How can anyone defend this?
 

How can ANYONE justify this? I don't care what your politics are I find it absolutely a crime that anyone working 40 hours a week has to live in poverty. It's bullshit and yet 20% of Ohio jobs pay that and that percentage is increasing.

I cannot see a reasonable excuse for this except greed. When you have people making less the government has no choice but to spend more on them in one way or another. Plus you take away a man's pride and in all honesty why work hard for 40 hours if you live in poverty? It's not just in Ohio people.

I heard this report this morning and have been looking all day to find a link so I could post this. There was more to it in the original report I heard but since I cannot find anything I won't comment until I can.
==========================================================

1 In 5 Ohio Jobs Pay Less Than Poverty
Low-Wage Earners Increasing

POSTED: 7:48 am EST November 16, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new study finds that one in five jobs in Ohio pays less than a poverty level wage -- about $18,000 for a family of four.

And the number of low-wage earners is increasing as Ohio continues to lose manufacturing jobs that are being replaced by low-paying jobs in the service sector.

The study was conducted by Community Research Partners, a Columbus-based nonprofit research organization with funding from the Annie E.Casey, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

==========================================================
http://www.newsnet5.com/money/3921656/detail.html

Here we go..........

READ these facts: tell me how we are living or leaving a better country than our parents or grandparents left. It's bullshit and people need to figure out why the government is allowing this to happen.

You can't have a money for education if you don't have a tax base for it. You can't develop a tax base unless you have the jobs that pay high enough wages. You can't get good paying jobs if you don't have the educated workers..... hmmmmm a cycle isn't it. Saddest thing is notice Ohio has the 7th Largest state economy, only 19 states are doing better financially for families.... means 30 are worse off than this.

===============================================================

Changes recommended in adult education and training and state tax policy to
help low-income working families get ahead and advance Ohio's economy.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Although Ohio has the seventh
largest state economy in the nation, one out of four working families with
children earns so little they have difficulty meeting basic needs, and one in
five jobs in the state -- about 1 million jobs -- pays less than a poverty-
level wage, finds a report released today.

Nineteen other states are doing better than Ohio in the percent of working
families with children who are low-income. Ohio trails other states in efforts
to help its nearly 350,000 low-income working families in such areas as adult
education and training, unemployment insurance and tax burden, the report
shows.

"Average Isn't Enough: Advancing Working Families," provides a
groundbreaking, comprehensive look at Ohio's low-income working families and
the efforts of state programs and policies to help them get ahead in the new
service and knowledge economy.

The report concludes that to achieve economic progress, the state must do more to enable all Ohio families that work hard to be self-sufficient. The
research, which assembles a wide range of data about the condition of these
families, the Ohio economy, and the state's efforts on behalf of low-income
working families, finds many opportunities for change:

-- Only one of Ohio's ten occupations with the
highest number of annual job openings pays an average hourly wage
above 200 percent of the poverty level for a full-time worker. Ohio's
two largest employers, based on state estimates, are Wal-Mart Stores
and the Kroger Company.

-- Twenty-one percent of Ohio's low-income working families -- 74,000
families -- have a parent who has not complete high school or a GED,
and an estimated 44-49 percent of Ohioans age 16 and over have poor
literacy skills. Yet Ohio has the 35th lowest state expenditure rate
for adult basic and literacy education programs, spending only $13.07 a
year per Ohio adult without a high school diploma or GED.

-- Sixty-eight percent of Ohio's low-income working families -- 200,000
families -- have an adult without any postsecondary education. Yet Ohio
lags behind 20 other states in need-based financial aid, providing only
31 percent of the amount of federal Pell Grants received by Ohio
students. In addition, Ohio does not provide financial aid to adults
seeking short-term, non-degree career classes.

-- One out of ten Ohio adults -- 575,000 workers -- is not fully employed,
a percentage worse than 34 other states. But Ohio's unemployment
insurance system does not provide an adequate safety net for the
lowest-income workers. A minimum wage worker working 35 hours weekly
does not meet Ohio's current $181 average weekly wage requirement to
quality for unemployment benefits.

-- Ninety-six thousand Ohio working families with children are living in
poverty, yet Ohio levies taxes on families with lower incomes than in
all but five states. An Ohio family of three who earns as little as
$13,000 a year must pay state income tax.

