Is poverty voluntary?

[LegendKiller]

So how do you propose fixing this?

You can't damn the successful people for making it easier on their children. Investing money away for their kids to pay for college, etc... nothing wrong with that stuff.

Yet we already have tons of programs to help out the poor vs. other countries that help them out none. So whats the answer?



I'm all for bringing jobs home, but is a lot of the shit that is done overseas HONESTLY stuff that ANYONE in 'murica would do? Poor or not, people in America are too good to sit in cloth making factories. Even our poor is high class.

Yeah, that's why they *LAY OFF* those people working in cloth factories. What about the small engine factories that Briggs and Stratton had? Well shit, nobody will want to build an engine! Or what about lawnmowers? Or snowblowers. Or tools. Or tires. Or radios for cars. Or TVs. Or computers. Or tablets. Or phones. Or stereos. Or speakers. Or furniture. Or appliances. Or wood flooring. Or lamps. Or ceiling fans. Or small appliances. Or shoes.

The list goes on forever.

This whole "nobody will work those jobs" narrative is a lie.

I imagine they say the same thing about all of those call center people, or IT people, they outsourced to India also. NOBODY wants to work in a call center, or IT helpdesk, or admin, or data processing, or programming. NOBODY I tell ya!

What about the iphone. It'd cost them a marginal amount more to make it in the US. Of course not a single. fucking. person. would work in a factory making an iphone.

How many millions of jobs are in those sectors I mentioned above? If 2 more million people were employed in those jobs then they'd spend their wages in this country, which would require millions more people to be employed. It is a virtuous cycle. However, people don't acknowledge the nth order of effect of shipping jobs overseas because it's too hard.

The problem is people like you. They have you sold on this whole "Americans won't work" bullshit. It's pathetic.

 

[Moonbeam]

The issue of poverty is an issue that has nothing to do with money. It is an issue of need. A rich man full of need is poor and a poor man satisfied with his life is rich beyond measure. There are two kinds of need, real needs that one must satisfy to survive with a measure of comfort and those that flatter the ego. In any equivalent situation, the person who has little ego to satisfy is more wealthy than the one who needs baubles to preen like a peacock, who the system has trained to long for things.

In my opinion a capitalist system is much better at satisfying human need than communism will ever be because it offers a far greater potential for a diversity of means to satisfy what people need. Of course, if all the capital it creates goes only to a few, just as in a communist society, nobody will have any money to buy anything and it will also collapse.

The issue, therefore, again in my opinion, is not to change from capitalism to some form of entrepreneurial throttling, but to make sure that everybody has both the psychological health and the income to participate in the system. There has to be jobs for people and they have to pay enough to live.

Compare Wal-Mart and Costco.

 

[MovingTarget]

So how do you propose fixing this?

You can't damn the successful people for making it easier on their children. Investing money away for their kids to pay for college, etc... nothing wrong with that stuff.

Yet we already have tons of programs to help out the poor vs. other countries that help them out none. So whats the answer?

No, you can't damn them. However, you can re-institute an estate tax to keep this country from sliding down the path to having a defacto nobility. You can reorient the taxation scheme so that it prioritizes actual work instead of pushing piles of money around between balance sheets. Its time to eliminate the distinction between capitol gains and traditional income in the tax code.

Having relied on those programs you speak of, I can tell you, they are not adequate by a long shot. They are woefully underfunded and understaffed. They have means-tests that are are sometimes so unrealistic that they may as well not exist at all. The application processes are often so byzantine as to be an affront to human dignity. You can still be below the poverty line yet make far "too much" to receive any assistance. Any assistance you do receive may be time-limited as well, regardless of how many available jobs exist. ...and you want to compare it to other countries that offer less or no assistance? Sorry, but we are better than that.

With the way the economy is going, I think that it is time to reevaluate what was proposed during the Roosevelt administration. His "second bill of rights" contained the right to a job. There is plenty of public, civil, and infrastructure work to be done in this country. The private sector has been unwilling or unable to do the hiring necessary to get us back to full employment. It is only once such a system is implemented can anyone claim that those that don't have a job are "lazy". If you are willing to work, there should be work.

