But see, you should not be levelling the field by BRINGING PEOPLE DOWN TO BRING OTHERS UP.
I don't think that's what Dems are trying to do - if you refer to the tax system in particular, a flat tax has problems of "bringing people down" just like the graduated system. It just brings down different people than the current system. I think you have to ask which people can best bear the equities or inequities, as the case may be.
That is exactly what they are trying to do. Kerry = more money taken from the top earners...ouch.
I guess I don't understand your point about more taxation = bringing people down. Is it more fair to give a break to the rich b/c of fortuity of birth (I do realize some of them work hard - I do) and increase the proportion of taxes to income paid by the middle class (they are working within the system to make the future brighter for their kids, too)? That's what a regressive ("flat") tax would do. I realize that the current tax cuts don't bring about a "flat tax" but that is where I think conservatives wish to go. Where's the tipping point of fairness?
Wait, youre saying the middle class needs this money for sending kids to college? There are already prograaaams that do that, based on income and number of kids, and need.
Wait, youre saying the middle class needs this money for sending kids to college? There are already prograaaams that do that, based on income and number of kids, and need.
Why not make college/university fully taxpayer funded and entry would be granted through a lottery system?
Yeah see, my parents worked their way up into positions where they could afford to be able to do this for their children. You see, my dad was born into a row house in Philadelphia, his father died before he graduated from high school, and his mother soon after. He was put through college from inheritence and eventually met my mother, gave up coaching football, and got a PhD. Now he is a top executive at a University and my mother is a lawyer for the same institution. How's that for the American dream? Oh, and we just built a brand new house. 5 kids, is a lot to support also...the system works. So now they are being compensated for their sacrifices and committment.
So you're dad was put through college on his inheritence, allowing him to get a good education, allowing him to get a good job, allowing you to have choices of your own.
And as a 19 year old, you have decided that all of this is "the system working" and babble on about "equlity of opportunity" and your fantasies of "income redistribution". I'm sure all that sounds very grown up to you, and cooly hard nosed.
22% of America's young children live in households below the poverty line. Two thirds of these are working poor, meaning wage earners that can't get a job that pays enough to get out of poverty. These are people who couldn't go to college even if they had the money, because they have no savings, and certainly no inheritence.
What poverty means in America, the richest country in the world, is that millions of children go to bed hungry. Their parents would put more food on table if they could, but the money from a minimum wage job only goes so far. You know, jobs, the kind that wealthy business owners "down-size" and "off-shore" because, after all, maximizing profits is best for America.
All this contemptible, ignorant bullshit in this thread about welfare queens and bootstrapping and lazy poor folk living off the dole literally makes me ill. And coming from a bunch of white, privledged tech empowered kids it borders on the obscene. You people have no idea what your talking about, and apparently are perfectly happy to parrot the slogans that you've heard without doing any research into the actual faces and facts of poverty.
If it's such a fcking free ride I wish any one of you could trade places with a poor person, because I guarentee you could not handle it. Bootstrap my ass.
22% of America's young children live in households below the poverty line. Two thirds of these are working poor, meaning wage earners that can't get a job that pays enough to get out of poverty. These are people who couldn't go to college even if they had the money, because they have no savings, and certainly no inheritence.
They live in households below the poverty line because the government picks a line and calls everything above it "middle class" and everything below it "poverty."
You should also mention that the clear majority of these "households" are single women with children. They also choose to work part time disproportionately and refuse to take jobs with less flexible hours since their priority is children over money. Their income reflects this and it is not a product of some oppression.
The part about college is 100% pure bullshit. Their income would open up an array of grants and loans. They can take a minimum of two years at any community college or (GASP) get a loan to get a well paying trade that then allows them to pay for college in the field they truly wish to study.
Quote:
What poverty means in America, the richest country in the world, is that millions of children go to bed hungry. Their parents would put more food on table if they could, but the money from a minimum wage job only goes so far. You know, jobs, the kind that wealthy business owners "down-size" and "off-shore" because, after all, maximizing profits is best for America.