"Families who do the right thing by working hard should not have to
struggle with the basic necessities of life. Fortunately, Ohio has many assets
on which to build a solid agenda to improve the lives of the state's low-
income working families," said Roberta Garber, executive director of Community Research Partners in Columbus. "The success of these families in education and employment is key to moving Ohio's economy forward, which we know is a top priority for state leaders."

The Ohio Working Poor Families Project report was prepared by Community
Research Partners, a Columbus based non-profit research organization, in
collaboration with the Center for Community Solutions in Cleveland, the John
Glenn Institute at The Ohio State University and KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

The findings of the Ohio report dovetail with those in the October 2004
national report, "Working Hard, Falling Short", which highlighted the
conditions and challenges facing low-income working families in the U.S. Both
reports were produced as part of the Working Poor Families Project. Supported by the Annie E. Casey, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations, the project spotlights issues confronting low-income working families and recommends policy changes to improve their economic standing. Information on the project and copies of other state reports are available
at http://www.aecf.org/initiatives/jobs...orkingpoor.htm .

Community Research Partners is a partnership of United Way of Central
Ohio, the City of Columbus and the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and
Public Policy at The Ohio State University.

An embargoed release of the report, "Average Isn't Enough: Advancing
Working Families," is available on the Community Research Partners
website: http://www.communityresearchpartners.org .

For more information on Ohio's low-income working families and the state's
efforts to help them develop economic security, contact Roberta Garber at
Community Research Partners, 410-234-8046 or Emily Hedrick, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, 513-929-1132.
====================================================

link: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2456841&EDATE=

the libel that the poor are universally "lazy" is one of the most astounding lies of our day. good post...it's crucial to show that the working poor are that, working and poor. call me a communist if you like, but i think a full time work ought to mean being able to afford a safe home, food on the table, and seeing a doctor when you need to.

Uhmm.... Are you sure it has anything to do with the governments intentions.

At the end of the day, non-union wages are based on nothing other than supply and demand. Period, end of story.

The answer is not to have the govt "do something about it" I assume you are referring to the federal govt since you were comparing to other states in the union. I suspect that the answer lies in what the state and local elected officials are doing to attract new business as the economc climate has changed. The elected officials, the ones you elected, have the responsibility to adapt as things change. We are a services based economy and as the manufacturing jobs have gone by way of the union, they local emphasis needs to change, unless of course they were in the back pockets of those unions....

just my two cents....

I just watched an excellent Frontline report on how Wal-Mart was forcing its suppliers to move their production to China. The full program should be available online starting Friday for those interested. I highly recommend it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

There is just no way U.S. manufacturing can compete with manufacturing in China so companies are being forced to move there or go out of business. As a result, decent paying $15/hour jobs with good benefits are being replaced with Wal-Mart wage service jobs with little or no benefits causing living standards to decline and steadily eroding the middle class. The U.S. trade deficit with China is now approaching $150 billion and it's only increasing.

Do you have any suggstions for what could be done?

The state has two service oriented businesses: Kroger and Wal-Mart.

Fred Meyer's (owned by Kroger) is unionized in certain sections (like the cashiers).

Otherwise they would get minimum wage indefinately. Even the unioniized workers get fucked oftentimes. My wife's store would constantly violate policies and her contract (as in, work her less than 20 hours per week so she wouldn't get benefits).

For anyone who thinks she should have gone somewhere else, that's the outlook in so many sectors it isn't even fathomable if you haven't been on the job market within the past decade or so. And it wasn't a personal thing, the store would hire multiple workers and rotate them around so everyone got equal hours. In fact, I got the impression that the manager was actually trying to do something positive by spreading the hours out--so more people could work, even though it was without benefits or a steady or enough paycheck. It was the corporation that capped the total amount of hours she could use per store sales and floorspace in a given week.

Before we left, she made ~$8 an hour. 8*16 (average weekly hours) = $128 * 4 = $512 per month. If we weren't married, she would have been in hardship. She wanted to work more and her schedule was available to work, but the company did not give out more hours; people in her situation are referred to as "involuntary part-time workers" in the literature and employment figures and we have more than 3 million of them in our workforce.

