pan6467

Look we can't keep not taxing imports as much as others tax our exports, it's economic suicide and seriously increases the trade deficit.

They use those tariffs to subsidize their own industries to undercut ours. We already are in an economic war and we are losing it in a horrible way.

Tariffs are the only way we can level the playing field, if we start at a disadvantage we may as well just surrender and admit the defeat we face.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

DEI37

You have NO idea what I would do for $30,000+ a year. I support my family on $18,720/yr. Heather works in home some, and can net about $3500/yr. I own a home, have a credit card or two to deal with, although, my car is paid for now. I can't afford to go back to school, but I need to. It's a catch-22. If I go back to school, then either my family time (night classes) is gone, or my work time (day classes) is gone. I can't win, so I deal with selling car parts. Haven't had a raise in over two years, yet the cost of living has gone WAY up. It's time for more money, really.

__________________
Generally speaking, if you were to get what you really deserve, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

smooth

gotcha pan. thanks for splaining.

joemc, thanks for bringing up costco. I had forgotten about that hidden 'gem' I heard and then read that they do better than Wal-Mart on nearly (or all) economic factors (such as, productivity per square foot, gross revenue, less turnover, & etc.).

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

pan6467

Funny the answer by many GOP not just here but everywhere is "well both parents need to work then". Which is laughable when they then complain that the kids today have no discipline because both parents work.

The right work so hard to make everyone believe it is the poors fault, and yet they are tools for the elite who make more in one year than all of us in this forum probably do combined.

They say taxes are high and yet in the 40's through 60's which are considered the USA's prime years the rich paid upwards of 75% of their income in taxes.

Ah, the hypocrasy and those being used who believe it.

The left is just as guilty in some ways. This financial situation we are in started with Reagan, Clinton did nothing to slow it down. Bush I tried to pass a few of those ideas I posted above but he lost his right wingers support and the Dems didn't like the fact he was going to take credit (and rightfully so) for some programs they had been pushing for during the Reagan years.

In the end it's both parties fault, just one party wants to fix everything in a rosy way and it can't be done and one party wishes to ignore the problems totally and not face them until the problems get so huge they won't be able to get fixed. (BTW both situations apply to both sides at different times.) Meanwhile the truly elite get richer and richer and laugh at us peons fighting over how to fix the problem.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

smooth

Get off the internet and get to *&%$&# work you lazy bum!

Seriously, thank you for posting your personal story. Best wishes from California.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

irateplatypus

i haven't read anyone from either side of the aisle say this was desirable or that should be necessary. either way, if both parents are lucky enough to work daytime hours (i know that isn't always possible in wage earning jobs) and any kids are schooling age... that leaves quite a bit of time for family life. my point with a dual income is that even unskilled laborers can earn a decent living if both chip away at it with some of the lowest wages in the country. dei's personal anecdote is proof that we've got a lot of room for improvement... i'm just unwilling to sound the alarm bell just yet.

in my experience this is more of a phantom. i have yet to meet someone who believes being poor is necessarily a character flaw of any kind. if you find someone who would have you believe that... i'll be the first to turn my back.

we also fought decent sized war in the 40's and spent the early 50's rebuilding a continent or two. we also know that coming out of the fifties and on into the sixties was the highest poverty rate yet recorded for our country.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/h.../hstpov13.html

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

pan6467

Irate here's an example of someone saying the poor deserve to be poor.

As for alarm bells, when will yours go off? What will it take, because right now we are addicts hitting rock bottom with money as our drug (this country would be devestated without credit and people are pushing the boundaries). What will it take for us to need rehab?

Nice chart, but the big difference between poverty is in the early 60's families on farms were counted in that, plus single mothers rarely worked and if they did they didn't make that much. Also, there were the share croppers, the blacks who had yet to achieve economic equality, and so on. And in the 60's we worked to help the poor, now it's everyone for themselves, again I point to the tax rate where the rich pay 1/2 what they did then and yet they are crying the tax rates are too high.

I may very well be wrong but having my parents grow up in that time (and my father was very poor) and them saying these are the worst times they have ever seen, that says something. There is far more condensation of wealth now. Before even though there was arguably more poverty, the wealth was spread more equally and society as a whole flourished. Today the wealth is going in one direction.

Even my grandmother says this is worse than the depression because people are actually working yet still losing everything because the jobs won't pay enough.

I live in NE Ohio and I can tell you as the factories have closed around here men and women who worked hard for 20 years and had nice houses and cars are losing everything, not because they can't work but because the jobs that are available to them are paying 1/2 what they made if they are lucky. And Ohio to keep bankruptcy down has changed the laws so that it is harder and you walk away with truly nothing. As opposed to being able to restructure and slowly repay. Now they just take everything.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

sob

Shows how much I know. I would have called them retailers.


In your lecture, did you specify how many of these are teenagers, as opposed to heads of households? My college-age son just got a raise to $8/hour after six months of working at a clothing store.

That's what makes it hard for me to figure out why so many are saying it's impossible to make over minimum wage.