100% unbackable bullshit. Most middle class and ALL impoverished children qualify for free lunch at public schools where they are served two meals a day for absolutely free. Study after study shows most children, even in impoverished homes eat out two to three times a week and have a growing obesity problem from ever earlier ages.
Minimum wage jobs are predominately held by students or very young people. They hold them in transitionary times when they are gaining the skill or trade to move on up the ladder. I earned minimum wage when I was 16 and some above it all the way through college. The second I was out of college I started earning real wages. I went from earning a maximum of $7000 a year (poverty) to earning a middle class wage and have every year since then. This is NORMAL. My brother earned minimum wage while going to trade school to become an auto and diesel mechanic. He earns a middle class wage and has every since he graduated. Again this is NORMAL.
Regardless of jobs being off-shored, the per capital income is still rising in America. The reason poverty advocates focus on household incomes is because households are getting smaller and thus it looks like their wages are shrinking when in reality they are rising per person. So a generation ago Dad, Mom and three children might have earned $50k a year with Dad working, mom at home and the three children at school. ($10k per person in the household) Now the single mother with her one child might be earning $25k per year. They are classified as a "household" and thus it looks like the household income has declined. In reality though the household income has gone up to $12.5k per person. The household is much smaller.
In an age of 50% divorce rates, we have more and smaller households. However per capita income is and has been rising.
Quote:
All this contemptible, ignorant bullshit in this thread about welfare queens and bootstrapping and lazy poor folk living off the dole literally makes me ill. And coming from a bunch of white, privledged tech empowered kids it borders on the obscene. You people have no idea what your talking about, and apparently are perfectly happy to parrot the slogans that you've heard without doing any research into the actual faces and facts of poverty.
Keep spreading your ignorance. I have worked and LIVED in the poorest neighborhoods. I have dealt with this population for over a decade. Go to any social worker and see how much remorse they have for 95% of the population receiving services. The people on the frontlines know them best and know the scams that occur. BTW assuming welfare recipients must be non-white is probably the most racist thing I have heard so enjoy not only your ignornace, but your racism as well.
This is from the Walter Williams link I posted earlier.
Quote:
From various government reports they find that: 46 percent of poor households actually own their homes; 76 percent have air conditioning; the typical poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities in Europe; nearly 75 percent of poor households own one car, and 30 percent own two or more cars; 97 percent have at least one color television; 62 percent have cable or satellite reception; and 25 percent have cell phones.
A bit more...
Quote:
According to the 1995 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, only 5 percent of those in the bottom 20 percent category of income earners in 1975 were still there in 1991. What happened to them? A majority made it to the top 60 percent of the income distribution -- middle class or better -- over that 16-year span. Almost 29 percent of them rose to the top 20 percent.
How many start at the bottom and never move from there? 5%. Of that 5%, how many were drop outs, drug users, lazy, dishonest, criminals, etc?
When you consider that the drop out rate is 25% and somehow only 5% of the population never left poverty, that really says something about the upward pull on income possible in our country if you do pretty much anything more than breath in and out.
Quote:
If it's such a fcking free ride I wish any one of you could trade places with a poor person, because I guarentee you could not handle it. Bootstrap my ass.
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard. My father was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife. We had 4 kids in my household and my financial aide application showed over $10k of unmet need every year that the state college did absolutely nothing to meet. (I can't possible be poor, I'm WHITE) My biological father was a drug addict and my stepfather and biological mother are both alcoholics.
I'll be a millionaire before I'm 40 and a multimillionaire before I retire.
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it. Being on the bottom doesn't do anything but motivate you to get moving and get better. If you ENJOY being on the bottom, then there isn't a single thing to government can buy you or give you that will change that.
All I know is that the poor aren't really poor- and even if they are poor, they're poor for a reason!
Ok, ShawnJ--does that J stand for Jimmy Carter? Now go be like him and get out there and DO something about it, since you are so right and passionate about the poor.
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard.
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it.
Nick
I plan on more travel abroad in future but simply from my trip to Paris I can say that indeed there are poor in many countries not just the US. Any large city will contain poor people and poor live also in rural areas (again in pretty much all countries)
I would hope comments of the like in the quoted materal above are given rest here in AO.
