The War On Poverty

[HenryBHough]

I would teach people to fish.

Yeah.

And have Greenpeace all over you like flies over shit for molesting those finned friends and, worse, encouraging others to do it too.

Then all those friends will get busted for not having licenses.

But government is your friend and wants everyone to have plenty to eat. Provided, of course, it comes from a government handout and the recipient is properly respectful when next at a polling place.

Hi Henry
Since I meant figuratively not literally,
I will try to read your reply msg that way as well.

the equivalent of your objection would be
* opposition by people who want to control the issue of currency
or who oppose capitalism and money altogether and protest it on its face
* and support by people who want to control handouts for political favor.

1. for opposition by the federal govt or people who support federal reserve notes only
the notes are legal as long as you follow certain rules so there is no conflict with licensing
2. for people who opposing capitalism like you point out those who opposing killing fish
most of those people are okay with cooperative economics and self-managed labor
most do not see this form of money as exploiting or oppressive so they tend not to object
3. it takes TOO MUCH WORK to be any kind of handout for political favor
so even the people who support it have difficulty enacting it

Does this answer the same points that you were making
using the literal example of fishing and opposition by animal rights environmentalists
or pro government regulation by licensing?

Does it address the issue of govt handouts and political exploitation not applying?

If there is any political empowerment of one group over any other it is a definitely
a push for cooperative and sustainable economic development and independence
from either excessive govt or corporate control. So yes, you may see opposition from that.

Cute but, since it won't fit on a bumper strip, most of it will be ignored by 90% of those who start to read it.

 

[emilynghiem]

Yeah.

And have Greenpeace all over you like flies over shit for molesting those finned friends and, worse, encouraging others to do it too.

Then all those friends will get busted for not having licenses.

But government is your friend and wants everyone to have plenty to eat. Provided, of course, it comes from a government handout and the recipient is properly respectful when next at a polling place.

Hi Henry
Since I meant figuratively not literally,
I will try to read your reply msg that way as well.

the equivalent of your objection would be
* opposition by people who want to control the issue of currency
or who oppose capitalism and money altogether and protest it on its face
* and support by people who want to control handouts for political favor.

1. for opposition by the federal govt or people who support federal reserve notes only
the notes are legal as long as you follow certain rules so there is no conflict with licensing
2. for people who opposing capitalism like you point out those who opposing killing fish
most of those people are okay with cooperative economics and self-managed labor
most do not see this form of money as exploiting or oppressive so they tend not to object
3. it takes TOO MUCH WORK to be any kind of handout for political favor
so even the people who support it have difficulty enacting it

Does this answer the same points that you were making
using the literal example of fishing and opposition by animal rights environmentalists
or pro government regulation by licensing?

Does it address the issue of govt handouts and political exploitation not applying?

If there is any political empowerment of one group over any other it is a definitely
a push for cooperative and sustainable economic development and independence
from either excessive govt or corporate control. So yes, you may see opposition from that.

Cute but, since it won't fit on a bumper strip, most of it will be ignored by 90% of those who start to read it.

Yes and that is why we are spending
6 billion re-electing people like Obama to office whose name fits on a bumper sticker

while no money is going into actual solutions that don't

 

[BillyZane]

My point is that absent a good-faith effort to define poverty, these anecdotal "studies" constitute an intentional diversion away from any real discussion about poverty into thinly veiled racial and class stereotypes.

Browsing through some of the posts of page 2 I see I have stumbled upon the grain of salt (who would have guessed it was in "The Clean Debate Zone!").

The Heritage foundation is the political implementing tool of Koch brothers who ran in 1980 as a Libertarian Candidate. Their primary task was running to remove social security, public schools and other government sponsored activity. These ideals do not go away. It takes little effort to take statistics out of context and with such overt views to stamp out the poor (or at least any assistance, sounds feudal), I would imagine this Heritage provides carefully chosen statistics for the audience of the regular conservative out there.

The trouble is no one has offered a satisfactory definition on poverty. The attempt to offer a wide ranging definintion of spiritual, financial etc was helpful.

That's because poverty is variable. To define poverty according to minimal nutrition standards may have been appropriate back in agrarian times. That died out by 1900 in America with farming becoming mostly mechanized and completely industrialized. That's why my family can watch satellite TV, use a washing machine and dryer!, drive a car (on loan of course resulting in major debt) and possess a full wardrobe in the closet (also resulting in several credit cards with 29+% interest). Also! we own a fridge and microwave! And despite all these things we are still working class and in poverty.

Defining poverty based on what one has is naive. Any and all things (modern appliances etc) can be found in dumpsters (in working order) as well as good food. We wouldn't consider the person with the industrial-ness to gather all these appliances as a sign he has lept out of poverty would we?

