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People dont like them because most of them smoke and or drink and have babies they cant afford....Thats sorta stupid .
Christ said "The poor will always be with us"--- He meant the materially poor- the poor of mind also- the poor of spirit..the stupid..Half the people have an IQ of 100 and less...some of them are very poor- some of them are really rich_ Yes there are rich people of limited intelligence..Poor - exists in all forms...we like to pick on the poor poor- we do not pick on the rich poor- because we think they might give us something- stupid rich people who are poor of mind are to stupid to share anything.....My mum used to say "You are not poor..He who has no arms and legs is poor"...she summed it up pretty good- She called poor people - whether they had money or not - the "under developed"..
An education is what helps people. The right education, I should add. Liberal arts degree, degree in philosophy...maybe not going to help you so well. But if someone wants to learn a trade? Carpenter? Painter? Electrician? Mechanic? How about we provide a way for them to do it no matter their age, no matter if they have 0 kids, no matter their skin color, no matter where they came from.
It really is like that saying which I'm about to horribly mangle: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. TEACH a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Yes. Stop paying their rent, food and cars, you want welfare? MAKE IT EDUCATION!
I'd go for this. People will graduate from high school and sometimes even college, and not know how to do squat.
I see this in my vocation as a tutor. I have had people seek help from me who have no earthly business being in college because their intellectual capacity is not sufficient to handle the course work. However, those people are not void of talent or ability. There is something they can do, which they should be taught to do.
Teach 'em to fish!!
I tell you, I have the fancy education... diploma, degree, etc.... and I still can't grow my own food, build my own shelter, or make my own clothes. Really... even with my fancy education... WHAT do I really know?!
I just wanted to find out why people who have found or made a better financial situation for themselves, and people with wealth or who grew up in wealth, always categorize everyone who's poor as being underachievers, or people who haven't tried hard enough in life? Why are the poor blamed for being poor? Are you the type of person who believes a poor person is always at fault for where they are in life financially? If so, do you ever think that thier path may have been more than you could have imagined to bare just to overcome poverty or do you think there are enough jobs and opportunities for each and every individual in society to be financially stable?
Typical human behavior of thinking "Anybody can do that" when they don't have to do it.
There's a word for that, but I don't know the name.
I think people with 'money' whether they are rich, or well off or just comfortable arent necessarily too concerned with poor people being poor, they are just concerned that the poor people don't inconvienience them in anyway because of their financial state. These days, there are SO many 'beggars' out there i have to deal with 2 or 3 of them just by walking down the block. I can't ever get out of my car at a gas station without someone coming up to me with a sob story needing a buck, i dont ever remember this stuff happening in the 1970s and 1980s, unless it happened and i was just in a fog?
These days, there are SO many 'beggars' out there i have to deal with 2 or 3 of them just by walking down the block. I can't ever get out of my car at a gas station without someone coming up to me with a sob story needing a buck, i dont ever remember this stuff happening in the 1970s and 1980s, unless it happened and i was just in a fog?
Speaking of beggars, with the exception of those I've seen in Asia (children and elderly who I do give money to), why is it that every "beggar" I've came across in the US is a person of 15-50 who obviously has enough money for nose or lip piercings and hair dye or is looking more better fed than I am but the ones who are obviously homeless aren't out asking for money but collecting cans?
I just wanted to find out why people who have found or made a better financial situation for themselves, and people with wealth or who grew up in wealth, always categorize everyone who's poor as being underachievers, or people who haven't tried hard enough in life? Why are the poor blamed for being poor? Are you the type of person who believes a poor person is always at fault for where they are in life financially? If so, do you ever think that thier path may have been more than you could have imagined to bare just to overcome poverty or do you think there are enough jobs and opportunities for each and every individual in society to be financially stable?
Same reason suddenly thin or fitness freaks keep pushing people to loose weight & making them overweight people feel guilty. People should understand that every person has different priorities. For some its financial success, for others its good health, or beauty, or family life, etc. They would invest whole heartedly in goals that are most important to them. Financial gain is not important to everyone & nothings wrong with it. Its just a matter of priorities. A middle class person might be working 8hrs or less in a day & would prefer to spend rest of the time with their family whereas a person in pursuit of financial gain might be working 18hrs & gives no attention to his family. If we are able to balance everything perfectly in a perfect world, then good for us but a lot of times we need to sarifice one for the other.
Agreed. But if you position yourself strategically and live comfortably beneath your means, you can survive a layoff. Heaven knows, I've survived plenty of lost jobs. (That's why I started my own business.)
I did say there are exceptions.
See above.
However, the person who worked for the Fortune 500 company for 8 years probably could have squirreled plenty of money away for the future.