They live in households below the poverty line because the government picks a line and calls everything above it "middle class" and everything below it "poverty."
The federal poverty level for a family of three is about $16,000 a year. That's pretty poor. I'd be curious to know how you'd propose to judge poverty rates in America without "picking a line".
Quote:
[i]You should also mention that the clear majority of these "households" are single women with children. They also choose to work part time disproportionately and refuse to take jobs with less flexible hours since their priority is children over money. Their income reflects this and it is not a product of some oppression.[/B]
The fact that you think poor single woman are "choosing" to pass on more money because "they're priority is their children", as if they were picking between ballet lessons and brunch, tells me you really and truly don't know anything about poverty and that you have one of the ugliest, most distorted world veiws I've encountered.
Quote:
[iThe part about college is 100% pure bullshit. Their income would open up an array of grants and loans. They can take a minimum of two years at any community college or (GASP) get a loan to get a well paying trade that then allows them to pay for college in the field they truly wish to study.[/B]
Which funds are constantly being cut. So a single poor working mother is going to go into debt for all of her living expenses and tuition, figure out how to warehouse her kid for free, on the off chance she can get one of those "good paying" tradesmens jobs that apparently are going begging. This is the problem with steeping yourself in right wing viscousness, you start to believe the absurd lies about what the world looks like outside of your comfort zone.
Quote:
[i]100% unbackable bullshit. Most middle class and ALL impoverished children qualify for free lunch at public schools where they are served two meals a day for absolutely free. Study after study shows most children, even in impoverished homes eat out two to three times a week and have a growing obesity problem from ever earlier ages.[/B]
What the hell is wrong with you? In order to justify your "every man for himself" ugliness, you actually deny that there is any hunger in America. "Study after study shows"? By whom? Because the US dept of agriculture disagrees: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/
Why not go whole hog and just claim there is no such thing as poverty? That way, social programs are not only wrong, but pointless.
Quote:
[iMinimum wage jobs are predominately held by students or very young people. They hold them in transitionary times when they are gaining the skill or trade to move on up the ladder. I earned minimum wage when I was 16 and some above it all the way through college. The second I was out of college I started earning real wages. I went from earning a maximum of $7000 a year (poverty) to earning a middle class wage and have every year since then. This is NORMAL. My brother earned minimum wage while going to trade school to become an auto and diesel mechanic. He earns a middle class wage and has every since he graduated. Again this is NORMAL. [/B]
Christ. It was normal for you. It's normal for people who have access to some resources, who have a way to move into the opportunity mainstream. The whole point of poverty is it erects barriers to "normalicy", barriers of stress, poor nutrition, access to capital, access to education, access to suport services, etc. How you get from your personal experience to how it therefore must be for everybody is beyond me, but I think that failure of empathy and imagination says a lot about where you're coming from.
Quote:
[i]Regardless of jobs being off-shored, the per capital income is still rising in America. The reason poverty advocates focus on household incomes is because households are getting smaller and thus it looks like their wages are shrinking when in reality they are rising per person. So a generation ago Dad, Mom and three children might have earned $50k a year with Dad working, mom at home and the three children at school. ($10k per person in the household) Now the single mother with her one child might be earning $25k per year. They are classified as a "household" and thus it looks like the household income has declined. In reality though the household income has gone up to $12.5k per person. The household is much smaller.
In an age of 50% divorce rates, we have more and smaller households. However per capita income is and has been rising.[/B]
Oh for God's sake. Poverty levels are calculated by number of members in a household. Why is it so important to you to believe that poverty and hunger don't exist? Why are you compelled to make shit up and deny easily verifiable facts and distort the rest? Really, I don't understand why any human being, when faced with the reality of suffering, would choose to loudly assert that there is no suffering, just people who choose to not try hard enough.
