UNITED WAY says almost half of U.S.households can't afford the basics

Because of course, we are not animals; nothing Darwin discovered applies to you- you are above nature and natures laws. Humans are too smart to learn from Darwin, or from nature; we should simply impose our rules on nature, force it to meet our wishes. It's a miracle we have continued to allow water to flow downhill, given our power and wisdom.

Tell ya what. Go out and hock everything you own, and start a business. Hire some help, and be sure to pay at least $20 an hour so your help will be able to afford a reasonable life.
One of two things will happen, and it won't take long- Either you will be bankrupt, or you will agree with me. Until YOU HAVE BEEN THERE, you are just blathering opinions which come from zero real experience, and even less understanding about what you speak of. .

Darwin recognized how man's perceiving himself as wise enough to ignore natural law would ultimately lead to his own destruction.
He saw you coming before you were born.

 

Psudeoscientitic garbage. Tell me another organism who has developed complex civilizations like we have? Everything we do is unnatural essentially, in that we use culture to create things that didn't exist before. What is natural about money? What is natural about private property? We make these things up, just as we do nations and corporations, etc. And we can easily make up laws as well and standards of living that all people in our society can at least enjoy.

We have hominid fossils where you have elderly individuals who are injured and unable to provide for themselves who show signs of healing and recovery to some degree. Meaning the band looked after those who got sick and of course humans already take care of their young for an extended period without reciprocity. Your social Darwinism doesn't even understand human nature or nature itself, its just an old outdated political ideology that would kill tens of thousands if implemented.

 

Social Darwinists think they understand the principle of individual selection by survival of the fittest. The do, however, have a problem grasping the concept of group selection, which is entirely compatible with Darwin's findings and applicable to social species. Humans are successful and currently on top of the food chain BECAUSE they are a social animal, not DESPITE of it, as the social Darwinists would like you to believe.

 

Even if group selection turns out not to be true, there are many reasons why human beings post civilization should not design our society and ethics based upon evolutionary processes.

 

When people are given money they didn't earn, they tend to get lazier. Without the owners, there are no jobs. The owners are the ones that put forth the capital and risked their own money to succeed.

 

Please explain to me how you eat for less than 4 dollars a day? Do you just eat rice?

 

How so? How do you think humans can transcend evolution (I disagree with that notion, btw)?

 

Just another fake LW lie narrative, debunked many times here. Relies on definitions of "wealth," a conveniently vague abstraction, purposefully distorted to exclude real categories of "wealth." Not surprised it's being repeated yet again despite being untrue, it's one of the LW Complex's favorite self-enriching lie narratives.

To the topic, shocking! That charities and other Complex grantees want higher taxation and redistribution, use weasel words and terms such as "worry free," (who, rich or poor, has a "worry free" life?) to create falsehoods in their favor. The "poor" in the U.S. have much the same basic amenities as the "rich."

 

Me specifically? Or the family as a whole. Lets see, last night we had the $2 box of 6 Salisbury steak, $2 worth of sides, and $1 worth of canned peas. $5 divided by 7 equals < $1 for everyone.
Lunches were Bologna sandwiches, chips from a bag, cup of store brand peaches. Apple sauce, and a juice pouch. This for the kids was about $1.50. I had a $2 box meal.
Breakfast was peanut butter waffle sandwich and the kids had cereal. Maybe $1, probably less.
Pretty easy when you don't eat out or buy the expensive

 

I don't think we transcend evolution, evolution is still happening. It is just that we shouldn't derive our ethics and design of society based upon our understanding of natural selection. Humans care for the sick and the invalid, we don't just give people up to nature to die so we can have a more pure blood line. Humanity is in a totally unique position with the invention of civilization, humanity can collaborate on massive scales hitherto unseen in biological history, this form of collaboration can create societies based upon mutual concern and value of all human life, and seek to live in balance with the world. Humans can THINK, and we are designed to be adaptable to almost any context or situation, so why not adapt human nature to an environment best suited for all life to flourish and for all to experience well being.

 

You are preaching to the choir about capitalism...you won't find an argument from me about the right to make as much money as you want - legally - as a business owner. But here's where we differ...I believe that, as humans, we have a responsibility to help others. When you can. If you can. Where you can. If everyone did that, the country would be in a much better place. The world would be in a much better place. It isn't utopian thinking - it is common sense. It is actually practicing what our parents taught us when we were children. Sharing when you have much makes a huge difference.