That would be simple, all right. A company that has been in my area for 60 years just moved to Idaho, specifically to lower expenses. It succeeded in cutting its overhead by about 50%, which they attributed to the cost of doing business in California.

When Gray Davis was governor, he passed 91 labor laws. 90 of them were detrimental to business. The 91st clarified an earlier detrimental one. That's why California is one of two states where employers have to pay overtime on the time in excess of 8 hours a day.

I can tell you as an employer, that law alone caused me to raise prices and terminate one employee. Well technically, she quit, but it was a ploy so that I'd beg her to stay, and I didn't.

In many areas of California, newly immigrated Philipino families used to live two or more families to a house which had been purchased jointly.

After a few years, one family would sell their portion to the other, and buy a house of their own with the profit.

Americans, of course, would prefer to have laws requiring higher pay, along with government handouts. A situation such as the above is much too undignified. It's better to ask for handouts.


4. Complain about increased "outsourcing" and file for unemployment. You've just succeeded in raising prices and the cost of doing business at the very places where the poorest shop.

Something tells me your lecture wasn't delivered to a business school.

smooth

sob,

I have no interest discussing matters with you.

But for anyone else who read my numbers, they only include adult heads of houses--they don't reflect teenagers' situations nor those of multi-family homes. I stated so when I explained that unemployment numbers are derived from household surveys.


EDIT: Here everyone, compare this portrait of Coronado (where sob lives) with the portrait of Ohio already given:

http://www.coastalsandiego.com/community/coronado.htm

You decide which one is closer to what you understand as representative of the bulk of the US economic and social context.

In comparison to ther ~$900,000 median home price, directly across the bridge, San Diego has a $300,000 median home price.

Median home prices in O.C. are ~$600,000. Asian concentration in the O.C. is well known and numerous sites on the internet will give a more detailed description of the context both of Irvine and the larger county if anyone is interested.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

socal

Seems to me to be a big mistake trying to bring back what was? We have deveoped from that time and things are different.

manufacturing jobs are going to continue to move off shore and as China continues to develop even more will go.

We have to adapt and I think that is what the great state of Ohio is not done so well. We are talking about the primary industry there is Retail. Now ask your self off all industries in the SIC distribution have the lowest industry wide net income? It is retail and sits around 1%! Don't look to that industry to put bread on the table of a family of 4 unless you are at the top of the company.

Ohio seems that in the days of manufacturing they were sitting pretty, but times have changed and the elected officials did not take action and adapt. Ohio was even on the forefront of technology manufacturing with NCR when they dominated the market.

Look at regions like the West and North east even the north central. Why is the cost of living there so high? Becsuse the demand is there. Why? Because the jobs are there and people are making money. Manufacturing, financial services, business services, Insurance.... these industries have much higher net income and can afford to pay a better salary.

Min wage is exactly that, and will always be at the poverty level. Regions that sit at the poverty level are introuble,but the answer is not to raise the min wage, it is to get those people to higher paying jobs.

Later....

daswig

My, what a nice string of ad hominem attacks you have there. Let me explain a bit about my situation. I came from a lower class family. My father left when I was three. He was supposed to pay child support, but didn't. We still managed to make it. I had no trust fund, my parents couldn't pay for my college, yadda yadda yadda. I worked a string of menial jobs, and at one point was literally homeless. Eventually, I decided that being poor sucked, so I worked, and with the aid of various financial aid programs out there (and working), put myself through college AND Law School. Yeah, I have a shitload of student loans (mostly from Law School, there ain't no Pell Grants available for postgraduate work) but I did what I needed to do. And I don't consider myself to be the "sharpest tool in the shed", either. If I can do it, others can do it too. It beats the shit out of trading your foodstamps for crack.

And we, in the "ruling class" (I guess I qualify for that now) will be ready, with our "Red State Dupes" (I personally think that the Democrats should be the red, and the Republicans the blue, but I guess it's like the "bolsheviks" and "menshaviks"...just another effort by the media to mislabel people) will crush "Tha Revolution!" as they man their puny barricades, mouthing discredited communist propaganda and wearing Nike shirts featuring images of Che.

I guess it's a good thing that I own machineguns!

pan6467

Personally, as I have stated here numerous times, it is economic suicide to not manufacturing your own goods. That's why China owns the HUGE ass trade surplus against us.

I agree Ohio didn't adjust and grow. NCR's big mistake was letting AT&T buy them and tear the company's reputation to shreds.

I find it sad that you focus only on the negatives instead of looking at my plan and suggesting positive ways it could be changed to better the country. Anyone can say, "raising minimum wage is not going to do it, manufacturing will never come back." Lot of negativity and nothing positive in those statements.

Manufacturing can comeback, follow what I proposed and we'll see it come back. It has to or this country is dead.

Ok let's look at it this way: I am a country and you are a country.

I tax everything you send me out of competition.

You barely tax anything I send.

With the taxes my country gets off your materials that come into my ports, I subsidize my industries to keep cut rate prices.