Quote:
[i]Keep spreading your ignorance. I have worked and LIVED in the poorest neighborhoods. I have dealt with this population for over a decade. Go to any social worker and see how much remorse they have for 95% of the population receiving services. The people on the frontlines know them best and know the scams that occur. [/B]
Yeah, they're just nasty and lazy and criminal and evil. That certainly solves that problem.
Quote:
BTW assuming welfare recipients must be non-white is probably the most racist thing I have heard so enjoy not only your ignornace, but your racism as well. [/B]
Now you're scaring me. I haven't said a word about race, but somehow it appears in your mind. Probably a coincidence.
Quote:
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard. My father was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife. We had 4 kids in my household and my financial aide application showed over $10k of unmet need every year that the state college did absolutely nothing to meet. (I can't possible be poor, I'm WHITE) My biological father was a drug addict and my stepfather and biological mother are both alcoholics.
I'll be a millionaire before I'm 40 and a multimillionaire before I retire. [/B][/[/B]
No, you weren't "them" (again with the race stuff, maybe the root of your animosity?)
Quote:
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it. Being on the bottom doesn't do anything but motivate you to get moving and get better. If you ENJOY being on the bottom, then there isn't a single thing to government can buy you or give you that will change that.[/B]
So, at the end of the day, it's all about "enjoying" being on the bottom. Lazy, lazy welfare bloodsuckers. The only people who can maintain that cartoon are people who don't really see the truly destitute in America, or don't want to.
Your rage against this idea seems kinda... over the top. Like you hate these people. But of course we're not talking about race, are we?
Comments
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
But see, you should not be levelling the field by BRINGING PEOPLE DOWN TO BRING OTHERS UP.
I don't think that's what Dems are trying to do - if you refer to the tax system in particular, a flat tax has problems of "bringing people down" just like the graduated system. It just brings down different people than the current system. I think you have to ask which people can best bear the equities or inequities, as the case may be.
Thoth
Originally posted by Thoth2
I don't think that's what Dems are trying to do -
That is exactly what they are trying to do. Kerry = more money taken from the top earners...ouch.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
That is exactly what they are trying to do. Kerry = more money taken from the top earners...ouch.
I guess I don't understand your point about more taxation = bringing people down. Is it more fair to give a break to the rich b/c of fortuity of birth (I do realize some of them work hard - I do) and increase the proportion of taxes to income paid by the middle class (they are working within the system to make the future brighter for their kids, too)? That's what a regressive ("flat") tax would do. I realize that the current tax cuts don't bring about a "flat tax" but that is where I think conservatives wish to go. Where's the tipping point of fairness?
Thoth
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Wait, youre saying the middle class needs this money for sending kids to college? There are already prograaaams that do that, based on income and number of kids, and need.
Why not make college/university fully taxpayer funded and entry would be granted through a lottery system?
That's equal opportunity!
I had no idea you were such a socialist.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Socialist? I was making fun of the fact that you want yet more ways to do something that is already being handled through tax payer dollars.
I'm not Thoth2.
I'm still playing around with the semantics of 'equal opportunity'.
Originally posted by audiopollution
I'm not Thoth2.
I'm still playing around with the semantics of 'equal opportunity'.
No, you're not, and even if you were he'd be wrong with what I am attempting to talk about.
I was talking about taxes in general - my recent posts have not said anything about educational programs.
So, what about it, M-tosh? What is fair in taxation?
Thoth2
Originally posted by Thoth2
No, you're not, and even if you were he'd be wrong with what I am attempting to talk about.
I was talking about taxes in general - my recent posts have not said anything about educational programs.
So, what about it, M-tosh? What is fair in taxation?
Thoth2
I do not think the alternative minimum tax is fair.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Yeah see, my parents worked their way up into positions where they could afford to be able to do this for their children. You see, my dad was born into a row house in Philadelphia, his father died before he graduated from high school, and his mother soon after. He was put through college from inheritence and eventually met my mother, gave up coaching football, and got a PhD. Now he is a top executive at a University and my mother is a lawyer for the same institution. How's that for the American dream? Oh, and we just built a brand new house. 5 kids, is a lot to support also...the system works. So now they are being compensated for their sacrifices and committment.