I just lectured this the other day, so I'm trying to recall the exact figure, but there are about 3.5 million full time workers in our workforce that make under the poverty level.

None of these numbers include illegal workers--they either don't have phones, don't want to talk to a government surveyer, and/or live multiple families to a single home. So the estimate is that we can likely double both of those and still not quite tap the extent of the working poor in our economy.


The simplest thing is to raise the minimum wage to a standard appropriate to the buying power it had when it was instituted decades ago. Studies the professor cited to the class indicated that the notion that jobs suffer from increases in minimum wages is a myth, but I haven't read them myself.

Also, the way we measure poverty is outmoded. It is figured by this weird notion of the average price of a food basket (an abstract basket that contains the proper nutrients for a family of 4) and multiplying it by 3. That is because it was assumed that the average family spends 1/3 of its income on food.

The woman who created that food basket forumla has since written a book about how it was misused. She states that her version was for basic life requirements to keep someone alive. Not like someone should live on it. You can figure it backwords and decide for yourself:

Just think for a second whether $18,000 per year for a family of 4 is enough to live on.
But using the $18K (which at least 7 million working people live under per year), we find that the government expects people to feed two children and two adults with $6,000 per year. And pay rent with the other $12,000 (we don't get to figure vehicle, clothes, medical care, or entertainment).

Researchers have come up with an alternate measure that does take into consideration those other items people need -- a self-sufficiency standard. I don't remember if it varies by region, but the number cited was, I think, $38,000.

In orange county, even shady parts of town that I guarantee most posters on this board would not live in, average rent is ~$1,600. That would be about a 2 bedroom apartment, so I don't know how long a family of 4 could live there.


So we need to do a couple of things:

1. Raise the minimum wage commensurate with inflation

2. Raise the poverty threshhold

3. Develop a plan to get these workers some preventive health care.

Who knows...maybe they should have studied in school instead of spending their time smoking pot and reading "Teen Beat".

If you're stupid, no matter how much you make, you can indeed live below the poverty line. And the poverty line, BTW, is generally a statistical critter.

If you're born poor and WANT to get out of poverty, you can do it. It may not be fun, it may entail a lot of hard work, but it certainly can be done. Even in Ohio.

[QUOTE=smooth
So we need to do a couple of things:

1. Raise the minimum wage commensurate with inflation

2. Raise the poverty threshhold

3. Develop a plan to get these workers some preventive health care.[/QUOTE]

Actually, that's 3 things :p

But seriously, the impact of a wage raise like that is quite substantial. For every economist that says wage increase would not impact jobs, there is one who says it will. Also, if it doesn't impact jobs, it will impact prices. What does it matter if everyone makes $10 per hour if now a loaf of bread is $6? The problem isn't the monentary value, it's real wage. And real wage won't rise unless you desire some mandated cap on profits of a company, because the increase in cost of providing labor for that company will be offset by dropping the labor force and/or increasing prices.

And for raising the poverty threshhold, I don't see that as being a big deal. All that is doing is changing the framework of a problem, but it won't go anywhere to solving a problem. For one, there are already many current metrics that would point out the poor lifestyle of many working poor (some of which you pointed out). Statistics are rarely enough to get the average person to care about an issue. Case in point: in 2003, many economists were actually saying that a RISE in the unemployment rate would point to an improving economy, versus a lowering. This is due to the way the unemployment rate is figured, and that the higher rate would show an increase in people looking for jobs again after losing confidence in the economy.

Rather than just raising minimum wage, I would prefer to see a shift in the way schools are run toward a model closer to Germany's. In Germany, many businesses invest in high schools, and also provide pseudo-apprenticeships for students. Not only does this give businesses a vested intrest in its future employees (staving off outsourcing), but it provides the businesses with highly trained employees with company loyalty. It won't help many of the people now, but something like this, IMO, would go a long way toward helping the development of a future middle class. Plus, the economic impact wouldn't be as unpredictable as just a blanket minimum wage increase.

As an aside, California is just an extremely expensive place to live if a bad apartment is $1,600. I live in Michigan, and a very nice 2 bedroom apartment can easily be had most places for around $700 (and that's for a fairly high-end place).