I guess that makes me one of those "evil libruls" now, since I think that hard work should be made both available and rewarding.

 

[LegendKiller]

With the way the economy is going, I think that it is time to reevaluate what was proposed during the Roosevelt administration. His "second bill of rights" contained the right to a job. There is plenty of public, civil, and infrastructure work to be done in this country.

I wholeheartedly disagree that anybody has a "right" to a job. However, we do have many ways of discouraging the idiocy that the .1% have been pushing.

Stop these fucking moronic trade agreements. Slap tariffs on non-floating currencies would be a great start.

 

[MovingTarget]

I wholeheartedly disagree that anybody has a "right" to a job. However, we do have many ways of discouraging the idiocy that the .1% have been pushing.

Stop these fucking moronic trade agreements. Slap tariffs on non-floating currencies would be a great start.

Perhaps I should add that when I say the "right to a job", that does not mean that you can't still be fired for non-performance. I mean that the government should have to give you the opportunity to work for them directly if you can't find private sector work. They shouldn't have to keep you on if you don't do what you were hired to do. It isn't charity.

Other than that, I agree with you about the trade agreements, etc.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

No, you can't damn them. However, you can re-institute an estate tax to keep this country from sliding down the path to having a defacto nobility. You can reorient the taxation scheme so that it prioritizes actual work instead of pushing piles of money around between balance sheets. Its time to eliminate the distinction between capitol gains and traditional income in the tax code.

Having relied on those programs you speak of, I can tell you, they are not adequate by a long shot. They are woefully underfunded and understaffed. They have means-tests that are are sometimes so unrealistic that they may as well not exist at all. The application processes are often so byzantine as to be an affront to human dignity. You can still be below the poverty line yet make far "too much" to receive any assistance. Any assistance you do receive may be time-limited as well, regardless of how many available jobs exist. ...and you want to compare it to other countries that offer less or no assistance? Sorry, but we are better than that.

With the way the economy is going, I think that it is time to reevaluate what was proposed during the Roosevelt administration. His "second bill of rights" contained the right to a job. There is plenty of public, civil, and infrastructure work to be done in this country. The private sector has been unwilling or unable to do the hiring necessary to get us back to full employment. It is only once such a system is implemented can anyone claim that those that don't have a job are "lazy". If you are willing to work, there should be work.

I guess that makes me one of those "evil libruls" now, since I think that hard work should be made both available and rewarding.

No, this is what makes you an "evil librul"

How does handing more money to our government help the poor in any way? This is where liberal ideology comes from, your answer is simply "Toss cash into the fire, magic fireworks will happen!"

This is absolute proof of the logic of liberals. I asked for a solution to the problem, and your first train of thought is simply tossing more cash into the firepit known as our government. That does not in anyway state how it will help the poor.

Also, right to a job? Seriously, what the fuck man? People like you need to put yourselves in the shoes of a business owner before you say things like that. It's not as simple as making magical job openings.

 

[1prophet]

So how do you propose fixing this?

You can't damn the successful people for making it easier on their children. Investing money away for their kids to pay for college, etc... nothing wrong with that stuff.

Yet we already have tons of programs to help out the poor vs. other countries that help them out none. So whats the answer?



I'm all for bringing jobs home, but is a lot of the shit that is done overseas HONESTLY stuff that ANYONE in 'murica would do? Poor or not, people in America are too good to sit in cloth making factories. Even our poor is high class.

Somehow somebody was doing it before before the rich elite 1% culturally instilled "those jobs are beneath us attitudes, you must go to college", heard that directly from a few of them during the 1990's NAFTA debate,

Not surprised that most of them where rich and mostly liberal but the attitude was the same , to paraphrase, "jobs we don't need any way"

The arrogant American attitude that others are there to serve us at our pleasure for pay and working conditions that most Americans would balk at, whether picking our fruits and vegetables or manufacturing our latest i-junk that we happily wait inline for at the store to pad the 1% pockets.

