The US Economy

timber, Ya never learn, do you? We are not "doom and gloom" wishers. We are a bit more cautious about the economy based on some major fundamentals called more jobs and stable GDP growth over a longer term than one quarter. Heck, I want our economy to improve. If the future holds out positive growth for our economy as we've experienced during the past month (October 2003), we would literally be wealthy beyond our dreams, and I can buy that MBZ sports that I've been dreaming about all my life. Wink

0 Replies

c.i. , I'm not overly optimistic, I'm not pessimistic, and I know you're not a doom-and-gloomer. In fact, If I were you, I prolly wouldn't be pickin' out a color for the new Benz quite yet. We've just had two upward-trending quarters after a couple which slowed a slackening of decline. There's a ways to go, but I really figure its on its way.

'Course, I gotta admit I've recently taken to lookin' at stuff about new fishin' boats :wink:

0 Replies

Quote:

Based on a Census Bureau survey of 50,000 households, the department estimated that 3.8 million families were hungry last year to the point where someone in the household skipped meals because they couldn't afford them. That's an 8.6 percent increase from 2001, when 3.5 million families were hungry, and a 13 percent increase from 2000.

Also, more and more families are unsure if they can afford to eat or don't have enough food in their cupboards.

Last year, 11 percent of 108 million families were in that situation. That's up 5 percent from 2001 and 8 percent from 2000.

Most poor families struggling with hunger tried to ensure their children are fed, the report said. Nonetheless, one or more children in an estimated 265,000 families on occasion missed meals last year because the families either couldn't afford to eat or didn't have enough food at home.

Margaret Andrews, a department economist and an author of the annual survey, said the prevalence of hunger and food insecurity is clearly tied to the poverty rate because they fluctuate together.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/31/national/main581268.shtml

0 Replies

Tart, an improved labor picture will positively impact the poverty picture. That's the way things work. If more folks are workin', fewer folks are available to populate the poverty pool.

0 Replies

It's some of the poverty gene pool that scares me, they just keep on multiplying when they know damn well they can't feed them.

0 Replies

There was a line somewhere by a potential imigrant-----I want to go to America where even the poor people are "fat".

0 Replies

and they die from overweight rather than starvation. a great choice.

0 Replies

Are we too good for our own good or what?

0 Replies

Actually, I take issue with those who say of "The Poor" that "its their own fault". Like most blanket statements, that's an example of One Size Fits Badly. For any of a number of lrgitimate reasons, one may be unable to derive an income. We do in fact have an obligation to provide assistance where it is needed, and to do what can be done to assure quality of life for those truly less fortunate. On the other hand there are The Welfare Queens and the Worker's Comp Kings, and the merely lazy or disaffected. It is unconscionable that we should enable those sorts. When one individual has to choose one or two from among shelter, medical care and food while another, ablebodied and in full possession of mental faculties, sucks up aid dollars while earning an unreported, often even illegal income is an outrage.

0 Replies

Here is an example of the money drains for the country:

The Social Security Administration continues to pay retirement income to dead people. Since they have allowed retirees to receive their SS through automatic deposit to their bank accounts. Some of them are dead but the SSA is not aware of it and continues depositing their monthly checks in their bank account, meanwhile the family members continue to withdraw and use the money. I actually knew some people who have done this.

America is an economic powerhouse. We can feed all our people if we need to. It is just a matter of priorities. Do we still need those billion dollar aircrafts and multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers?

0 Replies

This is a huge money pit. This is the most recent in depth study I could find, several sites on the subject link to Huddle's study. The study doesn't take into account recent California immigrant privileges.

Mass Immigration Cost American Taxpayers $69 Billion Net and 2 Million Jobs in 1997

Excerpt

Study by Dr. Donald Huddle Reports Legal Immigration of over 1 Million Per Year Accounts for over 62% of Costs
State Costs to Taxpayers are Also Soaring (1996 Net Costs % up from 1992):

California: $28 billion up 35%

New York: $14 billion up 29%

Texas: $7 billion up 37%

Florida: $6 billion up 77%

The first study of the net cost of immigration to American taxpayers in 1997 conducted by Dr. Donald Huddle, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Rice University, found that:

The nearly 26 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the United States since 1970 cost taxpayers a net $69 billion in 1997 alone, in excess of taxes those immigrants paid. This represents a cost of $260 in additional taxes paid by each U.S. resident or $1,030 in additional taxes paid by each family of four. This cost is a substantial increase over the net immigration costs of $65 billion ins 1996, $51 billion ins 1994, $44 billion in 1993, and $43 billion in 1992.

Over 62% of the net national cost of immigration in 1996, $40.6 billion, was attributable to legal and legalized (amnesty) immigrants. Illegal immigration generates about 38%, $24 billion of the total net cost. Legal immigration levels are over one million per year, and rising.

Rest of the study

0 Replies

The above site I linked doesn't seem to be up at the moment. Here's more info on the effects of rampant immigration to the US.

Immigration effects

0 Replies

timberlandko wrote:

Tart, an improved labor picture will positively impact the poverty picture. That's the way things work. If more folks are workin', fewer folks are available to populate the poverty pool.

