When will right wingers just admit they want the poor to eat dirt? (Congressmen, wages)
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It just seems ridiculous to me that in the largest economy of all time ever we still struggle to feed and house a huge chunk of our population because our society is so fundamentally greedy and self-serving. There is absolutely no excuse for millions of hungry children in such an absurdly wealthy nation.
You are confusing the country with yourself... the US has no problems "feeding" it's self, you see fairly clean streets, a fairly small percent of famished population. Most people have a roof...
no, it seems like you are imposing your own struggles upon the country when you said "we struggle to feed". I certainly don't... neither does anyone of my family and friends...
Sure there are pockets of homelessness and hunger, but you can always point that out in any country, but most countries don't have less than the US if you compare it to the same size as in population/land area
edit: but since I'm fairly "liberal" on the social issues, I don't mind paying taxes if it goes to making the streets cleanier/safer having good schools/healthcare... I just don't think "feeding" people is a role of government past making sure they get 3 loafs of bread and clean water a day. If they want more variety of food, they can earn it. But I'll feed them well enough that they are "able" bodied to work.
Honestly, I used to be a pretty hardcore Libertarian until I spent time in certain countries.
Stepping over live skeletons with sores all over their bodies on the streets and having my wealthy host mother wave them off as just 'lazy', talking to people here who've literally broken their backs to support their families only for one of their children to die of treatable health problems they simply couldn't afford, and talking to young adults who had to drop out of school to support their families....
Witnessing all of that completely impacted my perspective, and anything that moves the US in that direction (little by little it may be) is downright scary.
By contrast, in developed countries where there's a strong social safety net, people seem healthy, educated, and well-rounded.
Humans are social animals by nature, and survive best when the pack is working together, versus against/without regard to each other.
We have many social welfare systems in place and I think almost everyone agrees that it's good to have social welfare for people who are literally unable to work. We need to have a society that's at least caring enough to take care of our own, especially those who can't work because of disabilities. There's no doubt about that, I don't think, from almost anyone. We may disagree on which organizations are best at that, though. I would argue that private enterprise is far better at, well, ANYTHING, than the government. The government has repeatedly shown it wastes most of what you give it, because they're not efficient. Private charity organizations are usually a better bet, but there is some assistance needed from the government if nothing else than to fund those charities or organizations and allow them to do the great work they do.
But people are who able to work and just can't work because they have no skills, no intelligence, and no abilities need to find a way to get an entry-level job -- which many, many people have -- and then get an education through the numerous student loan programs available and inexpensive community college. There are is vocational training and there are a lot of other options, but it's just easier to sit around and complain about it so most of these people talk about how "unfair" life is and choose to do nothing about their own situation. Doesn't get much sympathy from me. My dad grew up one of 7 kids in a family where he inherited nothing, went to two state colleges because his dad wouldn't pay for him to go anywhere else, worked since he was literally a kid picking berries, in a deep freezer at a grocery store, some of the worst jobs I can imagine to save up money. He was a millionaire by 32 and a hundred-millionaire now.
The people who say you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps just don't know anyone who has. I know it's possible -- my dad did it. He didn't make excuses, he made millions.
Your dad also grew up in a different era, though. I'm not sure how old you are but I imagine it was pre-1980s and I'm sure it was pre-2007. I don't think picking berries and working in a freezer sounds that bad actually compared to a lot of the jobs available now, that expect the Moon of you but pay practically nothing. In fact it sounds like typical summer labor, the sorts of jobs that are much harder for kids today to find. I'm sure college then was far cheaper, some people simply can't take the risk of going into debt especially since as often as not it won't improve their job opportunities one iota.
Some parts of the US might have better economies but here on the West Coast it really is STEM or bust. I took a semester of EET but I quickly found that I was not going to be able to thrive in that field as it was much different from what I expected, not to mention the teachers did not so much teach us as show off their own outdated knowledge. Not everyone has the kind of brain/personality that can thrive in a trade that is both extremely challenging and at the same time highly dull and uninteresting. Something like EET is so hard to understand and competitive that you really have to love it or else you'll never be a competent worker or be able to keep up. It's not something that most people are capable of doing IMO and even if they were, not everyone can work in STEM of course.
Some of the people who complain about their plight online are doing so because it's taboo to complain about that kind of stuff in real life in this country. We absolutely loathe "whiners" here in America, even if they are actually real victims and their complaints are simply protests against injustice and persecution.
Lastly, I think virtually everyone has skills, it's just our system locks people out of using them by employers insisting on expensive college degrees and refusing to train new workers. It's no wonder some people end up "dropping" out of life - it's not because they are selfish and horrible people who want to burden others, it is merely an act of despair.
BTW I hope we can be civil about this. I don't mean to sound like I am bashing you because I'm not.
