Should the US make being "poor" a crime?

So...we imprison more people than even China, and your solution to everything is to put more Americans behind bars?

I understand the drunk posts that happen here, but even this is ridiculous.

 

she eats though, doesn't she.... not being able to live in lavishness your senior years is not the same as poor..... poor would have her living on the streets, and dead 10 years ago. I feel for your grandmother.... but you could always move her in to your place.... The fact that she can still survive at all, not in a family member's house, says how Americans view "poor" is subjective. The fact that you haven't seriously considered moving meem's into your house tells me she isn't poor, just that she doesn't have extra money. big difference.


not eating
family living in a van
no shoes on the kids....

those are all my definition of poor.

those are starts. the problem is, whenever this argument begins, everyone wants to include a 30-something highschool dropout doomed to working min wage for his entire life.

Min wage workers are not poor. Just because you can't afford all the luxuries you desire, compared to your higher paid boss, does not make you poor

 

I'm suggesting you quit calling section 8 housing recipients "poor", or people who live in Compton "poor". Poor is solved in America....

not budgeting your money, on the other hand.... wanting stuff you can't afford, but buying it anyways, then complaining you need food stamps because you spent grocery money on a fancy new cell phone.... complaining you can't afford clothes for the offspring, but having the latest 50" smart tv.....


I'm saying, unless a town looks like kiberia.... we don't have anything to fret over, America's "POOR" are doing just fine.

 

What a loss you are to the Christian charitable organisations!

 

who brought up religion? well, besides your hatred of it creeping into yet another thread.....

 

LOL, nothing to do with religion - I could have easily written state charitable institutions, but Christian ones are easily recognisable institutions in a predominantly (if nominally) Christian society such as ours. You really ought to try and understand irony.

 

fair enough....


I will say, my church has a ton of outreach programs with various missions. Our campus is right accross the street from an alternative school for expelled kids. The sermon this past Sunday.... give, even if you don't expect a return. The ultimate goal would be to get a troubled child, a poor family whose roof our habitat team reshingled for free, to come to church.... but even if noone we helped or counciled came to church... or even thanked us, or seemed entitled to the free help, we should still do it.

 

Christian charitable organiZations don't reward poverty as the government does, they teach the poor to fish rather than giving them fish.

 

LOL, learn to use the English language correctly before you presume to lecture an Englishman upon the application of his mother tongue. The spelling ideosyncrasies of a particularly hacked-about dialect, does not constitute the norm for international English. It was the Bard himself who wrote - "Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!"

And pat little homilies are no substitute for genuine compassion. Charity, whether Christian, Marxist, or Wiccan, simply does not have the ability and scope that government utilities can bring to bear in alleviating the suffering of so many demographics in society. Its funding is erratic, and its distribution is sometimes (if not often) influenced by ideological factors. For example, a fundamentalist Christian or Islamic charity may not believe in a programme for unwed mothers.

But the little homily (along the lines of "Give a man a fish ...) which I prefer goes - "Build a man a fire and you warm him for a few hours - set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life!"

 

That is a truly Christian, in the positive sense of the word, sentiment, and I applaud the organisation concerned.

 

orginiZation..... lol I keeed, I keeeeeed.....


thanks.


but the point I'm trying to make is it's not charity if its impressed upon you by .gov

also, .gov is notorious for not being able to manage any efficiently.
if .gov was so good at their job of 'charity' why do churches even need to do anything more in the first place.

 

LOL - to quote from "My Fair Lady" = "There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!"

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The pleasure (as the game-keeper said to the art-mistress,) was all mine.

I take that particular point, but why should that matter? Surely the end-product to be desired is the reduction in suffering - whatever the means.

With respect, perhaps you ought to qualify that statement as representing your government. Poverty and social ills exist everywhere, and are minimised in most developed societies (even yours) by means of governmental agencies. Can you see charities being able to provide unemployment benefits, medical care, pensions, etc. for 300 million odd citizens in your society? The odd care package, welcome as that is, does not even begin to address the problems of social justice.

