday. The Journal highlights Stephen Schwarzman’s worth (expected to be more than $7.7 billion after the IPO), his size (5 foot 6 inches) and his competitive streak (he is quoted as saying, he wants to “inflict pain” on and “kill off” his rivals).
Better yet, the Journal article reveals some of Blackstone CEO’s extravagances, which may not go over too well with lawmakers in Washington and various European capitals who are seeking to get a grip on the huge riches that private equity executives are hauling in. The Journal points out:
”He expects lunches consisting of cold soup, a cold entrée such as lobster salad or fresh grilled tuna on salad, followed by dessert, Mr. Zeugin (his executive chef) says. He eats the three-course meal within 15 minutes, the chef says.”
“Mr. Zeugin says he often spends $3,000 for a weekend of food for Mr. Schwarzman and his wife, including stone crabs that cost $400, or $40 per claw. (Mr. Schwarzman says he had no idea how much the crabs cost.) Recently, Mr. Zeugin has been ill and is no longer working, although he is still on Mr. Schwarzman’s payroll.”
“Once, while sunning by the pool at his 11,000-square-foot home in Palm Beach, Fla., hecomplained to Jean-Pierre Zeugin, his executive chef and estate manager, that an employee wasn’t wearing the proper black shoes with his uniform, according to Mr. Zeugin. Mr. Schwarzman explains that he found the squeak of the rubber soles distracting.”
Personally, I'm not comfortable with a society that shrugs off such drastic inequities. It's not a question of whether Schwarzman is legally entitled to his wealth -- of course he is. But is he morally entitled to spend $3,000 for two days of food when there are people who don't eat that much in a year?
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The poor pay much more for junk, like Made in China items, made by slaves in China !!
Did you know?
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We already have some Welfare reform in place don't we? Limited time to get the checks, the number of kids covered is now restricted to a certain number. We could improve and increase the criteria of receiving the benefits quite easily.
yes, you are correct, there has been some limited reform in the states since the 1980's and some reform at the federal level during the Clinton admin. These were and still are certainly welcome, but do not fix the fundamental problems.
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But in the US we are taught, even if it is only implicitly, to look upon the wealthy as role models of what we would like to become, and upon their possessions as what we would like to have for our own.
Yes, that is the problem, I think. We are sympathetic toward the rich because we all assume we'll eventually be among them (me, I'm counting on Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes ;D ). For most people, of course, that won't happen. But the Land of Opportunity encourages us to think it's just a matter of time.
Here I disagree. People are entitled to spend their money on whatever they want, as long as it is legal. He may be giving a ton of money to charity as well. There are a lot of wealthy out there living nicely who are not in the news, and that is fine. Hopefully they are giving back to society as well as enjoying their lifestyle.
I have mixed feelings. You're right, people are technically entitled to spend their money on anything legal. And it's true that this particular guy may give away a ton of money to charity.
Nevertheless, I'm disturbed by the degree of inequity that's built into the structure of the U.S. economy. Here's a list comparing CEO pay in developed countries to the amount earned by average workers:
Japan 11:1
Germany 12:1
France 15:1
Italy 20:1
Canada 20:1
South Africa 21:1
Britain 22:1
Hong Kong 41:1
Mexico 47:1
Venezuela 50:1
United States 475:1
(Note: This list is from an academic research paper by a business professor. I can't absolutely vouch for these particular numbers because I didn't want to spend lots of time doing research and comparisons. But these figures more or less match other such lists I've seen.)
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I'm disturbed by the degree of inequity that's built into the structure of the U.S. economy. Here's a list comparing CEO pay in developed countries to the amount earned by average workers:
Japan 11:1
Germany 12:1
France 15:1
Italy 20:1
Canada 20:1
South Africa 21:1
Britain 22:1
Hong Kong 41:1
Mexico 47:1
Venezuela 50:1
United States 475:1
(Note: This list is from an academic research paper by a business professor. I can't absolutely vouch for these particular numbers because I didn't want to spend lots of time doing research and comparisons. But these figures more or less match other such lists I've seen.)
I'm suspicious of this list. I need more information. For instance, what if there are only a handful of large corporations in those other countries, with many prospective CEOs to choose from, in contrast to the U.S. where there are hundreds of similar companies but only a few U.S. citizens capable of leading them? That would drive up the price significantly. Another thing, maybe CEOs in the U.S. serve an average of 4-7 years whereas those in other countries may serve 20 years or even more. The U.S. CEOs would need much more money.
Never thought I'd be an apologist for U.S. CEOs!!
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I'm suspicious of this list. I need more information. For instance, what if there are only a handful of large corporations in those other countries, with many prospective CEOs to choose from, in contrast to the U.S. where there are hundreds of similar companies but only a few U.S. citizens capable of leading them?
Glad to see you here, F-R! But ... sigh. ::) You're determined to make me do more research, aren't you? ;)
OK, well, to answer your first question, I'm not sure why the U.S. would have so few citizens capable of leading big companies. For example, Britain probably has fewer big companies, but it also has fewer citizens.
I'm not going to take the time to find the comparative figures on this. But it seems to me that big companies and people capable of leading them would be roughly proportionate from one country to the next. (And don't let's get into a discussion about the U.S. education system, broketrash! ;)) But maybe you're are thinking of something I'm missing.
Another thing, maybe CEOs in the U.S. serve an average of 4-7 years whereas those in other countries may serve 20 years or even more. The U.S. CEOs would need much more money.
They NEED much more money? So John A. Thain of Merrill Lynch can't scrape by on, say, $10 million a year -- he's absolutely gotta have that $84 million, or he'll have to cancel the cable TV? If Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs took a cut from his $54 million annually, his kids would be eating store-brand macaroni for dinner? If John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley got anything less than $41 million, his wife would have to start taking in laundry?
I'd bet there are more than a few minimum-wage workers who might question whether John A. Thain needs a raise more than they do. If we're going to start paying "to each according to his needs" ... well, I'm not sure the CEOs would be the first to endorse that system! :laugh:
Here's more info in an article from the Forbes magazine website, not exactly a bastion for leftist class-warfare politics:
Executive Pay
More In A Day Than In A Year
Steve McGookin, 08.29.07, 5:26 PM ET
As the nation prepares to celebrate a Labor Day holiday that will see the first increase in the federal minimum wage in 10 years, a new report shows that the gap in pay and compensation between workers and bosses is growing.
Indeed, according to the study, compiled jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, corporate CEOs "collected as much money from one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year."
The report, "Executive Excess-The Staggering Social Cost of U.S. Business Leadership," also says that the private equity boom "has pushed the pay ceiling for American business leaders further into the economic stratosphere."
The 14th annual survey showed that CEOs at the biggest U.S. companies averaged $10.8 million in pay and associated compensation, including stock options, based on data from 386 of the Fortune 500 companies. That's more than 364 times the pay of the average American worker. Meanwhile, the survey says, the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, who work on a fee-based reward system linked to their funds under management, were paid an average of $675.5 million.
That is equivalent to 22,255 times the annual pay of an average American worker--or more in roughly 10 minutes than the average worker makes in a year, the study says. (In this survey, the "average" worker's salary is around $30,000 a year.)
Meanwhile, the new federal minimum wage, $5.85 an hour, is, in real terms, 7% below where the minimum wage stood 10 years ago, the survey says. It also notes that CEO pay and compensation over that same decade has increased by about 45%.
The survey also shows that American executives are in a dominant position when compared with their European counterparts. It found that in 2006, the 20 highest-paid European executives earned an average of $12.5 million, roughly one-third as much as the 20 highest-paid executives in the U.S.
Here's a NYT list of top-paid CEOs and their compensation. It also shows for each how their pay increase or decrease compares to the price of their company's stock. For example, Kenneth Chenault of American Express saw his pay raise 95 percent (to $50 million) while the company's stock fell 12 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/05/business/20080405_EXECCOMP_GRAPHIC.html (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/05/business/20080405_EXECCOMP_GRAPHIC.html)
And here's a lot MORE information in the report Forbes mentions by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. As you can probably tell from the title, "Executive Excess 2007: The Staggering Cost of U.S. Business Leadership" the IPS and UFE are not exactly right-wing organizations. (Note that this is a pdf):
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/070829-executiveexcess.pdf (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/070829-executiveexcess.pdf)
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So we have read delalluvia's very specific recommendations for fixing the welfare system.
But broketrash, I guess I'm not clear on exactly what you're advocating, aside from instituting a consumption tax. You have complained that the poor should not receive assistance to pay for food, medical care, education, etc. So are you saying those programs should all be eliminated? That the poor and their children should be required to fend for themselves, even if it means starving or dying for lack of medical care? And not only that, but -- via the consumption tax -- to pay A HIGHER PROPORTION of their income than more affluent people do for these basic necessities and other goods and services?
Hello crayons, hope you had a great day, it was a helluva blow here! had wind gusts up to 50 mph, blew me right off the jogging trail with dust in my eyes!
You have asked me to offer a sample of my proposed solutions to what I see as the current mess of a welfare system, which in reality is a self perpetuating poverty creating mechanism.
Without going into all of the many, many programs which I feel the Federal government has no place being involved in, I will start by saying that welfare is one of those programs.
The Federal gov needs to get out of the poverty pimping programs and turn everything over to the states, local gov, and private charities.
I advocate "federal" (as opposed to the Federal gov) solutions to the challenges facing the US. And one of those challenges is the intractable nature of an underclass that continuously perpetuates itself generation after generation. This underclass is a huge burden on the tax payers who have to pay for the welfare programs, and the commiserate crime that grows out of dysfunctional neighborhoods. The federal programs designed by LBJ and his consorts as a "War on Poverty" back in the 1960's have failed utterly to eliminate poverty. They have in fact lead to the current situation of the plague of men who dog women leaving them pregnant and on WIC, etc. Notice, I am blaming the men and the women. Why are the men able to abandon the women and their children so easily? Because they know that the welfare system will feed, clothe, medicate, and educate their progeny. There is no motivation to stay and be the fathers that they should be. And because welfare benefits are tied to the size of families, the women have no motivation to use readily available birth control and abortion.
The federal gov having failed in this attempt at social engineering should back out completely from this endeavor and allow the states to find their own individual solutions to the problem within each state's borders. The founders intended the states to act as laboratories when they set up the union, and this is a perfect opportunity for the states to find solutions that work for them. The value of a "federal" union, is that some states will succeed, and others will fail, but all will learn and eventually emulate the winners if the Federal gov in DC would get its carcass out of the way.
what are my specific reforms which I would advocate in my home state?
1) The states need to regulate procreation in all recipients of welfare aid. if a person can not afford to raise children, then they shouldn't be allowed to have them, by law.
Birth control pills then should be mandatory for welfare recipients to continue to receive aid. Male birth control pills should also be mandatory. additional pregnancies should be viewed then as a disqualifier for continued aid. Periodic mandatory pregnancy tests should be a part of the qualifying procedures for aid, with periodic followups.
2) The fathers need to be tracked down and forced to contribute to the family income. If they refuse, then we need to revive the prison farm system. The productive work of raising commodities for sale can be applied to individual families. Repeat male offenders should be forceably sterilized.
3) Abortion needs to remain legal and safe, and this is not just a cast off comment. The Roberts court will probably invalidate Roe this next term. If Roe is invalidated, then the matter of abortion will return to the states. In my home state, I will be among the minority of conservatives who wish to keep abortion as a legal but restricted option.
4) Educational reform : it is crucial that we offer a relevant quality education to those who are at the highest risk to becoming a burden on the tax payers. (this is tied into my belief that the Federal gov has no business being in the education business. I want the states and local gov to handle all matters involved in education.)
On each state level, I would advocate an educational system which continues free education at the primary and secondary levels. Additionally, at the high school levels, the system should break into two paths - one for academics, another for technical and trade schools. We are presently in all of the states wasting billions in federal and state aid to education encouraging nonacademically qualified students into attending college. This is a disservice to the tax payers and the child.
And, just as in the two track high school system, we need a two track system in higher education. Academia and Trade/Technical schools. This is the model that has been used in Germany for generations with a great deal of success. If we can offer students a useful education that trains them in relevant job skills leading to an apprenticeship program and a guaranteed job at the end of their studies, we will have moved a long ways towards solving the problems of the perpetual underclass.
Additionally, I would advocate making all tuition, fees, and learning materials FREE to all students who enter the higher educational system, whether they go the academic route or the trade/tech route. It is absurd that students must go into debt in order to complete a course of college studies! I agree with Michelle Obama'a gripe about the student loan trap. Its time to fix that.
The key to eliminating the underclass problem is for early intervention before the person in question enters the underclass.
5) Shame should be reintroduced as a societal deterrent to unwed and unsupported pregnancies. (I would definitely include the men on the wall of shame as well) those who are a burden on society should feel its disapproval in order to function as an object lesson for those who have yet to enter underclass behavior.
6) Those who receive welfare aid should also be required to offer community service such as cleaning up the parks. It is not acceptable to take the income from others without showing gratitude. We should make it very clear that welfare assistance is NOT AN ENTITLEMENT, and it is not a permanent condition.
7) Those who make the transition from welfare to productive careers should be publicly honored for their achievement. Creating a positive role model.
have a great night!
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broketrash, you are essentially defining, on a behavioral level, the way in which the asian and european american americans pursue their lives. That is part of the cultural problem; blacks who exist in the lower economic strata are ofthen offended by such ideals and lifestyle behaviors and tend to reject them as being culturally in conflict with their own or as forcing them to integrate into a process that did not originate in their own ethnicity.
In order to affect that "change" even Obama will have a tough time. Bill Cosby has made laudable attempts to do so, but he was generally sidelined by the larger power of the speicial interest demogues who know how to race bait. 100 years ago, booker t Washington made the same arguements, but his memory and leadership/advice has also fallen far away from actionable agendas.
Hence, you may be correct that a tough stance (rigid consumption taxes, forced participation in labor, strict control on family planning, etc) on most social issues might lead yield a learning curve that drives behavior. Guiding by suggestion and example may not work; surely not much evidence to show for it. During the past 40 or so years, the educational theory that learning will occur without much (if any) discipline has been largely debunked.
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broketrash, you are essentially defining, on a behavioral level, the way in which the asian and european american americans pursue their lives. That is part of the cultural problem; blacks who exist in the lower economic strata are ofthen offended by such ideals and lifestyle behaviors and tend to reject them as being culturally in conflict with their own or as forcing them to integrate into a process that did not originate in their own ethnicity.
In order to affect that "change" even Obama will have a tough time. Bill Cosby has made laudable attempts to do so, but he was generally sidelined by the larger power of the speicial interest demogues who know how to race bait. 100 years ago, booker t Washington made the same arguements, but his memory and leadership/advice has also fallen far away from actionable agendas.
Hence, you may be correct that a tough stance (rigid consumption taxes, forced participation in labor, strict control on family planning, etc) on most social issues might lead yield a learning curve that drives behavior. Guiding by suggestion and example may not work; surely not much evidence to show for it. During the past 40 or so years, the educational theory that learning will occur without much (if any) discipline has been largely debunked.
Kaiser, good to see you back posting!
I have a question: do you honestly see dysfunctional underclass behavior as racially/ethnically/culturally linked? Lets look at the underclass as it exists in most US cities, and I am not talking about rural poverty but urban. If you look at the urban underclass and all that implies in regard to dependency on welfare, high crime rates, single parent families (even grandparent headed families), you will see that it is transracial. Anglos, Hispanics, Blacks all engage in underclass behavior. You can make the argument that Blacks are proportionately in greater numbers in that category, but I'm not sure that implies that the behavior is racially/ ethnically/ culturally based.
I can also make the argument that if the underclass were linked closely with racial/ethnic/cultural conditions, then we would not see the growth in middle class Black America, not to mention the phenomenal and wonderful rise in Hispanic entrepreneurship.
I honestly don't know much about the state of the Asian community across the US. Here in N TX Asian are mostly very successful professionals, and entrepreneurs. I am not aware of any underclass problems in the Asian community, but there could be somewhere else.
And the most important question that I draw from your post: if what you are saying is correct, would the solutions which I offered above for a state by state level evaluation, be regarded by those who define their culture in ways that could be called underclass as cultural or ethnic imperialism?
You have offered interesting and provocative commentary and I would be interested in discussing this. :)
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here is an interesting article about poverty in America.
August 27, 2007
Executive Summary: How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America
by Robert E. Rector
"Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of "poor" persons in the U.S. In 2005, the Bureau found 37 million "poor" Americans. Presidential candidate John Edwards claims that these 37 million Americans currently "struggle with incredible poverty." Edwards asserts that America's poor, who number "one in eight of us…do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need," and are forced to live in "terrible" circumstances. However, an examination of the living standards of the 37 million persons, whom the government defines as "poor," reveals that what Edwards calls "the plague" of American poverty might not be as "terrible" or "incredible" as candidate Edwards contends.
But, if poverty means (as Edwards asserts) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, then very few of the 37 million people identified as living "in poverty" by the Census Bureau would, in fact, be characterized as poor. Clearly, material hardship does exist in the United States, but it is quite restricted in scope and severity.
The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
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.
Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the averagecitizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.
Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all of the nation's poor: There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. A third of "poor" households have both cell and landline telephones. A third also have telephone answering machines. At the other extreme, approximately one-tenth of families in poverty have no telephone at all. Similarly, while the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.
Much poverty that does exist in the United States can be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home.
In both good and bad economic environments, the typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year—the equivalent of 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year—nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.
As noted above, father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three-quarters of the nation's impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.
Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, the nation's remaining poverty could be reduced.
While renewed welfare reform can help to reduce poverty, such efforts will be partially offset by the poverty-boosting impact of the nation's immigration system. Each year, the U.S. imports, through both legal and illegal immigration, hundreds of thousands of additional poor persons from abroad. As a result, one-quarter of all poor persons in the U.S. are now first-generation immigrants or the minor children of those immigrants. Roughly one in ten of the persons counted among the poor by the Census Bureau is either an illegal immigrant or the minor child of an illegal. As long as the present steady flow of poverty-prone persons from foreign countries continues, efforts to reduce the total number of poor in the U.S. will be far more difficult. A sound anti-poverty strategy must seek to increase work and marriage, reduce illegal immigration, and increase the skill level of future legal immigrants."
Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
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Lotta trouble with that article.
I'd like to see these "various govt reports' referenced.
My favorites are the 'owns TV, air conditioners and cars'. Yeah. How do they define an "air conditioner"? I've grown up around things they could call an air conditioner. A small metal box that if you poured water into it and turned it on, you'd get cool air cranked out - but only if you stood in front of it and only for about 15 minutes, then you had to pour more water into it. Is a 'fan' called air conditioning? They don't say these people have central air. The poor people across the street from my mother "owned" about 4 cars...only 1 worked. They traded batteries around every morning trying to find one that would help start the one car that might work. And it goes without saying that they didn't have the money to run their one car legally - no insurance, no tags, inspection etc.
And this Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both.
You do know that marriage has a failure rate of about 50%? So what if a poor person marries? There is a good chance they'll be divorced soon and right back where they started. So much for that "reliable ladder".
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The Federal gov needs to get out of the poverty pimping programs and turn everything over to the states, local gov, and private charities.
Some time I wish you would take the time to explain why you have such faith that the states would, in fact, take over the burden if the federal government got out of the picture. This, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with your "federalism" approach. State governments--state legislatures--are even more responsive to their constitutents than Congress. Any Pennsylvania state representative from, say, Mifflin or Juniata County, in the center of the state, who advocated raising taxes across the state--and don't kid yourself or try to kid anyone else, you take the federal government out of the picture, state taxes would have to go up to fill in the gap--for poverty programs in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Allentown or Reading would be voted out of office so fast his head would spin right around like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist.
I apologize if I'm offensive, but I think what appears to me to be your faith in the states--and the people in them--is unfounded at best and naive at worst. But, for what it's worth, I do believe your convictions are genuine. I would not say that about all conservatives.
I advocate "federal" (as opposed to the Federal gov) solutions to the challenges facing the US. And one of those challenges is the intractable nature of an underclass that continuously perpetuates itself generation after generation. This underclass is a huge burden on the tax payers who have to pay for the welfare programs, and the commiserate crime that grows out of dysfunctional neighborhoods. The federal programs designed by LBJ and his consorts as a "War on Poverty" back in the 1960's have failed utterly to eliminate poverty.
Perhaps because, unlike the war in Iraq, we gave up too soon?
what are my specific reforms which I would advocate in my home state?
1) The states need to regulate procreation in all recipients of welfare aid. if a person can not afford to raise children, then they shouldn't be allowed to have them, by law.
Birth control pills then should be mandatory for welfare recipients to continue to receive aid. Male birth control pills should also be mandatory. additional pregnancies should be viewed then as a disqualifier for continued aid. Periodic mandatory pregnancy tests should be a part of the qualifying procedures for aid, with periodic followups.
Jesus H. Christ, you have got to be effen kiddin'. Who's your medical adviser, Josef Mengele? While you're at it, why don't you just round up the poor and load 'em onto cattle cars. I'm sure there's plenty of room in West Texas to set up the concentration camps.
Edit: Actually, it strikes me as a good idea to make birth control available at the point of receiving Welfare benefits, especially if done without charge to the recipient, but as for requiring it? By law? No way.
5) Shame should be reintroduced as a societal deterrent to unwed and unsupported pregnancies. (I would definitely include the men on the wall of shame as well) those who are a burden on society should feel its disapproval in order to function as an object lesson for those who have yet to enter underclass behavior.
Let's us set up a business to embroider scarlet letters. ...
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Some persons are poor, because they are enslaved, period !
See my thread how China sells children on the auction block, yesterday and to-day, so these young kids have to be slaves litterally !!
Shame on China !
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I am a lifelong moderate Democrat, but find myself in agreement with broketrash on the above points, particularly those concerning education. I am a former educator, from a family of educators, and view the US educational system as a flat out mess. Broketrash's suggestions are in line with my own beliefs about how we might improve it.
Absolutely!
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Good morning, broketrash, and thanks for such a thorough and carefully considered response!
The Federal gov needs to get out of the poverty pimping programs and turn everything over to the states, local gov, and private charities.
I've never understood why people think this would be a good idea. Why would states and local governments be any better at handling this than the federal government? As Jeff said, handing responsibility to the states would just create new, even thornier, state-level problems. Just about every state has its Juniata County vs. Philadelphia situation. Or worse, IMO, is the conflict between cities, suburbs and rural areas. Many suburbanites, I've noticed, have little empathy for urban or rural poor people. (And I say that as someone who grew up in a suburb, lives in one now, and still likes a lot of things about them.) To me, this just seems like a strategy for giving people who oppose poverty programs more power to dismantle them.
State administration would also create instability of various kinds as welfare recipients in states with limited programs flood across the borders of neighboring states with more generous programs.
As for private charities, they're already in the business of helping the poor, but they somehow don't seem to be fixing everything either. Would taxpayers, relieved of their responsibility to pay for federal Welfare, turn over the same amount of their income to charities? Um, yeah, a few might.
This underclass is a huge burden on the tax payers who have to pay for the welfare programs, and the commiserate crime that grows out of dysfunctional neighborhoods.
This is among the reasons I think we all have an interest in addressing poverty.
The federal programs designed by LBJ and his consorts as a "War on Poverty" back in the 1960's have failed utterly to eliminate poverty.
Right -- poverty has not been eliminated, just reduced. When the War on Poverty was intruduced 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.
From the Census Bureau:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html)
And many individual programs that were part of the War on Poverty, such as Head Start and VISTA, are widely considered successful.
There is no motivation to stay and be the fathers that they should be. And because welfare benefits are tied to the size of families, the women have no motivation to use readily available birth control and abortion.
Yes, I can agree that these aspects of the system can create problems.
The value of a "federal" union, is that some states will succeed, and others will fail, but all will learn and eventually emulate the winners if the Federal gov in DC would get its carcass out of the way.
How will "all" be equipped to "eventually emulate the winners"? I'm guessing state politics and economics would largely shape the structures and outcomes of these hypothetical state-level programs. And those two factors, among others, vary widely among states. Would a program that works in Maryland work equally well in Mississippi?
additional pregnancies should be viewed then as a disqualifier for continued aid.
So those newborns would be punished for their parents' actions by being left without help?
Wonder what would happen then. Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel, the children left to die in the woods? It's actually based on historical fact. Back in the days when another mouth to feed could seriously threaten a family's ability to survive -- i.e., throughout most of human history -- babies were often left to die, either directly, by being abandoned in the woods, or indirectly, by being left on the doorsteps of foundling homes and wet nurses who were dealing with their own poverty issues and often could not support them.
I will be among the minority of conservatives who wish to keep abortion as a legal but restricted option.
Restricted in what way? It's only legal for poor people, or what?
at the high school levels, the system should break into two paths - one for academics, another for technical and trade schools.
Two problems with this that come to mind immediately: 1) I imagine lots and lots of kids would be mislabeled and put on the wrong track. Think of all the stories of great and famous people who were not high achievers in school. 2) Many technical and trade jobs are increasingly being automated or outsourced.
We are presently in all of the states wasting billions in federal and state aid to education encouraging nonacademically qualified students into attending college. This is a disservice to the tax payers and the child.
So you're contending that the Welfare roles are filled with underqualified former college students?? Hunh?? I'd guess that most poor people did not attend college, and that going to college, whatever one's academic skills, is one of the surest ways OUT of poverty.
And, just as in the two track high school system, we need a two track system in higher education. Academia and Trade/Technical schools. This is the model that has been used in Germany for generations with a great deal of success. If we can offer students a useful education that trains them in relevant job skills leading to an apprenticeship program and a guaranteed job at the end of their studies, we will have moved a long ways towards solving the problems of the perpetual underclass.
I don't know about the program in Germany, but times have changed over the generations. The job skills that led to success a generation ago, or even a decade ago, are not necessarily in the same demand today.
And the "guaranteed job"? That sounds suspiciously like it would involve more government intervention.
5) Shame should be reintroduced as a societal deterrent to unwed and unsupported pregnancies. (I would definitely include the men on the wall of shame as well) those who are a burden on society should feel its disapproval in order to function as an object lesson for those who have yet to enter underclass behavior.
I like this idea! And while we're at it, let's reintroduce shame as a social deterrent to mass murder, as well.
Those who receive welfare aid should also be required to offer community service such as cleaning up the parks.
Actually, I've never understood why anybody would object to this idea. Potentially, it seems, Welfare could be the equivalent of Roosevelt's WPA.
Those who make the transition from welfare to productive careers should be publicly honored for their achievement. Creating a positive role model.
This sounds nice! :D
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Here's an interesting article from the American Psychological Association's website. It appears to date back to the late '90s, though I'm sure many of its points are still valid. For more on Welfare myths, google "welfare" and "myths." You'll find a lot of what are called myths are statements that have been bandied about on this thread.
Myths and Facts About Welfare
The general public views poverty as the result of personal failures and deficiencies. This perception rests on several myths. The most prevalent are that poverty results from a lack of responsibility; welfare leads to chronic dependency; African American women make up the largest group of welfare recipients; welfare promotes single parenthood and out-of-wedlock births; welfare provides a disincentive to work; welfare creates a "culture of poverty" because recipients share and hand down to their children a set of defective behaviors, values, and personality traits; and welfare funds extravagant spending by welfare recipients (Ehrenreich, 1987; Katz, 1989). These myths of pathology translate directly to the debate of who deserves help. They also fuel powerful stereotypical racial and gender messages. It is mothers, especially African American and single mothers, who are viewed as undeserving. Unwed mothers are thought to have the choice of marriage and do not obtain the sympathy that widows have. Other groups that are perceived as undeserving are immigrants, especially if they are not fluent in English.
Even the term "welfare" has been pejorative, and distortions of facts about welfare perpetuate myths about public assistance and those who receive it. These negative myths and stereotypes reinforced the government's agenda in cutting welfare spending to those recipients viewed as undeserving. Reform will continue to be ineffective if those implementing it do not separate myth from fact.
Strategies for alleviating poverty and decisions about government spending continue to be closely linked to the perceived causes of poverty, as well as the extent to which these causes are perceived to be modifiable (Furnham, 1982). Poverty is seen as an individual problem or a social issue (such as education or crime) rather than an economic issue (such as unemployment and the economy)(Gallup, 1992). Consequently, solutions are geared toward fixing or punishing those individuals with the "problem." Little attention is focused on societal factors that may perpetuate under- and unemployment, such as inadequate education, transportation, child care, and mental health problems.
Myth: Poverty Results From a Lack of Responsibility
Fact: Poverty Results From Low Wages
Welfare programs have been our country's response to poverty, and everyone agrees that those programs have not solved the problem. Jared Bernstein (1996) of the Economic Policy Institute identifies wage decline as the crucial economic factor that has had the largest impact on poverty rates in the 1980s and 1990s. While hourly rates of pay have fallen for the majority of the workforce since the late 1970s, by far the largest losses have been for the lowest paid workers. According to Bernstein (1996), between 1979 and 1989, the male worker, for example, at the 10th percentile (meaning 90 percent of the male workforce earns more) saw his hourly wage decline 13 percent, and since 1989 he lost another 6 percent. For women workers at the 10th percentile, the decline over the 1980s was 18 percent. The low-wage female worker gained slightly since 1989, but by 1995, her hourly wage rate was $4.84, down from $5.82 in 1979 (all dollars are in 1995 inflation-adjusted terms).