But what happens when you start devaluing jobs and people and consider them to be beneath you and easily replaceable if not needed outright,

it becomes a norm and part of the corporate culture where no job is safe except for the few at top.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/u...off-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.


Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.


“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”


Disney executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.
But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.


According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.


Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.


“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.


A limited number of the visas, 85,000, are granted each year, and they are in high demand. Technology giants like Microsoft, Facebook and Google repeatedly press for increases in the annual quotas, saying there are not enough Americans with the skills they need.


Many American companies use H-1B visas to bring in small numbers of foreigners for openings demanding specialized skills, according to official reports. But for years, most top recipients of the visas have been outsourcing or consulting firms based in India, or their American subsidiaries, which import workers for large contracts to take over entire in-house technology units — and to cut costs. The immigrants are employees of the outsourcing companies.


In 2013, those firms — including Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL America, the company hired by Disney — were six of the top 10 companies granted H-1Bs, with each one receiving more than 1,000 visas.
H-1B immigrants work for less than American tech workers, Professor Hira said at a hearing in March of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because of weaknesses in wage regulations. The savings have been 25 percent to 49 percent in recent cases, he told lawmakers.


In a letter in April to top federal authorities in charge of immigration, a bipartisan group of senators called for an investigation of recent “H-1B-driven layoffs,” saying, “Their frequency seems to have increased dramatically in the past year alone.”

 

[MovingTarget]

No, this is what makes you an "evil librul"

How does handing more money to our government help the poor in any way? This is where liberal ideology comes from, your answer is simply "Toss cash into the fire, magic fireworks will happen!"

This is absolute proof of the logic of liberals. I asked for a solution to the problem, and your first train of thought is simply tossing more cash into the firepit known as our government. That does not in anyway state how it will help the poor.

Also, right to a job? Seriously, what the fuck man? People like you need to put yourselves in the shoes of a business owner before you say things like that. It's not as simple as making magical job openings.

"Tossing cash into the fire"? Seriously? Its this attitude that makes government dysfunctional to the extent that it is. The government only does what we tell it to do. It will always rise to the low expectations that you set. Besides, if living in a GOP supermajority "small government" state has taught me anything about government, its that you get what you pay for.

If you think that government hasn't done a lot to alleviate poverty, you are very mistaken. Perhaps you should look to what life was like before things like Social Security, Medicare, etc, especially for the elderly. It has done wonders compared to what existed before, but we still have much more to do. How would funding the government help the poor? Lets see...expand the programs I just listed, properly fund schools to meet the unique needs of the poor, expand medicare to cover everyone, include mental health care in that, restructure the VA to provide for veterans more effectively (including housing, which has enjoyed huge success recently), etc.

...and no, I am not going to put my feet in the shoes of some business owner. I would bypass them entirely in terms of the employment question. The government shouldn't force them to hire anyone....it should do the hiring itself. We did it once with the WPA, CCC, etc. We can do it again. If and when private sector hiring picks up, those programs can be relaxed depending on how they are needed.

 

[Brainonska511]

No, you can't damn them. However, you can re-institute an estate tax to keep this country from sliding down the path to having a defacto nobility. You can reorient the taxation scheme so that it prioritizes actual work instead of pushing piles of money around between balance sheets. Its time to eliminate the distinction between capitol gains and traditional income in the tax code.

Damn straight. What's especially galling is the carried interest rule. These hedge fund managers get to treat their pay as a capital gain, even though it's really a performance bonus or fee for services rendered.

Somehow somebody was doing it before before the rich elite 1% culturally instilled "those jobs are beneath us attitudes, you must go to college", heard that directly from a few of them during the 1990's NAFTA debate,

Not surprised that most of them where rich and mostly liberal but the attitude was the same , to paraphrase, "jobs we don't need any way"

The arrogant American attitude that others are there to serve us at our pleasure for pay and working conditions that most Americans would balk at, whether picking our fruits and vegetables or manufacturing our latest i-junk that we happily wait inline for at the store to pad the 1% pockets.

