3 ms·

No, this has nothing to do with poverty. This has to do with people who believe they are entitled to the 'american dream' but refuse to sacrifice or work hard,

No, this has nothing to do with poverty. This has to do with people who believe they are entitled to the 'american dream' but refuse to sacrifice or work hard, or compromise in any way to achieve that dream. I was raised on government cheese. I am alive because of foodstamps. You are arguing with strawman. I'm all for helping the poor. We need a safety net, specifically to help children. However, that doesn't mean that every hippy who hasn't succeeded is the victim of some grand conspiracy where the rich tilt the system in their own favor. Who wants to fix schools? Schools are corrupt in bad neighborhoods not because they are being sabotaged (they often have very high levels of funding), but because bad neighborhoods have bad parents and a poor PTA, so there is nobody with any incentive to fix the schools that also have the ability and experience to do anything about it. A poor inner city parent has never seen a school that works, and has never recieved any education to speak of, so they have no idea how to 'fix' their child's school, and most of the time they don't even know that is something they should be concerned about. Their priorities are all fucked. How is that the fault of me or anyone else in the 1%? How is protesting wallstreet in any way related to this? Your points are all entirely off topic. Health insurance scam them? What does that have to do with wallstreet? Seriously, though, if your biggest problem is long term debt, you are pretty fucking rich in absolute terms. There are people in Africa who's #1 problem is starving to death. After all, our western legal system is completely friendly to debtors these days, they can have all debts removed (other than student loans) by declaring bankruptcy. It's not my fault people are too stupid to major in a field that will let them pay back their student loans. The humanities do not lead to jobs, everyone knowns this. Hell, it's repeated so much it's a cliche! Blaming other people because you wanted to do an easy major and fuck girls in college while going into debt is an insult to those of us that worked our asses off so that we could make money later. This is just 'the ant and the grasshopper', don't blame the ant. Actually, I was born into and lived in poverty almost my entire life before the age of 18. I attended many bad schools, and had no support. I don't feel exploited at all, in fact I think I'm lucky to live in an age where even the poorest people, who's parents make the worst decisions (drug use, alcohol abuse, child abuse) are able to attend school, and in fact are compelled to. If you can afford a big screen TV, and you have 500 channels of television, you are not being exploited. Turn off the TV and do something before you start bitching about how unfair life is. Everyone has access to quality food. If you are too poor to afford quality food, foodstamps are provided for you and your family. If you choose to buy McDonalds and cheetos anyway, what then? Are we supposed to force feed people carrots? Because that is the only way you'll get many poor people to eat healthy food, by forcing them to. Is that what you advocate? I think if you turned the anger down, you would see that there isn't a class of evil conspirators at the top. The solutions to our problems are not clear cut, and you don't have any answers to any of the problems you think you see. There is no silver bullet to the problems of society, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of lessons to move forward a little bit every generation.

forensic 15y ago
The generations aren't moving forward, they're moving backward. The middle class has shrunken by 10% since 1970 and poverty has gone up, both worldwide and in America. TVs are not good things to have, they're brainwashing machines that make people stupid. Wall street moguls run the government and own the media. They are more powerful than presidents. We barely have a social safety net anymore. It's sad that the people who came from poverty often have the least sympathy. What you are missing is that not everyone can be born with above average IQs and work their way out. You got lucky and the social safety net is quickly crumbling behind you. What you miss about ghetto schools is the school board corruption. The school boards eat all the funding in salaries and perks and corporate pork projects. I'm not telling you or anyone else to sacrifice their well-being. I'm saying you should take a look at the demographic trends and recognize that for your own sake you need to play a part in bettering the communities of the unfortunate. Because your own livelihood depends on an intact civil society with a functioning non-corrupt government that is not owned by a few corrupt industries. The society that gave you the opportunity to enjoy wealth did not just spontaneously arrange itself. It was designed and protected by altruistic, honest, competent and intelligent people just like you. Except you aren't playing a civic role in your community but the corporate lobbyists and Christian fascists are, which threatens your lifestyle. Your social mobility was enabled by the middle class, through hardwon political and social battles with robber barons. You inherited the social traditions that made you more than a serf, but are not passing those traditions on to the next generation. They are quickly going away through corporate owned lawmakers creating a neo-feudalistic corporate fascism. All I want is for people like you to spend some of your time engaging in community leadership and politics, like my grandfathers did after the war to create and defend the middle class, the social safety net, and social mobility. You came from a poor background, but I come from an upper middle class background whose ancestors played roles in creating those social programs that kept you alive and gave you access to educational resources. They did it for future generations of poor children like you were, and I want you to pay it forward through civic participation. Don't just tell the poor to go wallow. Lend a helping hand.
- justin_vanw 15y ago
  A helping hand doesn't always help. You act as though we know what the problems are, and what the solutions are, but refuse to act because of idiocy or bigotry. Suppose you were given a budget of $100Billion USD to spend however you wanted. Now, give me your plan to fix something, anything. Tell me how this 'helping hand' will be used, and I'll respond with a long, long list of ways you are actually going to do more harm than good. It's not out of idiocy and bigotry that I advocate these positions, it's out of a desire to not simply waste resources (and thus cause harm) when we have no idea how to actually help. Now, to your specific points, you are just full of shit. You are spouting a bunch nonsense. I could refute one point at a time, but your MO seems to be to just move on to new talking points when old ones are refuted. No doubt you win arguments by simply wearing out your opponents with your endless stream of ill-posed statements. Honestly, I would be happy to demolish your arguments one at a time. So, if you want to have this debate, lets start with one important theme, and go from there, not 500 assertions that you'll just abandon and replace with 500 more in your next post. Just to be completely clear, I don't claim to know what all the problems and solutions are. I claim that you don't know what the problems and solutions are, and should stop criticizing people just because they don't advocate the same radical positions you baselessly hold.