So just because you happen to know plenty of exceptions, means that the rule doesn't apply?
That's YOUR rule. I don't accept it and don't find it to be valid. And, aside from that, you've missed the point I was making - which was, to put it simply, that some things are within a person's control and are the result of their choices, and other things are not. Every person's life is a mix of these two things and, no matter how masterful or determined a person may be, their life will still be at least partly dictated by things that are quite out of their control. Many people now are fond of saying that EVERYTHING that happens to anyone is entirely their own fault and caused solely by them - as if each person lived in a vacuum and was unaffected by the actions of others or by big events out in the world like, for instance, 9/11. Then others, like you, claim that if YOU survived lost jobs, so can every other person - as if every person's circumstances were exactly like your own. And yes, the person I mentioned squirreled away a LOT of money during his eight years at a Fortune 500 company. Medical bills wiped that money out in less than two years and left his family $76,000 in debt besides. But I suppose an uninsured illness never could happen to you, because so far it hasn't. Therefore no such thing ever does happen. I'm sure you will, again, consider this an "exception" to your self-created rule, but - again - I'm pointing out that there are many things that happen to people that are not the result of anything they could have prevented and, as much as you want to make everything someone's fault, are simply not their fault.
I do find that people who hold to this belief in spite of all logic, do so because they would never, under any circumstances, extend a helping hand to another human being and they want to justify this attitude by ridiculously claiming that everything that happens to everyone is entirely their own doing. Some even go so far as to claim that everyone planned their life before they were born and signed a contract to that effect, and therefore anything that happens to them has been agreed to in some kind of deal between them and their maker. What a remarkably convenient belief system this is for people who want to live by the law of the jungle.
That's easy. Because while everybody can't be rich, almost everybody has the potential to at least be self-supporting. We have schools, we have social programs, we have foundations, and we just about every kind of charity you can name to help people bootstrap themselves up the socioeconomic food chain.
Here's an interesting statistic. More than 50% of all births in the United States now are to single mothers. Think about the daunting number for a moment. Statistic after statistic shows that single parenting practically guarantees a far lower household income, far lower achievement rates among children, far higher instances of juvenile crime, and an entire host of other social ills. What's more, everybody who does not suffer from mental retardation knows how babies are made. Birth control is widely available and incredibly cheap--if not free.
And yet, despite the plenitude of birth control, despite the widespread knowledge that sex results in pregnancy, and despite the knowledge that single parenthood makes it much harder to obtain an even minimal standard of living, single parenting is becoming the norm. Which means that shouldering poverty is voluntary for large portions of the sapient population.
A few years ago, I was a consultant for a housing authority. I was asked to interview 100 different residents. It was an eye-opening exercise, for the interviewees fell into two broad categories: The ones who had bad luck in life and considered public housing a stopgap until they could get back on their feet; and the ones who were often able-bodied but just were working the system for all they were worth. This second group never took advantage of the job training, the job placement, the tutoring and a host of other social programs that were offered in the house center one or two blocks from their doors. They were content to wallow in poverty. The first group, I would totally support. The second group? I don't care what happens to them.
So don't hand me a bunch of bilge that the poor can't help being poor. You might have been born into poverty. But this country gives you many, many different avenues to get out of poverty. And yet people make conscious choices to remain poor. So excuse me if I don't hold them in the same regard as some working class guy who gets up every morning at 6 and works his ass off at a factory job or on a construction site. Those guys deserve my respect.
To me...it seems that the capricious hand of fate is too nebulous/unreliable for people to build a life on, so we have to believe that we (and by extension, other people too) have more control (over good fortune & bad luck) than we do.
Regardless of whether the individual being credited or blamed can be said to "deserve" that extreme of either success or failure (however we measure it, financially or otherwise)-to poorly paraphrase a famous quote about victory & defeat: credit attaches easily to those who "succeed", and blame attaches easily to those who "fail".
The way people become polarized on issues such as this (where credit & blame are contentiously asserted & assigned) could be compared with personality theory concept of "internal-or external-locus of control": Locus of control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiki entry
"...is conceptualised as either internal (the person believes they can control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their decisions and life are controlled by environmental factors which they cannot influence)."
Speaking of beggars, with the exception of those I've seen in Asia (children and elderly who I do give money to), why is it that every "beggar" I've came across in the US is a person of 15-50 who obviously has enough money for nose or lip piercings and hair dye or is looking more better fed than I am but the ones who are obviously homeless aren't out asking for money but collecting cans?
You make great points, i recently saw a 'beggar' on a median (hanging out near popular intersection) who looked homeless and downtrodden except he had on brand new sneakers. I was thinking to myself "dude".
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