 

I don't think .gov involvement decreases misery of the poor.... they simply redistribute it

 

I agree to disagree. We could have solved simple poverty when due to a simple lack of income that would otherwise be obtained from employment in a more efficient market for labor, last millennium; but, it may have been too much for the moralists on the right to bear because the the least wealhy under our form of Capitalism, would have benefited.

 

That is a fair point, that American government isn't efficient at being a welfare state as Europe. But it still goes to my point that the welfare state does not teach the poor to fish, it merely gives them the fish.

America is a success and able to withstand the current world economic downturn better than other countries such as Greece, Spain, and England for that matter, because it does not burden itself with these bloated charitable government institutions known as welfare.

Poverty is unofficially a crime here, as those who don't earn their keep are stigmatized as lazy freeloaders and are thrown in jail when they rob the corner store for snacks and drug money. We don't have our taxpayers supporting the lifestyle of the net-recipient as Europe does, while enjoying the same benefits as able bodied working net-contributors.

 

You also, make a number of fair points. Societal comparisons are always a problem, because they lack validity unless similar value systems are universally employed. So there are few absolute rights and wrongs, but we, in Europe, consider what you call 'welfare' a responsibility, not a burden. To us, social justice is essential to civilisation, and our societies are old enough to know where a lack of social justice eventually leads. Think the storming of the Winter Palace, and the Bastille.

 

Yes, I believe it has more to do with our sad, lack of morals as civil Persons in our republic, more than poverty should stigamitze the poor; especially, when corporate welfare has paid multimillion dollar bonuses to Persons on means tested, corporate welfare.

 

two wrongs doesn't make a right, and doesn't mean the people have a lack of morals, therefore, we have to tax them at a higher rate....

 

yes, it should. why spare the tax (rod) on wealthy children in the name of morals?

 

whose morals.... ? yours, or theres.


maybe had instilled a harder work ethic in their children (morals), we wouldn't have this conundrum.

 

how do you instill a work ethic with any rate of structural unemployment?

 

My guess is that the AF has provided you with a fairly handsome retirement package, possibly allowing you to double or triple dip at some other government job, or go back to school for a masters, so as to be able to "provide for yourself". Am I wrong? If I am, you'd be the first AF officer I've run across who hasn't done it. And I'm from an AF town with a bunch of AF retirees from old Titan Missile Silo colonels to A-10 and F-4 jockeys.

 

Those uprisings were from people who were accustomed to living off the government teat, and when it was taken away you see the same type of behavior as the riots more recently in parts of Europe, from the net-recipients in those states. In America we try hard not to have net-recipients become addicted to being dependent on the government in the first place . What they don't have they won't miss!.

Secondly, this 'civilisation', as you see it is still possible without entitlements from the welfare state. Those historic examples of the poor uprising cannot happen in America, as we are smart enough to invest in cages for millions of people who would ordinarily organize to rebel given the opportunity. Secondly we have the biggest spending in government force both in intelligence as our NSA, which sees all and knows all, and in the military to squash any sort of rebellion from the lazy freeloaders.

You see we have also learned a lot too from Europe's rich history, and that is why we don't commit to excessive and wasteful social justice spending, for the half of the country that is dependent on the other half.

 

This is a joke right?

Who pays the most taxes?

 

This is a leg pull - right? You are referring to the French Revolution and the 1917 Russian Revolution as being driven by people used to living of government beneficence? Have you read any history of France under the various Louis, or Russia under successive Czars? Poverty, hunger, and inequality was the lot of anyone who was not a noble. There were no elements of social justice nor any assistance for the unfortunate. If you were too poor to afford food or shelter - you and your children simply died.

And your idea of civilisation seems remarkably similar to that of Czar Nicholas II - ever heard of the Okhrana? They believed in the midnight knock on the door and the caging of noncompliant subjects.