Myth: A Huge Chunk of My Tax Dollars Supports Welfare Recipients
Fact: Welfare Costs 1 Percent of the Federal Budget
Widespread misperception about the extent of welfare exacerbate the problems of poverty. The actual cost of welfare programs-about 1 percent of the federal budget and 2 percent of state budgets (McLaughlin, 1997)-is proportionally less than generally believed. During the 104th Congress, more than 93 percent of the budget reductions in welfare entitlements came from programs for low-income people (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 1996). Ironically, middle-class and wealthy Americans also receive "welfare" in the form of tax deductions for home mortgages, corporate and farm subsidies, capital gains tax limits, Social Security, Medicare, and a multitude of other tax benefits. Yet these types of assistance carry no stigma and are rarely considered "welfare" (Goodgame, 1993). Anti-welfare sentiment appears to be related to attitudes about class and widely shared and socially sanctioned stereotypes about the poor. Racism also fuels negative attitudes toward welfare programs (Quadagno, 1994).
Myth: People on Welfare Become Permanently Dependent on the Support
Fact: Movement off Welfare Rolls Is Frequent
A prevalent welfare myth is that women who received AFDC became permanently dependent on public assistance. Analyses indicate that 56 percent of AFDC support ended within 12 months, 70 percent within 24 months, and almost 85 percent within 4 years (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These exit rates clearly contradict the widespread myth that AFDC recipients wanted to remain on public assistance or that welfare dependency was permanent. Unfortunately, return rates were also high, with 45 percent of ex-recipients returning to AFDC within 1 year. Persons who were likely to use AFDC longer than the average time had less than 12 years of education, no recent work experience, were never married, had a child below age 3 or had three or more children, were Latina or African American, and were under age 24 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These risk factors illustrate the importance of structural barriers, such as inadequate child care, racism, and lack of education.
Myth: Most Welfare Recipients Are African American Women
Fact: Most Welfare Recipients Are Children-Most Women on Welfare Are White
Children, not women, are the largest group of people receiving public assistance. Less than 5 million of the 14 million public assistance recipients are adults, and 90 percent of those adults are women (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1995). The majority of the recipients are White (38 percent), followed by 37 percent African Americans, and 25 percent other minority groups (Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans) (McLaughlin, 1997). However, African Americans are disproportionately represented on public assistance because they are only 12 percent of the population (O'Hare, Pollard, Mann, & Kent, 1991).
Myth: Welfare Encourages Out-of- Wedlock Births and Large Families
Fact: The Average Welfare Family Is No Bigger Than the Average Nonwelfare Family
The belief that single women are promiscuous and have large families to receive increased benefits has no basis in extant research, and single-parent families are not only a phenomenon of the poor (McFate, 1995). In fact, the average family size of welfare recipients has decreased from four in 1969 to 2.8 in 1994 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). In 1994, 43 percent of welfare families consisted of one child, and 30 percent consisted of two children. Thus, the average welfare family is no larger than the average nonrecipient's family, and despite considerable public concern that welfare encourages out-of-wedlock births, a growing body of empirical evidence indicates that welfare benefits are not a significant incentive for childbearing (Wilcox, Robbennolt, O'Keeffe, & Pynchon, 1997).
Myth: Welfare Families Use Their Benefits to Fund Extravagance
Fact: Welfare Families Live Far Below the Poverty Line
The belief that welfare provides a disincentive to work by providing a well-paying "free ride" that enables recipients, stereotyped as "Cadillac queens," to purchase extravagant items with their benefits is another myth. In reality, recipients live considerably below the poverty threshold. Despite increased program spending, the average monthly family benefit, measured in 1995 dollars, fell from $713 in 1970 to $377 in 1995, a 47 percent drop. In 26 states, AFDC benefits alone fell 64 percent short of the 1996 poverty guidelines, and the addition of food stamps only reduced this gap to 35 percent (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996).
Despite the ready availability of facts, myths about welfare continue to be widespread. The media contributes to this lack of information. The media helps shape public perceptions about welfare recipients. The way in which a topic is reported can turn a neutral reader into an opinionated reader and can greatly influence public opinion. Although in an analysis of articles published in 10 major newspapers from January 1997 to April 1997, the tone was generally sympathetic to the poor, actual research and facts to counter myths were generally lacking (Wyche & Mattern, 1997).
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State administration would also create instability of various kinds as welfare recipients in states with limited programs flood across the borders of neighboring states with more generous programs.
There is a great potential for interstate conflict here. What's to prevent states with numbers of urban poor, say, in the Rustbucket Northeast, from buying those poor folks bus tickets to Texas and Florida just to get rid of the problem? Seems to me I remember reading accusations of that sort of thing happening already.
I suppose you would address this by creating some sort of residency requirement for assistance, so then we would just have numbers of poor people getting kicked out of one state with nowhere to go.
Reminds one of the old English Poor Law, where the poor could be forcibly chased from parish to parish until they returned to the parish where they were born, which was held to be responsible for supporting them.
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Merci seriouscrayons !
Very interesting are the facts and myths about welfare !!
Thanks !!
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Lotta trouble with that article.
I'd like to see these "various govt reports' referenced.
My favorites are the 'owns TV, air conditioners and cars'. Yeah. How do they define an "air conditioner"? I've grown up around things they could call an air conditioner. A small metal box that if you poured water into it and turned it on, you'd get cool air cranked out - but only if you stood in front of it and only for about 15 minutes, then you had to pour more water into it. Is a 'fan' called air conditioning? They don't say these people have central air. The poor people across the street from my mother "owned" about 4 cars...only 1 worked. They traded batteries around every morning trying to find one that would help start the one car that might work. And it goes without saying that they didn't have the money to run their one car legally - no insurance, no tags, inspection etc.
And this Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both.
You do know that marriage has a failure rate of about 50%? So what if a poor person marries? There is a good chance they'll be divorced soon and right back where they started. So much for that "reliable ladder".
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/upload/bg_2064.pdf (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/upload/bg_2064.pdf)
Earlier, I had posted only the executive summary. Here is the original article as a 19 page PDF file with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you have an interest.. So, knock yourself out! :-*
this is article is by the same scholar whose study of the economic and social impact of illegal immigration stopped the rush to pass the Kennedy McCain amnesty bill in its tracks last year. this guy ain't no light weight crack pot. his work is taken very seriously in think tanks across the US. :)
with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you indicated an interest.
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(and you have to consider the source...the Heritage Foundation is a front for the Moral Majority refugees. They consider REAGAN to be the Messiah "the greatest most successful President since Lincoln" ::) ::) ::) )
That comment is sadly lacking in an understanding of the Heritage Foundation and indicative of the lack of serious scholarship on this issue under discussion. I won't further engage in a discussion that shows a lack of the basic knowledge of the problem in question, and relies on anecdotal commentary and emotional appeal. Why should I waste my time with that level of discussion of a very serious problem that will in fact be resolved in the political process one way of the other over the next decade?
http://www.heritage.org/ (http://www.heritage.org/)
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Some time I wish you would take the time to explain why you have such faith that the states would, in fact, take over the burden if the federal government got out of the picture. This, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with your "federalism" approach. State governments--state legislatures--are even more responsive to their constitutents than Congress. Any Pennsylvania state representative from, say, Mifflin or Juniata County, in the center of the state, who advocated raising taxes across the state--and don't kid yourself or try to kid anyone else, you take the federal government out of the picture, state taxes would have to go up to fill in the gap--for poverty programs in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Allentown or Reading would be voted out of office so fast his head would spin right around like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist.
I apologize if I'm offensive, but I think what appears to me to be your faith in the states--and the people in them--is unfounded at best and naive at worst. But, for what it's worth, I do believe your convictions are genuine. I would not say that about all conservatives.
I am not the least bit offended. You are attempting to enjoin me in a serious conversation about federalism, a continuation of a conversation which we have intermittently engaged in since I first started logging on to Bettermost some 11 months ago.
As far as the questions as to whether the states will assume the entire burden that the Federal gov assumes at this time. That will depend upon the state. After a vigorous debate within the state in question over the state's role in welfare, states will try many different solutions. How do you know that a reduced plan of spending on welfare needs is not the best solution? How do I know that an increased plan of spending on welfare needs is not the best solution? Neither of us know this.
What I do know, is that the best arena for this debate is at the state and local level. The programs which spend the taxes coming out of the state and the localities which fund those welfare programs need to be debated by the citizens, the local officials and the state officials. I am confident that if the people thru referenda, constitutional amendment, or just plain ordinary elections vote for those welfare plans or those who advocate an increase in spending, then those enhanced programs will become reality. The converse is also true. This is the essence of democracy, and this is what is lacking in the present welfare system, there is no accountability to the tax payer and the voter.
The magic of the federal system is that states are individual laboratories and given time and experimentation, we shall learn what works best for the tax payers money. But, we will never learn this until the Federal gov gets out of the way.
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I am a lifelong moderate Democrat, but find myself in agreement with broketrash on the above points, particularly those concerning education. I am a former educator, from a family of educators, and view the US educational system as a flat out mess. Broketrash's suggestions are in line with my own beliefs about how we might improve it.
that is good to hear Sunshadow, you might find that there are many scholarly studies verifying what I have opined. this is an issue that is just now coming to a boil on the national pot, and I am happy to be a tiny part of the dialog.
http://www.heritage.org/ (http://www.heritage.org/)
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Good morning, broketrash, and thanks for such a thorough and carefully considered response!
I've never understood why people think this would be a good idea. Why would states and local governments be any better at handling this than the federal government? As Jeff said, handing responsibility to the states would just create new, even thornier, state-level problems. Just about every state has its Juniata County vs. Philadelphia situation. Or worse, IMO, is the conflict between cities, suburbs and rural areas. Many suburbanites, I've noticed, have little empathy for urban or rural poor people. (And I say that as someone who grew up in a suburb, lives in one now, and still likes a lot of things about them.) To me, this just seems like a strategy for giving people who oppose poverty programs more power to dismantle them.State administration would also create instability of various kinds as welfare recipients in states with limited programs flood across the borders of neighboring states with more generous programs.
You are correct that the debate at the state and local level will become fiery and furious in the next decade. But, that is the way our founding fathers intended a federal republic to function. It is far better to have the debate and the decision making at the local level rather than dictated by the Federal gov. Yes, the response will vary state by state, that is the genius of "federalism". Some states will implement programs that help, others programs that do not fix the problem. In the open marketplace of ideas, those states which make the correct decisions will prosper and those that do not will fail. That is the nature of how our economy and our gov should work.
Ultimately you divorce decision making from the electorate at your own peril. Elitist advocacy from the bench or academia or the press will fail. And those suburbanites or urbanites such as myself will in the end make the decisions.
Roe v Wade should have taught the elitists in this country a lesson. The debate over Roe has been hugely destructive and unnecessary had the court stepped away from legislating from the bench and allowed the states to decide this matter themselves. When the debate over abortion breaks out next lege session here in TX, I will sign on to choice, I hope that it passes by constitutional amendment, but if it doesn't, there are other states which will keep abortion legal, and TX will suffer economically because the Bible thumpers refuse to keep abortion legal. I make the same argument about same sex marriage. Let the debate in a free society be free among all of the people.
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Good morning, broketrash, and thanks for such a thorough and carefully considered response!
As for private charities, they're already in the business of helping the poor, but they somehow don't seem to be fixing everything either. Would taxpayers, relieved of their responsibility to pay for federal Welfare, turn over the same amount of their income to charities? Um, yeah, a few might.
This is among the reasons I think we all have an interest in addressing poverty.
Right -- poverty has not been eliminated, just reduced. When the War on Poverty was intruduced 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.
From the Census Bureau:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html)
thank you for the link and the census bur facts.
that is good that poverty has been reduced by 7 % nationally in the following 45 years! good lord , we have spent TRILLIONS on these misguided programs! what a waste of money that the tax payers could have kept for their own family's needs, and the rate has only been reduced by 7% in 45 years after trillions!
not what I would call a success at all.
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How will "all" be equipped to "eventually emulate the winners"? I'm guessing state politics and economics would largely shape the structures and outcomes of these hypothetical state-level programs. And those two factors, among others, vary widely among states. Would a program that works in Maryland work equally well in Mississippi?
the winners will be the states which succeed in reducing poverty and the tax rate paid by the tax payers. the winners will be states which address and solve the issue of schools which are irrelevant to both the students and the local economy.
the winners will be decided in the open market, those states which succeed will attract more commerce, industry and in migration or talented workers who wish to relocate there. the losers will lose industry, commerce and productive citizens.
this is how our "federal" economy works and this reform of welfare makes the "federalist" system work even better.
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Restricted in what way? It's only legal for poor people, or what?
just the current restictions on abortion which involve age of mother and age of fetus. economic status would not be a legal determining factor in access to abortion
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Good morning, broketrash, and thanks for such a thorough and carefully considered response!
Two problems with this that come to mind immediately: 1) I imagine lots and lots of kids would be mislabeled and put on the wrong track. Think of all the stories of great and famous people who were not high achievers in school. 2) Many technical and trade jobs are increasingly being automated or outsourced.
So you're contending that the Welfare roles are filled with underqualified former college students?? Hunh?? I'd guess that most poor people did not attend college, and that going to college, whatever one's academic skills, is one of the surest ways OUT of poverty.
I don't know about the program in Germany, but times have changed over the generations. The job skills that led to success a generation ago, or even a decade ago, are not necessarily in the same demand today.
And the "guaranteed job"? That sounds suspiciously like it would involve more government intervention.
I like this idea! And while we're at it, let's reintroduce shame as a social deterrent to mass murder, as well.
Actually, I've never understood why anybody would object to this idea. Potentially, it seems, Welfare could be the equivalent of Roosevelt's WPA.
on the two track educational system beginning in high school and extending thru the college years.
the two tracks would be predicated on testing and observation as to the fit of a student in pursuing an academic path or a technical path. This type of system has worked and still works well in several countries in Europe and in Japan.
There is nothing about the two track system which locks the student into that track forever. If a student on an academic track for example, develops more of an interest in a technical subject which requires more hands on training and less academic training, then he or she would be free to switch tracks. A bit like switching majors in college between subjects which are radically different. Started for a BA in History, but decided to get a CS degree later on.
Apprenticeships and guaranteed jobs for those students which graduated the technical side of the process makes a great deal of sense to private industry and has extensive backing among private employers. What employers want are qualified graduates who do not have to be taught remedial programs by the employers, and that is what is happening right now. Students emerging from our high schools and colleges should be ready for the workplace. right now they have essentially been baby sat, except for those who are academic achievers and are going on into degreed programs at universities.
those whom we have forgotten about in our educational system are the very people who are most at risk to becoming or remaining a part of the underclass. my idea is a part of early intervention to avoid that cycle of welfare that I have been complaining about.
just because a good idea came from FDR, doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea! ;D I know my grandpa is rolling in his grave, but lets face it gramps, Alf Landon would have made a sorry President.
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that is good that poverty has been reduced by 7 % nationally in the following 45 years! good lord , we have spent TRILLIONS on these misguided programs! what a waste of money that the tax payers could have kept for their own family's needs, and the rate has only been reduced by 7% in 45 years after trillions!
Not quite that simple. First of all, the poverty rate was reduced 8% nationally in the following 10 years, not 45.
From Wikipedia:
In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level to date: 11.1% . They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. Since 1973 poverty has remained well below the historical U.S. averages in the range of 20-25%
What economic and cultural contributions have been made by those millions of would-be poor people who are instead taxpaying productive citizens -- helping pay for those very programs! ;D -- is a more complex calculation than I am able to make. What I can say is that there are millions of people out there who probably do not consider the project a failure.
:laugh: :laugh:
Here's something I just noticed: On an annual basis, the War on Poverty has cost about as much as the War in Iraq: about $100 billion a year. (The WoP has cost $5 trillion over 45 years; the WiI has cost $500 billion over 5 years).
Now, the Iraq War is hardly the gold standard for success or cost-effectiveness, so in that sense it's an unappealing comparison. On the other hand, the War on Poverty undoubtedly hasn't killed as many people, hasn't caused as many people to hate us, and so far seems to have made more people better off.
Let's hope we're not having this same discussion about the effectiveness of the Iraq War in 40 years!
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Alberta did have many problems with no taxes, since it closed hospitals !!
Dire times then and now too !!
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Slavery is coming back, unfortunately!!
Even China has slaves, children as such now sold to the rich on the auction block !
Does anyone but I know ?
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The First Nations are used as slaves in the USA ?
In Canada, they are so... in more than one way !!
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My idea is basically to educate women. By educating women, you are educating their children (and thus future generations) as well. And not just what you can learn in the public education system but practical living tools and survival techniques as well. Currently many poor women either willingly or unwillingly serve as free entertainment for idle men. With education and self-esteem, they can learn to say no, why to say no, alternatives to pursue, and how to deliver a swift kick to the groin. They need to know the birth control options, and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason why forced abortions, sterilization, or chastity belts or whatever else you have in mind should even be considered! Even tho birth control is the domain of the female, technology has managed to introduce new safe nonhumiliating reasonably priced methods. Yes, we have male birth control, they are called condoms and how well have they worked among poor men, among men in general? Piss-poor is how.
In societies where women are educated and have some measure of self-esteem, family size goes down, crime goes down, and quality of life rises. Women hold the key.
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Merci beaucoup Front-Ranger !!
May I say that I love your post, and that I agree with it !!
Au revoir,
hugs!
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It remains that some muslims in many arab areas, India with the cast system, etc., and other women remain captured by their so-called religion making them a slave.
Even in our countries such as the USA, Canada, and elsewhere !!
It is very hard to find them, get them to be safe, educated, like you say, as education can help !!
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I like the idea of micro-loans, but if it does NOT feed the slave markets for the rich to get richer !! ??
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oh, and the whole forced labor thing has been tried before...it is called SLAVERY.
Well, in defense of one of the few parts of broketrash's agenda that I agreed with, I must point out that slaves didn't get paid, weren't allowed to select different employment options, couldn't choose where they wanted to live, had little control over the fates of their children and family members, etc.
To me, as I mentioned in an earlier post, tying welfare benefits to public service reminds me more of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corp, Depression-Era work-relief programs that were considered quite successful. Many public parks still feature beautiful structures built by the WPA.
For many poor people, a big hurdle to being self-supporting is that they've simply never held a job. They aren't used to the procedures and habits. Providing welfare recipients an opportunity to be productive and gain employment experience, while also letting them give back something in return for their benefits, has always seemed to me like a good thing, so I've never quite understood the objection to it. Maybe I'm missing something, though. ???
Of course, it goes without saying that if people are expected to work, they must have access to affordable child care, transportation and so on.
Another thing, there should be a 'grace period' on the end of benefits. We lived in a government apartment complex, the rent was a set amount based on income. My mother worked hard and got promoted at work...the complex promptly raised the rent, taking all the raise. So she was working longer hours with more responsibility for nothing. Her circumstances remained the same. If there was a 'grace period' she could have saved enough to make a deposit on another form of housing and moved OUT of the government housing.
(also when you are on welfare you are not allowed to save money. Your bank statements are checked and any money in savings counts as income so they raise your rent or cut benefits, so most people I know on welfare dont even try to save....and certainly not in banks)
Yes, I agree, and as broketrash also said, the structure of the system contains disincentives to work harder, save, get married -- the very things that would help people become more self-sufficient. Doesn't mean the whole baby should be thrown out with the bathwater, but it does seem it could use some fixin.
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I am not the least bit offended. You are attempting to enjoin me in a serious conversation about federalism, a continuation of a conversation which we have intermittently engaged in since I first started logging on to Bettermost some 11 months ago.
As far as the questions as to whether the states will assume the entire burden that the Federal gov assumes at this time. That will depend upon the state. After a vigorous debate within the state in question over the state's role in welfare, states will try many different solutions. How do you know that a reduced plan of spending on welfare needs is not the best solution? How do I know that an increased plan of spending on welfare needs is not the best solution? Neither of us know this.
What I do know, is that the best arena for this debate is at the state and local level. The programs which spend the taxes coming out of the state and the localities which fund those welfare programs need to be debated by the citizens, the local officials and the state officials. I am confident that if the people thru referenda, constitutional amendment, or just plain ordinary elections vote for those welfare plans or those who advocate an increase in spending, then those enhanced programs will become reality. The converse is also true. This is the essence of democracy, and this is what is lacking in the present welfare system, there is no accountability to the tax payer and the voter.
The magic of the federal system is that states are individual laboratories and given time and experimentation, we shall learn what works best for the tax payers money. But, we will never learn this until the Federal gov gets out of the way.
Well, Friend Broketrash, I'm glad to know that at least the first part of my Friday morning post didn't offend you, but I guess I wasn't clear in my question because it appears you've missed my point.
What I am trying to ask you is, What is the basis of your faith that the states will assume the burden of welfare if the federal government is taken out of the picture? What makes you so sure it will even be a matter for debate if the federal government does get out of the way?
I'm not questioning whether or not debate on the subject is a good thing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that your pet "federalism" theory might even be correct: Perhaps the states could do a better job of dealing with the issue than the federal government.
What I want to know is why you think they will or would do it. "Because the theory says they can" is not an answer to the question of whether or not they will.
You must understand that I have spent virtually my entire life in an old, industrial "rustbucket" state in the Northeast. Pennyslvania has one major city on each end of the state, and vast rural areas in between. The members of the state legislature go up to the state capital to look out for the interests of their constituents--which is good and proper.
What they also have is a sad history of failing to look out for the good of the state as a whole. I'm sure that individually the members of the Pennsylvania legislature are, in general, good, moral persons, but collectively as a legislature they would let the poor die of starvation in the streets of Philadelphia before they would tax their rural constituents to do anything to solve the problem of poverty in the state's major metropolitan areas.
A theory is not worth a warm bucket of spit if people do not have the political will to put it into practice. This is what I see lacking in all your "federalism" theories. I also question whether it is wise to assume that a theory that may have worked just fine among 13 scattered states with small populations strung out on the Eastern Seaboard in 1789 will necessarily work in a nation the size that the U.S. has become in the 21st century.
I'm afraid it just seems to me that you "federalists" are living in a fantasy world where people are of good will and will do the right thing for their fellow man because it is the right thing, and I just don't think that's realisitic. The federal government is needed now because the states will not protect the poor or the rights of minorities (why I feel that gay marriage will only come about as a result of federal action, but that's a topic for another thread).
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Slavery is coming back, unfortunately!!
Even China has slaves, children as such now sold to the rich on the auction block !
A number of posts here have mentioned forms of involuntary labor as de facto slavery, but you don't have to find parallels -- chattel slavery is alive and well. Some of the worst examples are in Africa, with the worst and most brutal conditions being in Sudan and Mauritania.
Interestingly, trafficking in human beings has replaced the drug traffic as the most widespread and lucrative illicit business on the planet.
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Quote from: injest on Today at 08:32:31 AM
(and you have to consider the source...the Heritage Foundation is a front for the Moral Majority refugees. They consider REAGAN to be the Messiah "the greatest most successful President since Lincoln" Roll Eyes Roll Eyes Roll Eyes)
Quote from broketrash
That comment is sadly lacking in an understanding of the Heritage Foundation and indicative of the lack of serious scholarship on this issue under discussion. I won't further engage in a discussion that shows a lack of the basic knowledge of the problem in question, and relies on anecdotal commentary and emotional appeal. Why should I waste my time with that level of discussion of a very serious problem that will in fact be resolved in the political process one way of the other over the next decade?
http://www.heritage.org/
*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.
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the difference I see between Roosevelts programs and the 'solution' offered here is the 'forced labor' part...the interring people into 'work farms' (they would not have a lot of options about their futures locked up in camps or being forcibly sterilized.)
Oh, oh, oh! Sorry, Jess, I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about this part of broketrash's post ...
6) Those who receive welfare aid should also be required to offer community service such as cleaning up the parks. It is not acceptable to take the income from others without showing gratitude. We should make it very clear that welfare assistance is NOT AN ENTITLEMENT, and it is not a permanent condition.
... which is a llittle more scold-y than I would phrase it, especially the second sentence, but overall doesn't seem like an outrageous request, depending on the particulars.
But apparently you were referring to THIS part of broketrash's post...
2) The fathers need to be tracked down and forced to contribute to the family income. If they refuse, then we need to revive the prison farm system. The productive work of raising commodities for sale can be applied to individual families. Repeat male offenders should be forceably sterilized.
... which I do not support. I think they're already tracking fathers down and forcing them to contribute -- though perhaps not effectively enough. But forceably sterilized? No. That would be unconstitutional, I think.
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.
Now, much as I'd like to see deadbeat dads forced to take responsibility, that sounds like a bit much.
So, from that alone I think Jess has a legitimate critique about this website's bias.
Yep, I also followed broketrash's link and the first thing I saw was a giant picture of Ronald Reagan at the top of the page. Now I didn't see where they called him "the Messiah" exactly, but if you do a search for Reagan on the website you'll find a lot of awfully worshipful-sounding articles.
And Moral Majority? Well, if you search for "moral" you'll find quite a few articles there, too.
So I'd agree that it's hardly fair to accuse someone of "lack of serious scholarship" who is more or less simply quoting the site.
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http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/upload/bg_2064.pdf (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/upload/bg_2064.pdf)
Earlier, I had posted only the executive summary. Here is the original article as a 19 page PDF file with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you have an interest.. So, knock yourself out! :-*
this is article is by the same scholar whose study of the economic and social impact of illegal immigration stopped the rush to pass the Kennedy McCain amnesty bill in its tracks last year. this guy ain't no light weight crack pot. his work is taken very seriously in think tanks across the US. :).
with dozens of charts and direct referential links to the reports in which you indicated an interest.
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. ::)
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May I repeat one post:
A number of posts here have mentioned forms of involuntary labor as de facto slavery, but you don't have to find parallels -- chattel slavery is alive and well. Some of the worst examples are in Africa, with the worst and most brutal conditions being in Sudan and Mauritania.
Interestingly, trafficking in human beings has replaced the drug traffic as the most widespread and lucrative illicit business on the planet.
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And thank you Marge_Innavera !
And now such slavery starting too secretly in the USA, Canada, and other so-called free countries ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Lotta trouble with that article.
And this Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both.
You do know that marriage has a failure rate of about 50%? So what if a poor person marries? There is a good chance they'll be divorced soon and right back where they started. So much for that "reliable ladder".
A lot of women get pregnant not because of the good ole welfare benefits, but in hopes that the child's father will marry her. And even if he does, what if he is out of work? Where is the ladder out of poverty in these cases?
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Now, the Iraq War is hardly the gold standard for success or cost-effectiveness, so in that sense it's an unappealing comparison. On the other hand, the War on Poverty undoubtedly hasn't killed as many people, hasn't caused as many people to hate us, and so far seems to have made more people better off.
Let's hope we're not having this same discussion about the effectiveness of the Iraq War in 40 years!
Amen!
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Wow, guess with Iraq and other such areas, we will be like in film for unknown years!
And poverty will increase for us all ?
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The thing is that:
1- the rich are getting too rich;
2- the poor are getting to be too poor and starve;
3- and, there is becoming no more middle class in the world ??
What to think about that?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Not quite that simple. First of all, the poverty rate was reduced 8% nationally in the following 10 years, not 45.
From Wikipedia:
In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level to date: 11.1% . They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. Since 1973 poverty has remained well below the historical U.S. averages in the range of 20-25%
What economic and cultural contributions have been made by those millions of would-be poor people who are instead taxpaying productive citizens -- helping pay for those very programs! ;D -- is a more complex calculation than I am able to make. What I can say is that there are millions of people out there who probably do not consider the project a failure.
:laugh: :laugh:
Here's something I just noticed: On an annual basis, the War on Poverty has cost about as much as the War in Iraq: about $100 billion a year. (The WoP has cost $5 trillion over 45 years; the WiI has cost $500 billion over 5 years).
Now, the Iraq War is hardly the gold standard for success or cost-effectiveness, so in that sense it's an unappealing comparison. On the other hand, the War on Poverty undoubtedly hasn't killed as many people, hasn't caused as many people to hate us, and so far seems to have made more people better off.
Let's hope we're not having this same discussion about the effectiveness of the Iraq War in 40 years!
this was your quotation:
"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! any private sector company with that kind of track record would have gone out of business a long time ago. gov just isn't able to succeed in its social engineering programs. 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.
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Broketrash merci and, may I pray that that is true !!
Governments in power tend to change the figures and twist them so facts are towards their favour!!
I know of data changed when government in power changed the regulations when it came to the unemployed; even them could not contest the persons living on the streets, but it did not count those, unfortunately!
Nevertheless, 12 percent for me is way too high for any civilisation !! Right ?
Au revoir,
hugs! We need job create to get the economy going, not slaves nor starving persons who can not purchase item (s) made in one's country !! - may I say !!
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My idea is basically to educate women. By educating women, you are educating their children (and thus future generations) as well. And not just what you can learn in the public education system but practical living tools and survival techniques as well. Currently many poor women either willingly or unwillingly serve as free entertainment for idle men. With education and self-esteem, they can learn to say no, why to say no, alternatives to pursue, and how to deliver a swift kick to the groin. They need to know the birth control options, and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason why forced abortions, sterilization, or chastity belts or whatever else you have in mind should even be considered! Even tho birth control is the domain of the female, technology has managed to introduce new safe nonhumiliating reasonably priced methods. Yes, we have male birth control, they are called condoms and how well have they worked among poor men, among men in general? Piss-poor is how.
In societies where women are educated and have some measure of self-esteem, family size goes down, crime goes down, and quality of life rises. Women hold the key.
Exactly, that is the type of thoughtful response that keeps a discussion going! I agree education is a key to understanding how to take control of one's life, whether you are a male of female. How many times many of us had wished that Ennis and Jack had more options.
As I said in an earlier post on this thread. Both women and men have to take responsibility for the decisions which lead to poverty. I especially like the "swift kick to the groin". Women need to stand up for their individual autonomy and not let skanky men dog them and then move on to the next victim. That man who dogs you is not going to help you with the baby. And there is the problem, we the tax payers get stuck with paying the bill for the work of the dog and the woman who allowed him in. "kick him in the groin" by all means.