But what happens when you start devaluing jobs and people and consider them to be beneath you and easily replaceable if not needed outright,

it becomes a norm and part of the corporate culture where no job is safe except for the few at top.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/u...off-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

I liked the part of the article where Disney claims to only employee < 10 H1Bs. Total fucking bullshit. They hired the company that basically makes money by staffing itself with cheap H1Bs who are displacing Americans who were doing the job before. Cut costs at any expense, just so stock prices go up by a quarter of a point.

 

[Subyman]

Depends on the extent of the poverty and the situation that the person is in. If they are severely disabled then I'd say no. If they sit around and scheme ways to get just enough to get by from the government, then yes. If they work hard at minimum wage but do not have the skills or intellect to more forward, then no. Etc etc.

 

[MovingTarget]

If they work hard at minimum wage but do not have the skills or intellect to more forward, then no. Etc etc.

This is interesting. If someone works hard at their job, then why do you say that their poverty is voluntary? Not everyone is smart enough and/or has the opportunity to go out and get degrees. I have a hard time believing that someone exhibiting a good if not superior work ethic is choosing to be poor.

 

[LegendKiller]

Somehow somebody was doing it before before the rich elite 1% culturally instilled "those jobs are beneath us attitudes, you must go to college", heard that directly from a few of them during the 1990's NAFTA debate,

Not surprised that most of them where rich and mostly liberal but the attitude was the same , to paraphrase, "jobs we don't need any way"

The arrogant American attitude that others are there to serve us at our pleasure for pay and working conditions that most Americans would balk at, whether picking our fruits and vegetables or manufacturing our latest i-junk that we happily wait inline for at the store to pad the 1% pockets.

But what happens when you start devaluing jobs and people and consider them to be beneath you and easily replaceable if not needed outright,

it becomes a norm and part of the corporate culture where no job is safe except for the few at top.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/u...off-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

Great example. I bet those people hated their jobs. That's why they wouldnt work them. Ohh, wait, like every other job, it was wanted.

The lie continues unabated. Meanwhile Disney raises ticket, food, lodging prices sky high. Anybody ever look into how much it costs to bring a family of 5 to Disney and stay onsite? Stupidly ridiculous.

But I guess those it workers could always just get a job wearing a goofy costume making min wage. Just compound the humiliation of the American worker.

 

[Texashiker]

So, uhh, are there enough tug boat jobs or other good paying jobs to cover all the folks who have lousy jobs? No? Why not?

Tugboat jobs, no.

Do not be a dumbass.

You understand my post and my point. To rise above poverty people have to stop making poor decisions and be willing to make scarifies.

 

[Brainonska511]

Tugboat jobs, no.

Do not be a dumbass.

You understand my post and my point. To rise above poverty people have to stop making poor decisions and be willing to make scarifies.

And what kind of poor decisions and scarifies [sic] are those? Please, enlighten us all on how people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

 

[ivwshane]

And what kind of poor decisions and scarifies [sic] are those? Please, enlighten us all on how people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Well they certainly don't have abortions!

Not only does texaspiker think poor people should stop making poor deciscions (ask him about his daughter who decided to get sick), he also thinks that when people make poor decisions they should take responsibility for those actions BUT taking responsibility means they have to do what Texashiker thinks is right.

The guy is so fucking retarded that even after all his poor life's deciscions, that he has all the answers and has some how earned the right to tell other people how to live their lives, no matter how little or no impact it has on him.

 

[MongGrel]

Tugboat jobs, no.

Do not be a dumbass.

You understand my post and my point. To rise above poverty people have to stop making poor decisions and be willing to make scarifies.

What's a scarifies ?

That tugboat affecting you a bit.

 

[norseamd]

What is your take on the Western European nations? They seem to be rather successful models of part capitalism, part socialism.

They are close to what is my current political philosophy.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Great example. I bet those people hated their jobs. That's why they wouldnt work them. Ohh, wait, like every other job, it was wanted.

The lie continues unabated. Meanwhile Disney raises ticket, food, lodging prices sky high. Anybody ever look into how much it costs to bring a family of 5 to Disney and stay onsite? Stupidly ridiculous.

But I guess those it workers could always just get a job wearing a goofy costume making min wage. Just compound the humiliation of the American worker.