A quick way to define poverty is living paycheck to paycheck (or at least two checks away from financial ruin). This is a lot closer than you may think because debt among consumers has risen since the 1980s just as the wild income disparity between the top 1 and bottom 80 has increased. However, living paycheck to paycheck assumes you have paychecks coming in and so misses much of poverty. In a capitalist economy though, I'd think this is the definition they like best since everyone else is considered worthless homeless trash.

I still think this fails to take into account the full nature of poverty: by failing to account for the future of a person/family. In other words a more accurate view of poverty would include one's potential and their ability to access that potential. Many Americans, living in America's heartland are unequipped to truly earn their way out of rural poverty without at least spending their whole life toiling in a job they likely come to despise just so their children can go to college and perhaps leave the ranks of poverty (and perhaps spoil it by studying liberal arts education over careerism)

That's because a good definition of poverty would include the fact that there is mad amounts of generational and chronic poverty. In other words, poverty that is built into the system by the fact that capitalism promotes wealth concentration and prevents the ability to solve this sort of poverty.

That's why there is a New American Dream: appearing rich by having all manner of stuff bought on credit. Too bad appearances are inadequate because 4 million homes were foreclosed on, displacing millions: foisting people into poverty and homelessness or couch sufring with friends and family. Metlife Study of the American Dream, released in 2011 notes we still believe in hard work as the key to success but “Americans no longer seek to become wealthy; rather, they want to achieve a sense of financial security that allows them to live a sustainable lifestyle.”

The debt burden of families earning minimum wage has steadily risen alongside income inequality from 68% of total household income in 1980 to 97.4% in 2000. Today it is extreme with the median household debt of $75,000, far above average annual incomes in impoverished counties like mine of $33,000/yr. And people are required to pay debt back or life gets tricky with wage garnishment etc.. Sadly for every 1 spent on the principle of the loan, between 2 and 3 dollars are additionally paid in other fees and interest! That would mean the average person in my county is in poverty with over 100% of their annual income as debt.

That's why I think it's important we realize capitalism leads to this exact scenario. That's why poverty is a moot point and no one can reason with it. It is a fact and facet of capitalism and until we can move beyond this narrow perspective that capitalism is the final solution, we will never be able to address the real issues of poverty: the state, period.

okay let's clarify something here.

If you are watching DirecTV on a flat screen tv, while wearing the newest fashions while waiting to drive your new car out to eat but are two paychecks away from financial ruin. You aren't in poverty, you're a moron who is living beyond his/her means. I mean seriously.

Poverty is NOT relative. Being poor might be relative, but poverty is not. A single person making $14K a year is not living it up with all the newest and greatest, however , a single person could very well be making $25K a year and still be living paycheck to paycheck because they are stupid.

I have sympathy for the former and nothing but contempt for the latter.

 

[gnarlylove]

the main points to make any system work, regardless of identity, is to make sure there is due process and representation of interests within the group so any grievances are redressed, conflicts are resolved for the mutual good of the individual and the whole, and there is no unchecked abuse of collective authority to oppress or exploit individuals.

once you educate and train people on the democratic process, this can be applied in any system of any affiliation and make it work as long as the people choose to participate.

yep yep! love it!

the matter of a new class of takers is simply moot. the whole point is not to rigidly enforce a system that can never work in all instances. our current political environment is one where one is required to boast and bloviate. Ted Kaufman got the hell out of politics after 2 years because he was about the only individual that did not take corporate backing. He described it as maddening. So if you aren't using your leverage, then you are almost kicked out. Fucking nuts but this only goes to show how serious the takers are about taking. This idea is so heavily ingrained in us that we don't even believe we can achieve an entirely free way of living. Then it seems to be a matter of outlook: hopefully or dreary. I know the next 200 years won't see the end of this system, but god I've got hope for us!

Those of us who seek liberty know that true liberty is taught to each individual and each individual either understands it or doesn't. If they don't they continue seeking material gain that has no lasting value, aiding to solidify the social strata. If they agree liberty is a condition they wish to live in, we have got to totally end state sponsored anything (whether in a local community or as a continent/land mass.). Once the burdensome hierarchy is ripped asunder, there will be no takers or by definition they are not living in liberty: they have resumed some elitist, exclusive approach to distribution and that simply won't cut it. The next society is encapsulated in the ideas of the current one. If we neglect to arouse interest to an obviously better way of life for the majority, then we will never achieve our vision of liberty and hence it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do we want liberty? Yes. Then let's not sell ourselves short because of the inability to find hope. Hope is real and can be found by looking within yourself, there you can discover the way the world is before time and space--see verse 21 of the Tao Te Ching.

designing notes to raise funds in a bank to lend out to finance jobs in restoring environmental sites or species, anything from cleaning up a historic cemetery to make a community park or garden, or restoring a local river or cleaning up pollution in seas or oceans to save wildlife.