You last sentence is especially correct, among heterosexual men, women hold the key!
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Well, in defense of one of the few parts of broketrash's agenda that I agreed with, I must point out that slaves didn't get paid, weren't allowed to select different employment options, couldn't choose where they wanted to live, had little control over the fates of their children and family members, etc.
To me, as I mentioned in an earlier post, tying welfare benefits to public service reminds me more of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corp, Depression-Era work-relief programs that were considered quite successful. Many public parks still feature beautiful structures built by the WPA.
For many poor people, a big hurdle to being self-supporting is that they've simply never held a job. They aren't used to the procedures and habits. Providing welfare recipients an opportunity to be productive and gain employment experience, while also letting them give back something in return for their benefits, has always seemed to me like a good thing, so I've never quite understood the objection to it. Maybe I'm missing something, though. ???
Of course, it goes without saying that if people are expected to work, they must have access to affordable child care, transportation and so on.
Yes, I agree, and as broketrash also said, the structure of the system contains disincentives to work harder, save, get married -- the very things that would help people become more self-sufficient. Doesn't mean the whole baby should be thrown out with the bathwater, but it does seem it could use some fixin.
good point about the child care and the transportation. all these factors must come together in order to achieve a solution that breaks the present paradigm. and by the way, it is not just liberals who are blocking progress in this area. some conservatives would rather give a moral lecture than find a solution. what I have tried to do, is find answers that have worked in the past here in the US, and are working in other countries.
we will have to as a society consider all of the options if we are ever to break the back of the endless welfare cycle.
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Merci broketrash !
You say:
Exactly, that is the type of thoughtful response that keeps a discussion going! I agree education is a key to understanding how to take control of one's life, whether you are a male of female. How many times many of us had wished that Ennis and Jack had more options.
As I said in an earlier post on this thread. Both women and men have to take responsibility for the decisions which lead to poverty. I especially like the "swift kick to the groin". Women need to stand up for their individual autonomy and not let skanky men dog them and then move on to the next victim. That man who dogs you is not going to help you with the baby. And there is the problem, we the tax payers get stuck with paying the bill for the work of the dog and the woman who allowed him in. "kick him in the groin" by all means.
You last sentence is especially correct, among heterosexual men, women hold the key!
...............
Broketrash and others:
That sounds good. I am all for education. However, we need women and men to have kids !! ??
Yes??
Why is it that muslims men can have legally at least 4 wives SAME time, and we, can NOT ?? Fair??
Muslims are now same numbers as the Catholic religion (RC, protestants, etc.) !! So, there will be more poor in our democratic countries since a man can have only one wife, and one and a half kid ?? !!
Troubles, much more ahead !! ??
Au revoir, hugs!!
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Well, Friend Broketrash, I'm glad to know that at least the first part of my Friday morning post didn't offend you, but I guess I wasn't clear in my question because it appears you've missed my point.
What I am trying to ask you is, What is the basis of your faith that the states will assume the burden of welfare if the federal government is taken out of the picture? What makes you so sure it will even be a matter for debate if the federal government does get out of the way?
I'm not questioning whether or not debate on the subject is a good thing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that your pet "federalism" theory might even be correct: Perhaps the states could do a better job of dealing with the issue than the federal government.
What I want to know is why you think they will or would do it. "Because the theory says they can" is not an answer to the question of whether or not they will.
You must understand that I have spent virtually my entire life in an old, industrial "rustbucket" state in the Northeast. Pennyslvania has one major city on each end of the state, and vast rural areas in between. The members of the state legislature go up to the state capital to look out for the interests of their constituents--which is good and proper.
What they also have is a sad history of failing to look out for the good of the state as a whole. I'm sure that individually the members of the Pennsylvania legislature are, in general, good, moral persons, but collectively as a legislature they would let the poor die of starvation in the streets of Philadelphia before they would tax their rural constituents to do anything to solve the problem of poverty in the state's major metropolitan areas.
A theory is not worth a warm bucket of spit if people do not have the political will to put it into practice. This is what I see lacking in all your "federalism" theories. I also question whether it is wise to assume that a theory that may have worked just fine among 13 scattered states with small populations strung out on the Eastern Seaboard in 1789 will necessarily work in a nation the size that the U.S. has become in the 21st century.
I'm afraid it just seems to me that you "federalists" are living in a fantasy world where people are of good will and will do the right thing for their fellow man because it is the right thing, and I just don't think that's realisitic. The federal government is needed now because the states will not protect the poor or the rights of minorities (why I feel that gay marriage will only come about as a result of federal action, but that's a topic for another thread).
As you read my post, you will notice that I said that I don't know how much of a burden individual states will take up. there will be 50 individual state solutions. Some will take up the entire burden that the feds currently shoulder, others may offer more creative solutions, some may sadly do nothing. It will be an "experimental laboratory" as to what works and what doesn't work. In the end, those states which make progress in eliminating an underclass problem, will be the winners and will attract investment and growth. So, the states will be motivated from the stand point of economic development to find creative solutions and lower the welfare rolls.
What is definite is that if we keep the present system, the problem of the underclass will NEVER GO AWAY.
FDR used the approach of an "experimental laboratory" (his words by the way) in order to end the economic crisis in the 1930's. He threw everything reasonable at the problem, some things worked, some didn't. His approach was nationwide, but this new federalist approach to solving the welfare crisis uses the 50 states as 50 laboratories and gets Washington DC out of the way and lets the states do the job that is their constitutional duty.
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Broketrash: merci as you say, and may I note that is likewise for most countries, letting themselves be experiments to gas warlords and others such criminals runing their economies !!
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... which I do not support. I think they're already tracking fathers down and forcing them to contribute -- though perhaps not effectively enough. But forceably sterilized? No. That would be unconstitutional, I think.
no it seems to be constitutional, several states either now or in the past have used enforced sterilizations on repeat sex offenders. it is only a new interpretation of the law to allow that the repeated fathering of children which the tax payers must support is a type of sexual offense. I am in favor of implementing such a program right now.
I bet that dead beat dads will cough up the money, if the consequences of not supporting their children is sterilization.
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And the next thing will be the sterilization of gay men?
And the unwanted females ?
And the unwanted others ?
Germany all over again ?
Such tools were used in Canada, the USA, etc., too !!
To me, the solution is for such men to be given decent jobs, and that part of his paycheck taken away !! ??
Maybe ??
Au revoir,
hugs!
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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.
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.
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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 ?
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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.
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.
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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. ::)
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.
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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!
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.
private sector company with that kind of track record would have gone out of business a long time ago.
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.
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.
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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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.
But that's the point. A site that's so obviously biased toward the right may have done good scholarship, but then may have just as easily slanted the results in the direction they want it to be interpreted, either by omission or selective information. This is the problem I had with the article in general.
"WWRD" may seem weird to you, but that is because you are not a conservative.
It's not weird to me, I'm familiar with the acronym. What it demonstrates to me is that this site is used to its visitors and members being of the overtly Christian persuasion who will take WWRD in a positive light instead of the humorous light it is seen by the more secular of our society.
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.
The approaches of the conservatives have been looked at, the discussion exists because not everybody is a conservative and goes along with their approaches.
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.
Well, that's what you call it. As crayons so rightly pointed out, it's quite obvious that Reagan is lionized on this website, you yourself pointed out that conservatives believe him to be the source of many happy memories - not unlike Clinton is these days to another part of society - and it is a frankly conservative website. You yourself have just blanket labelled the website. We agree.
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I would suspect that it would depend on individual community standards of habitation. Some communities have stricter standards than others.
:o :o Um, yeah. If you live in the slums of Calcutta or Mexico City, then I'm sure a kerosene lamp is the ultimate in luxury. But we're talking the United States, broke! Ye gods, if I saw someone living in a hovel with the only way to heat their food and water and home was with a kerosene lantern because it was all they had, I would have no doubt whatsoever in stating that this is a poor person. I wouldn't matter where they lived in the U.S.!
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.
I agree. There are statistics and damned statistics, I am not commenting on the information the Census Bureau provided. I am commenting negatively on how the article writer used the information.
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.
No, my goal is to get a good idea of who and how many poor there are in the U.S. and despite the scholarship shown by the writer, his article is a disservice to anyone reading it who is not paying attention.
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It remains that one must be fervent not to become too poor, as poverty is another added dire stress in life !!
Fervent too, one must be to help others get out of poverty, or not to become too poorer !! Homeless, being so is not deserving !!
One can NOT live alone ! If one can not help another person, then there is no humanity!
Life can only exists when humans help !! ??
Au revoir, keep care,
hugs!
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There is always a special opportunity every day to help someone and yourself !! ??
That way, there is less poverty !!
And great times to share !!
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whereas if we used Broketrash's plan we could be rid of the poor in a few generations...(making a realistic assumption that we wont' be able to sterilize ALL the poor the first generation)
who we are gonna get to wash dishes, clean our toilets, and do all the menial low wage jobs though...that is gonna be the hard question.
Undocumented immigrants? ;)
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As you read my post, you will notice that I said that I don't know how much of a burden individual states will take up. there will be 50 individual state solutions. Some will take up the entire burden that the feds currently shoulder, others may offer more creative solutions, some may sadly do nothing. It will be an "experimental laboratory" as to what works and what doesn't work. In the end, those states which make progress in eliminating an underclass problem, will be the winners and will attract investment and growth. So, the states will be motivated from the stand point of economic development to find creative solutions and lower the welfare rolls.
Well, thanks for the clarification. However, this still indicates a willingness to allow some of the poor in some of the states to be thrown under the bus, and the easist way to lower the welfare rolls is simply to kick people off them. States, like people, are not always known for acting in their own best interest. Pennsylvania is again a case in point; the bulk of the state doesn't seem to get that it's good for whole state if Pittsburgh and Philadelphia prosper.
What is definite is that if we keep the present system, the problem of the underclass will NEVER GO AWAY.
"The poor you have with you always. ..."
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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.
the comparison made between the management techniques and goals between the for profit sector on the one hand and public sector on the other is a fair one. the reason it is fair, is simply because the measuring of the criteria used to achieve either particular corporate or administrative pubic sector goals must be similar. good management is good management. true, the public sector is not going to run a profit, although the TX Prison farm system did run an actual bottom line profit, and if a humane version were to be revived, the penal system could pay for itself again. but even though the public sector does not use profit loss benchmarks of success or failure, and there have to be bench marks used, the principle is sound in both the public and the private sectors.
The problem with the "War on Poverty" and just about any feel good leftist program that one can find, is that benchmarks are deemed irrelevant by the out of touch, unelected, overpaid, bureaucrats who administer the programs and justify their existence before authorizing funding committees. These administrators are in reality treated by the elected representative as if they are unaccountable, and the programs develop a life of their own and regardless of whether the programs come anywhere near achieving their initial goals, they just live on and on. I like to recall the Ken Starr and the Lawrence Walsh witch hunts. A perfect example of a public sector program (OIC in this case) which took on a life of its own, lived way beyond its initial investigatory charges, and metastasized without achieving its original goals and created unnecessary harm along the way.
programs such as the complex of assistance programs to those "deemed" as in need, must be subject to yearly sunset rules, and frequent voter referenda. This is the only way to make such programs live up to their initial charges. this will never happen if these programs remain federalized, only if the power to administer and authorize these programs is returned to the individual states can the voters get control over the process again.
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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?
newsflash to crayons! :)I know that you mean well, but businesses are usually not engaged in their business operations in order to provide "opportunities for the poor". they are in business to make a profit for the owners. and in doing so they hire workers who then can better their economic circumstances. private sector jobs are the only sure way for a poor person to grow away from the underclass.
Crayons, how many jobs are created by the poor?
How many jobs are created by those with capital to invest?
How much additional wealth is created by the poor?
How much additional wealth is created by those who have capital to invest?
Who funds thru their taxes whatever jobs which are created in the public sector?
How much additional wealth is created by the public sector?
answer these simple questions and you will see that the jobs which are necessary for the poor to leave charity behind do not come from the gov, or even the middle classes when you get down to it, they largely come from those who invest capital in order to make a profit. This process not only turns an underclass dependent on charity into working people who can pay their bills and contribute to the economy, it also turns the working poor into the middle class. this is an old story, proven over and over again to be successful not only here in the US but around the world.
How strange that the left in this country doesn't seem to understand just how the economic engine actually works.
How strange that the left can not seem to comprehend that the rocks around the necks of the underclass have their origins in the very gov programs designed to "save" the poor.
Or does the left really understand what they are doing? Some like Ann Coulter certainly think that the left has struck a truly cynical bargain.
WARNING / DANGER / COULTER QUOTATION!
"Every time the government tries to help the poor it ends up removing the marvelous incentives life provides to do things like buy an alarm clock, get a job, keep your knees together before marriage, and generally become a productive happy member of society"
from article on 08/09/2000 Bush's Compassionate Conservatism
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Well, thanks for the clarification. However, this still indicates a willingness to allow some of the poor in some of the states to be thrown under the bus, and the easist way to lower the welfare rolls is simply to kick people off them. States, like people, are not always known for acting in their own best interest. Pennsylvania is again a case in point; the bulk of the state doesn't seem to get that it's good for whole state if Pittsburgh and Philadelphia prosper.
Jeff, in a federal system, the only rights guaranteed under the constitution are what we call our civil rights. No state may abridge those rights, the courts and the history of the 20th cent have made that point loud and clear. However, a "minimal" income is not a civil right. Those states who under the direction of their voters choose to, in my opinion wrongly, defund welfare programs completely, will under the federal system be able to successfully do so. But, under our system, since we have no internal passport controls in moving from state to state, people can and will migrate. Think back to the post WWI era, when Blacks in the south migrated north to seek industrial jobs, and also think back to the "Dust Bowl" migrants who found jobs and prosperity in California. Those who can not get along in states which curtail welfare will migrate.
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newsflash to crayons! :)I know that you mean well, but businesses are usually not engaged in their business operations in order to provide "opportunities for the poor". they are in business to make a profit for the owners.
Newsflash to broketrash! (Hey, that rhymes!) I was joking -- in fact, being sarcastic -- and you apparently missed my point. When I mentioned "economic opportunities" I was merely quoting YOUR previous post in which you said:
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.
So I asked what makes you assume that the two -- opportunities for the poor and the work of "gov poverty pimps" --"will never happen" simultaneously. Here's what I said:
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?
You didn't answer my question, so I guess I'll have to answer it for you. You apparently think either that
1) Businesses are so overburdened with the taxes they must pay to support anti-poverty programs that they can't afford to expand and create more jobs.
Don't think so. We've already established that Welfare constitutes 1 percent of the federal budget. THAT'S not what's causing the recession.
2) The poor are too lazy and irresponsible to get jobs, because they'd rather cash those juicy Welfare checks.
Sigh. From your own remarks and the quote you provided from the venerable sage Ann Coulter, I'm guessing this is your viewpoint. But several people have already filled 18 pages of thread trying to show you that often is not the case. They've described the experiences of their own poor but hardworking mothers. They've quoted statistics about the working poor. They've posted articles (well, I posted one) explaining why this notion of Cadillac-driving Oprah-watching multiple-partnering frequent-birthing Welfare queens is a myth.
For some reason, you persist in holding onto this opinion. And why not? It's certainly a popular and tenacious bit of conservative dogma. But it's not based on actual fact. It's based on speculation and assumption. For some -- I'm not saying this of you, but for some people, most likely including the narrow-minded Ms. Coulter -- it is also the result of class prejudice. In some cases, perhaps (and here again, I definitely don't mean you) also racial prejudice.
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Newsflash to broketrash! (Hey, that rhymes!) I was joking -- in fact, being sarcastic -- and you apparently missed my point. When I mentioned "economic opportunities" I was merely quoting YOUR previous post in which you said:
So I asked what makes you assume that the two -- opportunities for the poor and the work of "gov poverty pimps" --"will never happen" simultaneously. Here's what I said:
You didn't answer my question, so I guess I'll have to answer it for you. You apparently think either that
1) Businesses are so overburdened with the taxes they must pay to support anti-poverty programs that they can't afford to expand and create more jobs.
Don't think so. We've already established that Welfare constitutes 1 percent of the federal budget. THAT'S not what's causing the recession.
2) The poor are too lazy and irresponsible to get jobs, because they'd rather cash those juicy Welfare checks.
Sigh. From your own remarks and the quote you provided from the venerable sage Ann Coulter, I'm guessing this is your viewpoint. But several people have already filled 18 pages of thread trying to show you that often is not the case. They've described the experiences of their own poor but hardworking mothers. They've quoted statistics about the working poor. They've posted articles (well, I posted one) explaining why this notion of
Cadillac-driving Oprah-watching multiple-partnering frequent-birthing Welfare queens is a myth.
For some reason, you persist in holding onto this opinion. And why not? It's certainly a popular and tenacious bit of conservative dogma. But it's not based on actual fact. It's based on speculation and assumption. For some -- I'm not saying this of you, but for some people, most likely including the narrow-minded Ms. Coulter -- it is also the result of class prejudice. In some cases, perhaps (and here again, I definitely don't mean you) also racial prejudice.
rhymes are always cute! ;D
I did not mean to avoid answering your question. There is an implication in the creation of wealth and jobs and the present tax system that I just didn't discuss. Businesses don't pay taxes, only the middle class in this country pay, the wealthy pay some, and the poor none - at the federal level. Sure, there are federal taxes levied on all sorts of production and gains, but those taxes are always passed on to the consumer of whatever goods or services capital creates. So, your point # 1 is not what I meant to say. New jobs are created by capital formation, chiefly from individual investors who have effective tax rates far below that of average middle class families. That is one of the reasons why I advocate a universal and equal consumption tax to fund the federal gov, but that is another thread and I will keep on target.
point #2 comes closer to what I am saying and definitely as to what Ms Coulter is saying. A culture of poverty has been created allowing a permanent underclass to develop. When the underclass expects, as a given right, to received welfare benefits, then for some but not all, there is really no motivation to work a 9-5. And for the men who father babies, there is a definite motivation to move on to other females and abandon the mother and their children. I am not sure that I would call it laziness, but I would definitely call it irresponsibility, and its an irresponsibility abetted by the welfare system itself.
??? Now I don't know about driving Caddies, but the facts about single parent households with multiple offspring where the head of household does not hold down a full time job is no myth. How could the head of household keep a job and adequately supervise multiple children? Neighbors, grandparents? maybe, but in most cases, the head of household stays in the home to care for the children. Watching Oprah and eating Twinkies, not far fetched, but I am sure that there is other day time TV and other snacks available. In spite of what I am sure are truthful anecdotal stories, this is the reality of most of the urban underclass.
Two parent households, those where the men did not chose to abandon their responsibilities are another matter entirely. Intact families have a much, much greater likelihood of avoiding the welfare underclass trap than do single parent households.
I think to ascribe class warfare and racial hatred motivations to those who wish to change the welfare system into a system which does not encourage permanent dependency is false and not conducive to finding alternate solutions to a very clear problem.
18 pps of thread trying to lead me into the error of my ways? I think that you must have skipped those posts who offered qualified approval of those ideas which I posted.
I know, spin, spin, spin! ;)
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Sterilization was tried, not only in Germany, but in Canada, the USA, and likely in other countries, and it took much liberty away, rendering the poor more poor !!
I am totally against sterilization... and I know that that does not help humans !!
I wonder why some started that ?
Au revoir,
hugs! Sterilization isn't it a from of cruelty and torment ? !! Why not be kind to another human being, that I prefer !! Creating decent jobs and markets as well as products, that helps the poor and the rich too, as everything goes to help all persons!! That's my view !!
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Merci injest !
This is food for thought:
It seems the quagmire here is that the working poor are stuck in a perpetual cycle of problems. Society is based on the Darwinian theory that only the strong will survive and the strong don't want to allow more people to enter the competition. The playing field is not level. Do you have any thoughts on this?
..............
Injest and all others too: May I ask therefore:
What are ways to share the wealth ??
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Sure, there are federal taxes levied on all sorts of production and gains, but those taxes are always passed on to the consumer of whatever goods or services capital creates.
Of course. But that doesn't mean businesses shrug off taxes as no big deal. They like to keep expenses down, even if they pass them on to the consumer, because if their prices increase, demand decreases. And if demand decreases, profits decrease, and eventually jobs decrease. But you knew that.
point #2 comes closer to what I am saying and definitely as to what Ms Coulter is saying. A culture of poverty has been created allowing a permanent underclass to develop. When the underclass expects, as a given right, to received welfare benefits, then for some but not all, there is really no motivation to work a 9-5.
But again here, you're making a big presumption based on a mixture of hearsay and myth and conservative doctrine. No doubt there are people here and there who fit this profile. But when you say that "the underclass expects" something or other "as a given right" -- i.e., the entire demographic group of people on welfare, or people whose income falls below the poverty line, shares some vast monolithic unreasonable attitude -- I'm afraid I don't find it convincing without evidence. And not just some essay from a conservative website, but poll results or sociological studies or Census figures or something empirical and ideologically neutral.
Perhaps something like this, from Wikipedia:
In the United States, according to the government Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 6.4 million working poor in 2000; by 2003 the number had grown. In 2004, Business Week suggested that "the share of the workforce earning subpoverty pay [is] 24% [in 2003]".
Different numbers were found by The Working Poor Families Project, a national initiative that examines the conditions of working families both nationally and at the state level. In 2005, using U.S. Census American Community Survey data, the project found that 2.8 million working families are poor (earn less than 100% of poverty) and that these families constituted 12.2 million people. In addition, 9.6 million, or more than 1 out 4 working families in America (29%), are low-income, earning less than 200% of poverty. The 200% of poverty threshold is considered a reasonable estimate of the amount of earnings needed to be economically self-sufficient ($39,942 for a family of four in 2005). Among states, the range for low-income working families extends from 15% (New Hampshire) to 42% (New Mexico).
How could the head of household keep a job and adequately supervise multiple children?
Yes, it's a wonder they manage, but nevertheless lots of people do it, including many in the middle class. From About.com, quoting a report released by the Census Bureau:
According to Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2005, released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August, 2007, there are approximately 13.6 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today). 79% of custodial single mothers are gainfully employed, 50% work full time, year round, 29% work part-time or part-year. 92% of custodial single fathers are gainfully employed, 74% work full time, year round, 18% work part-time or part-year. 27.7% of custodial single mothers and their children live in poverty. 11.1% of custodial single fathers and their children live in poverty. 31% of all single parents receive public assistance.
It is easier, of course, when there is reliable and affordable daycare available.
Watching Oprah and eating Twinkies, not far fetched, but I am sure that there is other day time TV and other snacks available.
And, conversely, I'm guessing not only the poor like Oprah and Twinkies. ;D
I think to ascribe class warfare and racial hatred motivations to those who wish to change the welfare system into a system which does not encourage permanent dependency is false and not conducive to finding alternate solutions to a very clear problem.
I'm sorry, broketrash, I know this is an ugly generalization, and I hope I made it clear I did not include you. But the fact is, the concept of racism or classism influencing some people's opinions on this issue is absolutely not false. if we're going to toss around generalizations, here's one I've actually seen, on numerous occasions, with my own eyes and ears.
I think that you must have skipped those posts who offered qualified approval of those ideas which I posted.
Hmm. Well, I do recall seeing something like that by HerrKaiser, and I wouldn't even call it "qualified."
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Jeff, in a federal system, the only rights guaranteed under the constitution are what we call our civil rights. No state may abridge those rights, the courts and the history of the 20th cent have made that point loud and clear. However, a "minimal" income is not a civil right. Those states who under the direction of their voters choose to, in my opinion wrongly, defund welfare programs completely, will under the federal system be able to successfully do so. But, under our system, since we have no internal passport controls in moving from state to state, people can and will migrate. Think back to the post WWI era, when Blacks in the south migrated north to seek industrial jobs, and also think back to the "Dust Bowl" migrants who found jobs and prosperity in California. Those who can not get along in states which curtail welfare will migrate.
Well, first of all, I'm going to take another risk at being offensive and suggest that you can cut out the civics lessons on the Constitution, etc. We've all been to school around here, and, frankly, I find the sentences I've highlighted in red more than a little condescending in its tone, and it is not appreciated.
As for interstate migration, I brought that up on Friday, 5/2, as follows:
There is a great potential for interstate conflict here. What's to prevent states with numbers of urban poor, say, in the Rustbucket Northeast, from buying those poor folks bus tickets to Texas and Florida just to get rid of the problem? Seems to me I remember reading accusations of that sort of thing happening already.
I suppose you would address this by creating some sort of residency requirement for assistance, so then we would just have numbers of poor people getting kicked out of one state with nowhere to go.
Reminds one of the old English Poor Law, where the poor could be forcibly chased from parish to parish until they returned to the parish where they were born, which was held to be responsible for supporting them.
I question the validity of your comparison to the migration of Southern Blacks to the North and Dust Bowl "Okies" to California because the world and the economy have changed a great deal since those days. For example, the industrial jobs for which those people migrated North no longer exist.
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It's always seemed to me to be risky and a bit arrogant to suggest solutions to society's ills that you would not care to be subjected to yourself. You may have the good life now, but it is presumptuous to assume that it will always be so. Karma can be a bitch.
I also notice that, for some, the discussion of the poor sounds strictly theoretical. As though the people speaking had never known anyone poor. In some ways it reminds me of the discussions I used to hear of straight people discussing us gays. Do we really want to do the poor the same kind of disservice that was done to us?
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Of course. But that doesn't mean businesses shrug off taxes as no big deal. They like to keep expenses down, even if they pass them on to the consumer, because if their prices increase, demand decreases. And if demand decreases, profits decrease, and eventually jobs decrease. But you knew that.
But again here, you're making a big presumption based on a mixture of hearsay and myth and conservative doctrine. No doubt there are people here and there who fit this profile. But when you say that "the underclass expects" something or other "as a given right" -- i.e., the entire demographic group of people on welfare, or people whose income falls below the poverty line, shares some vast monolithic unreasonable attitude -- I'm afraid I don't find it convincing without evidence. And not just some essay from a conservative website, but poll results or sociological studies or Census figures or something empirical and ideologically neutral.
Perhaps something like this, from Wikipedia:
Yes, it's a wonder they manage, but nevertheless lots of people do it, including many in the middle class. From About.com, quoting a report released by the Census Bureau:
It is easier, of course, when there is reliable and affordable daycare available.
And, conversely, I'm guessing not only the poor like Oprah and Twinkies. ;D
I'm sorry, broketrash, I know this is an ugly generalization, and I hope I made it clear I did not include you. But the fact is, the concept of racism or classism influencing some people's opinions on this issue is absolutely not false. if we're going to toss around generalizations, here's one I've actually seen, on numerous occasions, with my own eyes and ears.
Hmm. Well, I do recall seeing something like that by HerrKaiser, and I wouldn't even call it "qualified."
As far as taxes on businesses. Of course businesses would love to not have to pay local, state and federal taxes. But, the ultimate payer of business taxes are the consumers : poor, middle, and rich. And I would add, that many businesses can write their various taxes off to a large extent : hence the IRS honored phrase "cost of doing business". This shift the tax burden on to others who can't write off their taxes to the degree that businesses do, usually middle class families.
I don't mean to be difficult and you are so patient, but tell me again, what is the point that you are making with the references to the Census Bureau data?
I freely agree that there are people who are at or below the national standard of poverty set by the census bureau. I earlier agreed that there were single parents who also held jobs. I opined that the children must be cared for by neighbors, or relatives. I did not consider day care as an option, but I am sure that it is also true. If your point is that not all single parents are at home watching Oprah eating Twinkies, I am sure that you are correct. National standards of poverty are very misleading. A uniform national standard does not take into account the regional differences in the cost of living in a country as large as the US. What is middle class in Waco, might not allow you to pay the bills in Manhattan.
But, you know, I have an even better vision for that single parent working that job while someone else watches the kids. Avoid the pregnancy in the first place. Don't go on welfare, don't get trapped in an insidious system. Finish an education which opens the doors of opportunity for you so you don't have to be a part of an underclass. Isn't that a better vision? And shouldn't we really get back to what I was speaking of a few days ago? That is how do we either eliminate or reform the welfare system, the educational system, the penal system, so that we can eliminate the present seemingly intractable poverty of the underclass? Can we go forward on that basis?
p.s. I think that if you look you will see some agreement with me by a few other than my bud Kaiser!
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I'm sorry, broketrash, I know this is an ugly generalization, and I hope I made it clear I did not include you. But the fact is, the concept of racism or classism influencing some people's opinions on this issue is absolutely not false. if we're going to toss around generalizations, here's one I've actually seen, on numerous occasions, with my own eyes and ears.
I did not think that you were targeting me. :) My point is, that type of generalization takes our eyes off what should be discussed within this context, and that context would be alternatives to the present welfare system.
It is clear to me that someone who is not interested in changing the present system may wish to throw up red herrings that do not contribute to a meaningful discussion, and that is fine if they wish to discuss "classism" and "racism" within the context of the debate over welfare. There are people on this web site who are more interested in making little debating points than meaningful discussions of public policy. But from my point of view that is a waste of time, as I won all the debates that I needed to win back in high school. So, I would prefer to look at what is ailing the present system and look for realistic alternatives.
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Well, first of all, I'm going to take another risk at being offensive and suggest that you can cut out the civics lessons on the Constitution, etc. We've all been to school around here, and, frankly, I find the sentences I've highlighted in red more than a little condescending in its tone, and it is not appreciated.
As for interstate migration, I brought that up on Friday, 5/2, as follows:
I question the validity of your comparison to the migration of Southern Blacks to the North and Dust Bowl "Okies" to California because the world and the economy have changed a great deal since those days. For example, the industrial jobs for which those people migrated North no longer exist.
