Wisconsin Residents In Poverty!!!

[BarbJS]

Originally Posted by Dea13

I've lived in Wisconsin my entire life. I believe the taxes are too high. I'm really confused by the 'good schools' posts. I guess it depends where you are. Milwaukee and Racine county public schools IMO are not good schools. Test scores at some schools are good but not overall.

I love Wisconsin but it's not right to live with blinders on and ignore the issues the state has. Taxes are high. Many school districts need an overhaul. Air quality (at least in the non-attainment SE) needs to be improved. Alcoholism needs to be addressed. We have our problems just like every other state. Pretending problems don't exist doesn't make them go away. There is no utopia. Each person picks what they can live with or without. Compromise is part of life.

Don't like the politicians - then vote! Get involved instead of complaining. Don't leave things for the next guy to fix. That's my 2 cents worth.

Dea

There are good schools and not so good schools wherever you are. I think Elk Mound Schools are exceptional as are the Plum City Schools. The teacher to pupil rate is small and most parents are very active with the sports as well as helping in the classrooms and the comprehensive test scores seem to reflect that. I am sure that may change with budget cuts and other political interference. And of course some of the smaller private schools are usually on top of the academic scales. Those run by churches and then there are people who home school and do quite nicely. I think WE ALL need to realize that the children are our futures....that is a fact no one can control. If we as a community pull together and give them the best education both inside the classroom and in the classroom of life then we have as least attempted to fulfill our duties....My opinion only of course!!

[country pride]

Heck I think its that way everywhere, you should see the stats for the western region of the US...yikes!

[DelawarePackerFan]

Though this thread spanned a couple years, it made some interesting points. I grew up in the Milwaukee area and have lived many other places in 5 other states since. I think the "high" Wisconsin property taxes really apply to Milwaukee county more than the rest of the state. I've seen what my parents pay for their place in Waukesha County and its pretty comparable or lower than they'd be paying on the same house in the DC area. And Wisconsin income and sales taxes are lower than Maryland and DC.
When picking an area, you need to look at the total cost of living, ie housing, utility, food costs, and taxes. When you look at all that, Milwaukee probably ends up somewhere in the middle of the pack for US cities. Its way cheaper to live there than NY, NJ, DC, VA, MD, eastern PA, MA, CA, WA, etc, but more expensive than the south and western parts of the midwest. There's a lot of reasons for this which I won't get into other than to note that high incomes don't totally correlate with high living costs and "open shop" states generally have lower living costs.

Now somebody in the forum mentioned that Wisconsin has a lot of jobs. This couldn't be further from the truth. Places with lots of jobs don't have brain drains. Maybe there's a lot of low skill jobs or something (I doubt it given the inner city unemployment rate), but I can say of the roughly a dozen guys I went to highschool with who are now engineers, not one works in Wisconsin (though a few work in northern Illinois). So at least for engineering, employment isn't so good. They do seem to have a lot of financial firms though for a city that doesn't ever get mentioned for that kind of thing and many of my hs classmates managed to get jobs in that sector in WI (after finishing college of course).

All told, I'd go back to Milwaukee some day. Other than the winter the weather is good, the people are down to earth, the housing is decently priced, and there's lots of festivals and other attractions as well as good restaurants and shopping. It isn't the cheapest place in the world to live, but most of the places that are cheaper don't have as much to offer.

[geekduo]

Now somebody in the forum mentioned that Wisconsin has a lot of jobs. This couldn't be further from the truth. Places with lots of jobs don't have brain drains. Maybe there's a lot of low skill jobs or something (I doubt it given the inner city unemployment rate), but I can say of the roughly a dozen guys I went to highschool with who are now engineers, not one works in Wisconsin (though a few work in northern Illinois). So at least for engineering, employment isn't so good. They do seem to have a lot of financial firms though for a city that doesn't ever get mentioned for that kind of thing and many of my hs classmates managed to get jobs in that sector in WI (after finishing college of course).

I couldn't agree more. My husband is a mid/senior-level DBA and I am a mid-level engineer. We're both native cheeseheads who came back last year because of how much we love the state. My hubby had a job and I started looking soon after we settled in. Since then my hubbies job has fizzled and I haven't been able to find anything in my field at all. We are looking at moving again and unfortunately, it will probably be out of state again. There just aren't enough jobs here for those that want to use their education!

[erasure]

Originally Posted by JustT&Me

Let's offer a little courtesy here... I'm guessing that rwrobo might not know that typing with *all caps* is considered as yelling online. I don't know, but just a guess, esp. since it is their *very first post*! (Welcome to CD, Robo!)