Family of 5 just to get in the park is $500 (assuming 1-day visit). It is insane. Yet they keep filling up their park every time. Sooooo can you blame them? People (the middle class moreso) need to stop shitting on their money all the time with things like Disney World, and maybe prices would go down to answer to the lack of demand.

 

[Knowing]

Very, very, very few people from the educated class advocate for communism. They often advocate for socializing certain government functions such as health care, but that is mostly due to its widespread demonstrated success over decades. Either way, it has little to do with communism.

I hope that's been helpful in clearing up the mystery!

The people on the internet who incessantly advocate for communism generally like to claim to be educated.

tl;dr- you got your Venn diagram messed up. Hope that clears up the confusion you created for yourself.

 

[MongGrel]

The people on the internet who incessantly advocate for communism generally like to claim to be educated.

tl;dr- you got your Venn diagram messed up. Hope that clears up the confusion you created for yourself.

I'm suspect.

 

[norseamd]

Very, very, very few people from the educated class advocate for communism. They often advocate for socializing certain government functions such as health care, but that is mostly due to its widespread demonstrated success over decades. Either way, it has little to do with communism.

Many educated and intelligent individuals have advocated for socialism.

Not all socialism is what you may think of as communism.

 

[blastingcap]

Seems like the right wing mentality is that being poor is somehow a choice and not an issue of circumstance. The progressive liberal socialist stance that i take recognizes that poverty is violence of the worst kind and to alleiviate that requires thorough control of scarcity and that equates wealth redistribution. An untrained propagandized mind will say that is communism but they fail to realize that soviet communism had a heirarchical brutal pyrimid structural and the brutality wasnt/isnt a result of wealth redistribution but the general violent culture of the time or place. Marx was right all along about capitalism and i think this calls for an updated form of communism. The ecology of the esrth, stability of the society, and the sustainability of the human race depend on it.

About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped.

“The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?_r=0

 

[Texashiker]

What's a scarifies ?

That tugboat affecting you a bit.

Sorry, was in a hurry.

Been working on the chicken house all day.

And what kind of poor decisions and scarifies [sic] are those? Please, enlighten us all on how people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

First, stop demonizing manual labor,

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/15/on-job-hunt-machinists-in-high-demand/

America's economy was forged by machinists. But today, a quarter of the nation's welders, engineers and steelworkers are getting ready to retire. And as budget-strapped school districts cut shop classes, fewer young people are entering the trade.

The result is a shortage of skilled workers to build and run the machines that run our lives.

 

[Paratus]

I posted this in another thread but it applies to this one as well:

While some here won't understand this, being poor and suffering racism tends to impose a significant cognitive burden on the person. This burden makes decision making and performance more difficult than for a majority non-poor person.

Of course it's possible to overcome this burden, and people do, but many don't.

I also think that when comparing immigrants to local minorities and poor people a self-selection bias is evident.

Immigrants who make it here are the ones who already were capable of making significant change in their life. The ones who are poor and couldn't are still back in their home country. These immigrants are then compared to the local minorities some of whom can make a change for the better but many can't.

If we could eliminate racism and reduce poverty then people who couldnt be successful with those burdens would be able to become successful.

 

[Jhhnn]

Tugboat jobs, no.

Do not be a dumbass.

You understand my post and my point. To rise above poverty people have to stop making poor decisions and be willing to make scarifies.

I understand that you obfuscate, assume opportunity in a situation where you admit a dearth of it. Yes, the system allows a relative few to escape poverty, but it's still a hierarchical organization the structure of which is determined from the top down. Think of it a a corporate organization chart at a societal level. Only so many CEO's. Only so many board members. Only so many regional managers & so forth down to janitor & until we arrive at the really shitty job of being poor, of having marginal job attachment. Obviously, the system need not employ everybody for those running it, the financial elite, the so-called Job Creators, to get what they want out of it. Hell, the need for American labor of all sorts has been greatly reduced at a level beyond the control of working people.

You do understand, I hope, that a lot of those jobs are semi-hereditary, particularly at the top & the bottom.