Alleviating poverty and helping the poor

I have an idea. Since you started the thread, why don't you give your thoughts first. Go ahead, do something out of character for once.

You see the risk is, we give our thoughts and 'get the ball rolling', while you stand by, criticize anything that 'takes away freedom' and never ever actually offer any other opinion whatsoever.

I refuse to humor you when your behavior is such.

The inability to generate wealth.


The key issues with regard to poverty are ignoring what causes the inability to generate wealth for temporarily relieving the lack of wealth with cash payments.


In most instances, the best way is to not help one who is impoverished directly and instead encourage wealth generating activities. Most "household" poverty could be eliminated by marriage and it is generated by measuring two single adults often living together but claiming differently for the ability to claim benefits as two "households." The other major contributing factors to lack of wealth generation are age, most of the poor are children or young adults who have not yet started their careers while going to school or acquiring a trade but you can't pay someone to not be young. So the best way to help would be for the government to stop encouraging and subsidizing cohabitation.


Exactly what we are doing now in many instances which is cash payments for remaining single or for cohabitation. The government should never provide cash to help establish a single adult household because it cannot generate wealth on par with two party households and remains impoverished long term.


Not much is working which is why we have ever increasing poverty and now chronic long term employment all created by government social policy. Companies are sitting on massive reserves of cash that they are not hiring people with and likewise governments are going broke paying out massive benefits in an attempt to keep buying votes and subsidizing dependence.


Pretty much everything we do right now is not working and the worst of them involve education. We fail to have a vocational education system. We act as if every person is going to college. We have a higher education bubble due to government aid. Much education funded to "help" these single households are in grievance degrees, aka social work and ethnic and gender studies. It is a massive negative feedback loop of ignorance, lack of productivity and dependence that becomes more expensive and horrifying by the day.


The worst of these are food stamps in my opinion. They clearly subsidize substance abuse from my anecdotal experiences. The attempts to deal with the "stigma" all fail because what really happens is bad people steal the food from their children by selling the befits for $.50 or worse on the dollar in exchange for real cash that they can then spend on cigarettes, booze and drugs. When they are spent on food, the food is not healthful and it allows the small amount of actual cash to again, be spent on unhealthful vices. If the government is concerned about children eating simply provide the meals as they do through schools also provide the meals or food directly. Do not attempt in any form or fashion to give any form of purchasing power in place of actual food.

And still, no opinion offered. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Then why are you in this thread? Where are your effing ideas?

He needs help coming up with ways of consistently helping the poor that don't involve government intervention. He's hoping somebody will eventually make a breakthrough in that regard because clearly he has no fucking ideas himself here.

Oooh, how about this one? Give churches tax exempt status. That should fix the problem. They care about the poor and that money will clearly be put to good causes only.






Catholic Order Reaches $166 Million Settlement With Sexual Abuse Victims
The Catholic Diocese of Savanna, Ga agreed to settle a sex abuse claim involving a former priest for $4.2 million.
In the United States, Roman Catholic archdioceses have collectively paid some $2 billion in settlements to victims since the priest sex scandals first erupted in Boston nearly a decade ago.

I could keep going but I've barely scratched the surface.

I'm waiting for your contribution before I tear Nick's post apart as being idiotic.

So, you are FOR child molestation, billions of dollars paid to the victims to keep clergy from prison, and palaces of worship while there are still homeless people who starve. Got it.

You got al that from his question? Your anger with religion knows no bounds.

I was being facetious because it is difficult to be serious around MJ, who is clearly too good for us. It would lower himself too much to actually give us his opinion on the topic without bullshit games to play first.

Exactly. Which Is why those of us familiar with his MO (and opposed to his general ideology, which we find exceedingly naive, blind to reality, and simplistic, with no room for compromise) refuse to play.

This thread is about people sharing their opinions on these important matters. So why are you here, again?

So you are a blank canvas? You have no ideas yourself?

Oh, so you have ideas but refuse to share them unless we explicitly follow your arbitrary thread instructions. Your lust for power over others shockingly extends this far. So petty.

Share your ideas or shut up and go away. No more games.

Are you thinking of poverty on a global scale or, say, within the USA ?

What a coincidence. I'm seeking your opinion on the matter.


How Ironic. I know of one way you could get the discussion going quite easily.

This thread is hilarious.

As far as opinions go, you show me yours, and I'll show you mine. That's as simple as it gets.

Deal?

And here's the visual clue:




What are things less stubborn than MJ?


Seems like MJ could just avoid all this nonsense by simply voicing his thoughts on the topic. Other than pure unadulterated childishness, I can't find a single fucking valid reason why he can't tell us his ideas for solving poverty.

Ok I have been away for several days as I have had terrible problems with my web access provider.

Now that I am back online and I decide to look over things I see this thread....

WT for the love of God is this going on here in this thread?

We have for all to see BR and tonton acting like complete children with their garbage tossed into this thread.

I give huge kudos to Trumptman for being an adult and actually contributing to this thread.

BR and tonton what is your problem?

Fellows

Why won't MJ give us his opinion? Seems like he's the one continuing the pattern of being childishly stubborn.