Then I ship my goods over to you and because your people cannot afford to buy anything you country makes because of price they buy my stuff.

Your factories close or move overseas for cheaper labor, and you have no well paying jobs left. So more and more of my product gets sold and your remaining factories go down.

Now, I sit with your country heavily in debt to me through trade deficits, no good paying jobs and reliant on my goods.

I up the price of my goods and start demanding payment of the debt.

What does your country do?

You funded my schools (with buying my goods), while you allowed yours to fall apart. You funded my science and engineering programs (with buying my goods), while yours died.

My military is far more ready, and better equipped.

My missiles in case you think about it, are faster and deliver payloads.

Your government is heavily in debt and so corrupt that even in small skirmishes your military is ill equipped and plagued by scandal as companies overcharge for fuel, sell you armament that never arrives, etc.

While I have the manufacturing to make sure my military has all it needs.

I own 15% of your economy and I WANT WHAT YOU OWE ME NOW or my banks are going to start foreclosing and repoing anything of value you do have.

What are you going to do to save your country now?

Because in that scenario I am China and you are the USA and it's happening right now.

And then there's Japan, Britain and Germany, all waiting to collect what's theirs.

ECONOMIC SUICIDE, we're living it now.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

daswig

Hey, I'm in my late 30's, so if my references are too archaic for you, sue me. It's all about education and hard work. Actually, more than hard work....working smart. If you go through life with a goal of being a sports star or a rap star or whatever, odds are good that you're going to end up disappointed unless at some point you re-evaluate your goals and come up with something realistic. That means putting down the nintendo controller and studying something that you may find to not be glamorous or fun, and may in fact find deathly boring, like accounting. (/sings "It's fun to charter an accountant, and sail the wide accountance-sea! To find, explore the funds offshore, and skirt the shoals of bankruptcyyyyyyyy! It can be manly in insurance. We'll up your premiums semi-annually! It's all tax-deductable, we're fairly incorruptable, we're sailing on the wide accountancy!!!") It also means delaying gratification in some cases. I've got friends I went to highschool with who got out of school and went directly into the workplace. Now, they're looking at their lives, their mortgages, their wives and 2.3 kids, and wondering "Is this all?" They've gotten the rewards that they wanted, but have foreclosed on their own opportunities, so now they can't AFFORD to go back to school, because they need that paycheck each month.


The "poverty line" is a statistically formulated figure based upon averaging. It's not a thing that denotes something "real", like at what point malnutrition sets in. It's a statistical deviation on the average.

If a person making $75K a year has 50 kids, they may well be below the poverty line. People have a choice. They can do what they want when they want, which will limit their ability to make themselves more marketable, and therefore will limit their ability to make more money. That's a result of the decisions that THEY made, and they must take responsibility for their own actions.

100% WRONG. You're not unable to afford a mortgage, you're unable to afford a mortgage in the part of town you would want to live in, or one you would want to live in but still manage to afford to keep all of your other toys while living there. There's a major difference.

The problem is that people don't want to live a lifestyle that is within their means. We live in a country where the drug addicts that are the poorest of the poor still manage to buy hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of drugs on a monthly basis. Just recently, there was a janitor that died and managed to leave over $2 MILLION dollars to a university. How did he do it? He worked, and more importantly, he lived below his means and SAVED. If you're poor, you shouldn't be spending your money on "felony flyers" or Hilfiger clothing or whatever's "big" now, you should buy generic. Instead of conspicuous consumption, go with the old "use it, fix it, make do" philosophy. It's a LOT cheaper, and it allows you to save your money for things that actually matter to you. $120 for a pair of freaking tennis shoes? Get fucking REAL. That works for everybody....not just the poor. I've NEVER spent more than $50 for a pair of shoes, even for work. And I don't throw out clothes because they've "gone out of style". I wear them until there's no more use in them, and I don't buy stuff that is likely to become "dated". And when I shop for cars, I look for how long it will last, how expensive it will be to fix it, and what kind of costs are associated with it. Needless to say, I don't drive a luxury car, and I don't have a $4,000 set of rims on the car I do drive.

kutulu

Nice black and white statement. The truth is that someone will always be needed to fill those low paying positions. We could all have PhDs and someone would still have to be the cashier at WalMart getting 5.15/hr.

JumpinJesus

I didn't want to quote your whole response because it was somewhat lengthy, but I will say that I agree with you on some issues.

Yes, it's true that if I chose other areas of town, I probably could afford to buy a home, but that doesn't mean that people making even $10 an hour could. In fact, they couldn't.

Let me give an anecdote to give an idea of what it's like for many people.

When my father was 24, he worked for PGandE, a utility company in California. He worked construction, putting in gas and electric lines into new housing developments. At 24 he was married with 2 children. At 24 he had no college education whatsoever and a blue collar job that paid nowhere near what white collar jobs pay. My mother didn't work, leaving his income to provide for our family of 4. Yet, he was able to afford to build his own home. Using his friends and coworkers as help, he built a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom home. This home had a game room with a wet bar and billiards table. We had an in ground pool with a very large yard. All this he afforded by saving his money up for 4 years, all while providing for our family on his income alone.