The wealthiest one percent of the people in the United States, during the
thirty three year period between 1970 and 2003, increased the percentage of
the total wealth of this country that they own, from 13 percent to 33 percent.
This transfer of one fifth of the wealth FROM the rest of us, TO the wealthiest,
took place during a period of much higher state and federal inheritance taxes
than the wealthiest will face from now on.....and during a period when they
paid a much higher, progressive tax rate than they have paid recently.....
and will pay going forward. The wealthiest gained, versus the rest of us,
during a period of much higher worker union affiliation than the current level.

Your post is idealistic, impractical, uninformed, and describes a very unlikely
outcome for the vast majority of Americans, going forward, given current
tax policy and the velocity of the concentration of wealth. The wealthiest
few have never held more economic and political power than they do now,
and seldom in our country's history have they been less pressured to act
for the common good. Indeed, you, and many others discount their leverage
and advantage in maintaining current wealth redistribution trends. You help
to hasten the day when, in lieu of any hope of reversing current trends
via peaceful, political and union organizing and civil protest, violent revolution
against the ruling class will be viewed as an accepted, and inevitable remedy.

I'm sorry guys but there is no excuse and yes the government should do something. If people are willing to work 40 hours they should be able to afford a life. What does it show the kids, work hard barely afford to live? Be smart but not afford college? Try to work 40 hours and support your families but feel like a failure because the jobs won't pay enough?

20% people AND INCREASING people. Who's paying their credit cards and car loans and house loans off?

Why are we the only industrialized nation allowing our businesses to do this? What happened to this "the US sets the standards the rest of the world tries to get to"?

Government can help by raising education spending and making sure we educate our young for better jobs. Government can increase tariffs and tax penalties on companies that outsource jobs.

There are a few on this board that argue for greed and that as long as they have theirs everyuone else can go screw themselves, but, eventually it affects them unless they are in the very elite, because if people can't pay their bills the companies are going to hit the people that can pay harder. Someone has to pay and if the poor can't well the rest will.

IF you refuse to show a man who wants to work 40 hours respect then you only encourage animosity and total rage that eventually will find a release somehow.

Minimum wage is just that -- a minimum. It is not intended to be able to raise a family of four on 40 hours a week at minimum wage. The minimum wage is NOT a "living wage" and shouldn't be.

It's weird, there was one presidential candidate talking like this and one who wasn't and Ohio voted for the one who wasn't.

Monetary value is how you calculate real wage. Inflation has increased but wages have not, that is in effect a pay cut to the real wage. People earning minimum wage are actually earning less now than before Clinton raised the federal minimum.
I agree that we push far too many people into college that don't belong there and who won't benefit. Germany's system directs students into apprenticeships for jobs that are blue-collar but unionized, well-paying, and middle class as well. If we let businesses into our high schools I'm afraid it would just be taken over by wal-mart so they could underpay high school workers and indoctrinate students.
One of the purposes of a minimum wage is to even out this kind of discrepency across the nation. No, a person earning middle wage in Ohio could never afford to live in California. Much of California though has living-wage statutes that balance wages with inflation and the cost of living.

True but companies are taking advantage of it and are paying as close to it as possible and ARE NOT paying liveable wages. That's the whole point.

What we need to look at and what people on here who believe it is the workers fault and not the companies totally miss, why are we sending our jobs and money at record paces to countries that hate us while we allow and seemingly don't give a damn that, our citizens are finding jobs that keep them near or in poverty?

Why do these great GOPer's who hate China and believe China to be evil, who talk of China having one goal and that is to destroy us, and yet we send millions of dollars over there, and jobs and refuse to tariff their goods as they tariff ours? Why is that?

No, I don't believe someone who works 40 hours at McDonald's should own a Mercedes and live in luxury, but I don't believe they should be paid to barely afford rent, food and common luxuries that people need to maintain good mental health.

It is my contention that if give people respect and pay them an honest liveable wage that they will work harder and that they will advance on their own. However we are not seeing that. What we are seeing are companies paying as low a wage as possible, not giving more than 35 hours (because in Ohio 35 hours/ week for 3 months means f/t and the company has to offer benefits).

