4.3 million more in poverty since 2000

I kind of agree with McG that the government can't really help and maybe should just get out of the way. It's my personal opinion that we should ask the federal government for nothing because when we ask them for something, they give it to their friends instead and tell you how happy you ought to be to have it. See medicare drug benefit.

Anywho, I'm no economist but I am disturbed by the high household debt and high cost of housing in this country. I think that what happens is that the middle class has credit and so can afford to go into debt in order to have the kind of life that most American's consider minimal (house, car, kids). What happens is that those who are just below do not have credit or have bad credit and cannot compete. The disparity seems to be growing as households can't spend themselves into oblivion forever and start to fall behind. This is why I'm so concerned about our national debt -- same thing on a larger scale.

..and now for something completely different.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:
Bush did a good job turning around the clinton recession.

Can anyone say 'Revisionist History?'

Cycloptichorn

Yes they can, when they deny that this was Clintons recession.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Yeah, but if other people are BECOMMING poor at a higher rate than people who are leaving poverty, then things are not going the way they should.

This is exactly what we have seen in the rise in the number of people that live in poverty. You talk about how raising the dollar level for poverty changes this number; but, there are a lot of basic needs that are much more expensive than they used to be!

A family of four is two adults, two kids. This is not a crazy number of kids for people to be having. Your implication that this is so is disingenuous, and also contrary to the anti-abortion movement - what should a family who finds themselves pregnant(accidents do happen) do?

I myself live below the poverty line, thanks to the magical wonders of college. I will soon not be counted as being below the poverty line. But for some reason, I don't think that the majority of those below the poverty line are college kids...

Cycloptichorn

I would agree with the statement that a higher rate of people going into poverty is the wrong direction. But there are so many factors that make up this number. Does it account for teenagers of working age starting out their first job? They live below the poverty level. What about people of retirement age (baby boomer generation) who were making large incomes, retire, and their income drops below the poverty line? They could have large amounts of wealth in home equity, 410(k), stocks and bonds and various other wealth that is saved... but if you just look at just their income level they could be below the poverty line.

I am not saying there are not poor people - there are. But I wonder if a .4% increase could not be accounted for.

I also think an amount of accountibility needs to be established. You mentioned the average family of four and mistakes do happen. Fine, I'll give you one mistake but if the mistake keeps happening then it is not so much a mistake but carlessness or ignorance. You also mention abortion - although I am against abortion as a form of birth control it is an option that people have.

When it comes down to it the only way for people to raise above the income level is to work and get paid for it. Raising the minimum wage is not an option as your other article points out - that only adds to inflation. You and I have both taken it apon ourselves to go to college and better ourselves - why can't others do the same?

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I am really kind of getting tired of hearing the 'it's your own fault if you're poor' argument. While I certainly believe in personal responsibility and a work ethic, there's just a lot more to it than that.

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Who's "fault" is it?

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Why does it have to be someone's "fault"?

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Quote:

I also think an amount of accountibility needs to be established. You mentioned the average family of four and mistakes do happen. Fine, I'll give you one mistake but if the mistake keeps happening then it is not so much a mistake but carlessness or ignorance. You also mention abortion - although I am against abortion as a form of birth control it is an option that people have.

I agree; I am pro-choice personally. But that is inconsistent with the GOP platform, so I was wondering what someone from that side of the fence would suggest a family do in this case.

Quote:

You and I have both taken it apon ourselves to go to college and better ourselves - why can't others do the same?

I think there are a few reasons.

First of all, money. Even with financial aid I squeak by. THere are a lot of kids that are in the same position I was; their parents make JUST enough dough to disqualify a lot of financial aid, but not enough so that they can realistically give a ton of money to help out as the government expects. Colleges and Universities are becoming much more expensive nationwide, as well, which further hurts the problem.

Second, there is a societal drive to attend college amongst certain sections of our populace which is severely lacking. Personally, I believe more education is needed at the most basic levels - educating parents about the right way to raise their kids, how to break the cycle of poverty by setting goals for their children and making sure they meet them.