Jeff, it is truly regrettable that you are offended. Since I have no desire to offend you, and since based upon your responses here and elsewhere I feel compelled to make the same points again and again, I will not comment any further on any of your posts. Have a nice evening.
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Well, well, well...the hornets' nest seems to have been stirred up on this one! :) :) :) I've got my spray can ready just in case...and according to the label, it can hit a nest from 25 feet away! :)
Personally, having read through the commentary and having BTDT (been there done that) with the snide and sarcastic remarks that have become commonplace, I am not so interested in joining the fray with my point of view and possibly valuable insights. However, some facts about the sarcasm and/or personal digs may help get some misinformation on the right track for you all to continue the war:
1) Holland is often viewed as one of the most liberal and progressive countires in the world. Not sure of the status at the moment, but they are planning to institute a eugenics program that controls birth rate and death based on a variety of factors. Fact is, nearly all major issues on the left or right side of the polictical/social spectrum can be traced back, quite easily, to too many people.
2) "forced labor" is a buzz term that is often misused and has been here. When the U.S. "forced" german pow's to work the ag fields during WWII, it was not called such. Prisoners on prison are forced to perform tasks. Even full time, happy employees are forced to perform or they get fired. Sure, they may have a choice, but ulimately everyone has to buck and and perform or they are left on the sideline. For those on public aid, their being required to perform as all other workers do for compensastion is not forced labor.
3) actually, the idea that one's opinion is as valid as another's is somewhat absurd. Opinions not based on facts and not supported with logic are not as valid.
4) if the princilple "he who has the money makes the rules" is a conservative tenet (which it is not), then conservatives would have failed. The welfare rules are largely made by the power of the lobbyists for special interests for the poor. Conservatives are attempting to add reason and responsibility to the entitlements.
5) "My goodness the conservatives miss the days of mint juleps and tea on the veranda (as the sound of whips reverberate thru the evening air!)" Good example of why not to participate. ;) :-X
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Well, well, well...the hornets' nest seems to have been stirred up on this one! :) :) :) I've got my spray can ready just in case...and according to the label, it can hit a nest from 25 feet away! :)
Personally, having read through the commentary and having BTDT (been there done that) with the snide and sarcastic remarks that have become commonplace, I am not so interested in joining the fray with my point of view and possibly valuable insights. However, some facts about the sarcasm and/or personal digs may help get some misinformation on the right track for you all to continue the war:
1) Holland is often viewed as one of the most liberal and progressive countires in the world. Not sure of the status at the moment, but they are planning to institute a eugenics program that controls birth rate and death based on a variety of factors. Fact is, nearly all major issues on the left or right side of the polictical/social spectrum can be traced back, quite easily, to too many people.
2) "forced labor" is a buzz term that is often misused and has been here. When the U.S. "forced" german pow's to work the ag fields during WWII, it was not called such. Prisoners on prison are forced to perform tasks. Even full time, happy employees are forced to perform or they get fired. Sure, they may have a choice, but ulimately everyone has to buck and and perform or they are left on the sideline. For those on public aid, their being required to perform as all other workers do for compensastion is not forced labor.
3) actually, the idea that one's opinion is as valid as another's is somewhat absurd. Opinions not based on facts and not supported with logic are not as valid.
4) if the princilple "he who has the money makes the rules" is a conservative tenet (which it is not), then conservatives would have failed. The welfare rules are largely made by the power of the lobbyists for special interests for the poor. Conservatives are attempting to add reason and responsibility to the entitlements.
5) "My goodness the conservatives miss the days of mint juleps and tea on the veranda (as the sound of whips reverberate thru the evening air!)" Good example of why not to participate. ;) :-X
Kaiser! I am delighted that someone else noticed the multiple personal attacks and absurd personally directed comments.
I agree with you, why bother to engage that type of dialog? there is nothing to be learned and no contribution to a meaningful discussion can be made while engaging such people, on web sites or in the real world. let them rant I say! to quote someone who opined recently : "with every word you type" :)
to your points, and I will not attempt to put words in your mouth, I simply will take your thoughts and develop them along the lines which I started on this thread.
1) how can it be disputed that overpopulation is the root of many problems in the world. those who hoist the Al Gore flag should have already come to the conclusion that 7 billion people generate much more stress on the environment than say 5 billion, or 4 billion? so what is the problem with mandatory birth controls for those who can't pay their way in our world? why should the productive tax payers be forced to not only pay the freight for the charity seeker in question, but for all of his or her progeny ad infinitum? The comparison with the brutal mandatory sterilization efforts on the part of former dictatorships, is just a red herring. Democratic countries have long used mandatory sterilizations / and or birth control for those who are deemed unable to support their progeny. And I would remind you that my opine was that mandatory sterilization should only be applied as a remedy for those men who refuse to support their children, after certain criteria are met. Don't we throw child support scofflaws in jail right now? Yes, we do, and we garnish their wages as well. If a child support scofflaw has no means of support, and can not and will not support his progeny, then why is it unreasonable to convict that person of a sex crime and put him in a prison farm? And if he repeats the offense, why not humanely give him a vasectomy?
2) Seeking public assistance is a voluntary act on the part of the requester, and is not one of their civil rights. However, the tax payer has no choice but to pay the taxes to support this welfare system, or suffer the consequences of the law themselves. Why is it not a good thing to reduce the burden on the tax payer by incarcerating male child support scofflaws on a prison farm and use the income generated by that labor to offset the expenses of keeping his family in food, etc.? We throw such scofflaws in jail right now, and they sit and do nothing but rot until their time is up. So that is more humane than working these criminals and supporting their families with the proceeds?
3) My friend Kaiser, logic has little or nothing to do with some of the opinions of the advocates of the present welfare system. It is plain as day that many, but not all, are not the least bit interested in a dialog about the options in altering the present system. Throwing out red herring after red herring is all that one needs to see. Not everyone uses those tactics, but it is a clear delimiter of those who wish a serious dialog and those who are not interested in such dialog and substitute debating points for an exchange of ideas.
4) ultimately under a democratic form of gov the voters make the rules. when tax payers who are also voters have enough of their own funds being syphoned off to support programs which do not benefit them or their families, then the rules will change. we have already seen some changes, esp at the state levels. here is TX there has been a move towards privatization of the welfare industry in an attempt to dislodge the entrenched welfare bureaucracy (those whom I have called the "poverty pimps") Lets remember that the left in this country can not win on their issues at the ballot box, and their strategum has long been to use the courts instead of the legislatures, this is a problem that the majority of voters are now awakened to and the appointment of strict constructionist federalist judges has started the rectification process.
5) I realize that your point here is an attempt to inject humor into a largely humorless discussion. good luck in finding much humor on the left, wasn't it Ann Coulter who opined that "liberals have had their sense of humor surgically removed"?
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I don't mean to be difficult and you are so patient, but tell me again, what is the point that you are making with the references to the Census Bureau data?
Two things, actually.
1) Many poor people work full time. As do many single parents.
2) One good way to convince people that you are correct in your generalizations is to offer some kind of hard data -- Census figures, poll responses, research results ... SOMETHING! -- rather than just making sweeping statements about a vast group of people, all or almost all of whom you have not met.
But, you know, I have an even better vision for that single parent working that job while someone else watches the kids. Avoid the pregnancy in the first place.
So now, in your view, not only should welfare recipients avoid having children, but even the working poor (or even middle-class single parents, I guess) should not have them? In other words, you find it preferable to live in an incredibly wealthy country in which people below a certain income level should be discouraged from partaking in in one of the most basic human experiences ... than to live in an incredibly wealthy country where the haves lend a hand to the have-nots??
Finish an education which opens the doors of opportunity for you so you don't have to be a part of an underclass. Isn't that a better vision?
Yes. That would be great. Now all you have to do is spread the word through education and encouragement to all the poor people of this country. But then -- guess what? You'd be working for one of the many anti-poverty programs that are engaged in this very effort!! :D
That is how do we either eliminate or reform the welfare system, the educational system, the penal system, so that we can eliminate the present seemingly intractable poverty of the underclass? Can we go forward on that basis?
So you figure eliminating Welfare will get the poor out there working full time and pretty soon there won't be so many poor people? But how does this jibe with the figures I've been offering for the past several days showing that before the War on Poverty there were actually MORE poor people? And that throughout most of American history (especially pre-New Deal, I'm guessing) poverty has hovered around 20 to 25 percent? Yes, you've made clear that you don't think the WoP has been as effective as it should have been. But there is no indication whatsoever that it has made poverty WORSE! And again, if you have evidence of this, let's see the facts and figures.
In fact, as we have discussed numerous times, the WoP has made the situation better. Not fixed it altogether, but held down the poverty rate. And this, even as wages for middle- and lower-income workers have declined, in constant dollars, since the '70s.
My point is, that type of generalization takes our eyes off what should be discussed within this context, and that context would be alternatives to the present welfare system.
Right. I didn't mean to make racism and classism central to the discussion. They came up originally as I was speculating about the reasons the image of the lazy, oft-pregnant, Twinkie-gobbling Welfare queen is so persistent, despite the apparent lack of evidence that such a figure represents the typical Welfare recipient in the real world.
There are people on this web site who are more interested in making little debating points than meaningful discussions of public policy. But from my point of view that is a waste of time, as I won all the debates that I needed to win back in high school. So, I would prefer to look at what is ailing the present system and look for realistic alternatives.
This confuses me a bit. What are we doing here but debating? Are we looking to hammer out new policy, hoping that the BetterMost members who are also federal officials with influence in this area will read the thread and take action? Or more to the point, is anyone here really trying to come up with some new idea for helping the poor, or are we just batting back and forth our entrenched, conflicting views about the causes of the poverty and effectiveness of the current system?? In a discussion that seems to be taking on an increasingly nasty edge?
good luck in finding much humor on the left, wasn't it Ann Coulter who opined that "liberals have had their sense of humor surgically removed"?
Uh-huh. Right. Must be because we don't get those hilarious witticisms of hers. Um, including that one, I guess. ::)
I remind you again, as I mentioned the last time you said this, that the two funniest people in America are on the left. You can see them every night from 10 to 11 p.m. Central Time on the Comedy Channel (though I watch them in the morning, while working out).
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The arch-conservative Anne Coulter has said, "Liberals have had their sense of humor surgically removed"?
Jesus H., "Pot, meet Kettle." ::)
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others see a bright shining city on the hill with an internment camp at the foot with sweat shops and 'hospitals' where doctors geld men....
Can anyone explain to me what this is supposed to mean?
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Can anyone explain to me what this is supposed to mean?
I think it's a swipe at Broketrash's remedy for poverty in the U.S.
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No Humour on the Left!? :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Apart from Anne Coulter, that redneck guy and whats-his-name that used to be on SNL, most comedians are pretty much good ol' liberals, at least.
See related article below:
Drew Carey closes Conservative Comedians Association
Funny man Drew Carey has reportedly closed the Conservative Comedians Association after only two years of operation. In a press release, the comedian cites 'being the only conservative comedian on Earth' for the close.
"It took a lot out of him," says long-time friend of Carey, Sam Jackman. "He was wearing too many hats too small for his head: chairman, treasurer, secretary - even caterer. Although he was pretty good at being a caterer."
Critics blame the lack of conservative comedians in the US on IQ. "To be a good comic, you have to be pretty intelligent. That's where it all falls down for the CCA."
"Although Drew was the only member of the organization until the very end, he really did try to alert fellow comedians to the evils of a higher minimum wage and universal health care," said Jackman. "Eventually, it became clear that all other comedians are just Bolsheviks who like to whine about stupid poor people."
It is believed that the CCA (or, Drew Carey) was until recently involved in secret negotations to secure the membership of Rush Limbaugh, in recognition of a lifetime of service to the 'unintential self-parody' genre of comedy. Unfortunately for the CCA, Rush didn't think of himself as funny in the same way everyone else does.
Critics of the club complained that while the idea of a Conservative Comedians Association is pretty funny, it's a bit odd that Drew Carey ever considered himself a comedian.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha," laughed at least one prime time comedian, laughing on the condition of anonymity. "Ha hah ha ha," he later added.
The failure of the Conservative Comedians Association to attract members is only the most recent incident in a long string of thwarted attempts by conservatives to attract talented minds.
In the realm of science, for instance, the right-wing has been opposed by every Nobel Prize recipient, most particularly by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein.
Few are able to account for this phenomena, but researchers believe it has something to do with their high levels of education.
Meanwhile, one critic who has come to Drew Carey's defense writes, "Carey tries really hard to be original but being the world's only conservative comedian may be the wrong idea. Maybe he should wear a wacky tie and funny old fashioned glasses instead?"
Copyright 2004-2008 Brainsnap.com.
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Things are getting a bit too heated in here. Debating ISSUES is what we're all about, so let's cut down on the characterizations of the individuals posting those issues, and keeping the personalities out of the mix. Casting aspersions on each other usually suggests someone has run out of intellectual fuel to debate an issue intelligently, so showing that "tell" usually suggests you are about to "fold your hand." It is perfectly acceptable, if a debate has exhausted its course, to simply agree to disagree and move on to the next issue. We're all neighbors here, so let's always try and keep things civil.
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Casting aspersions on each other usually suggests someone has run out of intellectual fuel to debate an issue intelligently,
I agree.
And when they go the next step and harken back to nazi concentration camps, it's more than being out of fuel.
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I agree.
And when they go the next step and harken back to nazi concentration camps, it's more than being out of fuel.
What about when they post old Drew Carey material, is that also a sign of running out of fuel? ;D
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And when they go the next step and harken back to nazi concentration camps, it's more than being out of fuel.
Oh, really? Well, if you've got fuel to spare, maybe you can explain why rounding up the poor isn't such a big step after legally preventing them from reproducing?
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Broketrash has offered a solution for poverty...interment in work camps for poor people and forced sterilization...but Reagan called America 'a bright shining city'...I was juxtaposing Broketrash's solution with Reagan's vision.
And you did a really good job of it, too. :D
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really? I would like a list of these democratic countries that are using forced sterilizations...(as Katherine pointed out..we would like some HARD data...something!!)
This thread has been long on unsubstantiated generalizations that we are supposed to take on faith. :-\
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Things are getting a bit too heated in here. Debating ISSUES is what we're all about, so let's cut down on the characterizations of the individuals posting those issues, and keeping the personalities out of the mix. Casting aspersions on each other usually suggests someone has run out of intellectual fuel to debate an issue intelligently, so showing that "tell" usually suggests you are about to "fold your hand." It is perfectly acceptable, if a debate has exhausted its course, to simply agree to disagree and move on to the next issue. We're all neighbors here, so let's always try and keep things civil.
I think that is a wonderful idea. And since I have now blocked the person who was making the somewhat hysterical comparisons to the Third Reich death camps and the other person who seems to be very easily offended, I am happy to continue exchanging posts with those who actually wish to examine ideas relating to welfare reformation.
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Can anyone explain to me what this is supposed to mean?
It appears to be yet another reference to the Third Reich. Somehow it would appear that the person who posted this thinks this is just a devastating response.
I have noticed that frequently those on the left will automatically charge racism and sexism when their assumptions are challenged. The Nazi references are just this strategy taken to its logically absurd conclusion.
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So now, in your view, not only should welfare recipients avoid having children, but even the working poor (or even middle-class single parents, I guess) should not have them? In other words, you find it preferable to live in an incredibly wealthy country in which people below a certain income level should be discouraged from partaking in in one of the most basic human experiences ... than to live in an incredibly wealthy country where the haves lend a hand to the have-nots??
people should not have children which they can not afford to raise. This is a crime against the child, and it is robbing the tax payers. Theft and child abuse.
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Yes. That would be great. Now all you have to do is spread the word through education and encouragement to all the poor people of this country. But then -- guess what? You'd be working for one of the many anti-poverty programs that are engaged in this very effort!! :D
an antipoverty program that was able to offer a education that prepared people for the workplace and then offered them a job based upon their skill levels which provided allowed them to advance and meet their material needs would be a blessing.
In fact this program is called SCHOOL CHOICE, SCHOOL ADOPTION, AND CAPITALISM.
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This confuses me a bit. What are we doing here but debating? Are we looking to hammer out new policy, hoping that the BetterMost members who are also federal officials with influence in this area will read the thread and take action? Or more to the point, is anyone here really trying to come up with some new idea for helping the poor, or are we just batting back and forth our entrenched, conflicting views about the causes of the poverty and effectiveness of the current system?? In a discussion that seems to be taking on an increasingly nasty edge?
My original comment was not aimed at you. I assure you, if you were using the same "tactics" (and that dignifies what I have seen) which some others have used, I would not respond to your posts.
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I have noticed that frequently those on the left will automatically charge racism and sexism when their assumptions are challenged.
Since this seems to contain a reference to me, let me clarify once again. Sometimes, when I have heard people describe what they perceive as the typical Welfare recipient, or rail about the onerous 1-percent-of-the-budget tax burden it creates, the person also happens to be racist. I don't draw that conclusion entirely from their remarks about Welfare, which is why I haven't drawn it about you. I also draw it from other things those people have said.
Maybe it's entirely a coincidence, and their racist views have nothing to do with their reasoned assessment of welfare's efficacy. Again: Opposition to welfare is not, in and of itself, racist. However, it doesn't take a huge logical leap to surmise that, although the majority of welfare recipients are white, they are disproportionately black and according to stereotype almost exclusively black, so racism may enter into the viewpoints of at least some opponents of the system.
Let me put it another way. Most Welfare opponents may not be racist. But I would guess most racists are Welfare opponents. Except, of course, the racists who are also Welfare recipients.
That clarified, I'm happy to move on. :)
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Uh-huh. Right. Must be because we don't get those hilarious witticisms of hers. Um, including that one, I guess. ::)
I remind you again, as I mentioned the last time you said this, that the two funniest people in America are on the left. You can see them every night from 10 to 11 p.m. Central Time on the Comedy Channel (though I watch them in the morning, while working out).
Ann Coulter aside, and the fact the humor is indeed in the eyes and ears of the beholder, what is to be done about welfare?
You asked me to offer some solutions. That I did! You, and Del have offered reasoned objections to those ideas. OK, I disagree, but I am willing to entertain other ideas.
Or do you disagree with me that welfare needs to be scrapped at the federal level, turned over to the states and fundamentally reformed? Can I assume that you agree with Del's earlier post which offered some suggestions that would reform the system around the edges but wouldn't really change the fundamentals?
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Since this seems to contain a reference to me, let me clarify once again. Sometimes, when I have heard people describe what they perceive as the typical Welfare recipient, or rail about the onerous 1-percent-of-the-budget tax burden it creates, the person also happens to be racist. I don't draw that conclusion entirely from their remarks about Welfare, which is why I haven't drawn it about you. I also draw it from other things those people have said.
Maybe it's entirely a coincidence, and their racist views have nothing to do with their reasoned assessment of welfare's efficacy. Again: Opposition to welfare is not, in and of itself, racist. However, it doesn't take a huge logical leap to surmise that, although the majority of welfare recipients are white, they are disproportionately black and according to stereotype almost exclusively black, so racism may enter into the viewpoints of at least some opponents of the system.
Let me put it another way. Most Welfare opponents may not be racist. But I would guess most racists are Welfare opponents. Except, of course, the racists who are also Welfare recipients.
That clarified, I'm happy to move on. :)
I agree to move on, my comment was precisely aimed at the extreme comments on this thread in which analogies were drawn to Nazi death camps. You were not the person making those comments, and your reference to possible racism or classism as motivators among those who advocate welfare reform was made in a manner that was well within the bounds of a serious discussion. I regret that you felt I was strongly objecting to any of your posts. Since I have met you on this web site we have disagreed very strongly, but I have never noted that you use those types of attacks.
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I agree to move on, my comment was precisely aimed at the extreme comments on this thread in which analogies were drawn to Nazi death camps. You were not the person making those comments, and your reference to possible racism or classism as motivators among those who advocate welfare reform was made in a manner that was well within the bounds of a serious discussion. I regret that you felt I was strongly objecting to any of your posts. Since I have met you on this web site we have disagreed very strongly, but I have never noted that you use those types of attacks.
OK, good. Thanks for clarifying. :)
Ann Coulter aside, and the fact the humor is indeed in the eyes and ears of the beholder, what is to be done about welfare?
You asked me to offer some solutions. That I did! You, and Del have offered reasoned objections to those ideas. OK, I disagree, but I am willing to entertain other ideas.
Or do you disagree with me that welfare needs to be scrapped at the federal level, turned over to the states and fundamentally reformed? Can I assume that you agree with Del's earlier post which offered some suggestions that would reform the system around the edges but wouldn't really change the fundamentals?
I think you're right that my views are probably fairly close to Del's. But I'll be honest, broketrash, I don't know enough about the specifics of Welfare to say specifically how and where I'd tinker with it to improve the system. I'm sure there is probably room for improvement, and most likely the best policy is to focus on teaching people to fish rather than giving them a fish. However, I would not suddenly dismantle the system and pull the safety net out from under desperate people and their children.
I guess I would place a high priority on educational opportunities for all ages, as well as any other programs that can expose people, especially kids and teenagers, to the range of opportunities that are out there. I think what we call a "culture of poverty" is basically poor people being so immersed in their environment that they can't conceive of aspiring to anything better. What is that old saying? Something like, "To a worm in an apple, the whole world is an apple." I know there are plenty of opportunities that I, as a middle-class Midwesterner, didn't envision as possible for myself -- opportunities that the offspring of wealthier, more worldly parents would have taken for granted. Well, if I transpose my fairly inconsequential limitations to what I would imagine as the perspective of a kid growing up among poor, undereducated people -- people who, yes, in many cases have made poor choices -- I can understand how those more severe limitations get handed down.
Anyway. Those aren't nearly as specific as your prescriptions. The fact is, I'm on this thread not because I have some concrete welfare reforms I want to implement but because I objected to sweeping generalizations and assumptions about the poor, combined with suggestions for reform that, well, frankly, seem to me to lack compassion.
I think, broketrash, that there are some fundamental differences between how you and I see the world and what we consider to be fair. I think we agree that the middle class is unfairly burdened, but when we look around for who to blame for that, we point the finger in different directions.
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MY comments also were aimed at extreme comments on this thread in which forced sterilization and internment were advocated to solve 'poverty'.
I don't remember anybody actually advocating internment, but I meant to suggest that it was just a short step from forcibly prevent the poor from having children to locking them up in concentration camps. (I suggested there was probably room in West Texas. They probably have extra space on the YFZ ranch. ...)
From the outrage my comment has provoked, I'm satisfied that I hit my target. :)
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OK, good. Thanks for clarifying. :)
I think you're right that my views are probably fairly close to Del's. But I'll be honest, broketrash, I don't know enough about the specifics of Welfare to say specifically how and where I'd tinker with it to improve the system.
1) I'm sure there is probably room for improvement, and most likely the best policy is to focus on teaching people to fish rather than giving them a fish.
2) However, I would not suddenly dismantle the system and pull the safety net out from under desperate people and their children.
3) I guess I would place a high priority on educational opportunities for all ages, as well as any other programs that can expose people, especially kids and teenagers, to the range of opportunities that are out there. I think what we call a "culture of poverty" is basically poor people being so immersed in their environment that they can't conceive of aspiring to anything better.
4) I think, broketrash, that there are some fundamental differences between how you and I see the world and what we consider to be fair. I think we agree that the middle class is unfairly burdened, but when we look around for who to blame for that, we point the finger in different directions.
your statements are fair, I may disagree with some conclusions which you have drawn, but I agree also with much of what you have stated. In fact I am very pleased to see some broader fundamental agreement than I might have suspected. And I have to wonder that if you and I coming at many issues from opposite side of the spectrum can find agreement, then surely our national and state leadership (so called) should be able to put aside polemics and reach some solutions on the variety of ailments that need fixing in todays world. I think that there is a thirst in the body politic for new solutions that get beyond the "usual cast of characters", hence the temporary success of people like Jesse Ventura and Ross Perot.
let me address some of your more important points:
1) I agree very strongly on relevant education for the young, the middle and the aged. Earlier I opined that one of the problems is an educational system that has become irrelevant for many of our youth. I suggested the German model of a two track system of an academically oriented education paralleling an technical oriented education.
2) I agree with you, the reforms which I suggested could not be done overnight, the safety net would have to be changed gradually. The disruption in people lives and in the life of the marketplace would be intolerable if radical changes occured overnight.
3) again, I agree on the "culture of poverty" or the culture of the underclass. this is a mentality which blocks any hope of growing out of dependency on charity.
4) the rising taxes on the middle class are the fuel in this debate. the system as it exists makes the tax structure for a middle class person such as yourself unfair vis a vis someone such as myself in a different income bracket. I am all too aware of the fact that the wealthy in this country simply do not pay their fair share using the present system as a benchmark. The tax system itself is "deranged" and deranging. That is why I advocate the abolition of the IRS income tax system and a uniform consumption tax which taxes everyone at an equal rate. Under the income tax system, the rich will never pay proportionately what the middle class does, and the poor pay nothing or close to nothing into the system.
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your statements are fair, I may disagree with some conclusions which you have drawn, but I agree also with much of what you have stated. In fact I am very pleased to see some broader fundamental agreement than I might have suspected.
Yay! :D Are you listening, Congress?
1) I agree very strongly on relevant education for the young, the middle and the aged. Earlier I opined that one of the problems is an educational system that has become irrelevant for many of our youth. I suggested the German model of a two track system of an academically oriented education paralleling an technical oriented education.
But don't you think, broketrash, that this is a risky move given the changes in employment opportunities due to automation and outsourcing? To me, everybody could use a basic standard high school education. After that, it's another matter, I guess. But I've never felt that a shortage of technical-education opportunities is a big problem for young people today, especially because many high schools offer tech-ed programs. And they are downright plentiful after high school.
again, I agree on the "culture of poverty" or the culture of the underclass. this is a mentality which blocks any hope of growing out of dependency on charity.
Yes. Though what you have described as a sense of entitlement I see as an unawareness of, or ignorance of, the methods for creating a different kind of life.
Here's the analogy I always think of. Let's say I decide I want to be a movie star. Now, we know it's theoretically possible, because non-famous middle-class Midwesterners DO become movie stars sometimes. Still, I wouldn't know exactly how to go about it. Do I volunteer for community theater and hope to work my way up? Major in drama at my state university? Go get a job at a soda fountain in Hollywood and wait to be discovered? Without any guidance, becoming a movie star seems approximately as feasible as going to the moon.
Compare my situation to that of Jane Fonda, or Kate Hudson, or Tom Hanks' son ... etc. etc. They not only know what to do and where to go to try for movie roles, but they already have the contacts, and their backgrounds and identities will get them in the door. Sure, they eventually have to prove themselves, but in the beginning the path is there for them and they know how to take it.
That's the difference I see between poor people living living in a "culture of poverty," surrounded by the undereducated and unemployed ... and middle- or upper-class people who grow up among dentists and professors and architects and lawyers and shoe-store owners and commercial artists and marketing consultants -- people who are able to show them the ropes and, perhaps more important, make their lives seem easily attainable.
And our different perceptions, I think, influence what we see as solutions. If you think people remain on welfare because they like playing the system, then it makes sense to change the system so it's unplayable. If you think people remain on welfare because they don't know how to live any other way, then it makes sense to help them learn how it's done.
4) the rising taxes on the middle class are the fuel in this debate. the system as it exists makes the tax structure for a middle class person such as yourself unfair vis a vis someone such as myself in a different income bracket.
Yes, that's unfair. Taxes aren't my biggest personal economic worry, though, and I'm certainly not losing sleep over the 1 percent that goes to pay for Welfare -- which in my case amounts annually to less than I'd spend on a single dinner in a nice restaurant. I'm far more concerned about unemployment, the cost of higher education, the housing market, inflation, the stock market ... the stuff that determines whether I can afford to eat in restaurants at all.
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Broketrash has offered a solution for poverty...interment in work camps for poor people and forced sterilization...but Reagan called America 'a bright shining city'...I was juxtaposing Broketrash's solution with Reagan's vision.
I think, to quote the Rev Wright, you took Broketrash's ideas WAY out of context and as such tended to mislead.
But, what I find funny is using Reagan as a means to support the liberal argument! :) :) :)
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I think, to quote the Rev Wright, you took Broketrash's ideas WAY out of context and as such tended to mislead.
But, what I find funny is using Reagan as a means to support the liberal argument! :) :) :)
:laugh: I can see that you are trying to have fun being reasonable in the face of absurd argumentation. Good Luck!
You might wish to take a gander at the following link:
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,14666.msg284972.html#msg284972
This link will take you to a thread which also concerned topical welfare, poverty and the underclass. And in that thread, you will notice postings from some of the same cast members as we have here on this thread. On that old thread, I attempted to also be reasonable and patient in the face of unremitting absurd argumentation. But, in the end, nothing was accomplished.
And in the end, you will like me, click on the "IGNORE" button.
knock yourself out brother! 8)
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Absurdity, like reasonableness and patience, is in the eye of the beholder.
Obviously, some of us find the suggestion of legally enforced contraception absurd (at best), and responded to that perceived absurdity in a way we felt was both reasonable and deserved.
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Yay! :D Are you listening, Congress?
But don't you think, broketrash, that this is a risky move given the changes in employment opportunities due to automation and outsourcing? To me, everybody could use a basic standard high school education. After that, it's another matter, I guess. But I've never felt that a shortage of technical-education opportunities is a big problem for young people today, especially because many high schools offer tech-ed programs. And they are downright plentiful after high school.
all opportunities have risks. no risk, no payoff.