These articles (and I believe they are customary for ALL states) just talk about the 20% of workers in poverty, what about those that are just barely above that level, what are those numbers that make above poverty but not statistically liveable wages? (Liveable wages (to me) = being able to afford rent/ house payments, insurance, a car and its upkeep, utilities, food and entertainment and be able to have some form of savings.)

Who pays the medical bills when they can't? Who pays for the loans and the bills they stiff because they can't pay? Who's going to pay for them when they are to old to work?

You cut the tax base this badly and the "rich" will have to swallow all these expenses. It's not because the workers didn't try, it wasn't because the workers didn't work hard enough (and I challenge anyone in here who believes McDonald's or Wal*Mart to be easy work to work there for those wages for a week and truly say they were paid what they deserved).

By outsourcing jobs and allowing companies to take manufacturing overseas you cut 2 massive tax bases that don't ever come back. You cut the factory taxes and you cut decently paid employees taxes. What you get in return are sales taxes and very very low income taxes if any, in their place. Who makes up for those lost taxes, the government keeps cutting and we keep downwardly spiralling.

There are those that claim "we are moving beyond manufacturing jobs", 3 problems with that:

1) who is making the goods then and what are we exporting (as of right now the trade deficit is far far greater than the income).

2) how do we educate for these new jobs when the tax base has been eroded and we can't afford to finance public schools?

3) we are not increasing any true wage job growth, in fact we are increasing wage job loss (meaning as better paying jobs leave we get less paying jobs with fewer benefits in their place)

There is a reason lawsuits have increased, you work hard you are not advancing someone does something you see a rainbow out and sue. No, it's not right, no I truly believe people do not want to by nature do that, BUT it offers a way out for them.

There's a reason workplace violence, addiction, crime and poverty keep increasing and it is because when you do not pay liveable wages (in a society like ours where money pretty much dictates who you are to many people) you see a cycle occur. A cycle where people will first try to get out, then people accept their reality and lose their aspirations and dreams, then people become envious, then people become violent, then their children see this and repeat this formula, only the children have no aspirations and dreams.

You either accept the fact that ALL people deserve respect and honest liveable wages or you accept the fact that YOU will pay for those who you refused to respect. And if you think you won't have to pay..... elections are still held, and if they keep failing and poverty keeps increasing then other ways will come to surface.

I don't know whose job it is to justify it. You may want to try to put it into context.

How many people in Ohio are the single earner in a household of four and more and work 40 hours per week at one of these jobs? Without this information, the statistic doesn't mean that much.

What was the percentage in 1998 or 1994?

What if the previously high paying jobs are not needed anymore because of the evolution of the economy? Does the free market stop in Columbus? Are there diff. rules for Ohio?

If single people or students have a lot of these jobs and they do not live in poverty, are we still offended? What if one spouse makes 40k and the other makes 16k and they have two kids? The live in a household that makes over three times the poverty level and 50%, 50% PERCENT of that household has a job that would put a family of four under the poverty level. That's 30 more than 20. Whose greed is killing this family?

While were at it, aren't there some definitional issues with the "poverty level?" Does that level include families that can afford a computer, cable, the internet, cell phones, etc. in addition to food, shelter, clothing?

What good would raising the minimum wage do if we are upset that the man making 17k isn't making 20k?

Daswig unwittingly brings up another major myth about those living around or below the poverty line--that they're stupid, so that is their place in life.
Often the working poor work more than one job, and even if there was a job that paid slightly more than they make available, they wouldn't want to risk missing work to go apply for it.
My initial reaction to this post was--don't look at me, the people have spoken in the last election, they don't want a "society" where everyone can at least have "luxurys" like food and basic health care. I truely amazes me that some of the "red" states were convinced to vote clearly against their economic interests. I feel that it is the second biggest ruse that the Republicans purpetrated (after convincing much of the public that they are moderate). Most of the "red" states are not economic powerhouses, they probably have the highest percentage of people living below the "poverty line" and yet they vote for someone who has never truely spoken to their needs (a tiny bit of campaign lip service for a sound bite doesn't really count).
I wish I had some solutions. I continue to see our country turning into a "service nation" where the majority of people work at jobs where they make little (because you don't really need a special talent to work at Wal Mart, or the grocery store) and sell products that were made cheaply overseas. The problem is, anytime someone makes a suggestion to solve the problem someone in the Neo-Con party labels it as "Communist" and it dies a quick death. i would like to see the government place tariffs or taxes on companies who use cheap overseas labor to make products that are sold over here. Take Nike, for instance, I've read estimates that it costs anywhere from a few cents to a couple of dollars to make shoes in indonesia that retail over here for a hundred dollars and are sold by someone making 8 dollars an hour. They would say that they couldn't afford to make a profit if they produced the shoes here, but New Balance seems to be doing OK. It's a crime that the fat cats like Knight and the Waltons are making millions riding on the working poor.

