To all Christians here - Here is some ammo.
To all secular humanists here - Let's just say that "Actions still speak louder than words."
Freegards, all.
:) ttt
That one line makes the whole article a charm. I live in NYC after moving from a small town in Texas. I am always offended by the lengths my neighbors will go to show that "they care" and how the homeless are "oppressed" that is until one is sleeping in our apartment foyer. When that happens, they knock on my door to ask me to get the "homeless person" to leave. I always say, "Oh, you mean the crackhead bum?" They hate to hear that line almost as much as my NRA sticker on my apartment mailbox. "Don't you know that guns hurt people?", says one of my neighbors.
P.S. I am a Catholic and if you flame me because of it, I will call the Pope and we will run over you in his bullet-proof Mercedes SUV.
We have good unemployment statistics going back into the 1800's. The government changed its' procedure for measuring unemployment in the early 1990's so that now it counts unemployment at about 10% below what it would count by the old system. So, for example we measure it today at 5.7%, if we used the old standards it would be over 6.0%.
Prior to 1967 the unemployment rate in America was normally 3.0-3.5%. If it ever went over 3.5%, then there would be a lot of screaming that we have to get it down. Sometimes it did go up over 3.5%, even substantially higher, but it didn't stay high for more than 1-2 years. The one exception of course is the 1930's. Sometimes unemployment would drop much lower than 3.0% and even stay low for years at a time. In 1963 unemployment was 2.2%. In 1920 it was 1.0%.
We have been living with very much elevated levels of unemployment for 30 years now. The end result is that many people are discouraged, many more people today decide to sit out of the work force when they really should be in it. People can't switch jobs when oppressed by an employer nearly as easily as they used to be able to do. It is harder for lower income people to get raises than it used to be. There is of course a widening gap between upper income and lower ncome in America. We are becoming a nation divided by class like other nations.
A few years ago the Republican economist Alan Greenspan stood in front of us all and told us that he had to raise interest rates dramatically in order to slow down the economy because the unemployment rate was going too low. He said that it would be inflationary if lower income people could switch jobs and thus put pressure on their employers for higher wages.
In the 1960's all the politicians could talk about was helping the poor, then they had their way and it had a very negative impact on the poor. Nobody says anything about it at all any more.
We are a nation that has regulated some important industries out of existence merely out of spite for our own people in that no other reason can explain why those industries were regulated into nothingness. We are a nation that is completely enamored by the images of our leaders brought to us by a dishonest media and absolutely unconcerned at all for the reality of what our leaders actually do.
Mass citizens are extremely overtaxed. They don't have any money left to give.