Fellowship, you can be forgiven, because for the most part you weren't here to witness first hand MJ's relentless failure to contribute any ideas or solutions in his posts over the last year or two. Go back and read how many times he responded to four paragraphs, with links and analysis, with a single sentence, "No, it's not," or something else just as idiotic. He almost never offers any opinion of his own, except to tediously repeat the free market mantra, again without any supporting evidence for his claims. BR and I, and possibly some others, are well aware of this, and it's time to call him out on it.

If the sorry state of this thread is our fault, then why doesn't he simply post his opinion and put us in our place? Because he won't. Just watch.

I'm dying to tear down Trumpt's post in two or three sentences, but I'm waiting for the starter of this thread to chime in with his opinion first. I feel that that's a completely fair expectation.

Well I appreciate your understanding that I have been away for a period of time. I not being aware of what you and BR seem to suggest about MJ may be completely a fault of mine which I will own. I don't harbor any dislike towards any of the posters here. I would be interested as to what MJ has to say about these accusations.

I have no reason to have a problem with MJ as during the time I have posted within this forum I have very little experience with MJ and to my knowledge have never found this poster to present a problem.

MJ if you feel like it how would you address the complaints of your critics?

Respectfully to all,

Fellows

Or you could just post your opinion. You know, that option.

I will share my thoughts about poverty:

I think poverty results from several main concepts.

Lack of planning. (no system in place for economic prosperity as well as upward mobility)

Lack of education. (unskilled labor is likely to pay very little)

Economic hardship. (family or individual has fallen on financial crisis due to inability to pay off debts related to medical or some other unforeseen occurrence which took place in their life.

Substance abuse and or mental health issues. (no added commentary or expansion needed here)

Aside from the above I would make several points as well.

I do not believe that it is critical for investment to be made in an area for people to live a full life. In other words.. The idea that well, there are no banks, no restaurants, no factories, no "jobs" is not really a scapegoat to expect or tolerate poverty in my opinion as I believe that people as a family unit or community level unit can organize to work the land say as the Amish do, do not constitute poverty. This way of life may not be the norm by "modern" standards but none the less this way of life is by no means a variant of "poverty" as I see it.

You have to take what you have and utilize it and work it. As far as how much ingenuity and advancement you wish to partake with that is your choice to make. You can go anywhere from a basic lifestyle like the Amish all the way up to all the modern availabilities that you can imagine.

My argument would be that one can live a "rich" life when they decide what is of value to them.

I would also argue that some things steal from a life of value.

These things include:

Slavery

Substance abuse

Neglect / indifference / lack of concern.

Fellows

So will you now respond to him in kind with your solutions?

MJ1970, this is an excellent thread. Thank you, very sincerely, for starting it.

Everyone, lay off MJ1970.

I've been thinking a lot about these very questions, and I have an enormous amount to offer this discussion.

Before I do, I have a few questions for MJ1970.

• What is poverty?
• What are the key issues and problems?
• What are the best ways to help?
• What are the worst ways to help?
• What things are currently working?
• What things are currently not working?
• What things do we often think helps because not only don't help but actually hurts?

Just like to know your thoughts on these questions, MJ1970, before I actually make my valuable contribution to the thread you started to discuss these questions.

"What caught my eye was Scotland's switch to free prescriptions for all its patients, on the very day when England's rate goes up 20p to £7.40 a pop. Wales and Northern Ireland have already gone free, so the contrast within the British NHS family is now a sharp one."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/b...scriptions-nhs

"The pharmaceutical industry has thousands of lobbyists in Washington, DC, that lobby Congress and protect their interests. The pharmaceutical industry spent $855 million, more than any other industry, on lobbying activities from 1998 to 2006, according to the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity."
~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescri..._United_States


"The patients are encouraged to pray while awaiting treatment. The medical staff introduce God as part of what the organisation describes as holistic care.

"We find a lot of people who come to us with a medical need but wouldn't set foot in the door of a church," said the mobile clinic's nurse, Lynn Hersey. "They want to check and see if someone who is a Christian can be trusted with one little thing, if they're going to shove Jesus down their throat because they ate the bait and came in through the door."

But there's another kind of evangelising at work too, involving a web of interests more focussed on Mammon than the Almighty. Much of Good Samaritan's work is funded by hospitals trying to keep patients who cannot pay out of emergency rooms, where they must be treated for any immediate health crisis by law whether they can pay or not. Those same hospitals have an interest in promoting charity as an alternative to President Obama's plans for government to take the lead in getting healthcare to the poor and the middle classes likely to be bankrupted by catastrophic illness.

Good Samaritan makes no secret of where it stands on the issue; the government has no business involving itself in healthcare.

"Governments treat you like a number," said the organisation's director, Dr John Crouch. "I really believe that there has to be a way to cover the folks who can't get care at all, and I think one of the ways is what we're doing. Maybe there's a different way of funding us, besides just funding us through our donations. We're emphasising that the more all the time."

Hersey concedes that the present system can be a tragedy for the poor.

What happens to someone with a chronic disease and no insurance? A woman with cancer, say, who might get the surgery she needs thanks to Good Samaritan but not the medicines afterwards. Hersey hesitates.

"They go without," she said.

You mean they die?

"Yes.""
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-wrath-1-tulsa