So you're dad was put through college on his inheritence, allowing him to get a good education, allowing him to get a good job, allowing you to have choices of your own.
And as a 19 year old, you have decided that all of this is "the system working" and babble on about "equlity of opportunity" and your fantasies of "income redistribution". I'm sure all that sounds very grown up to you, and cooly hard nosed.
22% of America's young children live in households below the poverty line. Two thirds of these are working poor, meaning wage earners that can't get a job that pays enough to get out of poverty. These are people who couldn't go to college even if they had the money, because they have no savings, and certainly no inheritence.
What poverty means in America, the richest country in the world, is that millions of children go to bed hungry. Their parents would put more food on table if they could, but the money from a minimum wage job only goes so far. You know, jobs, the kind that wealthy business owners "down-size" and "off-shore" because, after all, maximizing profits is best for America.
All this contemptible, ignorant bullshit in this thread about welfare queens and bootstrapping and lazy poor folk living off the dole literally makes me ill. And coming from a bunch of white, privledged tech empowered kids it borders on the obscene. You people have no idea what your talking about, and apparently are perfectly happy to parrot the slogans that you've heard without doing any research into the actual faces and facts of poverty.
If it's such a fcking free ride I wish any one of you could trade places with a poor person, because I guarentee you could not handle it. Bootstrap my ass.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
Originally posted by addabox
22% of America's young children live in households below the poverty line. Two thirds of these are working poor, meaning wage earners that can't get a job that pays enough to get out of poverty. These are people who couldn't go to college even if they had the money, because they have no savings, and certainly no inheritence.
They live in households below the poverty line because the government picks a line and calls everything above it "middle class" and everything below it "poverty."
You should also mention that the clear majority of these "households" are single women with children. They also choose to work part time disproportionately and refuse to take jobs with less flexible hours since their priority is children over money. Their income reflects this and it is not a product of some oppression.
The part about college is 100% pure bullshit. Their income would open up an array of grants and loans. They can take a minimum of two years at any community college or (GASP) get a loan to get a well paying trade that then allows them to pay for college in the field they truly wish to study.
What poverty means in America, the richest country in the world, is that millions of children go to bed hungry. Their parents would put more food on table if they could, but the money from a minimum wage job only goes so far. You know, jobs, the kind that wealthy business owners "down-size" and "off-shore" because, after all, maximizing profits is best for America.
100% unbackable bullshit. Most middle class and ALL impoverished children qualify for free lunch at public schools where they are served two meals a day for absolutely free. Study after study shows most children, even in impoverished homes eat out two to three times a week and have a growing obesity problem from ever earlier ages.
Minimum wage jobs are predominately held by students or very young people. They hold them in transitionary times when they are gaining the skill or trade to move on up the ladder. I earned minimum wage when I was 16 and some above it all the way through college. The second I was out of college I started earning real wages. I went from earning a maximum of $7000 a year (poverty) to earning a middle class wage and have every year since then. This is NORMAL. My brother earned minimum wage while going to trade school to become an auto and diesel mechanic. He earns a middle class wage and has every since he graduated. Again this is NORMAL.
Regardless of jobs being off-shored, the per capital income is still rising in America. The reason poverty advocates focus on household incomes is because households are getting smaller and thus it looks like their wages are shrinking when in reality they are rising per person. So a generation ago Dad, Mom and three children might have earned $50k a year with Dad working, mom at home and the three children at school. ($10k per person in the household) Now the single mother with her one child might be earning $25k per year. They are classified as a "household" and thus it looks like the household income has declined. In reality though the household income has gone up to $12.5k per person. The household is much smaller.
In an age of 50% divorce rates, we have more and smaller households. However per capita income is and has been rising.
All this contemptible, ignorant bullshit in this thread about welfare queens and bootstrapping and lazy poor folk living off the dole literally makes me ill. And coming from a bunch of white, privledged tech empowered kids it borders on the obscene. You people have no idea what your talking about, and apparently are perfectly happy to parrot the slogans that you've heard without doing any research into the actual faces and facts of poverty.