Fast forward 24 years. When I was 24, I was married with one child. My father got me a job at PGandE since he had worked his way up and was able to pull some strings. I was doing the exact same job he was doing when he was 24. My wife was also working so we had 2 incomes. We lived in the same town in which my father built his home 24 years previous. We could barely afford the rent on a 2 bedroom garage apartment. At the time, we even qualified for WIC (which wasn't blown on crack, despite some popular myths about people on public assistance).

To break it down:

in 1969, a man with a family of 4 and only one household income was able to build his own home as he dreamt it.

In 1994, a man (working for the exact same company at the exact same pay scale) with a family of 3 and 2 household incomes could barely afford rent.

It's not always about living within your means. At the time I describe in this post, I owned 2 pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, and 4 shirts. We had no car, no television, no nintendo controllers, and the furniture we owned had been left in the apartment when we moved in. Ramen noodles were some of the more common meals in our home. I don't think anyone would have accused us of living beyond our means.

While it's anecdotal, I'm sure it's a shared experience for many. And while I got out of that situation, the only reason I was able is because I had help. Not just from grants and student loans, but from family who allowed me a place to stay while I got the money together. Everyone who's made it had help, whether they admit it or not; no one succeeds without someone's help.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

joeshoe

Who's defending it?

You can't blame other countries for this. It's not their fault they want jobs, just like anyone else would. They aren't doing anything wrong, anything you wouldn't do yourself. It's the people who are so interested in profits that they are willing to botch the economy who are to blame.

daswig

Did you ever consider that maybe the problem was you got married and bred too early? In the 1960's, you could get by with just a highschool diploma. That's not true now, we're a much more specialized society, and a highschool diploma now means almost nothing. If you're willing to be unskilled labor, your life is going to suck, and the odds are against you ever making more than $25/hr. Why? Because there's a LOT of unskilled labor out there that is willing to do the work, because it doesn't take much specialization to do. It's also important to remember that virtually ANYBODY can now get at least an associate's degree through a community college, even if you didn't finish highschool (at least here, a HS diploma isn't required for CC).

pan6467

I agree whole heartedly, but there are some on this board and in the media who work very hard to convince people that the working poor are getting what they deserve. So in essence they are the ones defending all this shit.

They are tools for the elite, who profit most from paying as little as possible. And it isn't all big businesses fault. I am sure there are sompanies that have to move as a last resort.

Another example:

I own a huge corporation and the town relies on my factory. I pay my workers good, they have income to spend and do so at mom and pop places (bars, restaurants, barber/salons little antique stores, grocers, health stores, insurance agents, car dealers, etc. And these places have decently paid employees.). Taxes are good, the schools profit, money is spent loosely.

Now, my foreign competition is coming over selling the same goods at a much cheaper quality for a much lesser price. Forcing me to move from an area my company has been at for 6-7 decades.

Now, those workers, who had good paying jobs and a nice disposable income have to shop at bargain stores like Wal*Mart, Kroger, Target. The bars are replaced by TGI Friday's and these workers are having to guy insurance off the net for cheaper prices because there is no commission overhead.

The locally owned businesses close down because they can't afford to stay in business (this I know having owned my own pizza place. When I owned one I paid premium for my supplies, someone who owns more gets a discount because they could buy more in bulk.) So all the nice locally owned businesses are closed there goes those decent wages to companies that pay crap.

Now the tax structures are hurting because not only is the factory gone, but so is that nice income tax from the workers, gone are the taxes from the small businesses. So now schools suffer, roads go to shit and the "richer people" feel that they are paying more than everyone else when in reality they may pay more percent wise but in real dollars they pay far less.

Poverty invades the community, land values fall, so another tax income drops. People leave to find work and more tax income drops. Finally, you are left with very rich, who are able to buy up land dirt cheap at foreclosure auctions then rent them out, and the people who can't move because they can't afford to, believe times will get better, have lost hope etc.

This is happening all across the nation. It has been happening since the late 70's and government has done nothing to stop it. Never even truly tried. Question is why?

Now, you have lost serious tax income from factories and their workers, small businesses, and the real estate. The rich refuse to pay more for public schools because they can afford to send their kids to private schools, so schools free fall and education goes downhill. So this global economy is a farce because every other country out there is educating their kids better and faster and harder than we can afford to.

What are your solutions to this problem? There are some here who care only about themselves and buy into this, saying that people deserve this and refuse to do anything to bring back factories. Yet complain about how they pay too much in taxes. What they don't see is if people made liveable wages and we had decent companies to work for and support the community, they would have more income and perhaps the tax burden would be able to be spread out more.