forensic 15y ago

The generations aren't moving forward, they're moving backward. The middle class has shrunken by 10% since 1970 and poverty has gone up, both worldwide and in America. TVs are not good things to have, they're brainwashing machines that make people stupid. Wall street moguls run the government and own the media. They are more powerful than presidents. We barely have a social safety net anymore. It's sad that the people who came from poverty often have the least sympathy. What you are missing is that not everyone can be born with above average IQs and work their way out. You got lucky and the social safety net is quickly crumbling behind you. What you miss about ghetto schools is the school board corruption. The school boards eat all the funding in salaries and perks and corporate pork projects. I'm not telling you or anyone else to sacrifice their well-being. I'm saying you should take a look at the demographic trends and recognize that for your own sake you need to play a part in bettering the communities of the unfortunate. Because your own livelihood depends on an intact civil society with a functioning non-corrupt government that is not owned by a few corrupt industries. The society that gave you the opportunity to enjoy wealth did not just spontaneously arrange itself. It was designed and protected by altruistic, honest, competent and intelligent people just like you. Except you aren't playing a civic role in your community but the corporate lobbyists and Christian fascists are, which threatens your lifestyle. Your social mobility was enabled by the middle class, through hardwon political and social battles with robber barons. You inherited the social traditions that made you more than a serf, but are not passing those traditions on to the next generation. They are quickly going away through corporate owned lawmakers creating a neo-feudalistic corporate fascism. All I want is for people like you to spend some of your time engaging in community leadership and politics, like my grandfathers did after the war to create and defend the middle class, the social safety net, and social mobility. You came from a poor background, but I come from an upper middle class background whose ancestors played roles in creating those social programs that kept you alive and gave you access to educational resources. They did it for future generations of poor children like you were, and I want you to pay it forward through civic participation. Don't just tell the poor to go wallow. Lend a helping hand.

justin_vanw 15y ago
A helping hand doesn't always help. You act as though we know what the problems are, and what the solutions are, but refuse to act because of idiocy or bigotry. Suppose you were given a budget of $100Billion USD to spend however you wanted. Now, give me your plan to fix something, anything. Tell me how this 'helping hand' will be used, and I'll respond with a long, long list of ways you are actually going to do more harm than good. It's not out of idiocy and bigotry that I advocate these positions, it's out of a desire to not simply waste resources (and thus cause harm) when we have no idea how to actually help. Now, to your specific points, you are just full of shit. You are spouting a bunch nonsense. I could refute one point at a time, but your MO seems to be to just move on to new talking points when old ones are refuted. No doubt you win arguments by simply wearing out your opponents with your endless stream of ill-posed statements. Honestly, I would be happy to demolish your arguments one at a time. So, if you want to have this debate, lets start with one important theme, and go from there, not 500 assertions that you'll just abandon and replace with 500 more in your next post. Just to be completely clear, I don't claim to know what all the problems and solutions are. I claim that you don't know what the problems and solutions are, and should stop criticizing people just because they don't advocate the same radical positions you baselessly hold.