Third, the fact remains that college isn't for everyone. Less than 30% of Americans attend college. Given that there are many unintelligent/unintersted people out there re: book learning, it becomes neccessary for our society to have a lot of jobs that do not require a college degree in order to be hired.

Manufacturing jobs are a good example of this, and we are losing manufacturing jobs in America at a huge rate. THis more than anything else is a problem; without enacting tarriffs and tax regulations to force our businesses to stop this idiocy of outsourcing jobs, we will lose more and more of our manufacturing base, which is very dangerous from an economics point of view and, in my opinion, a MAJOR factor in the rise of unemployment and poverty.

For example: Joe works at a tire factory, making an okay wage for his family. They aren't ever going to be rich or anything, but they get along okay. Suddenly, the factory is closed down because it's cheaper to make tires in Taiwan where you can pay people 20 cents a day instead of 100 dollars a day.

What is Joe to do? There are tons of people competing for the few manufacturing jobs that are left, and he has to feed his family... so he takes a job that doesn't pay as much, say a janitor position or perhaps construction. Where before he was getting by okay, now he is barely making ends meet, and has to resort to credit cards to make sure his kids have food every month.

Now repeat this times, say, 4 million and you will see why this is a huge problem for America, and one that is DIRECTLY related to politicians and their stance on taxes, tarriffs, and trade.

Cycloptichorn

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Another thread about this topic:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=32230&highlight=

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Okay, why are people poor?

You say there is a lot more to it than personal responsibility and work ethic. I can't disagree with that... there are people who are physically or mentally not able to work. There are people who get laid off do to no fault of their own. There are also people who are lazy. There are people who get fired for reasons that are their own (incompetence/drinking/harassment/violence/etc). In cases like those I would say it is their fault.

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jpinMilwaukee wrote:

Okay, why are people poor?

You say there is a lot more to it than personal responsibility and work ethic. I can't disagree with that... there are people who are physically or mentally not able to work. There are people who get laid off do to no fault of their own. There are also people who are lazy. There are people who get fired for reasons that are their own (incompetence/drinking/harassment/violence/etc). In cases like those I would say it is their fault.

Well, I can't argue that there are no lazy poor americans. But there is no single bullet answer to why people are poor. For most, it is because they were born that way and everyone they ever knew was that way and they had no idea that it was possible to be anything else and how one would go about it if it was. I believe that we should work very hard to find out why whole communities are poorer than others -- and it's not just about jobs -- and work to solve as many of those problems as we can so that the only poor americans left will be the truly lazy ones.

Have to go now.

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Oh, yeah, I think all that is true too.

As much as I would like to see it I doubt we are going to move to a socialist system any time soon. So there will always be a poor underclass.

The mission is not neccessarily to attempt to completely remove that group; but to make it as small as possible, to remove barriers from leaving it, to try and stop generational cycles that keep families poor for years.

The simple fact remains that while a lot of people are poor and it IS their fault, there are a lot who are poor and it ISN'T their fault. We, as a society, owe it to those people to try and give them a chance to rectify their situation.

That being said; the question becomes, how can we do this? McG had a good point that giving people money never helped anything, and he's right; we can't just redistribute all the wealth and act like that will solve things.

Rather, we should take a page from the good book: Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat forever! Instead of redistributing money, we can make American companies keep more jobs IN America by enacting trade programmes and tarriffs, as well as removing tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas.

The poor, no matter whose fault it is, are EVERYONE'S problem. We cannot ignore them and expect things to be okay. As a society, we must figure out a way to reverse this trend before it becomes too late.

Cycloptichorn

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Cy,

I agree with you on just about everything you just stated. I was in the same position of parents making to much money to get financail aid. What the government doesn't take in to account is a mortgage and car payments and what ever other debt is out there.

You nailed it on the head when you said:

"there is a societal drive to attend college amongst certain sections of our populace which is severely lacking. Personally, I believe more education is needed at the most basic levels - educating parents about the right way to raise their kids, how to break the cycle of poverty by setting goals for their children and making sure they meet them.