I like this idea and it is quite feasible. If corporate responsibility is at all on the agenda of banks and other large firms, they should be willing to consider financially supporting the wildlife they destroy by "business as usual." I've heard of the Lewis/Louis Pound as a local currency that has really taken off. Perhaps seeing how it flourished would help.

As for the rest, I think you might be more advanced on this issue then I can understand. I am not very aware of issues in Sweden or Europe for that matter. I am all for uniting in a very real way but suspect I lack mobility and understanding. In other words, unprepared...I guess message me more info if you wish to continue this conversation.

As for the consensus idea, I like it part and parcel. It would be fairly easy to weigh in as a nation or whole state on issues by voting on a phone or some device. It also promotes feasible progress out of our current money politics.

The problem we run into is that the average voter or dare I say 99% of voters have misinformation regarding their candidates. It's a question of how much misinformation. S relying on consensus needs the extra step of riding the media of propaganda so people have the freedom to make up their minds instead of millions in research on how to target that audience and manipulate them by deception.

Are you proposing conflict resolution groups that combat this sort of propaganda that is rampant in media?

I like your approach though, it has a feasibility that could be implemented nationwide today that I perhaps lack. Though when we all sit down at the campfire: we want very few things: unconditional love, regular food, restful sleep w/o alarm, and the freedom to live our life by our own means. Let me chop the wood when I want, don't tell me when I should do it and everyone can get what needs to be done, as long as they agree it needs doing, to support the commune without feeling like anyone's freedom has been coerced. Extrapolate nationally and you've got some whole other beast. Perhaps "nation-states" have no business in the 23rd century, I hope!

I agree terms distract from discussion of our freedom, much of the time.

 

[gnarlylove]

If you are watching DirecTV on a flat screen tv, while wearing the newest fashions while waiting to drive your new car out to eat but are two paychecks away from financial ruin. You aren't in poverty, you're a moron who is living beyond his/her means. I mean seriously.

I mean seriously, what gives you the right to think these people are moronic when from day one they are told to live this way. TV is filled with ideas of lavish spending and unending fame. Those who possess all those items can be two paychecks away from ruin and not know it.

Have you ever heard of debt? If the main income earner looses their job and fails to jump the hoops or feels small by relying on the government, they are going to face harsh realities that banks are not friendly. They demand you pay them and will harass you even after death (many cases exist which show credit companies calling even while knowing the person was dead in order to collect from relatives). Debt is a great way to take from those who do not have much spending power--a scheme to further enslave many folks, like everyone I know.

If these people stopped getting credit, the financial industry looses its best customer: the perpetual minimum payment-er. Those are the people that pay 3 or more dollars of interest for every dollar of principle. That's some major bucks for the industry, and you call them morons. I don't think rich people see it that way.

XXXXXXX

While I agree with you these people are living beyond their means, no one is going to tell them that because that sucks money from our precious economy. Everyone urges consumers to spend and to own that latest car or lease it. The rich don't participate in consuming products. Their wealth goes to investment and property/assets, not consumer goods.

So much money is pumped into advertising that tells us one thing: "you are lacking something and you will feel better if you have it. Go get it now. It's cheap and a great deal." When this has been ingrained since the 60s or even 20s, its a lot harder to say "wake up stupid" because this is the essence of the economy: buying consumer goods but as of late more and more people don't make enough to buy what they need/want and hence go into debt. Hell, all credit card companies encourage you to use credit with cash back incentives. The reason they do this is because it will cause some people to get fucked up and unable to pay, deciding between credit card bill or baby food.

The normal person isn't taught critical thinking skills to deny this emotional response to live beyond their means. How is it their fault that they are encouraged daily to live beyond their means when lenders say "just sign," as was evident in over 60% of cases in the mortgage crisis. Maybe these people are not morons so much as the backbone of the capitalist economy but no one values them as such, whether poor or impoverished.

 

[emilynghiem]

okay let's clarify something here.

If you are watching DirecTV on a flat screen tv, while wearing the newest fashions while waiting to drive your new car out to eat but are two paychecks away from financial ruin. You aren't in poverty, you're a moron who is living beyond his/her means. I mean seriously.

Poverty is NOT relative. Being poor might be relative, but poverty is not. A single person making $14K a year is not living it up with all the newest and greatest, however , a single person could very well be making $25K a year and still be living paycheck to paycheck because they are stupid.

I have sympathy for the former and nothing but contempt for the latter.

OK so maybe we need more categories besides emotional/spiritual poverty and political poverty in addition to financial poverty.

Clearly there is intellectual poverty. And social poverty or lack of strong personal relations.