The idea that the Walton family have employees that NEED food stamps because they don't pay a living wage, or because they are ensuring shifts fall below requirements for benefits is not okay. Compare that to Costco that reports an 88% salary satisfaction from their employees.

 

I completely agree, and would add that evolution is about species...not individuals.

 

Perfect example. Have you looked at the employees at your local Walmart or McDonald’s? Would you pay them $20 an hour to work for you? Seems to me that the biggest job skill for young people is to find the blind spots in the security camera system so they can hide and play angry birds on their phones.

 

It is true that animals living in the wild do not live as long as those in captivity. They live free, pursue all they can be; the are alive every moment.
Would you choose to be much less alive, have others regulate your life and be dependent on them, not be free to be what you want, but live longer- in a cage? Not a cage with visible bars, but a cage all the same?

What is valuable about life- the fact you are not dead, or the fact you are thriving and able to pursue everything you wish to be?

Nature was here before us and will be after we are gone, and the same basic rules that regulated nature a 100 million years ago will still be here 100 million years from now.
To assume they don't work.... is to deny all of the history of life, and assume we are the only species that knows how to live. Do we? Do you think we ill we be able to demonstrate that successfully before we make ourselves extinct, and take perhaps half the species on earth with us?

Imagine a world where everything thrives- every species, large, small, strong, weak- all doing well. Not trashing the world, not consuming it's limited resources, not poisoning it, not killing without cause, not having wars with others for the sake of war, not needing psychologists to try to cope with themselves, not needing governments, cops, lawyers or preachers- just thriving, alive and living every moment.

That is hard to find today, because we managed to destroy that harmonious living environment in every corner of the world. But make no mistake- that is the way life existed before we came along to "improve" it. WE, Humans, are the deadliest and most vicious species in history; a threat to virtually every living thing- animals and plants alike. The multitude of species that made up that thriving society of life have all suffered great decline as a result of our greed and failure to respect nature. However, there are still a few remote places where a person can observe the harmony that used to be commonplace, assuming you were respectful enough to visit quietly and watch rather than feel the need to control or destroy. IF you were an individual able to see past the natural prejudice of being human, able to recognize this natural harmony- Soon, you would find yourself envious, and realize that we ourselves are responsible for the sorry condition of humanity as well as the devastation of an incredibly successful natural world. IF you were such a person, you might begin to ask a question about what you see.... What do they know that we don't know?

I know the answers- because I did spend countless hours watching this spectacle of harmony, when my own life was in great disarray. I did ask that question, hundreds of times.
The answer is always there; the ability to see it is not. Ancient oriental wisdom - "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear".

What they know, is the secret to life, as well as to happiness, love and success. Not to avoiding death, but to living life successfully and it all being worthwhile. It's not unknown to man- it's simply rejected by the majority of men. We are too smart to waste time learning what has made a million species thrive over millions of years. As a species we simply are not ready- and unlikely to be so before it is too late. As an individual, it's available to anyone who is ready, anytime, any place. Provided you are not in a cage that limits your ability to see.

 

It is a fascination of mine that retail corporations make customer service an entry level position. Their bread and butter is earned through customer purchases, yet they assign the least trained and lowest paid to interact with them. And once one of those employees is recognized as being good at that job, they elevate them in pay and in position which takes them out of that realm.

The example you cite is of the chicken and egg variety. When paid dirt, and treated that way, are you motivated to do much more than the bare minimum? Pay more - train effectively and on an ongoing basis - manage effectively...those three things will make a huge difference in the types of employees you have and will change the work ethic of young people as they enter the workforce.

 

Even more specifically, it is about populations. Viewing this world in some kind of individualistic promethean overcoming is just the height of Conservative arrogance. Society depends on individuals, but we really are in all this together but we sometimes lose sight of that outside of existential crises. No individual is going to on his solve global climate change caused by human beings, we need wider scales of collaboration, not more atomized and isolate individuals clawing at issues they can safely comprehend or navigate on their own. And the individual nation state is also insufficient.

 

Mine is terlit paper..

 

We need a new world to conquer yet they have all been done on the Earth.

 

I'll also address this because eating healthy and cheap has been a hobby of mine for years.

