BS: Why do we need poverty?

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 09:05 PM

mary, mary, mary...

Let me remind you that you are speaking from your own culture (mindset, if you will) and where it's easy for you so see the better choices, you may need to keep in mind that most poor women have a completely differnt culture (mindset)... If the object is bring some wisdom to the table then its gonna be like making love to a gorilla. Sure, it can be done, but it's gonna be on the gorillas terms... It's like that with folks who do no possess the life's experinces that you or I might have and, one thing is fir certain, these folks sho nuff don't like to be preached to... Does this make them right? Well, not really. But if we are to make progress with folks from a differnt culture than, like the gorilla, we're gonna have to get on the down elevator 'cause these folks don't do up elevators.

Think of it as a folk musican and a classicly trained soprano. How can they sing together? Can the folkie just will him or herself to the classiclly trained level? Well, no. It's got to got the other way.

Bottom line, all the preaching in world ain't gonna do nuthin' until first of all the US decides it wants to do something and second, is willing to go to the source of the problem rather than insist it comes to us...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 09:18 PM

All of this talk about welfare and poverty seriously ignores the problems of the working poor who, in the US at least, can't afford any health care or dental care, and who often work more than one job in order to just barely survive, which then puts their children at high risk for delinquency and drug use due to lack of parental supervision. And this can happen just as easily in two parent households as in one parent households.

I don't have figures on this right now, but my guess is that the majority of poor people in the US are working poor.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 09:45 PM

Since the so-called "Welfare Reform" legislation during Clinton's term, Carol, you are absolutely correct and it does frepresent the lion's share of folks who are poor in America. It's lots of women, fir the most part, who get up at 4:00 in the morning, catch a bus to one job and another bus to a second job... Meanwhile, relatives try to look after the kids while this por woman recieves little or no help from the government...

Meanwhile, back at the Department of Defense, seems somehow $5B got lost... Ahhhh, who cares...

Meanwhile, bacl to our mom who gets on the bus at 4:00 in the morning, according to Boss Hog, $5.15 a hour is plenty...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: mg
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 10:26 PM

if you go back a few generations, most cultures had a culture that was pretty much what I was describing. Don't keep beating that hopeless drum. Things can change, and they can change quickly, for the better or for the worse. Don't assume that because people are caught up in a cycle of poverty, especially mixed with drugs and/or alcohol, that that is what they want or what they hope for for their children. Believing that people can't change their circumstances and their behavior is helping to condemn them. I truly think that at the same time that people insist that others have an economic stake in keeping people poor, so they can work as wage slaves etc., that other people have a psychological stake in keeping people poor. I truly believe this. The poor, not the working poor, for whom I would support all sorts of health benefits, housing supplements, etc., but the poor tied in with abuse, drugs, etc..(and I would support them as well, but impose a bunch of conditions, drug tests, inspections etc)..serve a purpose for people, and I think it is to act as surrogates for what they themselves would like to do but don't dare. Think about this. People want other people to be poor for some reason. Why???????? mg

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 12:29 AM

There are many reasons, I expect. Depends on your psychology, and your position in life.

As someone once said, "everybody wants somebody that they can look down on"! (was it John Prine?)

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 07:38 AM

And everybody wants somebody to clean their toilets...and clean them for as little as possible. Anyone read The Grapes of Wrath?

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 07:57 AM

Well, gol danged... Drug testing and other consitions for those recievung assistence from the governemnt? Great idea. Lets start with Dick Cheney... No, make it Goergie Porge hisself after his next pretzel (wink, wink) incident...

B:)

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 10:24 AM

I'm in favour of a society where everyone cleans the toilets...but on a rotating basis. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 10:38 AM

So am i...but i would be. I always end up cleaning the toilet...sigh....don't even get paid...:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 04:15 PM

but rotate carefully. I hate it when it sloshes over the rim.

I can't imagine wealthy who actually want there to be poor people. At worst I imagine many neither care nor think about it, but "want?" wow. I hardly know what to say. That's beyond cynical.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: GUEST,Heidebundt Pikelmaas, Arms Dealer
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 04:29 PM

You are naive, John. Without poor people, where do you think I would get workers who are willing to put up with slave-wages and atrocious working conditions? How do you think I would be able to stimulate violence, civil wars, and insurrection in impoverished countries, if there were not many people suffering from a lack of food, habitation, medicine, and the other things that give people peace of mind? How could the ragtag armies that purchase my weapons convince 14-year-olds to abandon their toys and pick up an AK-47, were they not living in despair and squalor? How could I even be seen AS fantastically rich...if others were not wretchedly poor?

And I am rich, John. Very rich. No thanks to you. Many rich people are like you, John. They're naive. Some are even social idealists, who wish to improve the lot of humanity. I regard such bleeding hearts as rather pathetic specimens, since they fail to realize that eliminating poverty would be going against the basic needs of a competitive economy and would be disloyal to their own class in the end.

I've never suffered from that kind of fairy-tale thinking. If you want a teeter totter to move, you've got to increase the weight at one end. It's as simple as that. Poverty feeds wealth, and wealth confers exclusivity and authority upon those who most naturally merit it...people like me.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Mar 05 - 08:08 PM

Rich imagination, that's fir sure...

Well written...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: hesperis
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 12:36 PM

I think it'd be fairly easy to persuade a 14-year-old to pick up a gun instead of a toy.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Mar 05 - 05:37 PM

Yeah, most 14-year olds have outgrown toys, unless you consider Nintendo/Gameboy as toys.

The young men of Columbine and Paducah weren't living in squalor. They were more like the kid who wrote the fantasy of more mass murder in high school that Clinton Hammond sees as harmless in another active thread here.