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Years ago if you were poor, you were poor and lived that life. Now there are an incredible number of programs to raise the standard of living of poor people who make low wages into the middle class lifestyle.
Food stamps, free school lunch programs, discounted rent, public housing, earned income tax credit, reduced cost for health insurance, free health clinics, etc. etc.
When did all these things happen? Do you remember the days when if you were poor and did not make much money, you were just poor?
"America in the 1920s was a prosperous nation. Savings during the decade quadrupled.1 A “housing boom” enabled millions of Americans to own their own home. By 1924, about eleven million families were homeowners. Automobiles, electricity, radio, and mass advertising became increasingly influential in the lives of average Americans. Automobiles, once a luxury for rich Americans, now gave industrial workers and farmers much greater mobility." ....
"When Jackson took office, the national debt was about $58 million. Six years later, it was all gone. Paid off. And the government was actually running a surplus, taking in more money than it was spending. That created a new problem: What to do with all that surplus money?
During the depression, the government started borrowing money again."
_________
For every person with a complaint on poor people and their use of government funds, I wish there was job, instead of that complaint, because then there just might not be much to complain about by either person.
We've had a Henry Ford and a Bill Gates and there has always been and will always be poor people. We need another great entrepreneur to give people something else to do, besides complaining.
Yes and people were embarrassed and often ashamed if they had to rely on any kind of public assistance. They wanted to get off of it as soon as they could. Quite a difference from today.
No, today a person gets over it, because they soon realize there's no point in being embarrassed about a situation they can not change. New hiring standards kicked a lot of good people, well trained skilled people out of a job. A person can be the best trained, most skill pro in their field, but if they can not pass the personality test, they're not getting a job, no where.
Take that hiring standard plus all the layoffs this recession has seen, guess what happens ...
Society has created this mess, and now society wants what? Oh, for people to be ... ashamed, I get it. Not.
The EBT card was implemented (I use to have a real job) because the government wished to reach out to those who were 'embarrassed' and going hungry. They thought the design of the 'credit card' look alike would help get more poverty stricken into the grocery stores.
The pressures society places on people, I doubt it worked.
You know what has steadily crept down, chewing away the middle class in that time? Decently paying factory jobs for low wage workers.
The factory where my grandmother - a single mother of 4 with no child support in the 50s and 60s - was able to work in order to feed her children (still in poverty, but never in any risk of losing their home or not having food on the table) closed down when she retired in the 80s. My uncles weren't blessed with the intelligence my dad (who broke the cycle) had and started their careers at the factory only to be laid off after a few years when it closed down. They've only managed seasonal construction employment ever since because there are no factory jobs in a city that in their childhood was one of the biggest shoe producers in America. They have frequently relied on welfare and have always lived together in a 1 bedroom apartment to get by their entire adult lives. Their wages haven't increased, but their dumpy 1 bedroom has gone up $400 a month in the past 5 years.
Where do we propose that all of the people who used to make due with low-skill factory work go in the new economy? They're the types of "grown ups" you see still puttering away as a cashier in the grocery store or working at McDonalds in their 30s and 40s. Those that could retrain did. Not everyone has the intellectual capacity to keep up with the work demands of the digital age.
If you look at second world and Third World countries, you would find it's a common site that's adults in their middle-age would be working ads these dull jobs. The US is simply becoming like that
Poor people in the 50's did not have food stamps or free lunches. No one wanted to be poor so they pretended not to be poor even if they were. They worked hard and did without. They tried their darnest not to appear poor.
Big change from today when so many have their hand out for more and more even if they are not poor. It is a scam on Americans , especially the illegals who work under the table and collect every benefit they can and drive 50k trucks to get their free food.
Are you serious? My grandparents got food in the 50s from the forerunner of the food stamps program, the surplus food program. The school lunch program with free and reduced price lunches started in 1947. I'm not sure how you know that poor people didn't avail themselves of these programs in the 50s. If you were alive then (I was) you were a kid or at most a teen and not privy to everyone else's finances.