So to those who believe that the poor deserve this and who don't try to better the community and cry their tax burdens are too high I feel no pity for you. In fact I don't think you are taxed enough. Once taxes get to a certain point then maybe you too will demand change.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

daswig

Three points. Young kids will always need first jobs, while working to get through school, et cetera. There will always be people who are too lazy or too stupid to finish their degrees. And there will always be unskilled immigrants of either the legal or illegal variety who are willing to do scutwork to give their kids the opportunity for a better life.

pan6467

First, big difference between paying people who work 30-40 hours a week and they depend on the income than paying a high scholler living at home.

Second, your assertion is that EVERY single person who doesn't finish high school is lazy or too stupid too? That's a nice outlook there.

Did you ever think inner city kids may quit because they have to work and put food on the table for their families (due to a parent's sickness, or leaving)? Or perhaps, there is far too much violence and drugs at their school and they can't afford to move out to another district? There are far many more reasons people cannot graduate or go on to college, than they are lazy or too stupid. That is a very shallow, elitist, ignorant viewpoint, that unfortunately is professed and crammed down people's throat so much that is causing stress and hatred between classes.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

daswig

Why? If they're doing the same work, what makes the work of the person with the family worth more than the work of the teenager? I thought we were supposed to be about "equal pay for equal work"?

There are other reasons why kids don't graduate high school, I suppose, but considering that most special ed students end up graduating, how hard can it be for those with average IQs?

Ah, forgive me for being "shallow, elitist, and ignorant". I'll refrain from posting what I think of your viewpoint, other than to say that you've obviously bought into the whole cult of victimization thing, and given up completely on the idea of self-determination and personal responsibility for one's own actions.

I've yet to meet ANYBODY who has even a minimum wage job that couldn't manage or afford to take one class a semester at the local community college. Hell, they offer financial aid there that covers tuition and books (Pell grants, for example), and we're talking a couple of hours a week, with campuses literally everywhere (now they have telecommuting and satellite classroom programs, where you can take classes over the internet via streaming video or via CCTV in communities that may not have a physical campus in them). For that matter, there's always the Job Corps or the military, where you can learn a trade, earn money for college, and get a paycheck simultaneously.

smooth

There you have it pan. Kinda takes the thunder out of the earlier statements about motivations of the young troops over in Iraq hailing from the most economically distressed communities.

It's unfortunate when someone has all the facts, but can't put them together to form a composite picture--as the case is here with dawsig.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

pan6467

And I thought we were supposed to be all about having a liveable honest wage for an honest day's work society.

Again, you have to put others down, because you can't deal with the fact others may not be as lucky as you were. Life happens.

You can say whatever you want about my viewpoint. I don't buy into "we are victims", I buy into "life happens and everyone at one point needs help." Even W who never ran a successful business but was able to have daddy and the Saud families bail him out time after time. But that is too partisan to point out now isn't it? True though.

Well then you must meet some very well paid workers. Financial aid is relatively easy to get. But not everyone is college material, some people are better at trades and unfortunately a lot of trade schools fill fast or don't accept financial aid like colleges do. Plus, financial aid doesn't cover everything, trust me I am going now and I am paying out of pocket almost as much as I am getting in aid. Thank God my parents have money and are helping me. If they didn't there would be no way I could afford it, and last year I only had $7,000 in income. So there's a very poor person trying to better himself and the aid isn't there. And next year it is being reported there will be less aid.

BTW, you need to maintain a 2.5 (B) average, at minimum 10 credit hours at an ACCREDITED school in order to get full aid. You drop below a B you lose aid. You drop hours you lose aid.

The military? That's an easy answer, then complain about how we have soldiers who don't want to be in combat. Why would anyone want to enlist with a war hanging over their heads. Besides last I heard a high school diploma or GED was needed to enlist.

Job Corps? is there still one and how big is it, how many do they take what are the requirements, what's the pay? I truly don't know anything about it so can't comment.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

daswig

I see it differently. I have the facts, I have a fair bit of real-world experience, and I put it together differently than you do, probably because I don't buy into the whole elitist idea of "My God, the Poor can't survive unless I HELP THEM, since after all I know what's BEST for poor people!!!"

pan6467

Well, Daswig don't come bitching when the poor can't pay taxes and yours skyrocket.

The only way to lower taxes is improve the base and can't do that with poor paying jobs. It's impossible.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

daswig

Who said life was fair?

I wasn't lucky. I worked my ass off and avoided self-destructive behavior. And I've had some pretty big obstacles to surmount, like being qualified under ADA. But I didn't let it stop me form doing what I wanted to do.

I'm glad you have parents with money. It must be nice to have a cushion to bail you out when you keep failing. I didn't have that luxury, so I had to make sure I didn't fail.