I think that the basic readin', writin', and 'rithmetic that students absorb by the time that they enter high school is enough to allow them to start differentiating their studies. the academically bound will continue a course of study familiar with all college bound high school grads. the technical trackers will be given relevant courses in their chosen technical field (of course business math, business English, some science would be a part of this curriculum as well) , and in some technical areas the math backgrounding might be quite extensive.
but, why can't we help train those who are going to go on to jobs in industry that do not need a college diploma?
why can't we put those kids in technical programs that allow them to intern in private industry with a good job after graduation?
don't you think that the high school graduation rates would go up?
employers would be very happy to hire good people out of high school that they don't need to remedially train. Relationships could be built between high schools and individual employers and community colleges who would have advanced tech courses for those students to take, maybe leading to a 2 year degree.
I can think of any number of tech areas that high school students could intern in and study without the need to go on to a 4 year degree:
machinists jobs
chemical technician jobs
surveyor jobs
cosmetology / barbering
computer techs
law enforcement/ ems / firefighters
med tech jobs
mechanics
soil management / animal husbandry and management
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all opportunities have risks. no risk, no payoff.
Well, yeah. But the balance of risk vs. reward has to be reasonable. Risking jumping off a cliff on the chance you might learn how to fly is not reasonable. I'm not saying your plan is that outrageous, just that it would require a lot more knowledge of the current job market and the projected job market than I myself have. A lot of technical jobs eventually won't exist, or won't exist in this country, or won't be performed by a human. Will the number of remaining jobs be sufficient? What happens to people who have received narrow training for a now obsolete job? The broader the education, the easier the career shift.
I think that the basic readin', writin', and 'rithmetic that students absorb by the time that they enter high school is enough to allow them to start differentiating their studies. the academically bound will continue a course of study familiar with all college bound high school grads. the technical trackers will be given relevant courses in their chosen technical field (of course business math, business English, some science would be a part of this curriculum as well) , and in some technical areas the math backgrounding might be quite extensive.
I think I might have been more open to this idea 10 or 20 years ago.
but, why can't we help train those who are going to go on to jobs in industry that do not need a college diploma?
We can.
don't you think that the high school graduation rates would go up?
I don't know enough about why people drop out of high school. Is it because they don't feel the academics are useful, or is it for other reasons -- lifestyle, pregnancy, delinquency, parents' examples ... ? Personally, as I said, I don't know. If the majority drop out because they don't find the coursework relevant, you could be right.
employers would be very happy to hire good people out of high school that they don't need to remedially train. Relationships could be built between high schools and individual employers and community colleges who would have advanced tech courses for those students to take, maybe leading to a 2 year degree.
Aren't these pretty common already? I know they had them in my high school. It was called Vo-Tech (vocational/technical). There was also a program called "Mini School" for would-be dropouts, and SWAS, School Within a School, where higher achievers worked on independent study projects.
I can think of any number of tech areas that high school students could intern in and study without the need to go on to a 4 year degree:
machinists jobs
chemical technician jobs
surveyor jobs
cosmetology / barbering
computer techs
law enforcement/ ems / firefighters
med tech jobs
mechanics
soil management / animal husbandry and management
A few of those may be obsolete or outsourced within a few years. Computer techs already are, to a large extent.
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I can think of any number of tech areas that high school students could intern in and study without the need to go on to a 4 year degree:
machinists jobs
chemical technician jobs
surveyor jobs
cosmetology / barbering
computer techs
law enforcement/ ems / firefighters
med tech jobs
mechanics
soil management / animal husbandry and management
I would not be too sure that med techs don't need college degrees. Possibly a two-year associate degree is sufficient now, but even if it is, that could change. I work in a branch of the medical education field. Even now there are certification examinations for medical assistants--the people who answer the phones and do the office work. The trend in medicine is toward requiring more education, for everyone, at all levels.
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Well, yeah. But the balance of risk vs. reward has to be reasonable. Risking jumping off a cliff on the chance you might learn how to fly is not reasonable. I'm not saying your plan is that outrageous, just that it would require a lot more knowledge of the current job market and the projected job market than I myself have. A lot of technical jobs eventually won't exist, or won't exist in this country, or won't be performed by a human. Will the number of remaining jobs be sufficient? What happens to people who have received narrow training for a now obsolete job? The broader the education, the easier the career shift.
I don't know enough about why people drop out of high school. Is it because they don't feel the academics are useful, or is it for other reasons -- lifestyle, pregnancy, delinquency, parents' examples ... ? Personally, as I said, I don't know. If the majority drop out because they don't find the coursework relevant, you could be right.
Aren't these pretty common already? I know they had them in my high school. It was called Vo-Tech (vocational/technical). There was also a program called "Mini School" for would-be dropouts, and SWAS, School Within a School, where higher achievers worked on independent study projects.
Vocational partnerships with existing employers who have evidenced both a desire to offer input into the curriculum and job opportunities that need filling, would preclude proffering a vocational education in disappearing markets. The employers who would set up internship programs would not do so if they did not see the need for the student to fill a real job in the real world after graduation. The marketplace is a much better indicator of those needs than the educational bureaucracy.
Vocational training most definitely not so narrow that it would only apply to one specific job with one specific employer or group of similar employers. Apprenticeships / Internships out of vocational schools are based upon a broader education than just the minutiae of a single employers needs. It is based upon the needs of entire industries and related industries.
Two Examples:
1) a vocational student enters the workshop internship programs specializing in a "machinist" position in a GM plant that makes SUV's. Because of the high price of gas, the SUV market collapses and there are layoffs at the GM plant. That student however would be prepared to offer their skills at any number of business operations both large and small who wish to hire machinists. In this case, because of the change in market conditions, the guaranteed job evaporates but because of a highly marketable skill, can easily be replaced.
2) a Student graduates from traditional curriculum in a high school, no voc ed, no internships, just a diploma, which will get him or her into a community college, a McDonald's job and that is about all. So, what are this student's prospects compared to the vocational tech student? Not even a close comparison, one studied relevant material and had hands on experience with something that will get him or her a good job, the other is just more fodder ejected from the public schools, clueless about the future and with small prospects of success.
I love the idea of independent study projects, and not just for high academic achievers, we need such projects for those who can achieve in non academically oriented subjects. Why not train mechanics this way, or machinists, or those interested in agriculture or mining?
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2) a Student graduates from traditional curriculum in a high school, no voc ed, no internships, just a diploma, which will get him or her into a community college, a McDonald's job and that is about all.
... Or into a post-secondary vocational school. Here's just one of the online websites that lists them in every state in what appear to be dozens or hundreds of categories:
http://www.rwm.org/rwm/ (http://www.rwm.org/rwm/)
Here, for example, is a list for Texas. On the site, clicking on any of those fields takes you to a list of schools that provide training in that area.
1. Aircraft: A&P Technician, Ground and Flight, Pilot
2. Arts & Design: Applied and Creative, Design, Media, Fashion
3. Automotive: Automotive Technician, Driver, Heavy Equipment Operator, Repair, Trucking
4. Barbering & Cosmetology: Esthetician, Cosmetologist, Hair Design, Facial, Make-Up, Manicuring, Nails, Salon Management
5. Bartending
6. Business: Accounting, Administrative, General Office, Management, Marketing, Organizational Psychology, Secretarial
7. Computers & Information Technology: CAD, Installer, Multimedia, Programmer, Repairer, Web Designer
8. Construction: Estimator, Heavy Equipment Operator, Project Manager, Superintendent
9. Culinary
10. Electronics & HVAC : Assembler, Electrical and Electronics Equipment Installer, Equipment Repairer, HVAC
11. Fashion Design: Apparel, Illustration, Merchandising
12. Gaming: Casino Dealer, Machine Repair, Table Games
13. Healthcare & Medical: Dental, Massage Therapy, Medical Assistant, Medical Office, Medical Records Technician, Nursing, Optician, Paramedic, Pharmacy Technician, X-Ray Technician
14. Inspection & Environmental: Hazardous Waste Technician, Home Inspection, Inspector, Quality Assurance
15. Jewelry: Bench, Designer, Identification, Diamond Setter
16. Legal: Court Reporter, Criminal Justice, Legal Office, Paralegal
17. Machinist: Machine Operator, CNC Machinist, CNC Operator
18. Plumber: Pipefitter
19. Private Investigation: Investigation, Security, Protection
20. Telecommunications: Assembler, Cable Installer, Fiber Optic Technician, Networking, Repairer, Systems Installer
21. Travel: Flight Attendant, Hotel Management, Reservationist, Travel Agent
22. Welding
I love the idea of independent study projects, and not just for high academic achievers, we need such projects for those who can achieve in non academically oriented subjects. Why not train mechanics this way, or machinists, or those interested in agriculture or mining?
Well, again, many do.
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What about people with limited talents and abilities? Are we just supposed to be Darwinian about them?
And the elderly, if they've worked all their lives in jobs that don't pay enough to save anything decent for retirement?
Are we only going to provide opportunities and advantages and safety nets for the able?
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What about people with limited talents and abilities? Are we just supposed to be Darwinian about them?
Everyone has ability to do "something" unless they are completely mentally or physically handicapped. The darwinian part is how the folks with any capabilites choose to use them.
And the elderly, if they've worked all their lives in jobs that don't pay enough to save anything decent for retirement?
That is what SS is for and medicare. Not much, but millions are living on those payments. It will get worse, though, because of the sheer numbers of baby boomers reaching retirment ages...and i don't get the impression that the current pop culture has much compassion for anything other than the next court date for Britney Spears! ;)
Are we only going to provide opportunities and advantages and safety nets for the able?
Safety nets are supposed to be for everyone. As I have mentioned before, the safety nets have turned into hammocks for many. As a result, the revenues available are no longer sufficient to act as safety nets for the "able" when they get into trouble/need. Try getting public help if you are not a government-labeled minority or with any assets. It will not happen.
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for people that answer the phone?? You're kidding...
Nope. Not kiddin'. There is an organization that certifies medical assistants. They require that an extensive and wide-ranging exam be passed for certification.
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I am talking about people coming on and criticizing ME on a thread I started saying I am not posting in a manner they approve of.
That seems kinda rude, if you ask me. :-\
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especially if past interaction has shown that they do not like my posting style...why even come on at all?? ::) ::)
I assume just to be cruel. It DID hurt....but I am trying to look past it.
I just got the bill in for my last hospital stay...(well the latest copy I should say) since I don't have insurance the total is all on us...$15,000 give or take a ten... >:( :-\
You know that some places charge you more if you don't have insurance?
I am sorry for it, Injest. I'm sending a lot of positive energy your way.
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I just got the bill in for my last hospital stay...(well the latest copy I should say) since I don't have insurance the total is all on us...$15,000 give or take a ten... >:( :-\
You know that some places charge you more if you don't have insurance?
One minute things can be good. You can have everything...and in a second you could lose it all.
One car accident, one natural disaster...and all you have worked for could be gone. '
Oh my gosh, Jess, this seems like a really risky situation. Obviously I know nothing about either your health or your finances, but is there any way around this, even if it's costly? I'm sure you already know this, but one catastrophic illness or accident ...
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And the lack of compassion on the part of some people who call themselves Christian just makes me want to hit them. ... :-\
I know it sounds like a cliche and cheap sentimentality, but time and again I ask myself, What would Jesus think of these people? Do they even listen to themselves? What gospel are they hearing on Sundays?
No wonder professed Christians have gotten a bad name in this country. :-\
How can--how dare--some people call themselves Christian and yet be so indifferent to the lack of health care among the poor in this country? And yet they want to claim that the U.S. is a "Christian nation." ...
Sorry, that was a bit O.T., I guess. ... :-\
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Thanks broketrash !
You say:
All people do not have the inclination or training to become a surgeon.
........
Broketrash, may I agree with you.
However, those that do want to become a surgeon and can be trained for that, should be able to do so, but that is often not the case !! I noted that the creation of another medical school could have been done sooner, but the government and the elite controlling the quota did not, and, therefore, many persons had no medical doctor and therefore, died before their time; same is happening now in many countries! Why ?
WE steal medical doctos from OTHERS countries, what a shame, since they are need in their own countries! Why do we resist that our own children become medical doctors ??
To me that is one case which renders persons poor ! When one becomes sick and no doctor can be found, then you become poor, because it costs more for that human being and for society too, which we do not think about that... as well as for cos which need help for labour and thought in production design and lines ! Entrepreneurs and cos need workers who are well, not sick persons - no too poor to come to work !!
There is too much of a lack of varied job creations, which makes many areas more and more poor !! For instance, many states in the USA (as well as provinces in Canada) gives billions of $ to Toyota to build cars, which co. does not need that dough! To me, that is a shame. It seems to me, that those public $ should be spent on creating different products, especially inventing new technologies which would be very much varied and not just car parts !! Many different kinds of entrepreneurs need cash to hire persons in order to create different prototypes, in many fields and not just to make cars!! There is a lack of perspective !! Governments give dough to cos that don't need it!!
There are many others such schools which are needed... besides a medical one likely in your area so local school kids would have the chance to be a doctor and be encouraged for that, or to become a plumber, a technician, a painter, a plasterer, an inventor, a TV repair person, etc. ! ! Yes! And also many other different kinds of schools are needed too: like for technologies and vocations, but these are too rare, even if the kids need training !! So, the kids sell dope, as if that is the ONLY way out ?? Society need all sorts of trades, not just a Toyota foreign owned co. !
Shame!
So, now it's Toyota, and Made in China time and no jobs in the USA, Canada, etc., times !! WE all will sell dope and become more poor in order to enrich dope warlords ??
Au revoir,
hugs!!
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from what we have seen from the 'conservative voice' on THIS thread, there isnt' much (if ANY) compassion at all coming from them either..
I guess this depends on how one defines compassion.
conservatives believe the human spirit elements of acheivement and self reliance and self respect need to be part of everyone's existence. Providing the encouragement to acheive such is compassionate.
Liberals seem to feel it is compassionate to simply give folks things which most conservatives feel is a road to disaster. Few people, left or right, continue to support, for example, the aspects of the 1960s war on poverty wherein the government build massive housing developments so the poor could live for free. They quickly turned into major ghettos of crime and violence which was regenerated by subsequent generations. Not very compassionate in my book.
A good example of the difference between conservatives and liberals:
Johnny can't do his homework; he is struggling. Everyone agrees a helping hand is needed. The conservative takes Johnny to the library, shows him how to use the resources, and encourages him to complete the task. Johnny feels accomplished and capable.
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
I think the conservative way is far more compassionate. The liberal way is "nicer" by some definitions because it doesn't make him work, but does nothing for his well being.
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A good example of the difference between conservatives and liberals:
Johnny can't do his homework; he is struggling. Everyone agrees a helping hand is needed. The conservative takes Johnny to the library, shows him how to use the resources, and encourages him to complete the task. Johnny feels accomplished and capable.
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
This analogy does not seem to have any parallel in the real world.
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Are there ONLY two choices ?? A- One for the poor to remain poor amd become more poor, and the middle class to become poor too ?? B- The other choice for the very wealthy to rule for themselves ONLY ??
1- Maybe HeirKaiser means that the Liberals let libertine rule society and no added schools or training is done, and so the child who is poor receives no schooling needed ? My sister needed help in Math. and so the liberals do not considered that she needed that nor care less if she did get that special attention !!
Liberals let the unrulers rule ! ??
2- Maybe HeirKaiser means that the Conservatives just think for themsleves ? My sister will never get the right education because she is middle class and/or in the poor class ??
....................
It is easy to see that the very wealthy are becoming more dominant still and do not care that much, if at all, about the other classes of society! And, in the way, they will not only destroy the others, but themselves !!
That seesm to be the norm more and more !! ??
Look at China ruling with murder and nobody cares (since only too few cares) !! Even most Olympians could not care less if they sport in the China 2008 Olympics ?? !! Shame !! Would you invite a known murderer into your home, if you are not a murderer ?
The poor are not considered anymore in to-day's world; governments and others only pay lip-service !!
What do you think ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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I guess this depends on how one defines compassion.
conservatives believe the human spirit elements of acheivement and self reliance and self respect need to be part of everyone's existence. Providing the encouragement to acheive such is compassionate.
Liberals seem to feel it is compassionate to simply give folks things which most conservatives feel is a road to disaster. Few people, left or right, continue to support, for example, the aspects of the 1960s war on poverty wherein the government build massive housing developments so the poor could live for free. They quickly turned into major ghettos of crime and violence which was regenerated by subsequent generations. Not very compassionate in my book.
This is a non-sequitur. Because a program turned out not to work does not mean it wasn't "compassionate" in its inception. Presumably the conservative idea of "compassion" would have been to save the money and just leave those people in the run-down, substandard housing where they were in the first place, since that's how the projects ended up.
A good example of the difference between conservatives and liberals:
Johnny can't do his homework; he is struggling. Everyone agrees a helping hand is needed. The conservative takes Johnny to the library, shows him how to use the resources, and encourages him to complete the task. Johnny feels accomplished and capable.
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
I think the conservative way is far more compassionate. The liberal way is "nicer" by some definitions because it doesn't make him work, but does nothing for his well being.
This analogy does not seem to have any parallel in the real world.
Agreed. It's a typical conservative gross oversimplification. Suppose Johnny is "struggling" because he has a learning disability? Then what does the conservative do? Probably abandons him in the library to fail.
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Johnny would not have a chance to go to the library, because schools are starting to close down libraries !!
So, likewise, cities are trimming libraries to the core and even have closed some !
Maybe the dope dealer has a library where Johnny will be forced to go to ? To learn what ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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to view the American population as divided between "conservatives" and "liberals" is not only oversimplistic, it is also highly misleading and mostly wrong. The majority of Americans are actually centrists - somewhere in between. The far right and far left "positions" which Herr Kaiser has boiled down to "big government tax and spend" ideas as opposed to "small government self-reliant" ideas is the roughest and least accurate of all descriptions of the US electorate.
However, looking at the one topic of "Johnny can"t read", the "conservative" presidency of GW Bush did not "bring Johnny to the library", and as a teacher of English, I can guarantee that bringing Johnny to the library will not teach him to read. The solution enacted was the "No Child Left Behind Act", which was "Test Johnny repeatedly on massive standardized tests and modify the curriculum to teach to the test." It has been a manifest failure.
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Liberals seem to feel it is compassionate to simply give folks things which most conservatives feel is a road to disaster. Few people, left or right, continue to support, for example, the aspects of the 1960s war on poverty wherein the government build massive housing developments so the poor could live for free. They quickly turned into major ghettos of crime and violence which was regenerated by subsequent generations. Not very compassionate in my book.
Johnny can't do his homework; he is struggling. Everyone agrees a helping hand is needed. The conservative takes Johnny to the library, shows him how to use the resources, and encourages him to complete the task. Johnny feels accomplished and capable.
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
I think the conservative way is far more compassionate. The liberal way is "nicer" by some definitions because it doesn't make him work, but does nothing for his well being.
All very well stated Kaiser. Good analogies
You should however not be under any delusion that many on this thread will admit to the failure of LBJ's trillion dollar War on Poverty. As an argumentative premise that the Social engineering projects started in the 60's are failures, you will not find any takers among the left. Why else would there be no interest in radical welfare reform? The left in this country will not admit any failure on the part of their sacred cow programs, as it would force them to admit the internal contradictions within their own proposals. No, they are perfectly willing to let the same old programs produce one generation after another to be imprisoned in the underclass.
So really it comes down to them only grudgingly and under intense political pressure admit to half heartedly making changes around the edges of the programs, i.e. Clinton's welfare reforms in the 1990's. To me that has almost been a waste of time, the only method of extracting the inextractable problem of the underclass is radical reform.
1) get the issue away from the feds
2) reform secondary education towards a two track system
3) allow mandatory birth control for welfare recipients
4) make the men who father children and abandon those children either pay up, or ship out to a prison farm
5) allow mandatory workfare for recipients
6) rest control away from the permanent welfare bureaucracy by allow the tax payers to vote in yearly referenda on any changes needed in the programs
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The majority of Americans are actually centrists - somewhere in between.
This is why, according to my old poli sci prof, the Presidential candidate who is perceived as being closest to the center is generally the one who wins the election.
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You should however not be under any delusion that many on this thread will admit to the failure of LBJ's trillion dollar War on Poverty. As an argumentative premise that the Social engineering projects started in the 60's are failures, you will not find any takers among the left. Why else would there be no interest in radical welfare reform? The left in this country will not admit any failure on the part of their sacred cow programs, as it would force them to admit the internal contradictions within their own proposals. No, they are perfectly willing to let the same old programs produce one generation after another to be imprisoned in the underclass.
So really it comes down to them only grudgingly and under intense political pressure admit to half heartedly making changes around the edges of the programs, i.e. Clinton's welfare reforms in the 1990's. To me that has almost been a waste of time, the only method of extracting the inextractable problem of the underclass is radical reform.
Is it not contradictory to say that the Left refuses to admit that things don't work yet agrees to make changes? Why agree to make changes if you don't think something isn't working?
Besides which, the claim is untrue. Otherwise, for example, we would still be building highrise housing "projects" instead of instituting programs to help the poor to homeownership--in some cases they even help build those homes to really give them a sense of "investment" in the house.
In any case, in the alternative universe of the Conservative Right, "welfare reform" really means "welfare elimination."
Of course, if the underclass is eliminated, who's going to weed the flowerbeds and mow the lawns and diaper the babies and clean the houses and wash the dirty laundry of all those rich Conservatives?
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I guess this depends on how one defines compassion.
A good example of the difference between conservatives and liberals:
Johnny can't do his homework; he is struggling. Everyone agrees a helping hand is needed. The conservative takes Johnny to the library, shows him how to use the resources, and encourages him to complete the task. Johnny feels accomplished and capable.
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
Nonsense!
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This analogy does not seem to have any parallel in the real world.
??? ??? ??? Of course it does. Many of broketrash's lists of ideas on how to help end poverty are exemlory of such. Rather than only providing the 'answers' or the end result, folks need to be encouraged to be responsible for their own outcomes.
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This is a non-sequitur.
??? How so? what are you suggesting does not follow?
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If majority of persons were responsable in the USA, Canada and other free countries, then would they have purchased Toyota cars, as a big item, and too many Made in China crap ??
Too many are lazy and not enough responsable, is that what make them so poor ? And the rich warlords richer, because they know that if they have their products Made in China, most stupid persons would purchase them ?
Who will pay for such irresponsable persons calling themselves citizens of the Free world, which is becoming 3rd World countries ??
Au revoir,
hugs!
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??? ??? ??? Of course it does. Many of broketrash's lists of ideas on how to help end poverty are exemlory of such. Rather than only providing the 'answers' or the end result, folks need to be encouraged to be responsible for their own outcomes.
Sure. But your stereotyping and oversimplifying of anti-poverty programs keeps you from seeing that many of them already do just that.
Let's take one example from LBJ's War on Poverty programs: Head Start. Head Start does just about exactly what you pretend conservatives do -- it takes little pre-school Johnnys and prepares them to perform better when they get to regular school. It has achieved well-documented, widely acknowledged, extensively researched success. Eliminating Head Start, to return to your analogy, would leave all those pre-school Johnnys out "playing" -- or dodging bullets in their housing projects.
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It's a typical conservative gross oversimplification. Suppose Johnny is "struggling" because he has a learning disability?
Sometimes, a bit of simplifcation is a good thing to cut through the briar patch created by government/social bureaucrasies that only feed on their own cyclical need for more bureaucrasy.
That said, the learning disability 'what if' is, imo, typical lefist nay-saying and constant desire to be paralyzed by indecision or joining a positive movement forward. I guess you could have said 'what if there is no library close by, what if it was closed when they got there, what if the computers were down....' And that helps make my point about the left's focus on giving rather than helping people acheive.
;D ;D ;D As I mentioned earlier, the left is always searching for the hammock rather than the safety net.
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Merci seriouscrayons !
You say:
Eliminating Head Start, to return to your analogy, would leave all those pre-school Johnnys out "playing" -- or dodging bullets in their housing projects.
........
Seriouscrayons and to others too:
Why are our children dodging bullets in their neighbourhood and at school ??
If we had real governments enforcing the laws with enough good cops and judges, instead of so-called cops and so-called judges for the criminals and their lawyers, then we woudl have a society !!
But were are the real men and women to do this ??
Any left, besides me ??
Au revoir, hugs!
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Then what does the conservative do? Probably abandons him in the library to fail.
Seems you did not read my post or understand it. Conservatives GOAL is to have indivuduals succeed, not fail. Success means less drain on public resources. For some reason, there is resistance among liberals to accept that a foundation of conservatism is personal acheivement and success.
Leftist philospophy is an abandonement philosophy in large part, imo. What happened to the thousands of people the liberals dumped into public housing? They just left them there to fail. That is one example among many. The fall of communism and far left socialism was due on large part because of the vast majority of human potential was unused and squandered due to eliminating the need/desire to pull ones' own strings.
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HerrKaiser: you saying: The fall of communism and far left socialism was due on large part because of the vast majority of human potential was unused and squandered due to eliminating the need/desire to pull ones' own strings.
.........
HerrKaiser; that is not nescessarily so. That is a myth! Many things were better.
The fall was because murderers took over. Know your Russian history: remember that the Parliament in Russia was bombed and the dictator took over, and it has dictators ever since !! So, what is worst ?
...............
And, I do agree with your conservative definition: Conservatives GOAL is to have indivuduals succeed, not fail. Success means less drain on public resources.
..........
But con artists use that to disguise themselves, just like when they like to be called liberals !!
WE need better system: jobs for all, and not just for criminals selling dope, and Toyotas, and Made In China crap !!
What do you think ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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The poor are poor, because cirminals control them !!
Too many to sell dope, like it or not !!
Sell it or be dead !!
But too many persons are ignorant of that, or place a blind eye to that !!
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Sure. But your stereotyping and oversimplifying of anti-poverty programs keeps you from seeing that many of them already do just that.
Look, it is quite, imo, disingenuous to claim 'stereotyping' and 'oversimpliying' when discussing a strategic movement forward to help solve the issues of non productivity and drains on the social system. I find it counterproductive to stall or roadblock strategies because they may not, in an overall sense, address every possible variant.
In claiming 'stereotyping' you would seemingly deny good pharmaceuticals from being on the market because they "stereotype' results among the largest populations of symptoms/results when, in fact, some people could die from usage or missuse.
'Stereotyping' is negative buzz word that should more often than not be replaced with 'target audience'.
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HerrKaiser, maybe the poor is poor because they are too much:
'Stereotyped' ??
.............
Instead of looking at each person to see what and how it can be helped ?
Seriously ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Look, it is quite, imo, disingenuous to claim 'stereotyping' and 'oversimpliying' when discussing a strategic movement forward to help solve the issues of non productivity and drains on the social system. I find it counterproductive to stall or roadblock strategies because they may not, in an overall sense, address every possible variant.
In claiming 'stereotyping' you would seemingly deny good pharmaceuticals from being on the market because they "stereotype' results among the largest populations of symptoms/results when, in fact, some people could die from usage or missuse.
'Stereotyping' is negative buzz word that should more often than not be replaced with 'target audience'.
Um ... well, OK, let's see: "Your stereotyping and oversimplifying target audience of anti-poverty programs keeps you from seeing that many of them already do just that."
Hunh??
I don't think you understood my point, because it has nothing to do with proper allocation of pharmaceuticals.
My point, to put it in the simplest possible terms, is that there are already anti-poverty programs in place devoted to teaching Johnny how to do his homework, to use your analogy, and in other ways teaching people to catch their own fish. Your posts suggest that you may not realize that.
If not, my best guess is it's because standard conservative dogma teaches that liberal programs are all about giving money away. That's where the word "stereotype" comes in -- not really replaceable, in this context, with "target audience."
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Everyone needs education.
The poor is getting less and less of it !!
So dope pushers have a field day, everyday!
Why is that ?
Au revoir,¸
hugs!
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Um ... well, OK, let's see: "Your stereotyping and oversimplifying target audience of anti-poverty programs keeps you from seeing that many of them already do just that."
Hunh??
I don't think you understood my point, because it has nothing to do with proper allocation of pharmaceuticals.
My point, to put it in the simplest possible terms, is that there are already anti-poverty programs in place devoted to teaching Johnny how to do his homework, to use your analogy, and in other ways teaching people to catch their own fish. Your posts suggest that you may not realize that.
If not, my best guess is it's because standard conservative dogma teaches that liberal programs are all about giving money away. That's where the word "stereotype" comes in -- not really replaceable, in this context, with "target audience."
You are right, i do not understand your point and your simplest of terms explanation made it no more clear.
If you are suggesting that conservatives assume 100% of assistance programs are ineffective and 100% of such program recipients have not benefitted in some way, you are stereotyping the "conservative dogma teaches that liberal programs are all about giving money away". Most surely appear to be; if any are not, great. But, it cannot be denied that the extensive desire--even in the Clinton administration and in the state of WI, one of the most burdened by entitlements--to CUT substantially the entitlement programs is because the resources being distributed are both wasteful and NOT results oriented...mostly about giving money away.
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I agree with the old saw "Teach a man to fish...." I don't know of many that don't...liberal or conservative.
I think most liberals and conservatives agree with the "teach a man to fish" idea, including probably everybody posting on this thread.
The difference to me is that if, for some reason, teaching a man to fish isn't possible, liberals would let him have a fish anyway, and conservatives would make him go hungry. Liberals would assume there's some practical reason he can't fish, conservatives would assume he's lazy.
If you are suggesting that conservatives assume 100% of assistance programs are ineffective and 100% of such program recipients have not benefitted in some way, you are stereotyping the "conservative dogma teaches that liberal programs are all about giving money away"
The liberal gives Johnny the answers. Johnny goes out to play.