Lean protein is the most expensive part of the diet, rest is very easy. Look for healthy meats like pork tenderloin, chicken, canned fish, on sale in bulk. Regularly on sale for $1.60 or so a pound in whole loins, pork tenderloin is a great, cheap protein staple. Another is turkey, on sale now for $.50 a pound. Bought my Thanksgiving turkey yesterday for $8.00. That will provide the protein component of 20 or so adult meals, a larger turkey is a month of adult meals for $10-15. Canned wild caught fish is dirt cheap, sardines, herring, salmon .50-75 per meal. I buy top quality canned fish at discount stores for $.50 a can. Great for Omega 3s also. Supplementing with hunting and fishing is very easy in many areas also.

Vegetables revolve around staples bought in bulk and frozen, proven to be as healthy as fresh. Black beans, good basmati or brown rice, white or sweet potatoes, .30-.50 a day tops per adult. Frozen veg, .50-75 a day tops. Get frozen broccoli pieces in bulk instead of florets, just as nutritious, dirt cheap. Always eat green veg when given a choice over yellow or orange. Fruits bought in bulk like bananas, apples, .50 a day.

A comfortable, healthy tasty diet with some splurge items can be done easily for $90 a month per adult. A subsistence diet that is nutritionally sound but boring and without splurges? Far cheaper, $30-50 a month per adult. I currently run on about $150 a month including lots of supplements, herbs and spices. and splurging like organic green tea.

Anyway, that's enough unless anyone wants to go more in detail on this. The point is that the narratives on "starving Americans," "food insecure Americans" etc. are a hoax. I saw a documentary on this topic once where a family of four was "forced to eat at McDonalds" because healthy food was too expensive. What a load of hooey. Then there's the derivative lie narrative that people in cities can't get to grocery stores. Well MOVE then... or take cheap public transportation to an inexpensive grocery store.

90% of "hungry in the U.S." lie narratives, like 90% of other lie narratives on "the poor" are based on repetitive bad behavior and choices that don't take a high IQ to correct, just not being lazy.

 

And tell me- how is it that every species on the face of the earth can do what you cannot do- Thrive, be itself successfully, using only what nature gave them?
Can you do that?

Thrive- without governments, lawyers, doctors psychiatrists, religions, weapons?

What is admirable about using up everything around you- consuming the natural resources, about destroying habitat, destroying species, polluting the atmosphere, filling the ocean with trash, and poisoning the entire planet in the process? How smart is that?

We haven't proven ourselves superior- only that we are the most vicious, greedy, disrespectful and dangerous predator that has ever inhabited earth. Not by natural necessity- but by choice. How smart is that?

As far as complex civilizations, have you ever studied things like the bees, the termites and ants? Tiny species with tiny brains- Living in total cooperation and harmony for the benefit of their society. A colony may have as many as 300 million members; and they are complex home builders sometimes covering hundreds of acres. There are a great many such examples in nature, that you are obviously ignorant of.

Humanity has huge potential- totally obstructed by arrogance, ignorance and a stupid desire to believe itself superior to everything. No other species acts as it's own worst enemy to the extent that humans do; we truly excel at that.

By the way- Darwin's most important works, the theory of evolution developed 200 years ago, is now accepted world wide as the cornerstone of all biology.
That has only become true in the last 60-70 years, because we are s-l-o-w learners when we don't like the lesson.
Of course, if you are not a biological entity, then it still doesn't apply to you.

 

That's seriously cheap eating. Impressive.

 

Surely more government and collectivism will fix all the many social issues that government and collectivism cause!

 

There is a lot of good advice there. It costs me about 12-18 dollars a day to eat, but I eat a lot more than most people.

Eating out daily or multiple times a day is a huge financial mistake. Even if you can afford it. Save that money and retire a couple years earlier. Places like McDonalds are not cheap. They are convenient, but expensive.

It is a problem for some, beyond a basic lack of knowledge, that there aren't good grocery stores available to them. I think that is starting to change, but there are still communities with no local grocer. That means they have to travel to buy healthy cheap food or they eat out or buy food at overpriced convenient stoes.

 

But is that really what an economy demands people eat like? If everyone ate like that, Capitalism would fall on its face.

 

I dont think most people should eat for less than 5 dollars a day. Personally I wouldn't eat that way. I like fresh vegetables and fresh red meat.

People shouldn't eat out everyday though.