Keep spreading your ignorance. I have worked and LIVED in the poorest neighborhoods. I have dealt with this population for over a decade. Go to any social worker and see how much remorse they have for 95% of the population receiving services. The people on the frontlines know them best and know the scams that occur. BTW assuming welfare recipients must be non-white is probably the most racist thing I have heard so enjoy not only your ignornace, but your racism as well.
This is from the Walter Williams link I posted earlier.
From various government reports they find that: 46 percent of poor households actually own their homes; 76 percent have air conditioning; the typical poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities in Europe; nearly 75 percent of poor households own one car, and 30 percent own two or more cars; 97 percent have at least one color television; 62 percent have cable or satellite reception; and 25 percent have cell phones.
A bit more...
According to the 1995 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, only 5 percent of those in the bottom 20 percent category of income earners in 1975 were still there in 1991. What happened to them? A majority made it to the top 60 percent of the income distribution -- middle class or better -- over that 16-year span. Almost 29 percent of them rose to the top 20 percent.
How many start at the bottom and never move from there? 5%. Of that 5%, how many were drop outs, drug users, lazy, dishonest, criminals, etc?
When you consider that the drop out rate is 25% and somehow only 5% of the population never left poverty, that really says something about the upward pull on income possible in our country if you do pretty much anything more than breath in and out.
If it's such a fcking free ride I wish any one of you could trade places with a poor person, because I guarentee you could not handle it. Bootstrap my ass.
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard. My father was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife. We had 4 kids in my household and my financial aide application showed over $10k of unmet need every year that the state college did absolutely nothing to meet. (I can't possible be poor, I'm WHITE) My biological father was a drug addict and my stepfather and biological mother are both alcoholics.
I'll be a millionaire before I'm 40 and a multimillionaire before I retire.
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it. Being on the bottom doesn't do anything but motivate you to get moving and get better. If you ENJOY being on the bottom, then there isn't a single thing to government can buy you or give you that will change that.
Nick
Originally posted by ShawnJ
All I know is that the poor aren't really poor- and even if they are poor, they're poor for a reason!
Ok, ShawnJ--does that J stand for Jimmy Carter? Now go be like him and get out there and DO something about it, since you are so right and passionate about the poor.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
All I know is that the poor aren't really poor- and even if they are poor, they're poor for a reason!
According to income, you are poor.
So you can feel free to show us how "poor" you really are.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
According to income, you are poor.
So you can feel free to show us how "poor" you really are.
Nick
And he's even posting from a Mac, the most expensive of all computers! haha
Originally posted by trumptman
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard.
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it.
Nick
I plan on more travel abroad in future but simply from my trip to Paris I can say that indeed there are poor in many countries not just the US. Any large city will contain poor people and poor live also in rural areas (again in pretty much all countries)
I would hope comments of the like in the quoted materal above are given rest here in AO.
Fellows
Originally posted by trumptman
They live in households below the poverty line because the government picks a line and calls everything above it "middle class" and everything below it "poverty."
The federal poverty level for a family of three is about $16,000 a year. That's pretty poor. I'd be curious to know how you'd propose to judge poverty rates in America without "picking a line".
[i]You should also mention that the clear majority of these "households" are single women with children. They also choose to work part time disproportionately and refuse to take jobs with less flexible hours since their priority is children over money. Their income reflects this and it is not a product of some oppression.[/B]
The fact that you think poor single woman are "choosing" to pass on more money because "they're priority is their children", as if they were picking between ballet lessons and brunch, tells me you really and truly don't know anything about poverty and that you have one of the ugliest, most distorted world veiws I've encountered.
[iThe part about college is 100% pure bullshit. Their income would open up an array of grants and loans. They can take a minimum of two years at any community college or (GASP) get a loan to get a well paying trade that then allows them to pay for college in the field they truly wish to study.[/B]
Which funds are constantly being cut. So a single poor working mother is going to go into debt for all of her living expenses and tuition, figure out how to warehouse her kid for free, on the off chance she can get one of those "good paying" tradesmens jobs that apparently are going begging. This is the problem with steeping yourself in right wing viscousness, you start to believe the absurd lies about what the world looks like outside of your comfort zone.