What would YOU conclude, from your own posts?
it cannot be denied that the extensive desire--even in the Clinton administration and in the state of WI, one of the most burdened by entitlements--to CUT substantially the entitlement programs
Well, there you go. Do you consider Bill Clinton a conservative? Do you think of Wisconsin as a conservative state? Or ... is it possible you're stereotyping liberals?
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I agree with the old saw "Teach a man to fish...." I don't know of many that don't...liberal or conservative.
Well, my sense from what I see, hear, on this forum, in the media and elsewhere is that the liberal leaning folks tend not to believe in this and/or place numerous caveats on the theorem. And that is, again generally speaking, not what one sees in the democrat programs for entitlements.
by the by...I love the term "old saw". Haven't heard that in years! My favorite is "it's an ill wind that blows no good".
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Of course you know that social security and medicare are theoretically "paid" for by recipients.
this is literally not the case because they are absolutely not "accounts"; the payments into each are simply tax dollars that are spent by the goverenment in a variety of ways and are in no way held in place for future distribution to those who input. That is what Bush wanted to do (which was an EXCELLENT idea) but the dems defeated the plan mercilessly.
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Really !!
So your money goes away for something else to be given to somebody else (even for drug takers ?) !
Government does a con game ??
Shame !!
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??? How so? what are you suggesting does not follow?
I answered that. It does not follow that because a program does not work, it was not compassionate. Compassion and success or failure are completely unrelated.
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That said, the learning disability 'what if' is, imo, typical lefist nay-saying and constant desire to be paralyzed by indecision or joining a positive movement forward. I guess you could have said 'what if there is no library close by, what if it was closed when they got there, what if the computers were down....' And that helps make my point about the left's focus on giving rather than helping people acheive.
Actually, this response just goes to show that Leftists live in a real world, where libraries are closed as a result of Conservative Republican tax cuts. Johnny can't be taught to discover things for himself in a library that isn't there.
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Right Jeff !!
And now schools are closing too !!
Will USA and Canada, etc., poor kids have to be on a human traffic boat to China to be sold as real slaves are there tomorrow and to-day ??
Only the millionaires kids will have their own schools in the near future in the USA, Canada, and other free countries as we are now becoming 3rd world countries buying Made in China crap ? GALORE ?
Shame !! But this is starting to happen ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Well said injest !
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Actually, this response just goes to show that Leftists live in a real world, where libraries are closed as a result of Conservative Republican tax cuts. Johnny can't be taught to discover things for himself in a library that isn't there.
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D OK. have it your way...the left and dems are the party of defeat and n'er do well. So be it. Live in a world of 'here's why nothing works'...'oh woe is me' if you want...whatever turns one on.
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I answered that. It does not follow that because a program does not work, it was not compassionate. Compassion and success or failure are completely unrelated.
Absolutely disagree. True compassion does not simply throw out "goodness". It seems ludicrous to think hard-nosed anticipations of success or failure need to be completely related to compassion to ensure the efforts success. By your implications, the happy meals, ice cream, candy, and pop all the kids have been consuming making them quite unhealthy would have been a compassionate upbringing (since it attended to wants). However, I see it as very uncompassionate because thinking people knew the downsides of the gluteny and did it anyway for a short term benefit. Few social scientists predicted the mass entitklements of years past, particularly the extremes I have pointed out in public housing) to end up with a net increase in productive, self reliant people.
compassion and results are indeed related. How uncompassionate to risk the life long well being of anyone on a flimsy program that could thwart their abilities to be self reliant and productive.
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The difference to me is that if, for some reason, teaching a man to fish isn't possible, liberals would let him have a fish anyway, and conservatives would make him go hungry. Liberals would assume there's some practical reason he can't fish, conservatives would assume he's lazy.
you should know that the leading charity providers to the needy are conservative people and organizations, mostly churches. that is a fact of the matter. So conservatives are KNOWN to feed the hungry.
you are right, a liberal would just give the guy a fish, no questions asked. but you are wrong about the conservative...like my analogy about Johnny, a conservative would expect the man to earn his meal in another way more in line with his capabilities...not just take without helping himself to the extent he can.
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What would YOU conclude, from your own posts?
playing this sort of game usually means the post has lost the argument. ;D
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It was just on TV that poor kids were burning up houses, and they are younger and younger down to 5 years of age !! Something like over 100 to 200 kids doing it, in a city of over 300,000.
So disregarding the poor, you would think that is no good, since your house can be burned too ??
More abuse for yourself, is to not even think on helping the poorest !! ??
What are your thoughts about that ??
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Of course, some well to do kids can be dangerous too !
News:
Winnipeg boy, 14, shoved into burning shed
Updated Sun. Oct. 15 2006 11:27 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A disabled 14-year-old Winnipeg boy is lucky to be alive after he was shoved into a burning shed on Saturday by a group of kids who then barricaded the door and ran away.
After spending nine years in foster care, Brian McKay recently moved into his grandparents' home in Winnipeg.
McKay has spina bifida, a curvature of the spine caused by a neurological defect. He is small for his age and has to wear leg braces to get around.
He was at a Gilbert Park Housing complex neighborhood playground near around 5 p.m. Saturday, trying to make some new friends. When he peeked through a hole in the fence to see what the neighborhood kids were doing, he saw cardboard on fire inside a shed.
When he approached to take a closer look, the kids shoved him inside and barricaded the door, McKay told CTV News.
"They locked it up with a big stick or piece of metal" as the flames started climbing the walls with him trapped inside, McKay said as he stood outside the shed, recounting his near brush with death. "I screamed for help. I thought I was gone."
The boy's screams prompted Joseph Bird to run out from his home nearby. With the help of three young girls on the scene, they rescued the teenager.
Shaneil Keesic, 9, and her sister Desiree, 8, said they found him on the ground inside the shed.
"I just grabbed him and pulled him outside," said Bird, "and that's when the fire department came."
McKay and the third girl who tried to help rescue him were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.
Winnipeg police are trying to track those who committed the crime and say this is one of the worst incidents they have seen.
"It is horrendous and unfortunately these youths cannot be charged under the Youth Criminal Justice Act," because the suspects are believed to be between eight and 11 years old, said Const. Jacqueline Chaput.
She said if police find the children involved, they'll likely be referred to a program for children under 12 who come into contact with the law.
McKay said he's grateful to those who saved him and that he's learned a tough lesson: "Nobody is all good."
With a report by CTV Winnipeg's Camilla Di Giuseppe
...............
What do you think of that ?
Where are the schools and our strong value systems of society ??
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Where is social justice, when youth has no sense of human values?
One can expect another person to save you, but can that be always the case ?
The poor need help, as well as the very rich need to be educated on human values !! ??
Security concerns about civilisation... are more and more asked and needed !!
This man in pic saved a life !
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playing this sort of game usually means the post has lost the argument. ;D
Oh, for Pete's sake. OK, HerrKaiser, sure, whatever.
::)
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To that case above, I have seen something similar once:
I was in a public park where there were many persons walking and it was an afternoon.
Kids came along and started teasing an old man who was alone and quiet; these started to beat him up just for fun !!
Luckily, a calm gentleman (later I learned that he was a gay man), came and he was joined by me in stopping the beating !!
No else cared, and just walk along... carefree like. Many now go to see killings I hear, as a sport !!
Who is to say when one is poor or rich ??
That to me is a form of being poor even if your are a rich kid or adult, or in a poor situation !!
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;D ;D ;D ;D ;D OK. have it your way...the left and dems are the party of defeat and n'er do well. So be it. Live in a world of 'here's why nothing works'...'oh woe is me' if you want...whatever turns one on.
And the right and Republicans live in a fantasy world where tax cuts have no effect except to take less money out of their wallets.
And I don't see you offering an alternative for how to help Johnny learn things by himself when that library in your own example is closed. Obviously it's just a lot easier just to make fun of a serious rebuttal than it is to respond seriously.
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I answered that. It does not follow that because a program does not work, it was not compassionate. Compassion and success or failure are completely unrelated.
Absolutely disagree. True compassion does not simply throw out "goodness". It seems ludicrous to think hard-nosed anticipations of success or failure need to be completely related to compassion to ensure the efforts success. By your implications, the happy meals, ice cream, candy, and pop all the kids have been consuming making them quite unhealthy would have been a compassionate upbringing (since it attended to wants). However, I see it as very uncompassionate because thinking people knew the downsides of the gluteny and did it anyway for a short term benefit. Few social scientists predicted the mass entitklements of years past, particularly the extremes I have pointed out in public housing) to end up with a net increase in productive, self reliant people.
compassion and results are indeed related. How uncompassionate to risk the life long well being of anyone on a flimsy program that could thwart their abilities to be self reliant and productive.
This is so twisted and convoluted in its logic that it defies comprehension, let alone response. You're saying something is only compassionate if it succeeds? I say that's completely wrong. Compassion has to do with motives, with, say, wanting to improve housing for the poor. If the first attempt to solve the problem doesn't work, then by all means move on and try something else, but that in no way means the motivation was not compassionate.
And your bizarre reference to Happy Meals, etc., is totally off the mark because I was talking about needs, not wants.
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Oh, for Pete's sake. OK, HerrKaiser, sure, whatever.
::)
Don't worry, Friend Crayons. Considering a certain person's responses to my most recent posts, you aren't the one who's lost the argument, or run out of ideas.
Someone else around here is unwilling to face up to reality that theories put in practice may not necessarily have the consequences desired or anticipated. It's much easier to post platitudes about teaching children to use libraries than to face up to the reality that libraries get closed when there is no tax money to fund them.
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;D ;D ;D ;D ;D OK. have it your way...the left and dems are the party of defeat and n'er do well. So be it. Live in a world of 'here's why nothing works'...'oh woe is me' if you want...whatever turns one on.
I don't think it turns anyone on. This is just the reality for a lot of people.
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Someone else around here is unwilling to face up to reality that theories put in practice may not necessarily have the consequences desired or anticipated. It's much easier to post platitudes about teaching children to use libraries than to face up to the reality that libraries get closed when there is no tax money to fund them.
Thanks, Jeff, and I agree. I'd even go so far as to say there is probably, on both sides, some idealism about applying theories that don't necessarily work as planned, in reality.
What seems to be the difference between the two viewpoints is that one risks wasting some money -- yes, even trillions over 40 years, which must amount to, why, several hundred dollars over four decades for the average middle-class taxpayer! ::) -- attempting to execute their flawed theories in hopes of helping poor people in need.
Meanwhile, the other "side" is willing, if their theories don't work, to let fellow citizens -- people living in the richest nation on earth and in history, the one that's supposedly about equality and opportunity and all that stuff -- suffer and, without health insurance, even die.
Don't seem right, to me. :-\
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Why are the poor, poor? In a word, "Karma."
I am genuinely not trying to trivialize this important issue by responding as I have. It is what I sincerely believe.
I believe that it is only the karmically UNevolved who are given wealth, because they are "young" souls, unaccustomed to the rigours of life and its lessons. We are given wealth in our early incarnations in order to soften the hardships of life. It is only after we progress karmically through many incarnations that we gain the privilege of attaining the lessons provided by lives of poverty. It is only then that we have the strength and experience from progressively experiencing more and ever more challenging incarnations that we are able to cope with poverty.
It is my belief that the entity who is closest to Nirvana and experiencing his/her final incarnation on Earth prior to progressing to a state of everlasting Bliss is more likely to be the beggar on the street, NOT the millionaire in his mansion.
We in the West see wealth as a blessing. Karmically speaking, it is just the opposite.
Peace. :)
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It is my belief that the entity who is closest to Nirvana and experiencing his/her final incarnation on Earth prior to progressing to a state of everlasting Bliss is more likely to be the beggar on the street, NOT the millionaire in his mansion.
We in the West see wealth as a blessing. Karmically speaking, it is just the opposite.
Peace. :)
"The West" has its version of this, too. Remember: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"?
:)
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Thanks, Jeff, and I agree. I'd even go so far as to say there is probably, on both sides, some idealism about applying theories that don't necessarily work as planned, in reality.
What seems to be the difference between the two viewpoints is that one risks wasting some money -- yes, even trillions over 40 years, which must amount to, why, several hundred dollars over four decades for the average middle-class taxpayer! ::) -- attempting to execute their flawed theories in hopes of helping poor people in need.
Meanwhile, the other "side" is willing, if their theories don't work, to let fellow citizens -- people living in the richest nation on earth and in history, the one that's supposedly about equality and opportunity and all that stuff -- suffer and, without health insurance, even die.
Don't seem right, to me. :-\
Don't seem right to me, either.
Tell you what, sometimes I wish I had a shower-proof computer. In the shower last night I composed the most elegant explication of the Conservative viewpoint as seen from a Liberal perspective, and this morning I can't remember a word of it! :-\
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"The West" has its version of this, too. Remember: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"?
:)
A very sobering quote, indeed, and totally in keeping with the tradition of the Middle Eastern Jew who spoke those inspired words.
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Why are the poor, poor? In a word, "Karma."
I am genuinely not trying to trivialize this important issue by responding as I have. It is what I sincerely believe.
I believe that it is only the karmically UNevolved who are given wealth, because they are "young" souls, unaccustomed to the rigours of life and its lessons. We are given wealth in our early incarnations in order to soften the hardships of life. It is only after we progress karmically through many incarnations that we gain the privilege of attaining the lessons provided by lives of poverty. It is only then that we have the strength and experience from progressively experiencing more and ever more challenging incarnations that we are able to cope with poverty.
It is my belief that the entity who is closest to Nirvana and experiencing his/her final incarnation on Earth prior to progressing to a state of everlasting Bliss is more likely to be the beggar on the street, NOT the millionaire in his mansion.
We in the West see wealth as a blessing. Karmically speaking, it is just the opposite.
Peace. :)
Well, karma certainly sucks then, lol! Sorry, but that just sounds like a justification of poverty, an attempt to make the poor & disadvantaged accept their lot and to absolve the rich from guilt. It reminds me of the similar idea that the poor are being punished for something they did in a past life. Or my parent's self-defeating attitude of "nous sommes nés pour un petit pain" ("we were born for a small loaf. [...so we may as well accept our fate instead of rebelling]".
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Merci oilgun !
Will the poor getting to be more poor, still have the chance to eat: le gateau ?
Who said, let them eat cake ?
I think that all should have a piece of cake, share the wealth !!
But not many persons think that ??
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Sure. But your stereotyping and oversimplifying of anti-poverty programs keeps you from seeing that many of them already do just that.
Let's take one example from LBJ's War on Poverty programs: Head Start. Head Start does just about exactly what you pretend conservatives do -- it takes little pre-school Johnnys and prepares them to perform better when they get to regular school. It has achieved well-documented, widely acknowledged, extensively researched success. Eliminating Head Start, to return to your analogy, would leave all those pre-school Johnnys out "playing" -- or dodging bullets in their housing projects.
I take great exception to the term "pretend conservative". I assure you, there is no pretense here, I am a right wing conservative on the libertarian side of the Republican Party. :)
Crayons, one of the aspects of your posts which I enjoy and respect is that you are openly and honestly on the left side of the Democratic party. You do not pretend to be an "independent" or a "moderate", or any of the other tripe that most Democrats have been trying to pass themselves off as since Reagan shined the light on liberals back in the 1980s'. :)
Lets all come out of our ideological "closets", and esp, let BHO opine truthfully about his far left agenda, and I may just grudgingly admire him. I won't vote for him, but he would then have my respect which he does not have right now.
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I take great exception to the term "pretend conservative". I assure you, there is no pretense here, I am a right wing conservative on the libertarian side of the Republican Party. :)
I believe she is using pretend as a verb, not as an adjective.
But then I guess I'm on ignore, so you won't see this. ;D
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That said, the learning disability 'what if' is, imo, typical lefist nay-saying and constant desire to be paralyzed by indecision or joining a positive movement forward. I guess you could have said 'what if there is no library close by, what if it was closed when they got there, what if the computers were down....' And that helps make my point about the left's focus on giving rather than helping people acheive.
I make a small departure from your sentence above. The goal of the left is not "giving", if that were the case then their donations to private charities would match conservative donations, it isn't even close. NO Kaiser, I am sorry, but the goal of the left in their "helpful" programs is CONTROL. If you are directly dependent on me to give you your bread, like the underclass is vis a vis the welfare bureaucracy, then when I say "frog jump" you will respond "How high SIR!"
see the new book : "Gross National Happiness" by Arthur C. Brooks http://www.arthurbrooks.net/ (http://www.arthurbrooks.net/)
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Lets all come out of our ideological "closets", and esp, let BHO opine truthfully about his far left agenda, and I may just grudgingly admire him. I won't vote for him, but he would then have my respect which he does not have right now.
Yes, there is, indeed, a Far Left Agenda!
And when the Great Day comes for the redistribution of wealth in this great land of ours, we'll be coming for the Right Wing Repbulican Conservatives First!
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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I believe she is using pretend as a verb, not as an adjective.
But then I guess I'm on ignore, so you won't see this. ;D
I've always found ignoring people I disagree with to be a risky business.
They may be making me look the fool and I don't even know it.
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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;D ;D ;D ;D ;D OK. have it your way...the left and dems are the party of defeat and n'er do well. So be it. Live in a world of 'here's why nothing works'...'oh woe is me' if you want...whatever turns one on.
The type of argumentation on the part of the left which you have accurately characterized is called "advanced victimology". This is a form of agitprop which the left in the US has perfected to an art form. Victimology always has a political power motive, it allows the left to achieve some of the power that they wish to have over our lives and the free market economy without ever having to announce their true intent towards the free market economy.
Kaiser, what conservatives such as yourself who work in the private sector, and who have not had extensive contact on a political level with the far left sometimes forget, is that in leftwing hagiography the most holy is the most victimized. This is one of the religious tenets to the left. To be a victim is to be good, and parading out victims during any debate is designed to end that debate. So, in a sense using victimology in debate is a type of censorship. Ann Coulter got this aspect of the left correct on point in her many columns about leftist tactics.
To summarize: the usual presentation of the left when discussing the tax vampire antipoverty programs goes something like this:
1) pity the poor: followed by examples
2) I know bone crunching poverty: my mother was, etc
3) I know people who are poor today: my neighbor, etc
4) We must spend more tax money at all levels of gov to "help the poor"!
5) Since you oppose our plans to help the poor, then you must be a racist advocate of death camps!
6) pity the poor!
where have you seen this sequence of arguments? ;)
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I keep checking this thread for information about decreasing poverty, but lately it seems to have gone way off topic! Shouldn't this be in the political forum instead?
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I've always found ignoring people I disagree with to be a risky business.
They may be making me look the fool and I don't even know it.
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
no I see you! you have not advanced the idea that any of my arguments are like an advocacy of Nazi death camps, neither have you indicated that I have offended you as I attempt to reexplain a point again and again.
cheers! ;D
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I've always found ignoring people I disagree with to be a risky business.
They may be making me look the fool and I don't even know it.
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
I think you may be correct, Clyde. ;) ;D
Incidentally, if you check back far enough on this thread, you will see that I did not suggest that he was advocating "Nazi death camps," only concentration camps (there is a difference)--which struck me as a logical extension of his proposal to legally force contraception on people in order for them to qualify for welfare benefits.
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I believe she is using pretend as a verb, not as an adjective.
But then I guess I'm on ignore, so you won't see this. ;D
Thank you, Jeff. You are correct.
Broketrash, I wasn't sure whether you were joking. But as Jeff points out, my sentence should be read (and I guess should have been written) as, "Head Start does just about exactly what you (Kaiser) pretend that conservatives do ..."
Sure, I would like to believe that conservatives are just pretending to believe all those ridiculous things and actually have a secret agenda -- like those they often accusing Democrats of having! -- in which they favor more sensible positions. Sadly, I must accept that this is not the case.
For example, here's one of those things I am amazed that anyone would actually believe:
NO Kaiser, I am sorry, but the goal of the left in their "helpful" programs is CONTROL. If you are directly dependent on me to give you your bread, like the underclass is vis a vis the welfare bureaucracy, then when I say "frog jump" you will respond "How high SIR!"
This time, you DEFINITELY must be joking! Exactly what left-wing orders do you see people in the underclass as obediently following?
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And isn't it amazing that the Conservative Right doesn't see their own ideas as attempts to CONTROL people?
Are they really that blind? That disingenuous? Or--I no longer care if I get in trouble for this--that stupid?
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This is so twisted and convoluted in its logic that it defies comprehension, let alone response. You're saying something is only compassionate if it succeeds? I say that's completely wrong. Compassion has to do with motives, with, say, wanting to improve housing for the poor. If the first attempt to solve the problem doesn't work, then by all means move on and try something else, but that in no way means the motivation was not compassionate.
And your bizarre reference to Happy Meals, etc., is totally off the mark because I was talking about needs, not wants.
It really would help if you actually read posts before exclaiming on them with inaccuracies.
The points I made were:
"It seems ludicrous to think hard-nosed anticipations of success or failure need to be completely related to compassion to ensure the efforts success."
"compassion and results are indeed related."
Neither of those say "something is only compassionate if it succeeds" which was your altered interpretation. I truly do not understand why there is an ongoing campaign by you and seriouscrayons to misrepresent and make your misrepresentions nasty and personal.
Have you heard of the concept of 'tough love'? That is exemplory of compassion with a eye toward a successful outcome rather than simply delivering another "fix" that has only short term satisfaction, if that. The entitlement programs have largely not been 'tough love' and the results have been, by nearly all measurements, failures in terms of helping people get out of the cycle of not being able to care for themselves.
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I think you may be correct, Clyde. ;) ;D
Incidentally, if you check back far enough on this thread, you will see that I did not suggest that he was advocating "Nazi death camps," only concentration camps (there is a difference)--which struck me as a logical extension of his proposal to legally force contraception on people in order for them to qualify for welfare benefits.
Heya,
I've been reading along in this fascinating thread but haven't jumped in yet with a post. I can't resist reconsidering the rather(extremely) radical suggestion of forcing contraception or even sterilization on poor people (as suggested long ago in this thread). It reminds me strongly of the 18th century essay “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift... Of course, Swift was being ironic and trying to make a social-political point against harsh and dehumanizing measures that abuse the poor.
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Thank you, Jeff. You are correct.
Broketrash, I wasn't sure whether you were joking. But as Jeff points out, my sentence should be read (and I guess should have been written) as, "Head Start does just about exactly what you (Kaiser) pretend that conservatives do ..."
Sure, I would like to believe that conservatives are just pretending to believe all those ridiculous things and actually have a secret agenda -- like those they often accusing Democrats of having! -- in which they favor more sensible positions. Sadly, I must accept that this is not the case.
For example, here's one of those things I am amazed that anyone would actually believe:
This time, you DEFINITELY must be joking! Exactly what left-wing orders do you see people in the underclass as obediently following?
direct orders from the high command of the left thru the fillings in their teeth, no that isn't what I meant! :laugh:
My comment had some basis in my genuine opinions as to the motivations of the left, and some part of it is simply hyperbolic to tickle Kaiser's funny bone, and some part was just to see what type of reaction the comment would produce, and from whom.
The motivations of control over others is certainly not limited to the left who continue to advocate a top heavy federally funded bureaucracy in underclass remediation, this is part of the motivations of some of the Bible thumpers in the advocacy of their "stated" agenda My own opinion on this matter is that an advocacy of those who are professional and educated enough to actually understand the effect these welfare programs have on the underclass are politically motivated, therefore a hedge on power and control.
People who are dependent on programs for their very life, shelter, medical care, clothing, etc, are extremely unlikely to VOTE for or support anyone who wishes to make any type of radical change to those programs. They will vote for those who offer to protect their programs, and the same can be said of the bureaucrats who administer the programs. The long term consequence of the "War on Poverty" has been to create a political class who vote nearly lock step for Democrats. Democrats and other leftists are shrewd, they will continue to advocate these programs unencumbered, it is their political bread and butter.
And, yes I am sure that there are many in the rank and file of the left who are not dependent on the programs in any fashion but who genuinely see conservatives as mean, heartless, and cruel in their advocacy of radical changes in the welfare programs.
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I've been reading along in this fascinating thread but haven't jumped in yet with a post. I can't resist reconsidering the rather(extremely) radical suggestion of forcing contraception or even sterilization on poor people (as suggested long ago in this thread). It reminds me strongly of the 18th century essay “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift... Of course, Swift was being ironic and trying to make a social-political point against harsh and dehumanizing measures that abuse the poor.
Hey Bud, thanks for joining in! :D
It's funny you should say that. At one point, I considered pasting the entire text of A Modest Proposal into this thread! ;D
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Hey Bud, thanks for joining in! :D
It's funny you should say that. At one point, I considered pasting the entire text of A Modest Proposal into this thread! ;D
Heya Bud! :)
I think it would be very relevant to post the whole essay... and amazingly so considering how long ago it was written.
And, FWIW, I apologize if the topic of "A Modest Proposal" has come up earlier... It's entirely possible that I missed certain parts of this long and complicated thread.
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People who are dependent on programs for their very life, shelter, medical care, clothing, etc, are extremely unlikely to VOTE for or support anyone who wishes to make any type of radical change to those programs.
The first half of this sentence is correct: "People who are dependent on programs for their very life, shelter, medical care, clothing, etc, are extremely unlikely to VOTE."
Yes, as I'm sure you know, voting rates are very low among the poor. (Many believe that's why George W. Bush was no hurry to rush to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and I find that quite plausible.) If doing favors for poor people in exchange for their votes is the Democrats' big plan to get into office, it explains why they've lost the last two presidential elections! :laugh:
But when they DO vote, do many poor people vote for Democrats? Sure. Just like many rich people vote for Republicans. As a rule (with some obvious exceptions) people tend to vote for the candidates who they believe are most concerned with their interests. I don't see that as some kind of secret underhanded scheme on the part of either party. Bush is quite open about whom he considers his "base." And that's why HE does the favors HE does. Nobody would mistake our president for someone who goes around worrying about poor folks.
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I think it would be very relevant to post the whole essay... and amazingly so considering how long ago it was written.
And, FWIW, I apologize if the topic of "A Modest Proposal" has come up earlier... It's entirely possible that I missed certain parts of this long and complicated thread.
Nope, this is the first time it has come up. And your wish is my command. Since it's so long, I'm going to put it in quote mode to save space. For anyone who finds that difficult to read and wants to see it in bigger print, here's a link.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html)
A Modest Proposal
For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public
By Jonathan Swift (1729)
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.
”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...”
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.
There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.
The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.
I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.
I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.
Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.
A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended.
But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.
Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.
I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.
For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.
Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.
Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.
Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.
Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating: and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.
Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor's feast or any other public entertainment. But this and many others I omit, being studious of brevity.
Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand.
I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and 'twas indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect: I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.
I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.
The End
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"It seems ludicrous to think hard-nosed anticipations of success or failure need to be completely related to compassion to ensure the efforts success."
A perfect example of the muddled and convoluted prose I was discussing earlier.
"compassion and results are indeed related."
No, they are not.
Have you heard of the concept of 'tough love'? That is exemplory of compassion with a eye toward a successful outcome rather than simply delivering another "fix" that has only short term satisfaction, if that. The entitlement programs have largely not been 'tough love' and the results have been, by nearly all measurements, failures in terms of helping people get out of the cycle of not being able to care for themselves.
Tough love may indeed be successful with individual troubled teenagers, but if you try it on a single mother on welfare, it's apt to be her children who suffer the consequences.
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A perfect example of the muddled and convoluted prose I was discussing earlier.
Thanks for the personal swipe that is only an opinion! ;) :-X ;D
No, they are not.
Ah, such perfection! I thought Oprah was the only one who thought she was God! ;D ;D ;D
Tough love may indeed be successful with individual troubled teenagers, but if you try it on a single mother on welfare, it's apt to be her children who suffer the consequences.
If the single woman had not felt comfortable, in the first place, that a child she could not afford would be covered by the broken system, she likely would have made better choices. ;)
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If the single woman had not felt comfortable, in the first place, that a child she could not afford would be covered by the broken system, she likely would have made better choices. ;)
This exactly supports Jeff's point, which you appear to have missed.
If the woman DOESN'T make better choices, the child will suffer. Should the child have made better choices?
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Ah, such perfection! I thought Oprah was the only one who thought she was God! ;D ;D ;D
Oh, I get it. The Right is allowed to know it all, but the Left never knows anything. Clearly you can't refute--or concede--my point that compassion relates to motivation and not to results, so instead you must try to turn it into a joke.
This exactly supports Jeff's point, which you appear to have missed.
As usual.
Thanks, Crayons. ;)
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If the single woman had not felt comfortable, in the first place, that a child she could not afford would be covered by the broken system, she likely would have made better choices. ;)
A good example of the Right's bizarre way of thinking.
"Oh, she should have foreseen that her children would suffer when we kick her off welfare, so she should have had fewer (read: none) children."
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the above posts are a fine indication of how confused many posts are:
1) seriouscrayons uses my quote to suggest it supports a point by JW
2) JW salutes seriouscrayons for stating this opinion.
3) JW then refers to the same quote as bizarre thinking.
Very, very strange. ;D ;D ;D
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1) seriouscrayons uses my quote to suggest it supports a point by JW
Yes. But I suggested that it unwittingly supported a point by Jeff -- that your response indicated you had misunderstood Jeff's point to the extent that, in attempting to argue your own position, you inadvertently were reinforcing his.
JW salutes seriouscrayons for stating this opinion.
3) JW then refers to the same quote as bizarre thinking.
Very, very strange. ;D ;D ;D
Not really. If you read all of the posts more carefully you will see that my criticism of your post, and Jeff's description of bizarre thinking, applied to two different weaknesses in your argument.
The first, the point that Jeff initially made and that I repeated, is that you did not seem to consider the suffering of the children -- whose only mistake was to be born -- into the "tough love" equation.
