How is it possible so many hard workers are poor?

[s.a.f]

I think the definition of "poor" has shifted in much of the Western world. What used to be "normal" as little back as half a century is now considered "poor"... and what used to be "super rich" is now considered "middle class".

Here in the UK even people living on benefits (welfare) have money to drink and smoke, own games consoles, have broadband internet, satelite tv and widescreen tv's ect.

 

[cleverusername]

What are you talking about? East LA is full of poor people. LA is crawling with homeless people as well. New York isn't any better.

You are missing my point. In a global context, just how "poor" are these people? They all have rooves over their heads, they are all getting food every day, their kids are going to school, they all have ready access to potable water at their reach, and they all have working sewage systems. How many people in East LA, or in New York, have died of starvation? How many in LA or NY die of exposure? I'd stand behind the claim that only those who are mentally ill, or are serious drug addicts paint themselves into such a corner. Even the most acutely poor have access to food stamps, and if not that, then there are food kitchens aplenty at least here in the bowels of Los Angeles.

In a global context, these people are not really "poor"... especially when you consider that two thirds of humanity does not have reliable daily access to potable water, as a point of reference. How many kids around the world get a quality primary education, for free? As much as some might like to complain about the schools in either LA or NY, the education of even those kids in the complete dregs of either city is streets ahead of what an average human gets.

And that is my basic point... I think the definition of "poor" has shifted in much of the Western world. What used to be "normal" as little back as half a century is now considered "poor"... and what used to be "super rich" is now considered "middle class".

I mean, come on... in the 1950s or 1960s even, you never saw advertisements showing cars with big bows on them, saying that a car is an acceptable christmas present.

Um, there are lines in the Bronx every week of people lining up for food because they have none at home and half of them go home empty handed because there isn't enough to go around. Ever heard of a canned food drive? Homeless shelters are overfilled and even more dangerous than the street. I saw a lady on the subway wearing a plastic bag she found as a coat when it was 20 degrees outside. You honestly think there are no families in America that go to sleep hungry? Even in the glamorous western world people are starving, public education in NYC is worse than Eastern European countries and plenty of other countries. Maybe take a step outside Rodeo Drive and you'll see people in America are suffering too and it's only getting worse. Yes standards are higher here than in some developing countries but that doesn't mean there aren't those who don't even have the bare essentials of food, water and shelter...don't kid yourself into thinking there aren't.

 

[The Gardener]

Maybe take a step outside Rodeo Drive and you'll see people in America are suffering too and it's only getting worse.

I don't live on Rodeo Drive, sir. I live in Long Beach.

And, NO, I completely disagree that there are people who don't have access to the bare essentials of food water and shelter. Homeless shelters here are not overflowing.

Yes, of course, there are people who due to sudden economic changes and a lack of immediate family or social system assistance are thrust into some temporary situations where they lack for these things. But, again, nobody in urban LA or NY dies of starvation unless they suffer from drug addiction, or mental illness. Yes I have heard of food drives to help give food to homeless shelters, and this charity is helpful in keeping their overhead costs low... but there is no chronic shortage of food in these shelters... and these shelters are only for the most challenged of the poor. Have you not heard of food stamps? Welfare? Or school lunch programs? Again, I assert that 99% of the people who sleep on the streets are there because of lifestyles that they have gotten involved in... either drug abuse, or perhaps mental illness. Many of these folks purposefully avoid shelters because the shelters do not allow them to come and go as they choose during the course of a night, and do not allow alcohol within, and don't allow obviously intoxicated people within.

I think the level of poverty you are referring to is missing the overall point I was trying to make initially. Those who require homeless shelters are a very small portion of the population... I am really talking about the people we refer to as "working class", which is what East LA is comprised of. These folks live in homes usually occupied by more than one generation of family, as an example... they do moderately skilled or trade labor that does not require a high school diploma and are usually immigrants. We now refer to these people as "poor", but we forget that in earlier decades, the US was overwhelmingly a "working class" nation. The whole emergence and explosion of a "white collar" class is a relatively new thing since the 1950s, and is a function of the US becoming less industrialized and more of a service oriented economy, and as a result, the former "working class" which used to be the majority of Americans back in 1950 is now considered less than middle class... and is viewed by the white collar class as being "poor".

I think we have reached a point where we think that if life is hard, if we need to really work hard and be industrious to keep food on the table, if we need to struggle a little bit to make ends meet, then we are "poor". We've gotten used to this new phenomenon where "middle class" people pretty much can buy or eat anything they want, with very little regard to our choices affecting our stability. Satellite television, the Wii for the kids, the family owning multiple cars, going out for dinner... there was a time just decades ago when an "middle class" American would find this level of economic freedom absolutely unheard of. And because we've been economically spoiled in the years since WW2, we now think that people unable to spend money on simple luxuries and people who need to scrimp and sacrifice in order to make ends meet are now considered "poor".