[i]100% unbackable bullshit. Most middle class and ALL impoverished children qualify for free lunch at public schools where they are served two meals a day for absolutely free. Study after study shows most children, even in impoverished homes eat out two to three times a week and have a growing obesity problem from ever earlier ages.[/B]
What the hell is wrong with you? In order to justify your "every man for himself" ugliness, you actually deny that there is any hunger in America. "Study after study shows"? By whom? Because the US dept of agriculture disagrees: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/
Why not go whole hog and just claim there is no such thing as poverty? That way, social programs are not only wrong, but pointless.
[iMinimum wage jobs are predominately held by students or very young people. They hold them in transitionary times when they are gaining the skill or trade to move on up the ladder. I earned minimum wage when I was 16 and some above it all the way through college. The second I was out of college I started earning real wages. I went from earning a maximum of $7000 a year (poverty) to earning a middle class wage and have every year since then. This is NORMAL. My brother earned minimum wage while going to trade school to become an auto and diesel mechanic. He earns a middle class wage and has every since he graduated. Again this is NORMAL. [/B]
Christ. It was normal for you. It's normal for people who have access to some resources, who have a way to move into the opportunity mainstream. The whole point of poverty is it erects barriers to "normalicy", barriers of stress, poor nutrition, access to capital, access to education, access to suport services, etc. How you get from your personal experience to how it therefore must be for everybody is beyond me, but I think that failure of empathy and imagination says a lot about where you're coming from.
[i]Regardless of jobs being off-shored, the per capital income is still rising in America. The reason poverty advocates focus on household incomes is because households are getting smaller and thus it looks like their wages are shrinking when in reality they are rising per person. So a generation ago Dad, Mom and three children might have earned $50k a year with Dad working, mom at home and the three children at school. ($10k per person in the household) Now the single mother with her one child might be earning $25k per year. They are classified as a "household" and thus it looks like the household income has declined. In reality though the household income has gone up to $12.5k per person. The household is much smaller.
In an age of 50% divorce rates, we have more and smaller households. However per capita income is and has been rising.[/B]
Oh for God's sake. Poverty levels are calculated by number of members in a household. Why is it so important to you to believe that poverty and hunger don't exist? Why are you compelled to make shit up and deny easily verifiable facts and distort the rest? Really, I don't understand why any human being, when faced with the reality of suffering, would choose to loudly assert that there is no suffering, just people who choose to not try hard enough.
[i]Keep spreading your ignorance. I have worked and LIVED in the poorest neighborhoods. I have dealt with this population for over a decade. Go to any social worker and see how much remorse they have for 95% of the population receiving services. The people on the frontlines know them best and know the scams that occur. [/B]
Yeah, they're just nasty and lazy and criminal and evil. That certainly solves that problem.
BTW assuming welfare recipients must be non-white is probably the most racist thing I have heard so enjoy not only your ignornace, but your racism as well. [/B]
Now you're scaring me. I haven't said a word about race, but somehow it appears in your mind. Probably a coincidence.
Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard. My father was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife. We had 4 kids in my household and my financial aide application showed over $10k of unmet need every year that the state college did absolutely nothing to meet. (I can't possible be poor, I'm WHITE) My biological father was a drug addict and my stepfather and biological mother are both alcoholics.
I'll be a millionaire before I'm 40 and a multimillionaire before I retire. [/B][/[/B]
No, you weren't "them" (again with the race stuff, maybe the root of your animosity?)
Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it. Being on the bottom doesn't do anything but motivate you to get moving and get better. If you ENJOY being on the bottom, then there isn't a single thing to government can buy you or give you that will change that.[/B]
So, at the end of the day, it's all about "enjoying" being on the bottom. Lazy, lazy welfare bloodsuckers. The only people who can maintain that cartoon are people who don't really see the truly destitute in America, or don't want to.
Your rage against this idea seems kinda... over the top. Like you hate these people. But of course we're not talking about race, are we?