And as I understand Jeff's critique, the second weakness, the aspect he called bizarre, is that you seemed to suggest that a woman, when having children, could be expected to foresee future changes in welfare policy and plan her pregnancies accordingly.
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The first half of this sentence is correct: "People who are dependent on programs for their very life, shelter, medical care, clothing, etc, are extremely unlikely to VOTE."
Yes, as I'm sure you know, voting rates are very low among the poor. (Many believe that's why George W. Bush was no hurry to rush to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and I find that quite plausible.) If doing favors for poor people in exchange for their votes is the Democrats' big plan to get into office, it explains why they've lost the last two presidential elections! :laugh:
But when they DO vote, do many poor people vote for Democrats? Sure. Just like many rich people vote for Republicans. As a rule (with some obvious exceptions) people tend to vote for the candidates who they believe are most concerned with their interests. I don't see that as some kind of secret underhanded scheme on the part of either party. Bush is quite open about whom he considers his "base." And that's why HE does the favors HE does. Nobody would mistake our president for someone who goes around worrying about poor folks.
oh, come on. now that is Jesuitical parsing if I have ever seen it!
Those who are on assistance of any type are much more likely to vote Democrat. It is no accident of fate that some of the safest Democrat districts in the US are in the inner cities with a large pop on assistance. Lets dispense with such silliness as trying to dodge the economic motivating factors in voting decisions, and the very real impact that being on assistance has on voting decisions. People tend to vote their pocketbook, and this is the control that the entrenched welfare system has over a segment of the electorate.
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Not really. If you read all of the posts more carefully you will see that my criticism of your post, and Jeff's description of bizarre thinking, applied to two different weaknesses in your argument.
The first, the point that Jeff initially made and that I repeated, is that you did not seem to consider the suffering of the children -- whose only mistake was to be born -- into the "tough love" equation.
And as I understand Jeff's critique, the second weakness, the aspect he called bizarre, is that you seemed to suggest that a woman, when having children, could be expected to foresee future changes in welfare policy and plan her pregnancies accordingly.
Could or should be expected to foresee, but, yes, that's it. :)
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Nope, this is the first time it has come up. And your wish is my command. Since it's so long, I'm going to put it in quote mode to save space. For anyone who finds that difficult to read and wants to see it in bigger print, here's a link.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html)
Lets all right now start weeping for the starving children of 18th cent Ireland who have been dead for 280 years!
I can see that the left is now running out of ammo and need a little diversion.
The reality is that there really is no relevance to the comparison of the famines in Ireland in the 18th cent which Swift was parodying and the 21st cent American underclass. Just as there is no comparison to the fate of the underclass in this country to the fate of the starving in 3rd world countries of today.
Now if you really feel a call to save starving children such as described by Swift, then go to Africa. There in the Islamic country of Sudan, a people are being starved to death in a type of ethnic cleansing.
and if people advancing the cause of the welfare state actually believe that there is a comparison, then the gulf is too wide to bridge the debate without using words like "delusional" and "confused".
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oh, come on. now that is Jesuitical parsing if I have ever seen it!
Those who are on assistance of any type are much more likely to vote Democrat. It is no accident of fate that some of the safest Democrat districts in the US are in the inner cities with a large pop on assistance. Lets dispense with such silliness as trying to dodge the economic motivating factors in voting decisions, and the very real impact that being on assistance has on voting decisions. People tend to vote their pocketbook, and this is the control that the entrenched welfare system has over a segment of the electorate.
Hunh? Are you not reading the posts you're quoting? ??? That's what Crayons said.
Ooops, forgot, I'm being Ignored. ... ;D
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Thanks for the personal swipe that is only an opinion! ;) :-X ;D
Ah, such perfection! I thought Oprah was the only one who thought she was God! ;D ;D ;D
If the single woman had not felt comfortable, in the first place, that a child she could not afford would be covered by the broken system, she likely would have made better choices. ;)
exactly, and I would add if the man knew that there were real consequences for abandoning the care and feeding of his children to the tax payers, he may not have dogged the woman and split.
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This exactly supports Jeff's point, which you appear to have missed.
If the woman DOESN'T make better choices, the child will suffer. Should the child have made better choices?
society should have made better choices and not created a system which encourages this type of behavior!
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the above posts are a fine indication of how confused many posts are:
1) seriouscrayons uses my quote to suggest it supports a point by JW
2) JW salutes seriouscrayons for stating this opinion.
3) JW then refers to the same quote as bizarre thinking.
Very, very strange. ;D ;D ;D
Kaiser my brother, it ain't strange at all, it is perfectly normal when dealing with liberalthink.
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To me that has almost been a waste of time, the only method of extracting the inextractable problem of the underclass is radical reform.
1) get the issue away from the feds
2) reform secondary education towards a two track system
3) allow mandatory birth control for welfare recipients
4) make the men who father children and abandon those children either pay up, or ship out to a prison farm
5) allow mandatory workfare for recipients
6) rest control away from the permanent welfare bureaucracy by allow the tax payers to vote in yearly referenda on any changes needed in the programs
Tell you what, the preceding proposal for radical welfare reform actually speaks to something that puzzles me about Gay Conservatives/Gay Republicans in general.
It's true that it is possible to be both fiscally conservative and socially liberal (I've been known myself to squeeze a nickel till the buffalo defecates ;) ), but it seems to me that welfare reform is the arena where the fiscal and the social come together. So what puzzles me is how anyone can believe that people who are of a mindset to espouse such a program of welfare reform as Broketrash proposes can also be brought to approve any form of gay marriage.
Granted, gay marriage and welfare reform are not necessarily related issues, but I'm not talking here about issues per se. I'm talking about mindset. And it just boggles my imagination that anyone could believe that any straight/heterosexual voter or legislator who would favor such a draconian program of welfare reform could ever be brought to be socially liberal enought to vote for or accept any form of gay marriage.
For what it's worth. ...
Unless perhaps the gays who are marrying are very rich, very white, and very in the closet. (Rich Uncle Harold and his "friend" Bruce are like that. ;) )
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society should have made better choices and not created a system which encourages this type of behavior!
Typical heartless Conservatism. Let the children suffer for the sins of the parents. Sad, really sad.
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Kaiser my brother, it ain't strange at all, it is perfectly normal when dealing with liberalthink.
Nice of you to support your buddy in his misreading/misunderstanding.
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Hmmm This thread started out as a serious discussion of why people were poor and looking for possible solutions to help us all.
Somehow it has gotten sidetracked into a contest of who is right and who is wrong about social welfare reform.
This competition to be right makes good sport if that's what you are after, but it helps neither the poor nor our pocketbooks.
I feel that certain people have arrived at "the correct" solutions before we even identified what the problems and their causes were.
Is anybody still interested in understanding what's going on? In understanding the problem before we solve it? (Personally I get enough premature half-baked solutions thrown at me at work already, it would be nice to actually go into something in depth.)
Or are we just going to have another "conservative" vs "liberal" free for all?
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??? JW, it boggles a logical mind that you would claim to be misread when your exact words are used to quote.
It further boggles the logical mind that you would claim to be misunderstood when you say what you mean.
If we cannot believe what you write is accurate and we cannot believe what you compose means what it says....what the heck is up with that?
Sheeeez.
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Hunh? Are you not reading the posts you're quoting? ??? That's what Crayons said.
Thanks, Jeff! You're right, and I was about to post the same thing. Broketrash disputed what I said ... by repeating what I said! :laugh:
How come you and I have to spend all our time nowadays explaining each other's posts -- not even just defending, but actually explaining -- to HerrKaiser and broketrash? ;D
Those who are on assistance of any type are much more likely to vote Democrat. It is no accident of fate that some of the safest Democrat districts in the US are in the inner cities with a large pop on assistance. Lets dispense with such silliness as trying to dodge the economic motivating factors in voting decisions, and the very real impact that being on assistance has on voting decisions. People tend to vote their pocketbook, and this is the control that the entrenched welfare system has over a segment of the electorate.
What Jeff said. Writing with such an indignant tone, you're basically repeating what I wrote (emphasis added):
But when they DO vote, do many poor people vote for Democrats? Sure. Just like many rich people vote for Republicans. As a rule (with some obvious exceptions) people tend to vote for the candidates who they believe are most concerned with their interests. I don't see that as some kind of secret underhanded scheme on the part of either party. Bush is quite open about whom he considers his "base." And that's why HE does the favors HE does. Nobody would mistake our president for someone who goes around worrying about poor folks.
Broketrash, sometimes I wonder if you actually read my posts before you attempt to dismantle my arguments.
Why on earth would I want to "dodge the economic motivating factors in voting decisions"? Economic factors are unquestionably among the biggest motivators in voting decisions. With the exception, that is, of voting by affluent Democrats and middle- or lower-income Republicans -- two groups who for some reason vote against their own economic interests. ;D Apparently they're more motivated by their views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
Lets all right now start weeping for the starving children of 18th cent Ireland who have been dead for 280 years!
Oh, right. The literature of the past could not possibly have any relevance or interest in the present, unless of course the two situations at least as closely parallel as in 18th-century Ireland and Darfur. Otherwise, it's all rubbish. Which eliminates ... well, pretty much all literature. But that's OK, because it leaves us so much more time for reading those fascinating right-wing screeds about how liberals are secretly actually fascists because both like organic vegetables! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
exactly, and I would add if the man knew that there were real consequences for abandoning the care and feeding of his children to the tax payers, he may not have dogged the woman and split.
society should have made better choices and not created a system which encourages this type of behavior!
And by my count, that's officially three and four times you guys have refused to acknowledge the question that Jeff and I have raised about how this policy of punishing parents for their deeds will affect their children. Guess concern for the well-being of kids is just more of that silly liberalthink, hunh?
Or are we just going to have another "conservative" vs "liberal" free for all?
Yes.
:)
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Lets all right now start weeping for the starving children of 18th cent Ireland who have been dead for 280 years!
I can see that the left is now running out of ammo and need a little diversion.
The reality is that there really is no relevance to the comparison of the famines in Ireland in the 18th cent which Swift was parodying and the 21st cent American underclass. Just as there is no comparison to the fate of the underclass in this country to the fate of the starving in 3rd world countries of today.
Now if you really feel a call to save starving children such as described by Swift, then go to Africa. There in the Islamic country of Sudan, a people are being starved to death in a type of ethnic cleansing.
and if people advancing the cause of the welfare state actually believe that there is a comparison, then the gulf is too wide to bridge the debate without using words like "delusional" and "confused".
The point about the comparison was not about famine per se. It was about the extremity and harshness of solutions being offered to the problems related to poverty and the issue of children in the context of poverty. In the one case, forced sterilization of poverty striken parents (discussed in this thread) and eating/selling children (as in the classic, satirical, and ironic Swift essay).
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my interpretation of her INTENT was to show how attitudes are still the same. The attitudes that were being parodied THEN are still active today.
Thank you, Jess. That was exactly my intent.
:)
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Why are the poor, poor ?
Reasons and solutions, please !!
More...
au revoir,
hugs! I know that for some First Nations, not only were their lands stolen, but where they are now, governments are causing them too much hardships ! Did you read my post about the child who died because of two governments ?
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well one thing that might help is if you ask your friend to stop making up words...it is difficult enough to follow his posts without him making up words and expecting that we all know what he is talking about.. :P
what does this notation have to do with anything regarding my post? ??? (or the price of eggs in montana?)
I referred directly to JW's makes sense/bizarre back and forth that was simply undecipherable.
If you, injest, are taking pause to criticize broketrash, who I assume you mean, what is he making up? Or are his words simply just those not in everyday vocabulary? Big difference, yes?
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At the risk of retreading ground that has already been covered. ...
If the single woman had not felt comfortable, in the first place, that a child she could not afford would be covered by the broken system, she likely would have made better choices. ;)
the above posts are a fine indication of how confused many posts are:
1) seriouscrayons uses my quote to suggest it supports a point by JW
2) JW salutes seriouscrayons for stating this opinion.
3) JW then refers to the same quote as bizarre thinking.
It is bizarre thinking, that a woman would make a decision to have children based on anticipation that "the system" would support them.
??? JW, it boggles a logical mind that you would claim to be misread when your exact words are used to quote.
It further boggles the logical mind that you would claim to be misunderstood when you say what you mean.
If we cannot believe what you write is accurate and we cannot believe what you compose means what it says....what the heck is up with that?
Sheeeez.
I can only presume what I've quoted above is what you are referring to, but who knows?
And as for that final comment, if you can't comprehend plain English and so just twist it to mean what you wish it to mean ... what the heck is up with that?
Sheeez. ...
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Why should the poor get a fair share of the wealth in the USA and Canada, when they are forced to push illegal drugs and work like slaves ??
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Thanks, Jeff! You're right, and I was about to post the same thing. Broketrash disputed what I said ... by repeating what I said! :laugh:
How come you and I have to spend all our time nowadays explaining each other's posts -- not even just defending, but actually explaining -- to HerrKaiser and broketrash? ;D
As for Broketrash, I don't know, and as for HerrKaiser, who finds me incomprehensible and, I think, just called me a liar (but from his prose, it's difficult to tell ;D ), I just won't say.
Why on earth would I want to "dodge the economic motivating factors in voting decisions"? Economic factors are unquestionably among the biggest motivators in voting decisions. With the exception, that is, of voting by affluent Democrats and middle- or lower-income Republicans -- two groups who for some reason vote against their own economic interests. ;D Apparently they're more motivated by their views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
;D
Oh, right. The literature of the past could not possibly have any relevance or interest in the present\.
Unless, of course, it's the Bible, being used by Conservatives to justify homophobia. ...
And by my count, that's officially three and four times you guys have refused to acknowledge the question that Jeff and I have raised about how this policy of punishing parents for their deeds will affect their children. Guess concern for the well-being of kids is just more of that silly liberalthink, hunh?
That tells you something about the Conservative mentality, doesn't it? It's typical. It's inconvenient to the Conservative position to acknowledge that innocent children might be affected by the Conservative program for the mothers of those children, so Conservatives just ignore the inconvenient detail and pretend ;D that the inconvenient detail doesn't exist. Instead, they find some way to attack whoever points out the detail they don't want to deal with.
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Bible or Koran or another crap book, poor merit to have decent jobs !
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my interpretation of her INTENT was to show how attitudes are still the same. The attitudes that were being parodied THEN are still active today.
Definitely. Thanks Jess. Some of the important points of the Swift essay that Katherine posted and that we discussed a while back are both to highlight the harshness and cruelty of attitudes and "solutions" directed at the issue of poverty and to highlight how unrealistic certain of the harsh proposals can be. And, the fact that the general tone and general points (not the absolute, specific historical context of 17th century Ireland) can be applied so easily to certain situations even today is just so striking and illustrates how much of a dilemma the goal of alleviating poverty has been for centuries.
Anyway, more on why it's relevant to this thread... the general topic of "why are the poor, poor" seems to be a really productive heading under which we can have a wide-ranging discussion of the humanitarian issue of poverty. Historical context seems vital to understanding the scope of the issue. And, Swift's essay is one of the most famous and widely cited/read pieces of writing on the topic of poverty... again for centuries now.
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Why are the poor, poor? In a word, "Karma."
I am genuinely not trying to trivialize this important issue by responding as I have. It is what I sincerely believe.
I believe that it is only the karmically UNevolved who are given wealth, because they are "young" souls, unaccustomed to the rigours of life and its lessons. We are given wealth in our early incarnations in order to soften the hardships of life. It is only after we progress karmically through many incarnations that we gain the privilege of attaining the lessons provided by lives of poverty. It is only then that we have the strength and experience from progressively experiencing more and ever more challenging incarnations that we are able to cope with poverty.
It is my belief that the entity who is closest to Nirvana and experiencing his/her final incarnation on Earth prior to progressing to a state of everlasting Bliss is more likely to be the beggar on the street, NOT the millionaire in his mansion.
We in the West see wealth as a blessing. Karmically speaking, it is just the opposite.
Peace. :)
another way of viewing the karmic value of poverty is that those who are unfortunate in a worldly way (i.e. lacking material resources, or are handicapped or born ill) may have chosen such limitations in order to provide learning opportunities for others, not for themselves. In other words, a child born with with autism or mental retardation may have elected to provide lessons to their parents in patience and compassion, and those who are born in poverty and want are providing opportunities for others to gain experience in being selfless and charitable. If everyone were fortunate there would be no need for selflessness and charitability.
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Is there a better term than "moderate" to describe someone who can see merit in both viewpoints? People tend to become more polarized in their arguments when defending one side or another of a topic in a debate. I try to avoid this and keep an open mind.
Now, there's a sensible position! :D Too bad we don't have more like you, SunShadow. :)
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O.K here goes.In parts of Africa where the poor really are incredibly poor,they will work incredibly hard to get their way out of poverty,given the chance. with money donated by charities and big events like live aid and live 8.Much of the money donated enabled some of the very poorest to dig wells,irrigate their land and so grow crops and slowly climb out of poverty.
It is true that some of the money was side tracked by corrupt governments.But when it did reach the source it was used wisely.These people did not simply want hand outs ,they wanted the money to enable them to work their own way out of poverty.
Can we in western societies learn something from this.I would think so.
My experience in England is that the poor need to have the situation where it is more desirable to work,than it is to rely on state handouts or crime or a combination thereof.State support should really be a final resort not the first port of call.
The jobs are obviously there, as there are thouands of immigrants flocking in to do them.So how is that resolved,It has to be a case where they will be financially better off working than claiming benefits.
As long as foreign workers will do the jobs for ridiculously low wages and benefits are higher than that,How can the problem ever be solved.
Next problem is caused by too many children.Some of the people who work for us here In America are doing 2 and 3 jobs.Not because we pay atrocious wages but because many of them are coping with absent fathers who do not pay for their children.
So they at least are trying to work their way out of the poverty trap.But that then leads to the very contentious issue of multiple kids by multiple dads.One woman who works for us has 6 kids by 6 different men. No matter what way you look at it.there is something wrong there.
Should contraceptives be handed out free,I think so,should they be given out at school and if so what age.?But if that were to happen,my guess is the far right wing would say how disgraceful it was.Yet most of those people would also say how disgraceful 6 kids to 6 men was.
So it becomes a lose lose situation.
People are going to have sex and they are going to have it underage.I know about that.You will never ever stop it.So surely the one solution is to make contraception available at clinics, free no questions asked.In the long term that is going to be massively cheaper than a whole host of pregnancies.
We can argue the rights and wrongs of under age sex till the cows come home,but we are never going to stop it.That I will absolutely guarantee.
Plus the age of consent varies enormously across the world.Who says which country has got it right.
I hate that my son has had underage sex and in no way condone it.It is not how I have brought him up,but equally I would hate a child to be the result.
We simply cannot have it all ways,no unwanted children, adding continually to the growing poverty population,but no contraception either.
So what do we do,lock up every kid until they are old enough to support a kid and then let them go.Because as said before we are never going to stop kids having sex.
I never ever thought my son,from his Christian,privileged background would,but he did.
So we have to be realistic,educate kids in a modern way about sex,provide clinics for them to get contraception anonymously.By so doing the birth rate would drop considerably,particularly in the poorer sectors.So right way we are reducing some of the poverty.How often do the patterns of parents repeat in their kids.Mom has several kids so do their kids ad infinitum.
We then need to make employment more profitable than state handouts,Work has to be made attractive,so that people learn the work ethic again,and take a sense of pride in a job well done.
I am not just spouting airy fairy rubbish here.We took on a reformed addict as our produce guy.He was in his 50's and had been on benefit.I worked with him for several days.Even little things like how much better the apples looked when they were given a quick polish,Trim down all the corn etc etc.
He is now completely in charge of produce and it always looks wonderful.When I go in he always comes to get me to show me new things he has done.
This is a man who had a serious habit,was living on handouts and crime,For the last year he has worked, and paid taxes,and really takes pride in his work,
He now rents a little house.What a difference.But we were willing to give him a try.He started off on a smaller wage,but was told that if he improved produce sales,looked after it well and always turned into work,we would promote him to produce manager and raise his pay.
He is more proud of the manager title than the raise.Never mind there is only him and one young kid.He has developed a real pride.He can now contribute financially to his ex wife and kids,so they are better off as well.
So not so different from the poor in Africa who used the charity money to get water to their land for irrigation,and now have pride in their work.
People the world over really are not that different.
I will not say it always works.One ex alcoholic we employed was a disaster,never turned in after a binge and robbed us blind.But each small success story is just that,a success.
For whatever reason we have reached a situation with a lot of people where crime and handouts are more attractive than work.The situation has Been created in the 1st place therefore logically it should be possible to reverse it.
We do not make a much money as the previous owner as we pay all employees fully on the books.Some have stayed,others left as it meant they would have to pay more in child support.
So there is another problem,greedy employers looking to take more money.Leading to men not supporting all the kids they have fathered,leading to the women getting handouts and also turning to petty crime.There are so many parts to the jig saw.But I firmly believe adequate sex education,free contraception,and less employment of some illegals for next to nothing would go some way to easing the problem.
O.k some employers would make less money,but ultimately we all pay the price in the end,via escalating crime and increased benefit claimants.
Goodness I have prattled on, but it really is a particular bugbear of mine.
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what does this notation have to do with anything regarding my post? ??? (or the price of eggs in montana?)
I referred directly to JW's makes sense/bizarre back and forth that was simply undecipherable.
If you, injest, are taking pause to criticize broketrash, who I assume you mean, what is he making up? Or are his words simply just those not in everyday vocabulary? Big difference, yes?
Kaiser, I know that it is no surprise to you that dictionaries are very useful. But, sadly it would appear that some others have not been taught that lesson. More the pity, and a continued poor reflection of the public school system as it has continued to deteriorate. I was taught that when all else fails, go buy a "Webster's Unabridged" and actually develop an interest in using it. But then that type of initiative and self-starting is not a part of the stage instructions at a "pity party", a whining fest is so much more on script - isn't it?
And isn't whining yet another red herring tactic to avoid discussing the need to radical change in the welfare system?
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Not a very subtle personal attack, Broketrash. Would you edit your post, please?
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I grew up in what I think of as lower middle-class conditions. Nothing like third-world poverty, certainly. Looking back, I think the cause was two-fold. First, both of my parents came from very poor beginnings and left school when they were 13 or 14. Their parents did not stress education and their help was needed on the farm. Second, my parents divorced and their incomes were split.
For whatever reason, my mother was adamant that her children get an education. She crusaded for programs for gifted children so we would be challenged in school.
So from my personal perspective, solutions to poverty lie in helping parents and children to achieve educational or technical school goals. Another large question is how to keep fathers engaged in the family.
Suggestions?
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I just ran across a mention of this book. It sounds fascinating, and very germane to our discussion here:
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
by Annette Lareau
From Publishers Weekly
This accessible ethnographic study offers valuable insights into contemporary family life in poor, working class and middle class American households. Lareau, an assistant sociology professor at the University of California, shadowed 12 diverse families for about a month, aiming for "intensive 'naturalistic' observation" of parenting habits and family culture. In detailed case studies, she tells of an affluent suburban family exhausted by jaunts to soccer practice, and of a welfare mother's attempt to sell her furniture to fund a trip to Florida with her AIDS-stricken daughter. She also shows kids of all classes just goofing around. Parenting methods, Lareau argues, vary by class more than by race. In working class and poor households, she says, parents don't bother to reason with whiny offspring and children are expected to find their own recreation rather than relying upon their families to chauffeur them around to lessons and activities. According to Lareau, working class and poor children accept financial limits, seldom talk back, experience far less sibling rivalry and are noticeably free of a sense of entitlement. Middle class children, on the other hand, become adept at ensuring that their selfish needs are met by others and are conversant in social mores such as shaking hands, looking people in the eye and cooperating with others. Both methods of child rearing have advantages and disadvantages, she says: middle class kids may be better prepared for success at school, but they're also likely to be more stressed; and working class and poor kids may have closer family ties, but sometimes miss participating in extracurricular activities. This is a careful and interesting investigation of life in "the land of opportunity" and the "land of inequality."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously--as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.
From the Inside Flap
"Less than one in five Americans think 'race, gender, religion or social class are very important for getting ahead in life,' Annette Lareau tells us in her carefully researched and clearly written new book. But as she brilliantly shows, everything from looking authority figures in the eye when you shake their hands to spending long periods in a shared space and squabbling with siblings is related to social class. This is one of the most penetrating works I have read on a topic that only grows in importance as the class gap in America widens."--Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Time Bind and The Commercialization of Intimate Life
"Sociology at its best. In this major study, Lareau provides the tools to make sense of the frenzied middle-class obsession with their offspring's extracurricular activities; the similarities between black and white professionals; and the paths on which poor and working class kids are put by their circumstances. This book will help generations of students understand that organized soccer and pick-up basketball have everything to do with the inequality of life chances."--Michele Lamont, author of The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration
"With rich storytelling and insightful detail, Lareau takes us inside the family lives of poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans and reminds us that class matters. Unequal Childhoods thoughtfully demonstrates that class differences in cultural resources, played out in the daily routines of parenting, can have a powerful impact on children's chances for climbing the class ladder and achieving the American dream. This provocative and often disturbing book will shape debates on the U.S. class system for decades to come."--Sharon Hays, author of Flat Broke with Children
About the Author
Annette Lareau is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education (1989; second edition, 2000) and coeditor of Journeys through Ethnography: Realistic Accounts of Fieldwork (1996).
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Now that just wasn't nice, Broketrash. I call myself a "moderate" Democrat for the reason that I can see sensible points in the arguments on both sides. I do think that Republicans tend to look at issues from the top down (the big picture) and Democrats from the bottom up (individual level). Neither is wrong. Every issue has both aspects. Is there a better term than "moderate" to describe someone who can see merit in both viewpoints? People tend to become more polarized in their arguments when defending one side or another of a topic in a debate. I try to avoid this and keep an open mind. And I think that if Obama didn't court people on the Right by being centrist he would be unelectable. He is just being realistic. First he has to win before he can have any impact.
the term "moderate" has meaning only in the circumstances which you listed, you see valuable ideas both left and right of center. my point, is that many on the left, who do NOT find any value at all in the ideas of the political right, call themselves moderate in order to deceptively market themselves to the voters, who on the whole are like you, in the center.
my verbiage was not at all intended as a swipe at true moderates in either party or moderate independents. There are still some moderates left in both parties, but probably most moderates do not identify with either party, and tend to think of themselves as independents, or they are increasingly not voting at all.
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Not a very subtle personal attack, Broketrash. Would you edit your post, please?
Kaiser, I know that it is no surprise to you that dictionaries are very useful. But, sadly it would appear that some others have not been taught that lesson. More the pity, and a continued poor reflection of the public school system as it has continued to deteriorate. I was taught that when all else fails, go buy a "Webster's Unabridged" and actually develop an interest in using it. But then that type of initiative and self-starting is not a part of the stage instructions at a "pity party", a whining fest is so much more on script - isn't it?
And isn't whining yet another red herring tactic to avoid discussing the need to radical change in the welfare system?
if the references to Nazi death camps made earlier is not a personal attack, then this post above is even further from that definition of what constitutes a personal attack. of course I will not delete this post.
cheers.
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My apologies, broketrash. I can't see quoted posts on my blackberry.
It is the post that infers Jess is illiterate that I find offensive - herrkaiser?
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If we have certain shared social values that most people agree on, why don't we teach them as part of public education? We certainly teach enough other crap.
It would seem to me that there would be very little disagreement in the idea that fathers are important to their children's lives and if you help create a child you have a certain responsibility to him/her. But this isn't formally taught anywhere. Why not? It would seem to me, the younger the better.
I can remember listening to Superman on the radio (yes, before TV), and they used to have public announcements by the regular announcer, or Superman himself, advocating things like social equality.
I don't believe it's true that our society has no shared values anymore. I believe we've become more sophisticated and refined the ones we had, but they still need to be defined and taught. And you can't really do it once, and stop, each generation needs to know them.
I don't see us doing that anymore. You're more likely to hear about global warming than you are the basics of life itself.
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My apologies, broketrash. I can't see quoted posts on my blackberry.
It is the post that infers Jess is illiterate that I find offensive - herrkaiser?
there is no implication that ANYONE is "illiterate". I think that it is clear that anyone who is able to post a legible post, is literate.
however, I have made a direct statement that if one does not know the meaning of a word or suspects that it is "made up", then they can simply turn the pages on the trusty "Webster's Unabridged" rather than complain about the word usage.
and it is a fact, I don't care whether the posts which linked my ideas for welfare reform with Nazi death camps are deleted or if they continue to stand.
On this thread I responded to that type of verbiage by blocking that person's posts from being read while I am logged into my profile. if others read those comments, I am not concerned. the "ignore" button is a great idea.
so now, have we had enough red herrings thrown down to avoid discussing the issues on this thread? should we continue to discuss the state of the underclass?
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If we have certain shared social values that most people agree on, why don't we teach them as part of public education? We certainly teach enough other crap.
It would seem to me that there would be very little disagreement in the idea that fathers are important to their children's lives and if you help create a child you have a certain responsibility to him/her. But this isn't formally taught anywhere. Why not? It would seem to me, the younger the better.
I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting, or what form it would take. Was this ever formally taught? If it was once and isn't now, I would guess the difference might be that schools are more sensitive about avoiding making kids whose fathers are absent, through no fault of the kids', feel stigmatized.
I do see more kids' reading material in which, for instance, the child protagonist has a single parent or other nontraditional family -- the most famous, of course, being Heather has Two Mommies. But again, I think this is mainly about making kids comfortable with their own situation -- and, in the case of Heather, normalizing that situation for their classmates as well.
so now, have we had enough red herrings thrown down to avoid discussing the issues on this thread? should we continue to discuss the state of the underclass?