Ohio is better than the national average in the following categories:

Working families who are low-income (below 200% of poverty)
Children in working families who are low income
working families in poverty
children in working families who are in poverty

The reason there is an increase in lower paying jobs is because those sectors of the economy are growing faster than other sectors of the economy, not because there are no higher paying jobs.

You can make over $36,700 in a household of two, have health benefits and still be included as a low income family in this study.

Question:

Where will the money come from for these wonderful solutions?

what could be better for capital in general that convincing so many petit bourgeois that the problems of economic instability and exploitation (they are linked) can be traced not to problems of economic organization but rather to problems of inner being?

the poor are poor because they are morally reprobate or because they are stupid or because...well they ought to be poor.
it is a question of essence.
same kind of arguments are embedded in the racism mobilized cheerfully by the right to rationalize the "war on terrorism".
same kind of arguments are embedded in elements organized by the assimilation of fundamentalist protestant discourse into right politics.
same kind of arguments are embedded in conservative conceptions of nationalism.

what could be better for capital than convincing people that the effects of capitalism can be explained in ways that divert attention away from capitalism?

well you could make these same folk suspicious of mobilization, of unionizing.
you could have them endorse their own economic powerlessness
if you want to cement the deal, you float the Ideal of the Entrepreneur
which is the simple-minded mapping of the ideology of the autonomous individual
not conditioned by social factors
into the space of neoclassical economics.

for good measure, add the horatio alger mythology

and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and

why bother with direct domination
when you can convince people to render and maintain themselves as powerless?

this discourse is the veil around which decline unfolds.

So the working poor - of who pan is speaking - spent their time in high school smoking pot and reading Teen Beat?

I chuckled whilst reading this. The notion that those working poor have within their homes a stash of old bongs and pipes and stacks of back issues of Teen Beat seems a little archaic - does anyone actually read Teen Beat anymore? Do we really believe that the working poor were lazy, pot-smoking do-nothings who are now receving their karmic reward while those who are not poor were the hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone studious types who are also now reaping the rewards of their toils?

I suppose when we carry those attitudes within us, it's easy to pretend that people are really that simple and the complexities of life are just part of the socialist manifesto designed to separate good, true Americans from their hard-earned money.

Black and white makes for good photographs and moody films, but it's lousy for real life analogies.

Hmm, calling the poverty line a statistical critter....I've never heard a statistic called a critter before. I may be wrong, but I take this statement as a trivialization of the idea of a poverty line. Taking away from its factual basis as a number that describes the ability of people who work 40 hours a week - the basis of pan's thread - to earn a decent living is disingenuous. Your statement that the stupid can still be poor even though they make a lot of money does not address the issue of this thread. A stupid person may be intellectually poor, but if they're making $75,000 a year, they are not living below the poverty line.

The working poor are not looking for a fun and easy way out. They're already working a full-time job. Some of them are even working 2 jobs. We're talking about people who cannot afford college but are willing to work as hard as they must to make ends meet. Don't they deserve a wage that allows them the means and the time to raise their families?

I'm not making this argument to ask for pity, but illustrate a point. My wife and I have a combined yearly income of nearly $100,000. This would ideally seem like a lot of money to live on, yet we are unable to afford a house. The reason is simple: based on our careers, we signed a contract requiring us to live within the city limits of Chicago. Housing in Chicago is not exactly cheap. While we do not live in poverty, we are unable to afford a mortgage. We did this willingly and are very happy with where we are, but that is us. If we are unable to afford a home at our income, what makes you think that a family of four with a household income of $50,000 can even begin to make it in places like Chicago, New York, or San Francisco? As much as we may like to be dismissive of places like this as not reflecting a true picture of affordability in our nation, it doesn't detract from the fact that well over 20 million people inhabit these cities and many of them must deal with the reality of not having a livable wage.

