A living wage does not include two cars. It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer, can get by without cellphone and cable tv. You can take classes on the internet to get a college degree, if they have your IQ.
Some decent people just don't have the intelligence to quaify for the better jobs, or they have handicaps you don't know about. That does not make them lesser beings and they deserve a minimum quality of life. Anyone with an IQ above 100 can make a good living. Most don't even try.
It's a shame that some even here would tell people "to go jump in the lake" if they can't make it on their own. I know there are times I have been humbled and it makes me show more humility and compassion. I know there are limits, I mean if someone just wants to sit there even with the help out there, well, even I can get angry at the lazy but if someone is trying to make a go at it but get nowhere, I can see giving them a helping hand.
I might get into trouble with this but I see myself as a social, moral and military conservative but an economic centrist. I think
Just Third Way (website - Center of Economic and Social Justice) has a lot of good points to offer where it would open up more paths to ownership for the average working person. We have gone beyond the paradigms of pure socialism/communism and pure capitalism, we need to accept that and think outside the box. In short, concentration of political and/or economic power in too few hands is not good. In short, we need some form of "Capitalism with a human face."
I think if we keep going down the path we are on, we are just handing the socialists and libertines the ammo that will eventually hurt us. Welfare should be geared as a hand up to responsibility as well as accountibility, not a hand out that leads to no production and laziness.
I don't know, maybe it is me getting closer to a more Christian based outlook, perhaps it is my roots in being a working class "Pittsburgh Hunky" and seeing industry die here (although one of my friends has a similar take, he grew up in rural Indiana where a lot of family farms disappeared) and my willingness to ask questions and help to come up with ideas that will benefit the most here in America and a brighter future.
Your #226. You get it. I would like to see more of a model like that and hope it's not too late to make something like that work for us. Otherwise, all the the very elite are going down the tubes with everyone else.
I might get into trouble with this but I see myself as a social, moral and military conservative but an economic centrist. I think Just Third Way (website - Center of Economic and Social Justice) has a lot of good points to offer where it would open up more paths to ownership for the average working person. We have gone beyond the paradigms of pure socialism/communism and pure capitalism, we need to accept that and think outside the box. In short, concentration of political and/or economic power in too few hands is not good. In short, we need some form of "Capitalism with a human face." Hey fellas, I may be losing it, but I swear I remember hearing something about the "Third Way" back in the nineties.
You guys remember anything about that?