Even if you have major wealth and no financial poverty,
if you are low on intellect, then yes, the "poverty in intelligence, experience or knowledge" could cost you your excess of wealth where you might as well be poor!

[same reason that people with fewer resources but great knowledge and agility in how to use systems or other people can still manage to invest that money to accumulate wealth.]

the different areas remind me of Maslow's Pyramid

but some people need to start with physical needs and put the social/spiritual needs last.

what I find is if people have the spiritual and social needs met, the other areas follow.

So I tend to emphasize the stability on the spiritual level and with relations with family and others as the first step to resolving problems with "poverty" or gaps/debts on other levels.

I believe once you get the inner and inter personal relations straight (ie spiritual balance and harmony), the rest can be organized, where physical resources flow in harmony between people to end social imbalance disparity or poverty on the external level as a result. I think of getting the spirit and vision first, then the words and information follows, and then physical reality can follow and build from sharing these ideas to put into action.

 

[midcan5]

There was no real war on poverty. The period in which Johnson's policies had any impact only lasted a few years before republican reps and presidents started whittling it down to nothing. During the few years it operated it did great good. The idea that possessing a few material items makes one middle class is comical, anyone who exists in the real world knows life is more than a fancy TV and that the cost to do things in America far exceeds TV and even AC. Apologetics for inequality are a right wing corporate sponsored exercise in theater for the believers.

The War on Poverty Hasn't Fully Succeeded Because It's Never Fully Funded - Carrie Wofford (usnews.com)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/on-fighting-the-last-war-on-poverty/

"...Self-discipline has not been seen as a great virtue by citizens of the West over the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was popularly assumed to be a preference of the Right, and this misapprehension remains in the political debate. But nothing could be less disciplined than the New Right, with its romantic mythologizing of freedom, equality and individualism in order to obscure such practical policies as the legalization of dishonest speculation through financial deregulation. The New Right is even more undisciplined than the liberal middle classes, which have redefined personal freedom as the privilege not to give of themselves when it comes to protecting or advancing the public good. Throughout the West they have gradually withdrawn from public life, claiming that politics is too damaging to their private lives. These lives tend now to be devoted to careerism, travel, holidays, sport, exercise and the caressing of a private state of mind which might be described as an obsession with their personal well-being. For both the New Right and the middle-class liberals, individualism has come to mean self-indulgence.... Such a childlike approach to the role of the citizen has allowed them to invert logic in a remarkable way. The public servant - police officer, soldier, tax collector, health authority - who is paid by the citizen, now becomes the enemy of the citizen. This transformation is, in part, the result of individuals feeling that they have lost control of the public mechanism. But what is self-discipline in public life if not working to ensure that one's beliefs have some effect? The tendency among Western elites is rather to evade paying taxes wherever legally possible and to pay the remainder resentfully, taking government services for granted, while grumbling about them and looking upon public servants and public services as money and time wasters. Thus our elites sink into precisely that childish, irresponsible mold which a technocratic society assumes is the real character of every citizen in a democracy." p337 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

 

[gnarlylove]

midcan, that's the most accurate and revealing description of America I've read. Perhaps I haven't stumbled upon others because like Saul points out, we have retreated from the public good.

And here I was formulating an idea that is by no means new regarding how material/physcial desires control or or the criteria by which most actions are made by my parents, relatives, indeed most of Americans. I thought what a tragedy that I live in the Bible Belt with Christianity having such an influence on my family and community. Yet they are the fattest people in America (Huntington, WV) with the most fast food restaurants and are the quickest to point fingers for not working yet they themselves are on average making less than 30,000/year. Their self-indulgence is not good for their soul or body yet they are so thickheaded they are incapable of perceiving the fact that what you eat, how you live your life, and how you think (negative or positive) influences your well-being. So while in one sense all that matters if their welll-being, they are fooled by modern capitalism that the solution is more stuff rather than an examination of what ails one. It's so fucked up given all the Bible really teaches (and I've read it thrice) is concern yourself with Christ who constantly taught to look after the poor and challenged authority commonly.

 

[Listening]

There was no real war on poverty. The period in which Johnson's policies had any impact only lasted a few years before republican reps and presidents started whittling it down to nothing. During the few years it operated it did great good. The idea that possessing a few material items makes one middle class is comical, anyone who exists in the real world knows life is more than a fancy TV and that the cost to do things in America far exceeds TV and even AC. Apologetics for inequality are a right wing corporate sponsored exercise in theater for the believers.