You are confusing the country with yourself... the US has no problems "feeding" it's self, you see fairly clean streets, a fairly small percent of famished population. Most people have a roof...
no, it seems like you are imposing your own struggles upon the country when you said "we struggle to feed". I certainly don't... neither does anyone of my family and friends...
Sure there are pockets of homelessness and hunger, but you can always point that out in any country, but most countries don't have less than the US if you compare it to the same size as in population/land area
edit: but since I'm fairly "liberal" on the social issues, I don't mind paying taxes if it goes to making the streets cleanier/safer having good schools/healthcare... I just don't think "feeding" people is a role of government past making sure they get 3 loafs of bread and clean water a day. If they want more variety of food, they can earn it. But I'll feed them well enough that they are "able" bodied to work.
It's actually not about me at all. I'm pretty comfortable, I live in a nice duplex, I'm not freezing. Just leaving Portland, Oregon for a smaller city made a huge difference in my quality of life. I don't make a lot of money, but there's probably only 1 or 2 days a month when I go hungry on average. There are people who have it way worse than I do, and I'm not blind to their suffering.
If you genuinely believe everything is hunky dory and nobody in this country is actually suffering you need to seriously study the stats. It's downright sobering.
Your dad also grew up in a different era, though. I'm not sure how old you are but I imagine it was pre-1980s and I'm sure it was pre-2007. I don't think picking berries and working in a freezer sounds that bad actually compared to a lot of the jobs available now, that expect the Moon of you but pay practically nothing. In fact it sounds like typical summer labor, the sorts of jobs that are much harder for kids today to find. I'm sure college then was far cheaper, some people simply can't take the risk of going into debt especially since as often as not it won't improve their job opportunities one iota.
Some parts of the US might have better economies but here on the West Coast it really is STEM or bust. I took a semester of EET but I quickly found that I was not going to be able to thrive in that field as it was much different from what I expected, not to mention the teachers did not so much teach us as show off their own outdated knowledge. Not everyone has the kind of brain/personality that can thrive in a trade that is both extremely challenging and at the same time highly dull and uninteresting. Something like EET is so hard to understand and competitive that you really have to love it or else you'll never be a competent worker or be able to keep up. It's not something that most people are capable of doing IMO and even if they were, not everyone can work in STEM of course.
Some of the people who complain about their plight online are doing so because it's taboo to complain about that kind of stuff in real life in this country. We absolutely loathe "whiners" here in America, even if they are actually real victims and their complaints are simply protests against injustice and persecution.
Lastly, I think virtually everyone has skills, it's just our system locks people out of using them by employers insisting on expensive college degrees and refusing to train new workers. It's no wonder some people end up "dropping" out of life - it's not because they are selfish and horrible people who want to burden others, it is merely an act of despair.
BTW I hope we can be civil about this. I don't mean to sound like I am bashing you because I'm not.
I think that bolded part is what your different era boils down to. In the past, people DID do the dull/boring/uninteresting work because they knew that was their job. Today, people think they are better than that, and quit when it gets tough... Then they made their way up because they learned enough of the ins and outs of a company to manage it.
Ask any CEO if they started off working jobs they didn't like, most all of them will say yes
Oh yeah and charity is awesome and I donate quite often even though I have very little money, but it's definitely not a panacea and it's not nearly enough to fill in all the gaps. Getting rid of the safety net isn't magically going to cause charity to quadruple overnight, in fact if anything I think the legitimization of the stingy mentality would cause charity to drop. At best, it might cause charity to increase slightly due to a vastly increased need for it, but I highly doubt it would be enough. You'd see Africa-style poverty appear in America almost overnight IMO.
I'm tired of their economic positions being viewed as moderate or reasonable and not as the extremism they are. Don't they realize how much their anti-labor policies are hurting Americans? And then they have the nerve to call THEM thieves when they have to turn to welfare in order to pay the bills and eat because our laws have been re-written to redistribute wealth and power upwards.
I'm sick of them beating around the bush. They should just admit that they want the poor to either accept low pay and abusive working conditions, or starve to death. Because that's what their policies have the effect of doing.
I think that bolded part is what your different era boils down to. In the past, people DID do the dull/boring/uninteresting work because they knew that was their job. Today, people think they are better than that, and quit when it gets tough... Then they made their way up because they learned enough of the ins and outs of a company to manage it.
Ask any CEO if they started off working jobs they didn't like, most all of them will say yes
You don't realize how hard electronic engineering is though. My IQ is about 130 and I STILL don't get mesh analysis at all. I think if I had a strong interest in it, I could learn it, and I was able to grasp SOME of it, but without that it's impossible to do well. It's not that I am too arrogant or lazy to work in IT, I simply can't learn to do something that complicated well without a passion for it. My mind just doesn't work that way. It's the same reason I can memorize geographical facts like nothing but I struggle at remembering phone numbers.
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