Personally, I'm done (I hope) fighting a circular battle over this, hurling sarcasm, accusations and veiled insults back and forth that often at least dance near the line of personal attack. And yes, I've been as guilty of it as anyone. Somehow, despite all my concerted attempts at reason and occasionally snarky comments, I have failed to convert broketrash and HerrKaiser to liberalism, so I am going to retire from that kind of debate for now (and just hope that someday they see the light ;D).
I'm still interested in discussing some of the issues here, especially the implications of class in America. But the posts implying that people on one side or the other are more or less intelligent or compassionate -- they must be, otherwise they'd surely see that they are wrong wrong wrong -- those don't seem to have been very effective. And yes, again, I've been guilty of these, myself.
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I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting, or what form it would take. Was this ever formally taught? If it was once and isn't now, I would guess the difference might be that schools are more sensitive about making kids whose fathers are absent, through no fault of the kids', feel stigmatized.
I do see more kids' reading material, for instance, in which the child protagonist has a single parent or other nontraditional family -- the most famous, of course, being Heather has Two Mommies. But again, I think this is mainly about making kids comfortable with their own situation -- and, in the case of Heather, normalizing that situation for their classmates as well.
I'm saying that if our society does stand for something, does indeed have values, that has to be transmitted to kids, and relying on someone else to do it is risky for them and us all.
There has to be a way of teaching that fathers are important in a child's life and have responsibilities, without stigmatizing a child who has no father. It would seem to me that the child without a father would understand the truth of this even more readily than a child with a father.
We have a tendency to talk in blanket terms like "family values" without specifying exactly what those values are, because it's politically expedient to garner more votes by leaving it vague. God forbid you should say something definite and define a value that costs you votes. But if we do have values, somebody's got to do the grunt work to discover what they are and see they get communicated.
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kinda like those 'diversty' seminars they do in businesses that have a problem with racism or sexism??
A lot of companies do have EEOC policies that employees are required to reread and certify that they understand every year.
But for it to really take root, we need to start before adulthood. I'm sure those equality public service announcements of the late '40's and '50's had a lot to do with the young adults involved in the civil rights movement of the '60's. Because they started teaching us at an age where we could see the truth of it and believe them.
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I'm saying that if our society does stand for something, does indeed have values, that has to be transmitted to kids, and relying on someone else to do it is risky for them and us all.
There has to be a way of teaching that fathers are important in a child's life and have responsibilities, without stigmatizing a child who has no father.
Well, maybe. I'm just not picturing specifically how it would work. A lot of people think this kind of teaching is the responsibility of families, not schools. Of course, schools have taken over teaching in some areas -- sex education, drug education -- where families sometimes drop the ball. But how would schools teach a unit on the importance of having a father? Especially given that financially strapped schools these days aren't exactly in the mode of expanding their services? I'm not denying it could be done so much as wondering what you envision it looking like.
We have a tendency to talk in blanket terms like "family values" without specifying exactly what those values are, because it's politically expedient to garner more votes by leaving it vague. God forbid you should say something definite and define a value that costs you votes.
Actually, I've written about this. "Family values" is a term that originated on the right, where it was vague code for "anti gay marriage," "anti abortion," and anti other social and lifestyle issues that low-income Democrats might have strong feelings about, in an attempt to lure them to the Republican party. It was pretty successful.
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Well, maybe. I'm just not picturing specifically how it would work. A lot of people think this kind of teaching is the responsibility of families, not schools. Of course, schools have taken over teaching in some areas -- sex education, drug education -- where families sometimes drop the ball. But how would schools teach a unit on the importance of having a father? Especially given that financially strapped schools these days aren't exactly in the mode of expanding their services? I'm not denying it could be done so much as wondering what you envision it looking like.
I don't know what it would look like either. My point is that we no longer define any social values with enough specificity to be useful and we don't pass them on.
Actually, I've written about this. "Family values" is a term that originated on the right, where it was vague code for "anti gay marriage," "anti abortion," and anti other social and lifestyle issues that low-income Democrats might have strong feelings about, in an attempt to lure them to the Republican party. It was pretty successful.
Yes it was. Every family has family values, whether you are Mr. Gotrocks, or a nomadic family of Travelers. They may be very different sets of values, with little in common, but put them under a vague umbrella term and they all look alike. This is the kind of political tactic the news media needs to educate people on. We need to be sophisticated enough to spot it regardless of which side uses it.
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Jess,
Is your friend making more than the minimum payment on her credit card, and has she tried negotiating a lower interest rate with them? There's info on the net how to do that if she hasn't and the credit card companies are coming under fire about their usurious interest rates so they will probably be amenable.
I'm not a big fan of Oprah, but here's a link to some advice that was given on her show about handling credit card companies.
http://www.oprah.com/money/debtdiet/steps/debtdiet_steps_03_b.jhtml (http://www.oprah.com/money/debtdiet/steps/debtdiet_steps_03_b.jhtml)
Gotta go now.
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and it is a fact, I don't care whether the posts which linked my ideas for welfare reform with Nazi death camps are deleted or if they continue to stand.
On this thread I responded to that type of verbiage by blocking that person's posts from being read while I am logged into my profile. if others read those comments, I am not concerned. the "ignore" button is a great idea.
so now, have we had enough red herrings thrown down to avoid discussing the issues on this thread? should we continue to discuss the state of the underclass?
The person who wants to force poor people to use contraception is still upset that his plan is compared to Nazi atrocities. He refuses even to acknowledge that his ideas for welfare reform may affect others--children--beyond the individual welfare recipients, yet he still wants to discuss the state of the underclass. And he accuses others of preferring to have a "pity party"? He advises other people to get a dictionary but doesn't know that there is a difference between a concentration camp and a death camp (I wonder what he calls the places where the U.S. interned its Japanese citizens during World War II?).
I guess the meaning of whining must depend on who is using the word.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not for one minute even thinking of apologizing for or deleting my remark that if he wants to prevent the poor from reproducing by force that he just go ahead and round 'em up. The fact that he keeps coming back to it suggests to me that I made my point.
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This is the kind of political tactic the news media needs to educate people on.
Well, I tried! I wrote a newspaper story about it in 1992, when the term emerged.
The story was well-received, but it wasn't as good as it would be if I wrote it now, because at that time I wasn't familiar with the "wedge issue" strategy. And the idea of deliberately taking a simple, seemingly nice term (family! values! what's to object to in either of those?) and giving it a subtext with a subtly more sinister meaning -- without openly acknowledging what you were doing, so that your listeners would understand what you really meant but you would retain complete deniability -- well, that was a pretty new scheme at the time.
New to me, anyway. Actually, it apparently goes back to Nixon and his Silent Majority. But I think the strategy really blossomed in the 1990s, beginning in the George Bush Sr. vs. Clinton election of 1992. I got curious just now, did a search and found an article on the topic that appeared in an academic journal called The Sociology of Religion and appears also to have been written during that election. The article's really long, but here's a sample excerpt:
What may be less obvious is that "family values" is largely a repackaging of the issue that gave rise to much-noted Reagan Democrats in 1980 and '84 and thus stands to be a big factor in this election. The fact is that so-called pocketbook issues are fairly straightforward, and voters can estimate whether, in paying taxes for example, they gain or lose more than they pay. With some exceptions (for example, the Pentagon) the Republican Party since the 1930s has been the low-tax, low-spend party, and the Democrats have taxed and spent. However, there being more Americans who benefit from government expenditures than who lose, Democrats on this issue alone have an edge, especially if we note that the low-income ranks are joined by some high-income persons who agree with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement that taxes buy civilization.
Because of this Democratic advantage, therefore, Republicans must find one or more "wedge" issues to pry away sufficient numbers of otherwise Democrat-inclined voters. Nixon used anti-communism to a "silent majority," a strategy that Reagan adopted and added to by courting the religious right. In 1988, Bush inherited many of these Reagan Democrats, but developed the "morality" theme less than he did law-and-order and the containment of enemies abroad. Now in 1992, the wedge issue -- in part chosen by Bush and in part thrust upon him in a Party Platform dictated by convention delegates with a traditional view of morality -- has sharpened greatly. It is the combined issues of abortion, homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, and gender equality, and it is known as "family values." Will it work in this election?
In answer to the question, "will it work in this election?" of course we now know that it did not, as Bush lost. Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" apparently succeeded in getting people's attention back on financial matters. But over the long haul, I think it did work -- it turned a lot of would-be Democrats into Republicans.
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Another interesting early reference to "family values." This from a 1992 Time magazine interview with Bill Clinton:
Q. What do you hear when Dan Quayle talks about family values? Is that code for something?
A. Well, yes and no. I have a little different take on this than some people do in our party. I think family values are important. You can't raise children without them. On the other hand, the Republicans don't feed hungry children. They don't dignify work. My beef with Quayle is not his saying fathers should take responsibility for their children or that it's a good thing when a child's fortunate enough to have two parents to take care of him or her. My beef is that they use the issue of family values in two ways that are not legitimate. One is as a flat-out excuse for their not having done anything. And the second is it's a wedge issue. The implication is always: We the Republicans represent your family values and the other guys don't. You know, I was looking at my wife and child and Al Gore's family up there today and thinking that we were not without family values. I was sitting out there under that carport with my 87-year-old great-uncle the other day, who did so much to raise me when I was a kid, and thinking that we were not without family values. The clear implication is Clinton, Cuomo, all these guys, they are in a cultural elite and they don't really share your values, they don't live by them, they don't like them, they don't like you. You know that's their whole deal -- it's a bunch of bull.
I wish the interviewer would have explored this further, because it's interesting how even Clinton seems to just be starting to see through this fairly new strategy.
BTW, I believe this year's "family values"-type wedge-issue term is "elitist." Personally, I've been amused to see myself called elitist at least a couple of times on this site -- not for describing my taste for fine wines or fancy olive oil, but simply for stating basic liberal views.
And it's bizarre to see Barack Obama, a black man raised by a single mother who for a time was on food stamps, called "elitist" compared to two candidates from affluent backgrounds.
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These points about "family values" also remind me of yet another lesson from my old college poli sci class: People will also vote for someone whom they perceive to be more like themselves.
And perceive is important: How many Americans come from oil-rich families with long histories of government service and own ranches in Texas and once owned their very own baseball team? Not many. But talk real folksy-like and mispronounce common words--despite having an Ivy League education--and a lot of people will perceive you to be more like themselves than someone caught on film windsurfing off Cape Cod. ... ::)
What has depressed me (probably permanently) is how many people are taken in by this bullshit. I had thought Americans were smarter than that. Apparently you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time. :-\ :(
I guess this makes me an elitist, too. ;D
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Are we talking why are the poor, poor ?
Seriously ?
When I saw a foreigner passing himself as a good person while he burned persons houses and collected insurance, and then opened up crack houses, I saw the poor become more poor, because that drug lord was seen as so nice, but if you don't take his drugs and pay more and more, then I saw persons even during the day being hit in their front or back yards by his gang of thugs !!
So, that is one way that the poor as well as the rich trapped by drugs, become poor and more poor !!
Did you know ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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I liked Mrs. Roosevelt !
Happy Mother's Day to her !
And to you all ladies too, to-day !!
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I liked Mrs. Roosevelt !
Happy Mother's Day to her !
And to you all ladies too, to-day !!
Thanks, Artiste!
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Merci Littlewing !!
Bienvenue ! Welcome !
May you have a wonderful Mother's Day !
And to all others too !!
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Just a thought:
If we would all consider mothers and be thankful for their activites and wondrous help, then there would be no poor ? !!
Au revoir,
hugs!!
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I believe broketrash said that Republicans do more charitable giving than Democrats, based on a book he cited by a conservative writer. I did a little quick checking. The only places I could find that broke donation statistics into individual giving of Republicans vs. Democrats were right-wing sites, of which I am a bit skeptical. But I did see in a couple of ideologically neutral places that red states have higher giving rates than blue states, on average.
I can think of a few possible explanations besides Republicans just being nice and generous and Democrats mean and stingy. 1) Republicans are wealthier on average, 2) Republicans are more church-going, and they give primarily to churches, 3) Red states need more charitable help because government services are scarcer, 4) Democrats give less because they believe in helping the poor via taxes.
Who knows.
But one interesting factoid I ran across was this: The people who give the highest portion of their income are the rich and ... the poor! Middle-class people give the least.
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I can think of a few possible explanations besides Republicans just being nice and generous and Democrats mean and stingy. 1) Republicans are wealthier on average, 2) Republicans are more church-going, and they give primarily to churches, 3) Red states need more charitable help because government services are scarcer, 4) Democrats give less because they believe in helping the poor via taxes.
It would be interesting if giving to churches could be parsed out of this. Certainly money given to churches counts as charitable giving for tax purposes. This is not to deny that churches do charitable work--my own runs a sort of drop-in center for people affected by AIDS and H.I.V.--individually and collectively as part of a denomination, but it's also true that money given to churches goes for lots of things that aren't "charity," like upkeep of the church building, utilities, and clergy salaries, just to name three examples. I can't help but wonder what the figures would look like if it were possible first of all to parse out the church giving altogether, and then to parse out what part of the church giving goes to overhead.
But one interesting factoid I ran across was this: The people who give the highest portion of their income are the rich and ... the poor! Middle-class people give the least.
I've always heard that the poor were more generous.
I also heard a news report about a week ago that in the current economic situation, demands on food banks are increasing--and donations are decreasing. :-\
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"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. "
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Amen.
I'd go so far myself as to substitute for "our progress"--"our greatness as a nation."
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but there are enough "Dittoheads" that take every word that comes off talk radio as truth they will believe it. Tell a lie enough times and eventually people will start to believe it.
Jess, are you making up words now? :o
If you are, I like that one! ;D
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It would be interesting if giving to churches could be parsed out of this. Certainly money given to churches counts as charitable giving for tax purposes. This is not to deny that churches do charitable work--my own runs a sort of drop-in center for people affected by AIDS and H.I.V.--individually and collectively as part of a denomination, but it's also true that money given to churches goes for lots of things that aren't "charity," like upkeep of the church building, utilities, and clergy salaries, just to name three examples. I can't help but wonder what the figures would look like if it were possible first of all to parse out the church giving altogether, and then to parse out what part of the church giving goes to overhead.
Yes, somewhere I read that more charitable donations go to churches than anything else.
Some would argue that the money that goes to keeping up the church, paying the clergy, etc., directly benefits the poor and infirm and needy just as much as church-sponsored charitable programs, in that the church provides spiritual comfort and healing. That is, the food shelf feeds bodies, and the church feeds souls.
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That is wonderful injest !
All that sharing are great gifts of humanity !
Au revoir,
hugs! HAPPY NOTHER'S DAY !!
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Some would argue that the money that goes to keeping up the church, paying the clergy, etc., directly benefits the poor and infirm and needy just as much as church-sponsored charitable programs, in that the church provides spiritual comfort and healing. That is, the food shelf feeds bodies, and the church feeds souls.
Yes, some would, and with the exception of one individual I know over at DCF, they would probably be Republicans. The trouble with that reasoning is that the poor and needy aren't filling the pews on Sundays in the churches getting in the big bucks. You don't see the poor and needy in those football stadium-sized megachurches that have more money than God. The poor and needy are either in Victorian Gothic buildings in inner cities that are often literally falling down because there is no money to keep up these buildings any more, or they might be in store front-type churches where, like as not, the pastor supports himself with a full-time job (like St. Paul himself) in addition to his church responsibilities.
There are always exceptions, of course. Trinity U.C.C. in Chicago might be one of them. ;D
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Actually that is the term that Rush Limbaugh listeners call themselves (like fans of Star Trek call themselves "Trekkie")
That's where Dittohead comes from? :o ;D
Learn somethin' new every day. ... ;D
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I have only been in the States for 2 years. But one thing that blew me away was the generosity of the poor.
We have a supermarket in an extremely poor area, lots of food stamps and people really struggling to make a living.
It never ceases to amaze me when if they are a little short at the register,someone else in the queue will make up the shortfall or one of the cashiers will.
When it is another customer we always give them an item free to thank them for their kindness, the cashiers will never take anything.
In terms of amounts it is not very much,as said we are really talking about exceptionally poor people here.In terms of the number of times it happens,too numerous to count,but on a daily basis.
Things like that do renew your faith in mankind.
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That's really interesting, Fiona.
I was wondering earlier what reasons might explain why the rich and poor give the most and the middle-class gives the least. The best I could come up with is that the rich have the money to spare (duh), and the poor constantly see firsthand what it's like to be in need.
People in the middle-class, in contrast, are removed from poverty and so it's more of an abstraction to them. Many of them probably reason that the poor are poor because of their own actions or lack thereof. And meanwhile, many middle-class people feel enough financial insecurity themselves -- desperate to climb higher on the ladder or even just to cling to the rung they're on in an uncertain economy -- that they don't feel they can spare the money.
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I was wondering earlier what reasons might explain why the rich and poor give the most and the middle-class gives the least. The best I could come up with is that the rich have the money to spare (duh), and the poor constantly see firsthand what it's like to be in need.
People in the middle-class, in contrast, are removed from poverty and so it's more of an abstraction to them. Many of them probably reason that the poor are poor because of their own actions or lack thereof. And meanwhile, many middle-class people feel enough financial insecurity themselves -- desperate to climb higher on the ladder or even just to cling to the rung they're on in an uncertain economy -- that they don't feel they can spare the money.
I think this is important, especially in times like the current financial unease.
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thought this was interesting...
Mentally ill 'go without food'
Almost three-quarters of people with mental health problems run out of money at the end of each week, a study says.
The charity Mind said its poll of 1,800 people showed half had gone without food because of money worries.
And virtually all those questioned - 91% - said debt had made their health problems worse.
Mind called on banks and other creditors not to hound those with mental health problems and to find ways to help them.
People with mental health problems are three times more likely to be in debt than the general population.
Two-thirds of those surveyed by Mind had felt unable to tell creditors about any mental health problems.
But of the remainder who did, 83% had been harassed about debt repayments despite the organisation knowing of their issues.
Mind says the issue is particularly pertinent as all kinds of households face rising fuel and food prices.
'Astronomical interest rates'
Half of people in the survey had been contacted by bailiffs, some of whom issued threats saying they could "break in and take my stuff " or "get me sent to prison".
Bank staff are not health practitioners and cannot diagnose mental health problems
British Bankers' Association spokeswoman
Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said: "People living with mental health problems are particularly vulnerable to being trapped in a cycle of debt and poverty.
"With many unable to work due to ill health, Mind has found that people are becoming dependent on credit to pay for everyday essentials.
"Those on lower incomes are also more likely to only be able to get credit from lenders who charge astronomical interest rates.
"This is a worrying trend as people are left facing a debt mountain that they have no means to repay."
The charity is launching a section on its website to help people with financial problems.
'More sympathetic'
Mr Farmer called on banks and other creditors to help people with mental health problems who are struggling.
"Changes in practice - such as waiving fees when a customer has been too unwell to manage their finances and introducing mental health awareness training for bank staff - will make all the difference.
"Creditors have a duty to help not hound their customers, especially when they are coping with serious health problems."
But a spokeswoman for the British Bankers' Association said help was available.
"Banks will have staff who are specifically able to help with mental health issues, and we try to help people before they get into really difficult situations.
"However, bank staff are not health practitioners and cannot diagnose mental health problems or assess the likely impact these problems may cause their customers."
She added: "Customers who no longer have the ability to look after their own affairs have their banking needs looked after for them, but less serious health issues can be a silent problem - unless the customer wishes to let their bank know.
"Then the bank can flag accounts and will be able to factor this into any debt help required."
Susan Kramer, Liberal Democrat families spokeswoman, said: "Mental health problems can make the challenge of handling money and debt far harder.
"For others, the depressing realities of living with debt can lead to a downward spiral into hopelessness and despair.
"Financial organisations must train staff to support clients with mental health issues, and mental health workers need training to advise on issues of debt."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/7391744.stm
Published: 2008/05/11 23:06:21 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
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Let's not forget, the wealthy can use the tax deductions from their gifts. Not that this is the reason they give, but a side benefit that definitely works as an incentive.
It sure does act as an incentive.
A little story: Many years ago, early in the AIDS epidemic, a local church founded a program, sort of like Meals on Wheels, to provide nourishing meals to people living with AIDS/H.I.V. Often they would stand outside our local bars on a Saturday night to ask for donations. I always put in a couple of bucks. A friend of mine, now deceased, would never contribute so much as the price of one drink because he couldn't get a receipt for his taxes. I used to get so mad at him. >:( Embarrassed the hell out of me when I was with him and would do that.
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I wonder if there isn't a bit of racism involved with the giving to their churches that the wealthy do....they know they can control who gets the charity and prevent certain people or groups from getting it.
That may be the case occasionally, but I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say race isn't a big factor in their decision. I don't think of wealthy people as any more racist, on average, than people in other income groups.
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I see them as more controlling though.
I'm sure some of them feel their money gives them a right to be controlling. :-\
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I'm sure some of them feel their money gives them a right to be controlling. :-\
And you know, I'd have to agree with them. We all want some say in how our charitable donations are spent, don't we?
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And you know, I'd have to agree with them. We all want some say in how our charitable donations are spent, don't we?
Sure enough! Around here we're even allowed to designate whether our donations to the PBS affiliate go to support TV or radio. But I interpreted the "controlling" comment as being controlling of people, and that's what I based my comment on.
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within reason..but when they get the feeling that they can take other people's rights away because of their status financially that is wrong..immoral.
Sure enough.
for example, the new way employers attempt to control employees even when they are not at work...you get paid to show up at a certain time and do a certain job...what you do outside is not your bosses business.
That bothers me a lot, employers trying to dictate to their employees about their personal lives out of work and off the premises--like not smoking, for example.
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Well, I'm not sure how I got appointed Defender of the Rich, but giving to particular charities of one's choice doesn't seem to be the same thing as taking people's rights away or controlling individuals.
And as for controlling employees when they're not at work, I agree, but that's not necessarily just rich people making that decision. It probably comes from middle-class middle managers just as often. And it's not all that new -- remember how school teachers didn't used to be allowed to be married, let alone pregnant!
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And as for controlling employees when they're not at work, I agree, but that's not necessarily just rich people making that decision. It probably comes from middle-class middle managers just as often. And it's not all that new -- remember how school teachers didn't used to be allowed to be married, let alone pregnant!
"Remember"? Seriously, no. If I'd thought about it, I would have thought it was just an old cultural assumption that female school teachers were either "old maids" or just killing time till they got their "Mrs." and quit to start families of their own. My fifth grade teacher--that would have been 40 years ago this coming fall--was both divorced and remarried. (God bless Mrs. Williams wherever she is. She was young, enthusiastic, and the best teacher I had in elementary school.)
As for the controlling employees, the anecdotes/stuff I've read in the papers have mostly concerned cutting insurance costs: that is, you don't want fat smokers for employees because they cost more in health insurance than thin, fit, non-smokers. I would think mandates like that come down from higher up than middle managers, but I could be wrong.
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"Remember"? Seriously, no.
:laugh: I meant this in the sense of "remember the fact that" rather than "remember when"! I was talking more in terms of Little House on the Prairie days. I know you just had a birthday, Jeff, but I don't expect you to remember those personally. :laugh: (And actually I'm about half a year older than you!)
As for the controlling employees, the anecdotes/stuff I've read in the papers have mostly concerned cutting insurance costs: that is, you don't want fat smokers for employees because they cost more in health insurance than thin, fit, non-smokers. I would think mandates like that come down from higher up than middle managers, but I could be wrong.
Oh, that's a good point. I guess I'm not that familiar with those situations first-hand, myself. Though if there's some company somewhere that controls their employees and makes them lose weight, I want a job at that company! :laugh:
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:laugh: I meant this in the sense of "remember the fact that" rather than "remember when"! I was talking more in terms of Little House on the Prairie days. I know you just had a birthday, Jeff, but I don't expect you to remember those personally. :laugh:
Oh, if you're talking that far back. ... :laugh:
Even so, in my seven years of public elementary school, including kindergarten, I was taught by one widow, one married woman, the aforesaid divorcee/remarried woman--and four single/never married women.
As for employers controlling their employees' weight, off hand I can only think of one story from the local news, and I consider this one a little--I don't know--sordid? A casino bar hostess in Atlantic City was going to lose her job because she gained too much weight. The casino insisted it wasn't discriminating because it was selling a certain "image" to customers. ::) I don't remember if that situation was ever resolved.
I think I've also read about people not being hired because they were smokers or overweight.
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As for employers controlling their employees' weight, off hand I can only think of one story from the local news, and I consider this one a little--I don't know--sordid? A casino bar hostess in Atlantic City was going to lose her job because she gained too much weight. The casino insisted it wasn't discriminating because it was selling a certain "image" to customers. ::) I don't remember if that situation was ever resolved.
I think I've also read about people not being hired because they were smokers or overweight.
I'm sure that probably happens. Both for insurance reasons and for "company image" reasons. In the second case particularly for women's jobs where appearance is considered a factor, as with the bar hostess you mentioned. I'd imagine it might be a problem in places like Hooters when one of the waitresses gains weight. The airline industry used to be completely open about requiring flight attendants to match certain height and weight requirements.
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Originally, and now we are talking way back, only men were allowed to be school teachers in the US.
Well, "schoolmaster" was a man's job, but if you go back far enough into the colonial period, the rudiments of education--maybe the alphabet, the barest beginnings of reading--were at least some times taught by women in what were referred to as "dame schools."
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The airline industry used to be completely open about requiring flight attendants to match certain height and weight requirements.
I remember hearing that once upon a time that flight attendants were not allowed to be married. Is this true?
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I remember hearing that once upon a time that flight attendants were not allowed to be married. Is this true?
I think I remember hearing that the first flight attendants had to be nurses, too.
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The poor are poor, because some purchase too many slave-made items, like Made-In-China or Japan-etc., crap, and so become slave as to be more poor !!
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Wow -- that is very sad. Her dogs look well taken care of, but I wonder where they stay during the daytime when she is working. They can't stay in the car.
She could move to AR and be able to afford an apartment. But if she's lived in CA all her life, she may not want to move. It's probably hard to get an apartment that would allow 2 big dogs, too. No way I'd want to live somewhere without my dogs.
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I know of a former policeman, who brings his dog, when he works, and he leaves it in his car !
He goes to check on it often !!
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That is one way that persons become poor.
Some let in too many wealthy foreigners or others in the area, and therefore, one born there can not afford to live in it !!
Does anyone understand that ?
Au revoir,
hugs!
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Unfortunately more and more it seems: People don't care anymore if persons are poor and poorer, via no fault of their own, some or most of them being really poor !
The wealthy forget that they can become too poor too ! But no such bell in most of them too weathly to care ?
Take this new report, that doctors should not give an x-ray to men 75 or more yrs old; the next time they will write 50 years old; the time after that 25 ?
And figure out that x-rays will be only for criminals ?
Can that become so ?
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No one seem to care about the poor ?
How much money did so far millionnaire Barack Obama give to the poor ?
Did Barack Obama make millions from his book ?
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No one seem to care about the poor ?
How much money did so far millionnaire Barack Obama give to the poor ?
Did Barack Obama make millions from his book ?
Another question that could be asked is, how many houses and vehicles do the McCains own?
Both Obama and McCain are wealthy people. But, McCain is far more wealthy.
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According to the American Tragedy thread, apparently the poor are poor because they elect Democratic mayors. ???
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According to the American Tragedy thread, apparently the poor are poor because they elect Democratic mayors. ???
I prefer to think of it the other way around.
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At least, the McCain help the poor !
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At least, the McCain help the poor !
WTF?
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WTF?
Really.
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I help the poor also.. It doesn't qualify me to be president....
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How much money did Obama make with his book ?
Did Obama give some of it to the poor ?
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Did Obama mention how he will help the poor ?
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As this is not a popular subject even to-day, maybe it can be considered as everyone needs to be educated so gays can have the egual rights ! ?
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Are the poor poor, because the too rich don't want them ?
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Are the poor poor, because the too rich don't want them ?
no, it is because thay don't clip, save and use newpaper coupons.
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Oh! Do they, these billionaires, purchase rubbers like we do since we are being poor?
Or add 24 carats on them ?
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Oh! Do they, these billionaires, purchase rubbers like we do since we are being poor?
Or add 24 carats on them ?
carats, or carrots?
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Gold real gold !
My uncle in California used 24 c to make the handles of someone's doors!
They do not think of the poor!
So, the poor only think of the poor?
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Gold real gold !
My uncle in California used 24 c to make the handles of someone's doors!
They do not think of the poor!
So, the poor only think of the poor?
gold door handles? sounds like something only a Saudi or a Texan would do! :laugh:
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Yes, nearly all Saudis have gold galore they can not count since they have too much, but Texans now are too poor for such ?
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Yes, nearly all Saudis have gold galore they can not count since they have too much, but Texans now are too poor for such ?
oh, definitely I agree we Texans are way too poor these days for an extravagence like gold door handles! I was thinking about the glory days of the 1920's and 1930's oil boom!
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So, what are Texans now doing, burning their gold handles or their wood handles ?? For warmth ? Or going to become Saudi slaves, as what is it: nukes (sexless?) ?
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So, what are Texans now doing, burning their gold handles or their wood handles ?? For warmth ? Or going to become Saudi slaves, as what is it: nukes (sexless?) ?
well, I have thought of selling apples on the street corner, since I am retired and have time on my hand. but, Dusty said that it would embarrass him to see me selling apples, so I guess I'll just keep clipping my coupons and hoping for the best.
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ha ! ha!
Maybe, it would be better to sell your used rubbers then ?
You want a pic of some ?