Now the issue of manufacturing and other lower paying jobs gets tricky. My take on it is that these jobs are a side-effect of a capitalist society. We eat tons of fast food. There needs to be people who work at McDonalds. We drive cars and produce a lot of garbage. There need to be people who wash our cars and collect our garbage. If we were to raise wages to the point that these people made as much money as doctors and other high paying jobs, there would be less incentive for anyone to become a doctor. I once heard economics explained by the need for people to be competitive. As a society we are competitive. We compete to be better than the people next to us. This competition makes people invent things, work harder to get a promotion over their co-employee, start your own company becasue you think you can do it better than somebody else. This in turn creates other jobs.

They then related this to communism where everyone was given everything everyone else was. Here people competed to do less than everyone else.

That ramble may have lost it's point somewhere along the way, but when it came down to it, I could continue working at Menards my whole life or I could do something about it. I chose to do something about it.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

As much as I would like to see it I doubt we are going to move to a socialist system any time soon. So there will always be a poor underclass.

And how exactly will a socialist system eleminate the poor underclass?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The mission is not neccessarily to attempt to completely remove that group; but to make it as small as possible, to remove barriers from leaving it, to try and stop generational cycles that keep families poor for years.

The mission is to keep a system where greater effort yeilds greater rewards.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The simple fact remains that while a lot of people are poor and it IS their fault, there are a lot who are poor and it ISN'T their fault. We, as a society, owe it to those people to try and give them a chance to rectify their situation.

They have the chance to rectify their situation already.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

That being said; the question becomes, how can we do this? McG had a good point that giving people money never helped anything, and he's right; we can't just redistribute all the wealth and act like that will solve things.

Yet you mention socialism, implying it would be the cure. Until we know the circumstances of this increase we can't know the cure, this might be an immigration problem.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Rather, we should take a page from the good book: Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat forever! Instead of redistributing money, we can make American companies keep more jobs IN America by enacting trade programmes and tarriffs, as well as removing tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas.

You can't keep certain jobs in the US when you can get skilled labor at a fraction of the price. Programming is going to India, manufacturing is going to china or elsewhere, and tht will not stop, at kleast until robots replace humans in these positions.

As we still don't know if the exportation of certain jobs is responsible for the increase.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The poor, no matter whose fault it is, are EVERYONE'S problem. We cannot ignore them and expect things to be okay. As a society, we must figure out a way to reverse this trend before it becomes too late.

Not really.

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Quote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The poor, no matter whose fault it is, are EVERYONE'S problem. We cannot ignore them and expect things to be okay. As a society, we must figure out a way to reverse this trend before it becomes too late.

Not really.

Well, you don't think so, Karzak, but that has more to do with you being a jerk than anything else.

Jp Wrote:

Quote:

Now the issue of manufacturing and other lower paying jobs gets tricky. My take on it is that these jobs are a side-effect of a capitalist society. We eat tons of fast food. There needs to be people who work at McDonalds. We drive cars and produce a lot of garbage. There need to be people who wash our cars and collect our garbage. If we were to raise wages to the point that these people made as much money as doctors and other high paying jobs, there would be less incentive for anyone to become a doctor. I once heard economics explained by the need for people to be competitive. As a society we are competitive. We compete to be better than the people next to us. This competition makes people invent things, work harder to get a promotion over their co-employee, start your own company becasue you think you can do it better than somebody else. This in turn creates other jobs.

The great part about manufacturing jobs is that they are really considered to be a step above the jobs that ya listed - McDonalds and Garbage collection are things that very few people wish to do.

Many people are happy and much better paid by working as a semi-skilled laborer in one of our many Manufacturing or Refining plants and industries. This gives people who are traditionally poor and uneducated a chance to raise themselves up high enough to make things different for their kids. I know my life, even though we were lower-middle class and didn't have a lot of nice things, is better off because of the hard work my parents put in. They sacrificed, and because of that we moved out of our crappy house into a nicer one and had enough food to eat.