Second... it *is* more difficult reading the post that way and makes it more difficult to recognize the punctuation.

I think if either rwrobo would like to retype it in regular font (not caps) or if ppl will try reading it again... you *will* find that rwrobo does have some good points to make and some very agreeable ones.

There *are* way too many handouts in SE WI. I had some customers once in the "inner city" area and upon delivering some product to them one day was handed at least two checks written by other individuals acting as their "sponsors." They were not "challenged" in any way (physically, mentally, etc.) and were simply sitting there - a group of about 5 women in their early 20s, all healthy, capable women. It was unusual to me the number of children with them at home that day, and I asked them if there was a school holiday. I was told that there wasn't, and that they were keeping them at home, "to cook them pizza!" (I kid you not.)

They must have read some surprised look on my face, and they begin to explain, "Why should we go to work when we can make more staying home having babies!" Furthermore, "There are always 'rich women' out there looking for some 'cause', and we don't mind being it!" (Laughter). All these women were well-dressed, had their hair obviously styled, and their nails ornately decorated.

I asked if the schools ever called on the kids, and they laughed again saying, "H*** yeah! But we just write them a note..." to which they all chimed in "Yeah - yeah - yeah -" and that "the school didn't care if they were there or not,..." then concluded... in summary, "... but we do! Who else is going to make us lunch?!" Then they repeated to their children, "You heard us! Now go make your Momma some pizza!"

I will never forget that day. And it both saddens and amazes me immensely that these young, obviously intelligent women had sold their lives so soon, so fast, and for so little. I have always wondered how any of their children have actually turned out, and if any of these women ever "wised up" long enough to realize all that they are *truly* missing in life... with no greater purpose than to stay home and make the most of what they had called, "easy money."

I am guessing that somewhere along the line... it wasn't "easy money" for *someone*, and perhaps someday they will have come to appreciate others in life and not take what they have been given ... for granted.

Enjoy your pension - rwrobo. Sounds like you *worked* for it. Congratulations.

And *no* thumbs down to either of the previous posters... my aim was only to provide a positive perspective in support of the opinions posted by rwrobo even though the font was somewhat "Western Union" like. So, we all give each other a little leeway... and the next time rwrobo submits a post, maybe s/he will remember to unlock the caps key on their keyboard.

"Too many handouts in SE Wisconsin?"
Really?
Then how do you explain THIS?
( This is from the article "Don't look to Wisconsin as model for welfare reforms.")
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=7

"According to Hudson, those who didn't convert were people most likely to have serious obstacles to working, such as a disability or health problem, people with disabled children and people with no high school education or GED.
What happened to those thousands of single mothers with small children? Some of them became homeless. According to the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin, a landlord organization, the number of forcible evictions in Milwaukee County increased from 700 a year before W2 to well over 2,000 today. All the homeless shelters in the county are full to overflowing, with the increase primarily among women. In addition, the numbers of children taken into the foster-care program has skyrocketed.
Remember that this all took place during a time of economic expansion and low unemployment, and the only major socio-economic factor that had changed was the introduction of W2.
What about those who did find jobs?
Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development, which oversees W2, did its own study of women who had left either AFDC or W2 in the first quarter of 1998. This study found that 38 percent of the women surveyed were not working six months after leaving the welfare system. Of those with jobs, 42 percent worked fewer than 40 hours per week and 19 percent worked fewer than 30 hours. The average hourly wage was $7.42, and the median was only $7. Sixty-eight percent reported they were "just barely making it from day to day," and many of the new jobs are through temporary employment agencies."


So whatever the reasons are for poverty in Wisconsin - they are obviously not the "handouts" that the quoted poster is trying to pass for a fact.
Yes, in spite of all the good points of Wisconsin (local people is one of them,) Wisconsin IS poor, predominantly white state.
I could see the difference right away moving from such wealthy, as well predominantly white state as Washington. ( On another hand I must admit that by the time I was moving out of Washington, it was already not a state that it once was, with Seattle voted as the "most liveable city in US" for middle class. With takeover by Californians who moved there in droves, the real estate skyrocketed overnight, the big division between rich and poor took place after that, and it became yet another "inner- city- suburban- living" kind of a place in US. I guess the trend of deep division between the rich and the poor is quite common now throughout the country, so Wisconsin can't be an exception all that much.

[SIZE=2][/SIZE]