Posted on 09/02/2007 12:24:41 PM PDT by wagglebee
John Edwards said there are “Two Americas”. And he worked for the hedge fund to learn about poverty. Let’s ask him what more we can do to fight poverty that hasn’t already been tried.
Like so many things in life it all depends on the definition. You are correct, the left (democrats) will always change the definition in order make sure there is at least 10% poor.
As long as poverty is defined as being a certain percentage of the population, it doesn’t matter how much money people have.
Oh wait! No free bling-bling and drugs — damned America!
The poor are so poor in America that the poor of other countries are walking over shards of broken glass bare-foot to get in.
We have those in this country who are relatively poor...but the vast majority of them do not know what true poverty is as compared to how most of the rest of the world lives...and they do have a much, much better opportunity to pull themselves out of it if they simply choose to do so.
Probably both.
We have those in this country who are relatively poor...and they do have a much, much better opportunity to pull themselves out of it if they simply choose to do so.
I totally believe that ANYONE in America who is of average intelligence, not burdened with serious mental or emotional problems AND willing to work hard can achieve the American Dream. And the more intelligent a person is and the harder they're willing to work, the easier it gets.
“The bottom line is that the left NEEDS to DEFINE a large portion of Americans as “poor” to continue to push their socialist agenda.”
That is completely true yet for the last six and a half years the Bush administration has been in charge of the US Bureau of the Census which collects poverty data and which publishes the annual reports on poverty and the Bush administration has done nothing to change public perception of poverty and it has increased federal funding to poverty programs.
The largest expansion of publically funded health care since LBJ is the new Medicare Part D program, passed by a Republican congress and signed into law at a cost to taxpayers of $43 billion per year by a Republican President.
I wish Republicans weren’t aiding the socialist agenda.
Of that 10%, 90% of them are poor because they are lazy.
The United States of America. Where the poor are fat and the rich are thin.
Aside from the war on terror and (hopefully) his two SCOTUS appointments, GWB has been a disappointment.
But I have a gripe about these statistics, even though I think they are correct. I am really sick of seeing statistics on how many people own a color TV as compared to 40 years ago.
First of all, there are no black and white TVs anymore. ALL TVS ARE COLOR. Secondly, TVs are DAM CHEAP! If you want to measure affluence, count how many people have a rear projection TV or plasma TVs or a blackberry or highspeed internet service or a zero radius turn riding lawn mower or a digital camcorder, or a sony playstation3.
This color TV stupid crap really gets on my nerves. I bought my COLOR TV USED FOR 35 BUCKS! I guess that makes me rich though, doesn’t it??!?!!
Excerpt and link please. This is the longest posting I have ever seen on FR. You even added the footnotes.
Poor people have POOR HABITS.....generally speaking.
If I were a truly poor person in the Third World, I would want to be poor in the US. Unfortunately, they are making it so, no thanks to Bush and the RATs, our idiotic immigration policies and the massive failure to obey our own laws. Have any Freepers seen the 2000 mile wall yet? Gee, I thought our pressure on the morons in gummint meant something more than a legislative win. Time to inundate the morons again with “Where’s the wall, you dolts!” missives and calls.
I think the point is the standard of living in the U.S. is much higher than the rest of the world. Your 35 bucks you spent on your used color TV is the equivalent of one month's wages in many parts of the world.
The fact that you listed all of those “toys” as a sign of wealth is very telling. Perhaps instead you should look for a measure of poverty. Such as whether you had at least one meal yesterday. The “Poor” in the U.S. are often obese.
That’s not to say that there are zero poor people, but their numbers are so small that their problems could easily be solved by a tiny percentage of the Government money leftist politicians claim is being spent on anti-poverty programs. The problem, of course, is that the numbers of truly poor Americans is so small that they represent an insignificant voting bloc, so the left isn’t really interested in them. They’re significantly more interested in the irresponsible people that they can convince are “poor” due to Republicans and capitalism.
There is no correlation between wealth and hunger in this country. We have achieved a level of utopia in terms of food. Not only can the poor afford to eat themselves to death, they can also afford to drink themselves to death AND SMOKE A PACK OF CIGARETTES A DAY while doing so. That is an amazing achievement if you stop and think about it.
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