The War on Poverty Hasn't Fully Succeeded Because It's Never Fully Funded - Carrie Wofford (usnews.com)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/on-fighting-the-last-war-on-poverty/

"...Self-discipline has not been seen as a great virtue by citizens of the West over the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was popularly assumed to be a preference of the Right, and this misapprehension remains in the political debate. But nothing could be less disciplined than the New Right, with its romantic mythologizing of freedom, equality and individualism in order to obscure such practical policies as the legalization of dishonest speculation through financial deregulation. The New Right is even more undisciplined than the liberal middle classes, which have redefined personal freedom as the privilege not to give of themselves when it comes to protecting or advancing the public good. Throughout the West they have gradually withdrawn from public life, claiming that politics is too damaging to their private lives. These lives tend now to be devoted to careerism, travel, holidays, sport, exercise and the caressing of a private state of mind which might be described as an obsession with their personal well-being. For both the New Right and the middle-class liberals, individualism has come to mean self-indulgence.... Such a childlike approach to the role of the citizen has allowed them to invert logic in a remarkable way. The public servant - police officer, soldier, tax collector, health authority - who is paid by the citizen, now becomes the enemy of the citizen. This transformation is, in part, the result of individuals feeling that they have lost control of the public mechanism. But what is self-discipline in public life if not working to ensure that one's beliefs have some effect? The tendency among Western elites is rather to evade paying taxes wherever legally possible and to pay the remainder resentfully, taking government services for granted, while grumbling about them and looking upon public servants and public services as money and time wasters. Thus our elites sink into precisely that childish, irresponsible mold which a technocratic society assumes is the real character of every citizen in a democracy." p337 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

1. Please prove that it did some good when it first started. Please don't appeal to the chart showing the downward slope in poverty as that slope started downward long before Johnson got this brainfart.

2. You've lost sight of the argument when you say that people are equating material goods with the middle class. The question was asked....if people in poverty (or so called poverty) can afford these things then how are they so bad off. If they are in poverty, why are we calling it that ?

Quoting Paul Krugman in the clean debate zone is getting close to the edge. It is nothing (and I mean NOTHING) but an opinion piece. It does nothing to support your point of view with facts and figures. I frankly, detest P.K. and anytime a post is put forth with his name attached....I'll be hard pressed to read it.

 

[Listening]

midcan, that's the most accurate and revealing description of America I've read. Perhaps I haven't stumbled upon others because like Saul points out, we have retreated from the public good.

And here I was formulating an idea that is by no means new regarding how material/physcial desires control or or the criteria by which most actions are made by my parents, relatives, indeed most of Americans. I thought what a tragedy that I live in the Bible Belt with Christianity having such an influence on my family and community. Yet they are the fattest people in America (Huntington, WV) with the most fast food restaurants and are the quickest to point fingers for not working yet they themselves are on average making less than 30,000/year. Their self-indulgence is not good for their soul or body yet they are so thickheaded they are incapable of perceiving the fact that what you eat, how you live your life, and how you think (negative or positive) influences your well-being. So while in one sense all that matters if their well-being, they are fooled by modern capitalism that the solution is more stuff rather than an examination of what ails one. It's so fucked up given all the Bible really teaches (and I've read it thrice) is concern yourself with Christ who constantly taught to look after the poor and challenged authority commonly.

I would dispute your claim. There are very few things that can be universally said about America and the American people. That is what makes it America.

I don't get the 30K who point fingers at others who don't work. If they are working (fat or not), they are working. True ?

Modern capitalism has no conscience. It has no soul. Only people do. If they are stupid enough to be taken in by our commercialistic society that is just to bad.

 

[gnarlylove]

No one is strictly a freeloader or strictly a worker. We all walk the line between leisure and work. The American work ethic is a sham and if you read a history of this ethic you can easily notice it gives rise to illness (see neurasthenia). I Recommend "Doing Nothing" by Tom Lutz. Menial labor is degrading and anyone who chooses not to demean themselves have the right. But in America this is no choice because not working is choosing to go hungry but no sane person should have to decide between dignity and food.

I'm not saying all jobs are demeaning. It's mainly the industrial monotonous jobs, fast food jobs, etc that pay poorly in the first place and provide little to no satisfaction for the worker but mind-numbing labor.

We are all humans and all deserve shelter and a right to nourishing food. We shouldn't have to rent our bodies/time/labor for survival/basic needs.

I don't see why it's so hard to understand people who mock the non-worker--indeed poverty is harsh for all who experience it--you are doing it by scourging the "freeloader." What gives you the right to consider anyone, freeloader or not, worth harming emotionally so we can feel better about our staunch and immovable work ethic? Even if a person could be 100% freeloading, in capitalism, excess is overflowing in certain regions and so if a person survives by this excess alone, why think his success of survival is any less worthwhile as long as he survives without harming other people in the process? Indeed, he may have insight to work that some of us might find extremely valuable but cannot perceive because of barriers.