It's one option, and it's no longer open to you, because you're too old. For some, it's a good deal. For the whiners, it's not. I remember a guy I knew who had the big plan of joining the Navy when he got out of high school. The problem was that he was a whiny sack of pus who was unwilling to work at just about anything, and thought he could get through life by stealing from people. He claimed to be "addicted to pot", and gave that as the reason for his stealing. He didn't end up graduating from high school. He didn't end up joining the military (which is a good thing, because if he stole from his shipmates, they'd have put a serious hurting on him....we're talking a disability-inducing level of smackdown) Last I heard of him, he was doing day-labor, and bitching about how unfair the world was to him. I don't see it that way. I see it as he fucked up over and over again, due to his own stupidity. I saw the level of support his family tried to give him. He took their help, then REPEATEDLY pissed in their faces and acted surprised when no more help was coming. This guy is a fucking loser. He'll always be a fucking loser. And he'll undoubtedly continue to bitch and moan that society (or somebody else) is to blame for his personal fuckups, because if they aren't, then he'd have to accept responsibility for his own fuckups, and he can't do that.

Accepting personal responsibility for what happens to you is a necessary first step in becoming a sucess.

smooth

I was referring to the poor boys who are fighting in Iraq.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

pan6467

NOONE CAN SURVIVE ON THIS PLANET ALONE, not in today's world.

No it's not an elitist idea it's called trying to be compassionate and helping others learn to help themselves and giving them the tools they need to do so.

And BTW that was a very cheap shot about my parents having money and bailing me out.... If you have read my past posts I spent 13 years as a compulsive gambler, MY PARENTS helped me very very little, my father NEVER helped.

I have been bet free for 5 years, worked hard to prove I am trying to better myself and my parents see that and are now helping. So please do not jump to any conclusions regarding my life you do not know anything about me, nor I, you and therefore I may say you believe a certain way (based on posts you have written) but I say nothing about your private life. Please refrain from saying anything about mine.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Ustwo

The poor already don't pay taxes, try looking at how the taxes are broken down, its been posted before.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

daswig

You're right, I don't know you. However, I do know some things about you that you've posted here, assuming that what you've posted is accurate. And I do know a tad bit about compulsive behavior and OCD, since clinical psych was an area that I did fairly extensive postgraduate work in, to the point that I earned a M.S. in the field before I went to Law School and got my J.D.

I understand that you don't want to discuss your "personal demons". What I DON'T understand is why you keep bringing them up if you don't want to talk about them.

sob

Congratulations. See my next post. I didn't have it as bad as you, though.

sob

That doesn't surprise me, since you are apparently unable to contest my arguments, and are possibly still smarting from that embarrassing thread in which you posed as an expert on the military.

However, you keep putting up absolutely irresistable posts, so I'll continue without you.

What I need to have explained is how my 19-year-old son was able to vault past minimum wage after six months on an entry-level job, when many on this thread seems to think that the minimum wage must be raised, because the poor never make more than the minimum.

Actually, San Diego's median now is about $489,000. That figure, of course, is much lower than the median in Point Loma, where you mentioned you spent your teen years.

It's interesting that where I live evokes such hatred from you. Especially since Halx lives in Simi Valley, which is white as a bedsheet, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

In much the same way that you decided to "cure my ignorance" on the military, you now profess to impart information about poverty. Here's a little personal history (not one of your "studies"):

My father grew up on a farm. Had a brother who died from whooping cough. Had another that died when he fell in the family sawmill. Never had a paying job until he graduated from high school, because he had to work on the farm every day without pay.

I can remember visiting that farm and being assigned to run around the house flapping a towel to get rid of the flies when "company" was coming. Some of you might correctly gather from that statement that it wasn't air conditioned, even though it's in the Florida panhandle. By any measure you provide, my father's family was poverty-stricken. I guess it's a good thing they didn't seem to know it. Otherwise, his siblings might not all have gotten college educations.

My mother was the only child of a bank president. When the depression hit, his bank went under. My grandfather had to inform my mother that there was no money for her to attend college. Shortly thereafter, my granddmother had a stroke, and my mother cared for her for six months until she died.

I don't know what jobs my grandfather had from then on, but when he died, he was working as a janitor in the local YMCA.

My first job was a paper route at age 9. By age twelve, I also cleaned my church for money, which wasn't all bad, because I got to ride their riding lawn mower.

I recognized early that I was not going to be a rock star or a professional athlete. I also realized that I didn't want to stay at my first "real" job, which included scraping bird shit off of the large vehicles that haul peanuts. Hence, I applied myself to academics, and was able to get assistance with my college expenses.

During graduate school, I lived with three other guys in a house so old that class parties were held there because it was practically impossible to make it look any worse. When we moved out, the city used it as a haunted house at Halloween for a few years, then tore it down entirely.

During graduate school, I had three part-time jobs, and classes were 8-5, Monday-Friday. My work schedule was twelve days on, two days off.

Upon moving to San Diego, I lived with my wife on the second floor of a large house. The first floor tenants were illegals.

One son came along right before I started my own business. After six months, my net profit from the business was a total of $70. Over the past 17 years, things have improved. I eventually moved to a nicer neighborhood, which seems to infuriate you (quotes from you available on request).

Neither my grandparents, my parents, nor I have ever received government assistance. However, now that things are better, all kinds of people (including the government) crawl out of the woodwork to tell me how much I am either legally or morally required to give away.