That would be swell if she wanted to see improvement. She doesn't. It's obvious from her citations that she's desperate to prove that things are bad for people under Bush.

It's like the homeless issue. Homelessness was a big story during Reagan and Bush I, but dropped off the media's radar under Clinton, despite the fact that HOMELESSNESS WENT UP UNDER CLINTON.

These people don't care about "the poor", "the sick", "the homeless"; they merely use these groups as political cudgels with which to bash the opposition. If poverty suddenly failed to "play" as an issue, liberals would abandon the poor drug company sponsors leaving the Rush Limbaugh show.

0 Replies

http://www.evilgopbastards.com/karl_roves_playbook.jpg

Page 17:
Characterize our critics as pathological "Bush haters." When they accuse us of failed policies, respond that they're hoping for a bad economy, Iraq quagmire, etc.

0 Replies

Brand X wrote:

It's some of the poverty gene pool that scares me, they just keep on multiplying when they know damn well they can't feed them.

Your comment makes me think it isn't the "poor" who should have been filtered from the gene pool. Hows the weather in Argentina, Dr.Mengele? Mad

0 Replies

Scrat wrote:

timberlandko wrote:
Tart, an improved labor picture will positively impact the poverty picture. That's the way things work. If more folks are workin', fewer folks are available to populate the poverty pool.

That would be swell if she wanted to see improvement. She doesn't. It's obvious from her citations that she's desperate to prove that things are bad for people under Bush.

It's like the homeless issue. Homelessness was a big story during Reagan and Bush I, but dropped off the media's radar under Clinton, despite the fact that HOMELESSNESS WENT UP UNDER CLINTON.

These people don't care about "the poor", "the sick", "the homeless"; they merely use these groups as political cudgels with which to bash the opposition. If poverty suddenly failed to "play" as an issue, liberals would abandon the poor drug company sponsors leaving the Rush Limbaugh show.

Hmmm..so...guess how many dedicated righties I met volunteering at the Pike Market Clinic in the 1990s? None. How many of us were very leftward leaning? All of us! The far right (apparently with the exception of Timber) sees poverty as a problem that results from "immorality." Therefore the poor deserve no help, since their debauchery would only increase. They deserve to die from otherwise preventable disease processes,a dn to starve. And their kids should starve too, since they "breed like cockroaches," right? Most of you people deserve what this country is morphing into!

0 Replies

Hbob, I gotta say I believe your assessment of The Right's position on poverty is ill-informed. What the right is about in that regard is the responisbility of those able to help themselves to do so, and the responsibility of all who are able to help those legitimately unable to help themselves. By and large, that is true of most of the ideologic differences dividing The Left and The Right, IMHO; where The Right is for responsibility and personal initiative, The Left is about enabling disfunction. The Right indeed loves its fellow humankind ... its just that The Right practices "Tough Love" as opposed to being given to the coddling and encouragement of slackers. And before any of those on The Left jump up and down, appendages jerking at the pull of their strings, I repeat that it is not "The Poor" who are "The Problem", it is the slackers among them, and the supporters of those slackers. I single out for condemnation only those who are in fact slackers. It is long past time we can afford to carry those who are able, but disinclined, to contribute to and participate in the matter of their own betterment. More must be, and is being, done to provide real opportunity to those in need. There is no need, or justification, to pander to those who think otherwise. Unless, of course, you're a Democrat.

0 Replies

What is you definition of "slacker?" Nothing in your comment suggests a "love of humankind." On the contrary, it suggests a willingness to let some members of society fall by the wayside, since they couldn't "cut it."
Lets look at the situation here in Colorado. As a method of controlling the budget, medical care for indigent immigrants was cut. Legal immigrants. So sorry, you are no longer eleigible, now just go into that corner and die, but don't be messy about it, okay? In Seattle, a city that has been hit rather hard by the tech bust, the community clinic network has been hit very hard by city, county and state budget cuts. The Pike Market Clinc has had its hours cut, and lost two PAs and a physician. Virginia Mason Med Centre, the facility that had accepted specialty referrals form the community clinics, cased to do so for financial reasons. Harborview, essentially the county hospital, has had to absorb these patients, with the associated extension of treatment waiting times.
Many of the patients seen at these clinics are "working poor" and "formerly employed." Are these folks the "slackers" of whom you speak? I know folks here in Denver who have been unemployed for going on two years, at this point. Are they "slackers" for not being able to find a job? Another friend of mine, and electrical engineer let go by Boeing, is looking for jobs in Hungary and Slovenia at the moment because he can't find anything in the US. He's almost making ends meet right now by working in the mens clothing department at the Bon in downtown Seattle. He moved in with three other unemplyed engineers in their mid thirties, all of whom are struggling in such low paying jobs. Are these the "slackers" you so causally mention?

0 Replies

Capitalism is a condition both of the world and of the soul.

-Franz Kafka

0 Replies

rather than making comparisons with other nations/cultures I would find it far more significant to look at capablity as in, what level of quality of life is the US capable of providing for ALL its citizens and to what extent does it do that.

0 Replies

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know