Oscar Wilde wrote,

I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

From "The Soul of Man under Socialism" referring to the prevailing attitudes of yester-century which also happens to be sprightly in our present day. For Wilde human labor is pleasurable almost exclusively under the condition of our own freedom. The pleasure of any activity is vapid once constrained or coerced by money or a boss, yet we deny this daily resulting in mental anguish and disease.

 

[S.J.]

Most people fall on hard times occasionally. The difference between workers and freeloaders is that workers freeload only when they have to, and freeloaders work only when they have to.

 

[gallantwarrior]

No one is strictly a freeloader or strictly a worker. We all walk the line between leisure and work. The American work ethic is a sham and if you read a history of this ethic you can easily notice it gives rise to illness (see neurasthenia). I Recommend "Doing Nothing" by Tom Lutz. Menial labor is degrading and anyone who chooses not to demean themselves have the right. But in America this is no choice because not working is choosing to go hungry but no sane person should have to decide between dignity and food.

I'm not saying all jobs are demeaning. It's mainly the industrial monotonous jobs, fast food jobs, etc that pay poorly in the first place and provide little to no satisfaction for the worker but mind-numbing labor.

We are all humans and all deserve shelter and a right to nourishing food. We shouldn't have to rent our bodies/time/labor for survival/basic needs.

I don't see why it's so hard to understand people who mock the non-worker--indeed poverty is harsh for all who experience it--you are doing it by scourging the "freeloader." What gives you the right to consider anyone, freeloader or not, worth harming emotionally so we can feel better about our staunch and immovable work ethic? Even if a person could be 100% freeloading, in capitalism, excess is overflowing in certain regions and so if a person survives by this excess alone, why think his success of survival is any less worthwhile as long as he survives without harming other people in the process? Indeed, he may have insight to work that some of us might find extremely valuable but cannot perceive because of barriers.

Oscar Wilde wrote,

I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

From "The Soul of Man under Socialism" referring to the prevailing attitudes of yester-century which also happens to be sprightly in our present day. For Wilde human labor is pleasurable almost exclusively under the condition of our own freedom. The pleasure of any activity is vapid once constrained or coerced by money or a boss, yet we deny this daily resulting in mental anguish and disease.

We all deserve what we earn. No one else owes you shelter and "nourishing" food. You want those things, you earn them doing what you need to to get them. What we have lost in this country is the sense of shame that would make robbing someone else of their labor demeaning. The shame of expecting everyone else to sweat and sacrifice so you don't have to deman yourself by earning your keep is what's missing. If digging ditches or flipping burgers Are the only jobs available to you, you better get to work if you want shelter and food. Nobody, nobody, should have to work so you can sit on your ass, just because you would demean yourself.

 

[editec]

If one has no choice but to live paycheck to paycheck?

One is poor.

 

[gnarlylove]

We all deserve what we earn.

Have you earned everything you have ever used/done/looked at or did you rely on your parents to raise you? I get it, your birthright into a middle class family allowed you to receive the necessary nutrition so your brain and development was not stunted. 1 in 7 children in America experience hunger insecurity which can contribute to improper development as a child which is crucial for adult decision making.

I guess we should dismiss the fact that some people are less equipped to survive due to tramua, hunger, and lack of medical care as children.

I assume by your language you never had to go hungry and so have retained your privileged attitude. I am impressed you have earned everything you have received in your life. No one else has done that. Everyone else depends on a complex global network of people to produce their goods and services. How do you explain those who never worked but were born into wealth. They didn't earn it themselves but they can buy what they need and much more. How does that fit into your earning scheme?

As for my view, I don't mean that you owe a happy meal to anyone. That is obviously an easy strawman to knock down. I know it revolts you to give up your money in taxes, let alone to feed a starving person. Food was around long before money and "quarterly earnings." What I mean is everyone has the right to food by virtue of their existence. TO deny food is to deny life. Go ahead an advocate the killing of hungry people who are struggling in the welfare state that is suppose to take care of their basic needs. As a nation with a welfare state, we believe that people need help in a system that is undeniably set up for wealth to accumulate among those who already have capital. Without capital you cannot make capital. American policy does not agree with you that you can take a human being out of his/her context and say what did you earn today? If they say "I have earned nothing today", it sounds like you advocate they need to try again.

There are several problems with that approach: They need a shower otherwise no job will hire them but since they didn't earn a shower they should not be allowed a shower--sounds pretty counterintuitive for encouraging work. Additionally, as they go hungry or eat nutrionless food, which leads to illness, they are significantly distracted by their hunger/illness from being able to get a job. According to you though, we should only give them the chance to eat the foods you when they earn it--which is a vicious cycle that many people were born into and will never get out of.

Don't forget, in America there is 1 job for roughly 3 Americans. What if all the bums and homeless and poor decided to be hired and earn their way. They couldn't because jobs are not even available. Yet somehow that's there fault.