Poor people in the 50's did not have food stamps or free lunches. No one wanted to be poor so they pretended not to be poor even if they were. They worked hard and did without. They tried their darnest not to appear poor.
Big change from today when so many have their hand out for more and more even if they are not poor. It is a scam on Americans , especially the illegals who work under the table and collect every benefit they can and drive 50k trucks to get their free food.
Also, before the '60's, being on the public dole was an embarrassment to yourself and your family. People would do ANYTHING to avoid public assistance!! In today's (Orwellian) world, welfare has been changed to "entitlement" programs and shame is no longer seen as a virtue, but deemed as "hate speech" i.e., ****-shaming, fat-shaming, etc... The purpose of welfare was to care for orphans and widows, now it is deemed an entitlement to anyone who cannot get a job making $50K a year to start.
We need to go back to providing "government cheese" to those who claim to be in need.
Ben Franklin was absolutely right when he said, “I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
This thread is revisionist history -- the hard-right thinking that everyone was just fine and happy until the big bad government decided to create poor people to feed, so the gov't can control their lives.
The reality, of course, is that America has had many poor people who went hungry and the anti-poverty programs, like all government programs, is a REACTION to unwanted conditions. Government officials didn't wake up one day and decide to regulate drugs. We saw that certain drugs were hitting the market and harming people. Likewise with food regulations.
Anti-poverty measures were created because of recognition that the market does fail certain people. John Kennedy was amazed that when he campaigned in West Virginia, there were starving Americans.
The right-wing would like to ignore that these people exist or to say that government programs make their lives worse. It isn't true.
This meme is thrust upon Americans to swallow which happens to serve the interests of the wealthy conservatives that benefit from those policies. Modern conservatism uses the smoke-screen of self-reliance, individualism and character to mask policies which are self-serving, bigoted and cruel. The cadre of conservative billionaires don't want to pay higher taxes that will be used to help "those people." Thus, they invent a myth that the best way to help the poor is to NOT provide them any help at all. This way, according to them, their misery will give the poor the incentive to become educated and industrious. As I said earlier, this has never worked in all of human history.
Their objective is to keep taxes on the rich low and keep government out of their hair. But these people's numbers are small, so they need to fund propaganda groups like the Heritage Foundation to create false data and spread the message to middle-class conservatives, who are generally stupid enough to swallow their lies. Thus the pro-life conservative-leaning worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.
This thread is revisionist history -- the hard-right thinking that everyone was just fine and happy until the big bad government decided to create poor people to feed, so the gov't can control their lives.
The reality, of course, is that America has had many poor people who went hungry and the anti-poverty programs, like all government programs, is a REACTION to unwanted conditions. Government officials didn't wake up one day and decide to regulate drugs. We saw that certain drugs were hitting the market and harming people. Likewise with food regulations.
Anti-poverty measures were created because of recognition that the market does fail certain people. John Kennedy was amazed that when he campaigned in West Virginia, there were starving Americans.
The right-wing would like to ignore that these people exist or to say that government programs make their lives worse. It isn't true.
This meme is thrust upon Americans to swallow which happens to serve the interests of the wealthy conservatives that benefit from those policies. Modern conservatism uses the smoke-screen of self-reliance, individualism and character to mask policies which are self-serving, bigoted and cruel. The cadre of conservative billionaires don't want to pay higher taxes that will be used to help "those people." Thus, they invent a myth that the best way to help the poor is to NOT provide them any help at all. This way, according to them, their misery will give the poor the incentive to become educated and industrious. As I said earlier, this has never worked in all of human history.
Their objective is to keep taxes on the rich low and keep government out of their hair. But these people's numbers are small, so they need to fund propaganda groups like the Heritage Foundation to create false data and spread the message to middle-class conservatives, who are generally stupid enough to swallow their lies. Thus the pro-life conservative-leaning worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.
if the goal of welfare is to help people through a difficult time, it hasn't worked either.
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