 

[Old Baldy]

Just an anecdote: Where I lived for 30 years and worked for 32 years, the welfare recipients(sp?) were, on average, about 150lbs to 250lbs overweight. They were not even close to starving.

On average, they were lazy, useless slobs who would rather watch cartoons than work. They had about as much ambition as a sloth IMHO.

Gardener has a more gentlemanly way of putting it but I agree with what he has posted on this subject about 1,000 percent.

We in America, don't have a clue as to what true poverty is (i.e., poverty that has occurred totally due to outside forces and not by the laziness and/or total lack of ambition of the poor person).

Sure there are exceptions, but they are far and few between IMHO. If a person has a mere sliver of ambition in America, they clearly won't starve. By ambition, I mean getting up off the couch and going to the food kitchen.

In America, we have a very serious problem with entitlement. We also have a very serious problem with laziness and lazy useless people parenting children who have absolutely no intention of getting their useless butts off the couch.

Why don't one of you younger guys from Hollywood start a show entitled "The Lazy American" show. I'd bet it would be more popular than those stupid American Idol and Survivorman types of shows. And you'd have a limitless population to choose from. The show could run for 100 years with the amount of lazy slobs in my country.

And if Bryan has his way with getting socialism in our culture, the show could run for about a guzillion years!

Just watch one episode of the Keyshia Cole show and, if those people aren't starving, than any useless idiot won't starve in America. To be fair though, I could only watch about 2 minutes of that show. :shakehead:

 

[s.a.f]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... douts.html
This sh*t makes me mad, :firing: Labour pr!ck5.

 

[CCS]

OK, we all agree some people here are kind of poor, but disagree about if it is preventable by a little ambition. Let's move back to china and other asian countries:

The reason they don't build their own machinery for serving each other; the reason they don't do labour for each other more; is because none of them have any expendable money to pay each other with. They only get enough to pay for food, so they never move forwards. And maybe this is because there are too many workers. Actually, it is not this bad. A lot of them do have expendable money, and they spend it on sending their siblings to school. So school is how they are investing right now.

But in order for them to really get out of poverty, they will need machines to operate. Machines make stuff cheaply, compared to US labour. But I guess chinese labour is cheaper for employers than is chinese labour. So employers there have no incentive to make machines, since the labour is cheaper. And if they did make machines, it would put some chinese out of work, and the profits might not be passed on in the prices. In the US, we make stuff with machines, or we buy stuff from china, so we have a high standard of living. But we must get the money from somewhere. So what is it that we export to china that they give us all these goods for?

I don't think dollars have value in themselves, since you must trade them for goods for them to have value. And US goods are expensive. So why would they want dollars if they can't afford US goods? Or do we have goods they can't make over there? It makes no sense to work so hard to send goods to the US to get dollars to pay your neighbor in dollars for his services, when you could have just given him your services for his. I'm sure they can make rice cheap over there, and cheap labor could make cheap houses too. So why do they need us? Do they owe us lots of money from loans?

The only other reason I can think of is they owe high taxes, or they are making a lot of money but all of it is going to tuition for school. But I heard chinese universities are cheap. My chinese roommate said I should save up $5,000 and move to china and finish my education cheap, but I'd have to learn chinese. Or I could move there to teach english and make money that way, but without knowing chinese I could not take advanced engineering classes. Point is, school over there costs a lot less than over here.

Reading and learning from chinese made books must be cheap and just labor intensive, which they are good at. Taking tests is cheap too. So school should be cheap. My question though is when will it be that they all use machines to serve each other with? If they all made stuff and services for each other, and saved their money to buy machines to use for production and services, they could all have a high standard of living. But all those machines would take energy, which will soon be in short supply and higher cost as India and China start industrializing... hence they are going to start making machines soon.

Basically, they are poor because they don't have machines and must do everything by hand, and saving up for machines and takes time, and high populations allow labor exploytation since companies shop for bottom dollar.

My next question is, why don't all the unemployed workers work for each other? At worse they can all work on rice patties, with a few building cheap houses in exchange for rice. I just wonder if we could somehow research this and give them a push. My vietnamese friends says communism is the reason they are all poor.

 

[CCS]

Why are the north Koreans 3 inches taller than the south Koreans? I heard it is because the north koreans are communist, and the south are not. But maybe it has to do with embargos. Anyone want to take a stab at this?

 

[blueshard]

The standards of living are always changing.

We are say "people in the 1950's really knew what poverty was" and if we were in the 1950's we would be saying "people in the 1910's really knew what poverty was." And then we could say people in 1910's have no idea what poverty is, Africans know what poverty is"

I don't think that this reasoning is logical because we are an industrialized nation, our "standard of living" is higher so we need to compare this poverty issue with our current environment, the environment that people have been born into and have been accustomed to. So we have to look at "why are some people not working."