But; they could have worked just as hard as they did, and have me not learn that lesson, by making less money. Enough less so that they were working all the time and still ends weren't being met. Many people do exactly this, because there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there used to be in America. Some of our biggest manufacturing industries have been decimated over the last 20 years by outsourcing to other countries (as well as some other factors like robotization). There just aren't enough jobs out there right now to fill this traditional lower-middle class need.

What does it teach a child when both his parents bust their asses, and they still don't have enough money for food and all the bills every month? When credit cards aren't a luxury, but a neccessity for survival? There are millions of children in that situation here in America right now who are not learning that hard work makes a difference. It's a big problem.

There will always be people to work at McD's and pick up our trash. Some will be lazy, some incompetent, some young and on the way up. But if we can teach our kids that hard work actually does pay off, and do it for a few generations in a row, we could see a dramatic shrinking of the poor in America.

----------------------------------------------------

(Philosophy Alert)
You speak of competition. I don't have a problem with competition, I have a problem with the goal.

Right now, as a society, we have decided that the Goal is material wealth. Oh, sure, it changes a little for some - political power, fame - but for the most part, we live in a society where prestige is based upon how much money one makes. Hell, even the law seems to apply differently to the wealthy than the poor.

I think that once again, we should take a lesson from the good book to heart. What is the worth of a man? Why should he be admired? Is it how much money he has made? Or how good a person he is?

Now, I'm not talking about everyone instantly becoming saints. There is little doubt in my that that will never happen. But, let me ask you a question:

Are there reasons for doing things well, outside of the acquistion of wealth? Are there reasons for people to strive to create, to innovate, to discover, besides whether or not it will make them money?

In many ways our society is successfull because we appeal to the lowest, and easiest to entice, of all human rationales: greed. It's hard to fight greed. I know I like stuff. I'd really like more of it. But at the same time, stuff and money don't make you happy. So I know there is something higher out there that we can work to as a society. Some other motivating factor besides greed.

Yaknow, Competition is really just one side of the coin. On the other side? Cooperation. Look at the heights a team working together can accomplish.

We should have both Competition AND Cooperation as integral aspects of our society. They are not mutually exclusive; they grow and nurture each other over time.

When we realize this as a society, and start teaching our children that duty, happiness, and responsibility are more important than money and things, we will be a lot better off in our socitey.

Sorry for the long post.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:

The poor, no matter whose fault it is, are EVERYONE'S problem. We cannot ignore them and expect things to be okay. As a society, we must figure out a way to reverse this trend before it becomes too late.

Not really.

Well, you don't think so, Karzak, but that has more to do with you being a jerk than anything else.

Cycloptichorn

Resorting to name calling Cycloptichorn? You have the option of ignoring the post. You should edit that.

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I will not. There are about 400 posts of his that support my opinion nicely.

And hey, I used to call him a Troll all the time, so I'm working on it.....

Care to comment on anything else I wrote?

Cycloptichorn

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McG has the portfolio for sanctimony here, Cyclo, i wouldn't pay him much attention if i were you, Boss.

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Cy and jpin, I agree with both of you, and McG too. I certainly don't think I have the answers but I think that finding the answers should be a priority. I agree with Cy that poverty is everyone's problem -- especially since it breeds crime. I feel pretty strongly that things should be done on the local level but I'm not sure how. There is no way to force a community to come together or force goodwill. But if those who had a college education would tutor the children of those who didn't, if we had local community banking structures to support small business startups, if we could somehow encourage those who get out of poverty to stay and build their communities, I think that would help. I'm a strong believer that jobs, in themselves, are not necessarily the answer but I'll be darned if I know exactly what is.

Whew, sorry, I'm a bit long-winded on this one. The point I could have made a long time ago is that it should be a priority for government to find out the why and how of it, and I don't feel like it is right now.

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Setanta wrote:

McG has the portfolio for sanctimony here, Cyclo, i wouldn't pay him much attention if i were you, Boss.

Setanta wants to play the knave.

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Wants to?

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4.3 million more in poverty since 2000

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