Speaking of giveaways: Among the causes I contribute to are wheelchairs for the citizens of Malawi, eye surgery for the indigent in Guatemala, schoolbooks for African children, and worldwide polio eradication.

You spoke of "relative poverty." Those situations involve REAL poverty. By the way, those people say "Thank you," instead of whining about why they weren't given more.

Oh, I also contribute to a summer camp for US children in wheelchairs. They don't all live in poverty, but they deserve the time they spend at the camp.

I do NOT contribute to people who feel entitled to the money of people who work, by "virtue" of the unfairness of life. However, I've got a suggestion.

Since there has been so much talk about increasing taxes on those greedy people who make over $200,000, or $1 million, or whatever, let's jump aboard the tax bandwagon:

I propose an immediate surtax of 30% for all college instructors. College costs have frequently increased at around 10% a year, and for what? For instructors to put a lecture on videotape (or have a TA do the lecture) and haul it out once a semester for ten or twenty years? And apply for tenure in the meantime?

We can dedicate the money to student aid, thereby greatly increasing the number of people with college educations, and we'll make a huge dent in the poverty problem!

(Pardon me--I was distracted by the sound of someone's ox being gored in the distance.)

Bottom line: If you're downwardly mobile, you should ask yourself what you can do to improve your lot, instead of indulging in the mindset described by Frederic Bastiat, who said, "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
-

pan6467

I am not afraid to talk about my "demons" this is not the forum to talk of them.

I brought out the fact that you stepped over the line and personally attacked me with no knowledge of my life by saying since I had rich parents I was bailed out all my life. I felt I had to defend that because that is not true at all. If you care to open a personal discussion with me, we can do so I am very open and honest about every facet in my life.)

I know what it's like and the hopelessness of being so poor and working a job just to pay the bills from last month. Where there doesn't seem to be a light at the end of a tunnel. A situation many face today.

I was lucky I had drive and determination and wasn't married nor had a house or car payments so I was able to correct my situation. But I've seen great close friends who had very good paying jobs and a nice savings lose it all because the company they worked for, for years, left or closed down(we won't talk about retirement funds they also lost). It's hard to see 30-40 year olds with families lose everything and expect them and their wives to work 2-3 30 hour jobs for pay that is still 25-50% less than what they made.

And what's worse and sickening is watching fellow Americans say that they are "lazy", "stupid", "don't want to do better", need to look at going to school (how they have to work 2 jobs to keep food on the table and try to keep their homes). It just amazes me people will blame the hardworking poor for being poor. To me that's a very sad way to live life thinking.

There are 3 things I'm passionate about in politics (Constitution and BOR excluded, everyone should be passionate about them as they guarantee our freedoms). Education, decent wages and bringing home manufacturing and a military that if they have to fight are as well armed and as well prepared as we can possible get them to be. There's reasons I'm passionate about all 3.

You say life isn't fair and therefore "an honest liveable wage for an honest day's work" is BS. I believe that way of thinking is not only greedy but shows why we have the massive disparity we have and why it is increasing. I think that quote is how businesses should pay their people.

Even Henry Ford, who would pinch a quarter so tight you could hear the eagle scream in pain said, "pay your workers enough to live and afford the product they make and you will have customers forever." And yet businesses today don't do that do they. Pretty sad when people who work at Wal*Mart have to go to Dollar General to shop.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Manx

It's heartwarming to read all these personal stories about overcoming obstacles to achieve "success" in life.

Until I realize that they are nothing but excuses to justify the negation of social welfare policies.

I have to say: I couldn't care less how hard your dad had it, how hard you had it or how difficult it is to walk 10 miles to school up hill, both ways.

There are countless instances of people not having opportunities to achieve this magically-easy success of which you speak. When you come from an environment which has been downtrodden for decades and subjected to inferior standards of "equality" for centuries, it is not a simple matter of waiting until most of the bastards that did the oppressing have died off to eliminate the mentality from those that do the oppressing and those that are subjected to the oppressing. There is no amount of hard work that is as easy as you would like to believe that is going to change a mentality of a child raised in an environment of shit, itself born from an environment of shit, and again from an environment of shit. As hard as you want me to believe your sob story was, there are thousands of families that have it 100 times harder. It is no longer a case of "yeah yeah, your mom is a crack whore and who the hell knows who your pop is? but all you need to do is ignore that meaningless problem and study hard and you'll achieve the grand American dream". It's NONSENSE. You can't switch off the effects of these types of environments. Money has to be spent to weaken the corrosive influence they have on our entire society.

Everyone has received help. No one has made themselves. You receive help the moment you are conceived. The effectiveness of the help you receive until you leave home for the first time determines how effectively you will strive for success on your own. It is in your upbringing, the relationships you have with your parents, friends and teachers while you are a child which creates you. Everyone does not get the same treatment.

And lastly - rich people did not automatically work hard to become rich. It takes money to make money. It takes cronyism to make money. It takes greed and deception to make money. Honest, hard work is not the most important qualifier for achieving success - by any measure. It is far easier to cheat than it is to produce something beneficial.