Well, what is the incentive to work if you get shitttty wages, shitty benefits, and have no opportunities to move up the capitalistic chain? When there is no incentive, and nothing to be achieved through hard work, why wouldn't you living off of welfare? The reason why people are not working is not because they are stupid and lazy, it is because the system does not work in their favor.

And actually when you think about it, welfare provides an excellent avenue for containing and controlling the lower class, to get them off of the state's back....."here is your check, now get away from me."

Welfare is a great way of putting a band aid on the problems of oppression that arise in our governmental system. Instead of changing the macrosystem forces that contribute to poverty and oppression and make the rich richer, they simply just pay the poor off, it is simply easier.

And if when you are driving your car around the city and get enraged when you see a young Hispanic pushing a baby stroller and instantly become angry and disgusted at their "laziness" and "stupidity," well you are directing your anger and energy at the shadow cast by government, not the substance. And chances are, if YOU were in their shoes you would be doing the SAME EXACT THING.

 

[Old Baldy]

I was in their shoes. I grew up poor. I worked hard and made it.

They can do the same if they'd get some drive and ambition.

No IMHO, welfare recipients are generally lazy and have little, if any, ambition. Many are drug addicts and alcoholics but the vast majority are just plain lazy and sloth-like in their drive to better themselves.

Why? Because they are satisfied with Daddy government's handouts. They'd rather live poorly for free than get off their lazy behinds and take a chance at bettering themselves.

Lousy wages, benefits, etc., well they should at least try and go into business for themselves or get two jobs like I did and quit crybabying. Oh, but wait, that would take about 16 hours of work per day. No way, they are too lazy.

To better myself I worked 7 days a week at various factories, oftentimes on a day-to-day basis knocking on doors to get a job for that day. I went to businesses after working at the various factories to do clean up work and also went to school for most of the year. I averaged 4 to 6 hours of sleep. Most nights only 4 hours of sleep. I didn't need much sleep, I was young, strong and ambitious. I even helped my father with bills at home so we could keep a roof over our heads. End result, I made it.

And there ain't nothing special about me. I just put my nose to the grindstone. They can do the same.

The Asians do it very well. They are a perfect example of hard working people who don't ask for freebies. They just put their noses to the grindstone. No crybabying in the Asians. They're tough and ambitious. I respect them immensely.

Sympathizing with welfare bums, and making excuses for their lack of ambition, does them no favors. It emboldens their sloth-like bahavior and perpetuates their disasterous lifestyle.

Living your life off of welfare, or living in a state of ridiculous laziness, is the greatest sin anyone can commit (i.e., the sin of a wasted life).

 

[CCS]

Old Baldy has first hand experience in every debate issue. He had a gun on him which saved his life when a robber pointed a gun in his face, and he would be dead had he not had that gun on him. He also grew up super poor and worked 16 hour days while in school and averaged 4 hours of sleep. If he is pro-life, I bet his mom was going to abort him, but the state would not let her, which is why he is alive today. If he is pro-war, I bet he was deployed to another country once, and was thanked by the people who were rescued from tyranny, and wished the US president had not ended the war so since he could have won and saved everyone. He is about the right age for Vietnam afterall. I bet he has plenty more stories to prove a point.

 

[blueshard]

I was in their shoes. I grew up poor. I worked hard and made it.

They can do the same if they'd get some drive and ambition.

There is my question, where is their drive and ambition? How do they get drive and ambition?

It is a myth that anyone who tries hard enough can succeed in our free markets. If someone is born into a poor family and cannot afford higher ed, then what do they have going for them here in America? Poverty level wages, low benefits and crappy work, with hardly any chance for stepping up the ladder? And then to deal with the poor, then government offers them money... then why wouldn't they take the check, and doesn't this enforce "lazy" behavior? The problem is not the people....they are responding to their environment, they problem lies in not getting to the root of the problem and covering it up with state and federal aid.

I know you have made some amazing achievements through your hard work and determination, and you should be commmended for that!

Let me say that I have had it a lot easier than you financially (but prob not mental health wise lol), which I know makes me ignorant to this issue. I just think that much of the problem lay in policy and governmental influence which enforces the behavior we are seeing, the "lazy" behavior. I think that the EASY way to deal with this problem, is to blame it on the individual. People respond to their environments.

Happy New Year Everyone!

 

[s.a.f]

I was in their shoes. I grew up poor. I worked hard and made it.

They can do the same if they'd get some drive and ambition.

There is my question, where is their drive and ambition? How do they get drive and ambition?

Take away their welfare cheques and I'm sure their drive and ambition will return.

