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Don't put a whole lot of stock in anything which talks about "poverty. In most cases, defining poverty is a political determination, made for a variety of interests which may, or may not, have anything to do with people being poor.
If you've ever been to places like Haiti or the Dominican Republic or Mumbai or Cairo or any one of a thousand other places where there's REAL poverty, any "study" which identifies American's as being that bad has some other agenda besides the truth.
Are you suggesting we should do nothing to help our own poor? What exactly are you suggesting?
Did you grow up in a poor household? You do know that the biggest factor in determining your future income is the income of your parents right? Did you choose to be born to your parents? Did you choose to be born in this country?
I believe that if more people believed in reincarnation, or simply cared for others as they care for themselves, then our world would be a totally different place.
And no that doesn't mean giving everybody a handout. It means giving everybody a fair shot. Everybody does not have a fair shot currently and through this process called evolution some humans are looking to improve the lives of the entire population instead of just themselves.
Some of you need to get out of your McSuburb and actually go to other countries. I don't mean a trip to London or Prague, I mean interior China, Mongolia, Russia, South America, Africa, or India. What we have spent the past 60 years defining as poverty is somewhat different than the rest of the world's.
Why do we have to compare ourselves to third world nations? Why can't we compare our poorest people to the poorest of countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands?
Not the lazy who don't work -- why on earth should they be the best, the wealthiest, the happiest?
The problem is, we are fast becoming a welfare recipient nation and not a nation of workers.
Once people make it here, they quickly become too good to work for a living so we have the endless cycle of people laying around on welfare handouts believing they are too good to work for a living, while we must continue to import cheap workers from 3rd world nations to do all the work.
Our welfare rates are growing at incredible rates, in many parts of the country, more babies are born to welfare recipients than to parents who will support them. At some point it all becomes unsupportable. Then what?
I was in the process of writing a long-winded response, but figured it wasn't worth arguing much.
We have become a country of lazy consumers, yes. Heck, we hardly produce anything anymore.
Anyway, I don't like people who are on welfare just because it pays them more than a real job -- that is wrong. But, someone who has lost their job and has been paying into unemployment has every right to exercise their benefits. Everyone should be better off in the US than anywhere else in the world. I take pride that anything can be accomplished in this country. I want to keep it that way, just like everyone else.
Are you suggesting we should do nothing to help our own poor? What exactly are you suggesting?
Did you grow up in a poor household? You do know that the biggest factor in determining your future income is the income of your parents right? Did you choose to be born to your parents? Did you choose to be born in this country?
I believe that if more people believed in reincarnation, or simply cared for others as they care for themselves, then our world would be a totally different place.
And no that doesn't mean giving everybody a handout. It means giving everybody a fair shot. Everybody does not have a fair shot currently and through this process called evolution some humans are looking to improve the lives of the entire population instead of just themselves.
Why do we have to compare ourselves to third world nations? Why can't we compare our poorest people to the poorest of countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands?
Exactly. We should compare ourselves to other great countries, not complain that someone here is living so much better than a poor person in Mozambique.
I don't think that a wealth disparity of that magnitude is productive.
Are you suggesting we should do nothing to help our own poor? What exactly are you suggesting?
Did you grow up in a poor household? You do know that the biggest factor in determining your future income is the income of your parents right? Did you choose to be born to your parents? Did you choose to be born in this country?
I believe that if more people believed in reincarnation, or simply cared for others as they care for themselves, then our world would be a totally different place.
And no that doesn't mean giving everybody a handout. It means giving everybody a fair shot. Everybody does not have a fair shot currently and through this process called evolution some humans are looking to improve the lives of the entire population instead of just themselves.
No, I'm not suggesting that and, yes, I did grow up poor. All I'm saying is let's not get silly and start claiming the poor here are as bad off as the REAL poor in other places.
What good does it do to make a false comparison? Who is helped by that? What's the point?
Why do we have to compare ourselves to third world nations? Why can't we compare our poorest people to the poorest of countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands?
Because we are falling behind those countries. If Americans want to compare our country to 3rd world countries that's fine by mean, its just not going to mean any progress if they are our metric of success.
We can also blame all the poor who continue to have kids, tripling the size of the dependent class every year.
My mom cried when she had me because we were so poor. Currently, my parents own their own business and I have a business and a start-up. What are you suggesting?
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