Posted on 04/25/2011 9:51:17 PM PDT by Mark Landsbaum
We are rightly concerned with the poor, who always will be with us and to whom we owe our support and aid. Of course, it’s quite another thing for the government to take from you to give to the poor. The presumption that the government can be compassionate with someone else’s money is absurd on the face of it.
Robin Hood was a thief first, and the ends don’t justify the means. Every theft does someone some good. But that doesn’t justify theft.
But being poor is quite another thing in itself. What is poverty? . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at orangepunch.ocregister.com ...
Yes, there are poor.
People with disabilities. Some (NOT MANY) of the elderly. People who because of market changes or temporary conditions have lost income or jobs.
But the frustration of J6P is not because of those people. I have literally stood in line at the supermarket and seen folks with way bigger rears than me buying way better food than I was buying and leaving, climbing into their way better SUV than I can afford. With food stamps.
It is not the people who need a hand up who I am unwilling to support.
It is the people who gladly and proudly take a hand out, who feel they deserve it, and are willing to spit in the face of anybody who disagrees.
I have mentioned what follows on a couple threads.
A man in Washington state was sentenced to a year in jail just last week.
What did he do?
He sent life threatening emails to Gregoire.
Why did he do it?
Because the state told him they were going to cut (NOT TERMINATE!) his welfare benefits.
We simply can’t afford excuses any more.
TRUST ME I do know what it is like to be poor. I am.
What I meant is that many of the poor in America have options that are not available in other places - such as food stamps, unemployment and such. Things that were not available during the great depression.
Your choice, Dr. In the USA or generally.
And they all seem to have cell phones and other electronic devices. You're right that there may be a tiny number genuinely impoverished but most of the so-called "poor" of America would be envied in other countries. And they seem to drive pretty nice cars too.
A certain percentage of the so-called "poor" are just gaming the entitlement system put into place by Franklin Diablo Roosevelt, the president that paved the Socialist pathway for the likes of O'Bambi.
For much of my life I lived without owning an automobile, a TV, or a telephone. My clothing was plain and few in number.
And it is possible in the U.S. to eat well but cheaply. In the past I have managed on as little as a $1 a day, and no. it was not by scavenging in dumpsters or collecting road kill.
So, is it those who have too little who are poor, or those who want too much?
That sounds eerily familiar.
Since this is your own material, you are not obligated to excerpt unless you’re afraid you’ll sue yourself for posting the entire content of your article.
Unnecessary excerpting is blog pimpery, and it is frowned upon by the site owner, Jim Robinson.
Straighten up and fly right, and you are welcome here. Pimp your blog, and you will get flak.
” to whom we owe our support and aid.”
OWE? I don’t think so.
Indoor plumbing - check
Electricity - check
Air conditioning - check
Heating - check
Refrigerator - check
Cable TV - (sometimes) check
Cell phone - (often)check
Food stamps and free food - (often) check
Welfare and tax credits/subsidies - (often) check
Family/relatives support - (sometimes) check
Private charity assistance, including churches - (often) check
Other - check
Now go to foreign countries and visit with their poor and tell me the USA has a problem. Give me a break. Their are very few chronically poor people in this country, especially innocent chronically poor (not lazy, not drug addicts, not alcoholics, etc.)
The "truth" is that except for drug and alcohol addicts and those with serious mental illness, poverty is rare in this country. There have also been many studies detailing the conditions of those whom the government claim are poor. They have cars, air conditioning, cell phones cable etc.
Addiction is a nearly intractable problem, as anyone who has a family member addicted knows. George McGovern's daughter (he wrote a good book about his daughter) being a prime example. He had virtually unlimited resources to help a person he loved more than life itself, and he couldn't save her. Expecting the government to solve problems such as these is a long trip down a dead end.
The left frequently uses data showing that the income of the lowest earners hasn't increase very much. What they don't tell you is that the people on the bottom frequently change. As Dr. Sowell put in a recent column:
Internal Revenue Service data show that the income of people who were in the lowest income tax bracket in 1996 rose by 91 percent by 2005.
I lived in the Philippines from 1988-1990. I was talking to a guy who sold american magazines on the street. He showed me a Newsweek article entitled “America’s Poor.” The first page was a photo of a “poor” couple, both of whom were obese. This guy, who was skinny as a rail, could not understand how people who were poor could be so big. Neither can I.
Poor people like in Haiti, the “poorest” American would live like a King in Haiti.
When an American is cold and hungry with clothes in tatters, their circumstances aren't improved in the least by information about conditions in Etiopia.
There are also a lot of scammers.
People keep acting like the prevalence of the latter precludes the former from being prevalent as well.
It doesn't.
Incorrect.
In view of the current economy and current widespread joblessness, where are you presuming prosperity is coming from?
A red white and blue spigot in the sky?
I already replied to you
Presumably, you do so in order to either put a system you believe in up on a pedastel, or to 'justify' looking the other way while the actual poor suffer.
Those who have too little.
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