 

[Old Baldy]

Old Baldy has first hand experience in every debate issue. He had a gun on him which saved his life when a robber pointed a gun in his face, and he would be dead had he not had that gun on him. He also grew up super poor and worked 16 hour days while in school and averaged 4 hours of sleep. If he is pro-life, I bet his mom was going to abort him, but the state would not let her, which is why he is alive today. If he is pro-war, I bet he was deployed to another country once, and was thanked by the people who were rescued from tyranny, and wished the US president had not ended the war so since he could have won and saved everyone. He is about the right age for Vietnam afterall. I bet he has plenty more stories to prove a point.

A little dig on Old Baldy eh' CCS. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

No CCS, just experiences with violence and poverty. I grew up in the cesspool known as Detroit and worked there for another 32 years. (You notice I don't tell guys how to pick up women or theorize too much on the "meaning of all things". )

If you ever get the chance, take a drive through Detroit sometime. You'll quickly see that my stories are not fake. They are real and I don't lie. Plus, I really did work my a** off to get ahead. It was the way people did things back in the 1960's and early 1970's. Especially if you were a caucasian male. No handouts or freebies for caucasian males. In fact, it was "open season" on us white males back then. If you'd lived it you'd understand how true my statements are. If you haven't lived it you might think they are fake.

Here you go CCS, a youtube video for your viewing pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6WKMNmFsxM (Oh to be back home.)

Blueshard wrote, in part:
There is my question, where is their drive and ambition? How do they get drive and ambition?

I got it from my parents. Especially from my father.

The government should ensure a level playing field. That's difficult enough to accomplish IMHO. No lifetime freebies but no discrmination. I know that is pie in the sky but that is IMHO.

 

[IBM]

Its easy to catch poor people. When they dont hang with this

they're poor.

 

[KANGA]

omg who is that... epitome of a perfect 10.


In my short 21 years, I have observed this of people I know (from school, through family):

At the end of high school, person get a decent paying job at the time ($10-12), and believes that this is enough income to live on their own. The person moves out from his/her parents house with friends or by themselves, and they get stuck in this rut that he/she has to work 40hr weeks to maintain a steady income to provide for themselves. The problem with a 40hr+ job is that it doesn't allow them to pursue post-secondary education, trade skills, or muster up the courage to find a better paying job. The person eventually gets sick of his/her job, and quits, only to get another low-wage job.

Its hard to get out of that kind of rut, but its not THAT hard. Like my father always said, if people had the courage, everyone would own their own businesses.

I "work" about 10 hours a week. I'm not lazy, or incompetent; I just don't see how doing the same, redundant tasks of an every day job can be satisfying. I make work adapt to my life, not the other way around.

 

[Old Baldy]

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

 

[cleverusername]

before I got laid off last week I was working 57 hour weeks plus an hour commute each way. I was making a ton of money because I was freelance and paid overtime but was always too tired (mentally, I'm a graphic designer) to do anything even on the weekend. I'm really hoping the next job will be 40 hours, that's absolutely fine for me.

 

[ali777]

I was in their shoes. I grew up poor. I worked hard and made it.

They can do the same if they'd get some drive and ambition.

There is my question, where is their drive and ambition? How do they get drive and ambition?

I don't think it's that simple. Take two kids that are born to a middleclass family and a poor family. The environment will always favour the middleclass kid. He will have support at home and at school, on the other hand the kid from an uneducated family can't ask his parents for help with his homeworks.

I think the environment makes a big difference.

As a kid I was very lucky. We never had money but my parents were educated enough to push me in the right direction. Although, I can see what they did for me was very good and academically I was successful but the middleclass kids had better chances. I didn't have a computer until I was 19, and I bought it with my own money. On the other hand, some of the kids I grew up with had computers at the age of 10-12.

I think the initial years are very important in the kids future development, I believe the brain shapes very early and if someone doesn't have clear goals in life by the time he/she is 18, the future is somehow bleaker.

 

[Old Baldy]

Of course the middle class kids had better chances than you or I Ali. But you worked hard, went to school and made it.

You didn't crybaby or ask for freebies. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps and bettered yourself. Good going!!

That said, WHY are you a liberal!!?? :dunno: :mrgreen:

 

[ali777]

That said, WHY are you a liberal!!?? :dunno: :mrgreen:

Because I believe in equality and individual's freedoms.

I believe the equality should be endorsed by the state/society. In that aspect, we can argue that most of the "democratic" countries as we know them are liberal. It's the same with the freedom, I want to be able to do whatever I want, obviously within certain limits. The limits shouldn't be there to oppress certain section of the public, but to protect the individuals.

When it comes to politics, I'm mostly ignorant, I don't have very strong opinions about things. I think the democratic societies give us enough freedom to do whatever we want.