KMA-628

Good post, until this comment.

/goes away to feel bad about being evil, greedy and deceptive

Manx

You must not be very wealthy.

I have my own business. The industry I am in primarily bases its' pricing structure on the amount of time it takes to complete a project. But I've been working this industry for 10 years now, so I have the experience to complete most projects in far less time than most. If I were completely honest, I would sell my services based on that fact. But then I would find potential clients choosing other vendors. So instead I have to sell based on how the client expects to be sold - which is by assumed duration, not result. In the end, they get what they want and I get what I deserve for providing it. This is dishonest, but it is the way of business.

Just recently I had to take a bad client to court for refusing to pay me for a project. Unbeknownst to me, the owner is also being investigated by the SEC for $7 million in fraud, which is what he used to fund the company I contracted for. His business is built on even more greed and deception than mine. I'll be lucky if I get half what he owes.

Honesty is not a prerequisite to success. And in many cases it is detrimental.

Tarl Cabot

You just HAVE to love this!!!!

I thought it was the greedy RICH people who were so despicable for saying, "I couldn't care less how hard your dad had it, how hard you had it or how difficult it is to walk 10 miles to school up hill, both ways, you're not entitled to the money I worked for."

Thanks for clearing that up.

Manx

Yes. From the mentality of a person who believes that social services are nothing more than theft, that is exactly what I would expect you to get out of my post.

smooth

sob,

Actually, I grew up on Ocean Beach, not Point Loma. But military personnel will know of Point Loma over OB. They are not quite seperate--mine basically being the lower class ZIP code at the bottom of the hills.

I wasn't embarrased in any earlier thread. In fact, I wasn't claiming to be an expert on the military, but refuting your claim that you could speak for families based on conversations with 3 people. You claimed to be the expert, I was correcting that pompous assertion with my personal account only because you specifically asked me from which place I could claim special knowledge. Well, as a military family member--not as an expert on the military.

I haven't expressed rage at your living context, just asked people to make their own more informed judgements about your assertions of the economic picture in ohio based on your multi-million dollar social context. I pulled the figures from the latest census data, so I don't know where you got your alternate figure for San Diego's median housing price. Of course, I shouldn't need to point out to most people following your posts toward me that many of your perceptions have so far been extremely distorted.

I don't what any of this has to do with Halx. I never mentioned his name, and I also don't see him in here disputing the reality in ohio based on his social context. Although, he may take issue that Simi valley is still the mecca that it was once, I don't know. So if you have quotes about me being hateful toward the money you have or the wealth you live around, post them. You threatened something once before, but didn't follow through on that either, so I probably won't be seeing anything soon.

I don't see the point in discussing things with you because you twist and distort what I say and try to pinpoint logical fallacies in my posts, so far unsuccessfully except in your mind. Only in that space are you making sense to the people following your replies to my posts.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

daswig

Please quote where I said you've been bailed out all of your life. I said no such thing. You had family that you could turn to for help if you got your shit together. You've stated that now that you have your shit together, your family is indeed helping you. I didn't have that luxury...in fact, I had the opposite. There were times when I was in school that I was called by my family when members of it couldn't make their mortgage payment, and I was the last person they could turn to to try and keep their home. I coughed up the cash, by whatever means necessary, even if it meant going without myself. One semester, this happened, and I literally had to sell ALL of my textbooks (from all previous semesters, even including my reference DSM) before I was finished with them to help my mom make her mortgage payment. That sucked, but I did it, because that's what family does....we bail each other out, no matter what, and we deal with the fallout, no matter what. It's just in my case, we had a much smaller pie to work from.

Life is a situation where you either adapt or die. This holds true for plants, it holds true for animals, and it holds true for people. This is Darwinism in action. Some people believe in the moral equivalent of Creationism, but I can't hold those people in terribly high mental regard, regardless of which species of Creationism or protectionism they believe in.

They have to downsize some aspect of their lives. Maybe it means getting rid of cable tv. Maybe it means moving to a different neighborhood. Maybe it means taking part in a co-op food pantry. But if they choose to work 60 hours a week at two different jobs to keep their home that they can't really afford now, that's a matter of their CHOICE.

Education: Good. I'm a big believer in education too. Decent wages: Yeah, no problem there, PROVIDED that the wages are based upon the utility of the work being performed, rather than being made artificially high due to legislation. Manufacturing? That ain't gonna cut it. Most manufacturing doesn't take skilled work, and there are billions of unskilled workers out in the world who are happy to work for 1/100th of what unskilled workers here want. In order to bring manufacturing back here, you're going to have to engage in massive protectionism. That doesn't work.

It's all a matter of utility. If you work for somebody doing something that adds no real value to the enterprise because of a government edict saying they have to employ you doing make-work, you don't DESERVE a living wage. All you're doing is marking time, you're not adding value. If you add value, you should be paid based upon the value you add. That's not greed on the part of corporations, that's what's REQUIRED by corporations for them to survive and remain competitive. And if the corporation doesn't survive, it can't very well pay people, can it?