Few positions exist and the one's that do are commonly low wage jobs that literally do not earn enough to support a modern American lifestyle or a family. However, if you cannot live this way it looks like you'd continue to spit on them for their lack of earning.

What you advocate makes no sense if you want those people out of poverty. They simply cannot get out of poverty because there is not enough work available. But you know what, there is enough food for the whole planet to eat 2,700 kilo calories yet this food is not distributed because someone didn't "earn it". I guess it makes sense that those folks should suffer and starve because they are not a white American male born into a middle/upper class life where food was never an issue.

I wholly disagree with you as does basically the whole world that has some welfare state. It couldn't be more evident you are on your peddlestool looking down. Take yourself out of your privileged life and imagine if you were born in unacceptable living conditions (by your standards) without access to medical care and could have only 2 meals a day always going to bed hungry. No opportunities exist and all the peer pressure suggest the only chance of making money is selling drugs or crime and even if you know it's wrong and don't want to, what option do you have? There are great pressures including the one that says "Earn your way" that demands you take the route that will allow you to earn something rather than nothing. So either go to bed hungry or sell some drugs on the side and make the cash that you can feed your whole family.

Your issue is you've never once been IN THE SHOES of poverty and so it enables you to wax eloquent on any matter without having any relevant experience/understanding of what it would take for an impoverished family to get out of poverty.

 

[gnarlylove]

From Dharma Bums written by Kerouac back in 1958,

i've been reading whitman, you know what he says, cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots.... dharma bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and there have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, tv sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume..."

wage labor doesn't lend itself to purchasing power and personally I've had many of the popular products and have come to realize its all vapid in a very real way--except food!. I have lived homeless and since that time I have never been or felt free-er.

This may be shocking but consumption in the modern sense is very new (3-4 generations; 1 for some immigrants) given the course of human history. But we take to it like flies on shit because it attempts to excite our natural capacity to desire. Very crude and crass but it makes trillions and trillions. A very narrow perspective one might say indeed.

 

[Listening]

If one has no choice but to live paycheck to paycheck?

One is poor.

I guess it depends on how big the paycheck is and what you are using to buy with it.

I know many folks who make good money, have lavish lifestyles and still can't make ends meet.

They are not poor.

 

[Listening]

We all deserve what we earn.

Have you earned everything you have ever used/done/looked at or did you rely on your parents to raise you? I get it, your birthright into a middle class family allowed you to receive the necessary nutrition so your brain and development was not stunted. 1 in 7 children in America experience hunger insecurity which can contribute to improper development as a child which is crucial for adult decision making.

I guess we should dismiss the fact that some people are less equipped to survive due to tramua, hunger, and lack of medical care as children.

I assume by your language you never had to go hungry and so have retained your privileged attitude. I am impressed you have earned everything you have received in your life. No one else has done that. Everyone else depends on a complex global network of people to produce their goods and services. How do you explain those who never worked but were born into wealth. They didn't earn it themselves but they can buy what they need and much more. How does that fit into your earning scheme?

As for my view, I don't mean that you owe a happy meal to anyone. That is obviously an easy strawman to knock down. I know it revolts you to give up your money in taxes, let alone to feed a starving person. Food was around long before money and "quarterly earnings." What I mean is everyone has the right to food by virtue of their existence. TO deny food is to deny life. Go ahead an advocate the killing of hungry people who are struggling in the welfare state that is suppose to take care of their basic needs. As a nation with a welfare state, we believe that people need help in a system that is undeniably set up for wealth to accumulate among those who already have capital. Without capital you cannot make capital. American policy does not agree with you that you can take a human being out of his/her context and say what did you earn today? If they say "I have earned nothing today", it sounds like you advocate they need to try again.

There are several problems with that approach: They need a shower otherwise no job will hire them but since they didn't earn a shower they should not be allowed a shower--sounds pretty counterintuitive for encouraging work. Additionally, as they go hungry or eat nutrionless food, which leads to illness, they are significantly distracted by their hunger/illness from being able to get a job. According to you though, we should only give them the chance to eat the foods you when they earn it--which is a vicious cycle that many people were born into and will never get out of.

Don't forget, in America there is 1 job for roughly 3 Americans. What if all the bums and homeless and poor decided to be hired and earn their way. They couldn't because jobs are not even available. Yet somehow that's there fault.

Few positions exist and the one's that do are commonly low wage jobs that literally do not earn enough to support a modern American lifestyle or a family. However, if you cannot live this way it looks like you'd continue to spit on them for their lack of earning.

What you advocate makes no sense if you want those people out of poverty. They simply cannot get out of poverty because there is not enough work available. But you know what, there is enough food for the whole planet to eat 2,700 kilo calories yet this food is not distributed because someone didn't "earn it". I guess it makes sense that those folks should suffer and starve because they are not a white American male born into a middle/upper class life where food was never an issue.

I wholly disagree with you as does basically the whole world that has some welfare state. It couldn't be more evident you are on your peddlestool looking down. Take yourself out of your privileged life and imagine if you were born in unacceptable living conditions (by your standards) without access to medical care and could have only 2 meals a day always going to bed hungry. No opportunities exist and all the peer pressure suggest the only chance of making money is selling drugs or crime and even if you know it's wrong and don't want to, what option do you have? There are great pressures including the one that says "Earn your way" that demands you take the route that will allow you to earn something rather than nothing. So either go to bed hungry or sell some drugs on the side and make the cash that you can feed your whole family.

Your issue is you've never once been IN THE SHOES of poverty and so it enables you to wax eloquent on any matter without having any relevant experience/understanding of what it would take for an impoverished family to get out of poverty.

Your statements are very pertinent to a discussion on the poor and also very compelling as we consider our capacity for humans to care for others.

Please keep in mind this entire thread was started in order to gen up a discussion on whether or not the classification we call poverty really would impact whether or not we feel we are successful in fighting the so-called war on poverty.

Just trying to bring it back around.

 

[gnarlylove]

Understanding the conditions and images in which people live, commonly referred to as poverty, is definitive in recognizing our social ills and to know how to respond. Indeed, recognizing poverty as real, although tricky to define accurately, is a very helpful tool. I don't think the definition matters as much as the simple coverage and display of images, real faces, real days, and expounding on the lifestyles people are forced to live due to lack of money. Just like porn, you know it when you see it.

I'd also like to note that America has the greatest wealth disparity globally and is in the top 3 countries who have the worst social mobility. That means America is the worse place, ironically, to be poor and to have hope. Being poor without hope is much more accurate. See second edition of Bloomberg Businessweek in Dec for article and chart on disparity and mobility.

 

[Shrimpbox]

XXXXXXX I am seeing in many threads efforts to promote certain points of view by redefining the definition of certain words. In this thread the push is to explain that what used to be poverty fifty years ago is not the same definition of poverty today. A previous thread which may still be up spent many pages claiming that intolerance is really not intolerance as Webster defines it but something different. As one poster has it the goal posts are forever being moved by guerrilla posters who continually lose the battle but will never give up the war. In my opinion the biggest reason for these eternal arguments is the lack of recognition of absolutes. If there can be no agreement on what is an incontestable truth than the ball can never be moved forward. Going into many of these thread rooms I just find a bunch of alpha thinkers chasing their tails.
Products - Data Briefs - Number 88 - March 2012

Old fart( of) I must take issue with your take on things even though you seem to be an eminent numbers cruncher. There is an old joke my accountant told me which I want to pass on to you with a slight change. A man asked a teacher what 2 and 2 was and she responded by saying 4 . Then he asked a psychiatrist what 2 and 2 was and he said it depends on what the meaning of 2 was.then the man asked a statistician what 2 and 2 was and the statistician replied, what would you like it to be?

Sometimes I get the impression OF that you determine what poverty is by looking at your computer screen and that there are millions of people warehoused in high rises in NY or wherever that conservatives refuse to admit even exist. I feel it doesn't matter to you what my eyes see or what my experience is if govt stats say something else. Having lived for forty years with fishery scientists I have a healthy skepticism and very little faith in the numbers that the govt puts out.
And I find your dismissal of details in a Heritage article at least in part based on your political bias. If you can't concede that many if not most of the poor live in conditions that don't even approach poverty than you are being unrealistic. Poverty is not having a roof over your head. Poverty is not having running water. Poverty is not having a refrigerator. Poverty is not having a school to go to. Poverty is exhibiting severe malnutrition. Poverty is having no shoes to wear. Poverty is having no access to medical treatment. And as one who has traveled extensively in this country this kind of poverty is few and far between.

So let's talk about absolutes that your numbers can't argue with. Life expectancy has continued to rise every year since 1935 and has risen even more dramatically in the last fifteen. So things have gotten dramatically better in this country period! You can't argue with this so your negative views of the underclass are more about the degree of improvement than whether the lot of the poor has become remarkably better. Are you going to argue that people are trying to get into this country so they can die earlier? Or will you be ready for an honest debate about whether some govt entitlement programs have actually contributed to poorer health and a decrease in life expectancy for some at the bottom.and I don't think it is fair to talk about death rates when you are comparing countries with homogenous pop to the massive mongrel diversity of the US. We are also victims of our own excesses because of our many successes. And still our life expectancy increases.

So the question remains, are you going to believe what the govt tells you or yor own lying eyes? I will base my judgement on my life experiences
America 10. Poverty 0