The reality is that there are many people in our nation unable to afford a lifestyle that is comfortable or even livable. That someone who works an honest day is not able to afford the basic necessities in life is dispicable.

Here is a great link describing the poverty levels since 1959.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov1.html

you can see the figures for families of all numbers in the table... but here is an interesting fact. for a couple living 1983, the poverty line was at $7,938. this same measure has been bumped up to $14,680 in the year 2003.

that's nearly TWICE what it was just 20 years ago. surely this must outpace inflation (does it?) and the CPI. medicare, welfare and unemployment benefits have risen since then... is it not possible that the standard for poverty has improved since 1983?

thanks for the link, irate. I looked at it very quickly and it seems that the CPI is about twice what it was in 1982, as well. I'm on my way out the door, but I'll take a closer look at it when I get home. Unless someone beats me to it - which will most likely be the case.

The dems are working at convincing Ohio that they suck and need government (read democrat) help already?

Wow, thats pretty fast work.

For the same reason that while we bemoan and cry about Walmart, we still shop there. $$$$$$
It's to our immediate financial advantage. Long term...maybe not so much, but for right now...this is where the dollar is.

my point exactly! (but said a little more eloquently, I think)

I still have yet to see a reasonable, workable solution to helpint the "working poor". Sure, it would be nice if all these hardworking people could get more money, but who is going to foot the bill? Raising the minimum wage has more impact than just the base wage increase. A business usually pays approximately double an employees salary in SSI, taxes, and other gov't programs (depending on state workman's comp laws). So somebody making $6 an hour whose wage is bumped to $11 an hour has an increase of $11 to $20 per hour of labor for the company. So these costs are now going to come out the back end as either higher prices on goods (making the wage increase less effective) or as manufacturing jobs shipped out to countries where they don't have to pay as much.

Notice how many ask where the money comes from or offers arguments as to why this is okay.

We have to look beyond initial cost and figure out what is more beneficial in the long term. Long term right now is bleak to say the least. The only way to change things is to either tariff imports and make it again worthwhile to pay employees middle income wages and re-open factories. (Worked pretty damn well from the end of WW2 till the late 80's.) Or raise taxes on the rich and reinforce education not just for the children but for the displaced workers. Train and educate people to get the jobs that are high paying. Yes, taxes go up, yes, education is the primary focus BUT, the alternatives as discussed before in previous posts I've written, end with the rich paying more taxes anyway or a revolution in society by the worker once they have had enough.

Personally, this time is more profitable for me. My family is making a bundle. Dad is running a surveying company and breaking up farms and gaining land from those who need to sell it (taking his pick of parcels as payment. Mother is gaining money in auctions buying antiques dirt cheap then selling them for 50-100+% markups in my mother's shop or on E-Bay. I, personally, will profit because the more people feel hopeless the more addiction there is, the more need for addictions counselors there are.

My family profits on the losses of others. I should be all for it then, right? Wrong because I look long term and while my sister and I and maybe our kids will be set there are many out there that won't be and the country will be at odds and a very negative place to live. The USA should never be negative. I grew up believing that anything was possible here and that this country strived to be better than anyone else.... we don't and we aren't. The truth is we have people striving to MAKE as much as they can by utilizing those who struggle just to keep a roof over their head and try to live decent lives.

So the reality is my family and I will lose money if times get better, but my children and grandchildren may have a better country than what I have now, and that is what I want.

The amounts are roughly the same ($14667.24 in the year 2003 has the same "purchase power" as $7938 in the year 1983.)

I pulled that figure from here: http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/

Benefits have not increased, they have decreased and the amount of time one can receive them is now capped at 5 years. The standard for poverty has worsened over time.

Well, considering the wealth gap has been widening, we could raise taxes on the rich and close corporate tax loopholes. Instead of, you know, doing the reverse.

Regardless of what economists say about the impact of raising the minimum wage in terms of lost jobs or increased prices, there is a historical record that researchers can and do look at.

My statement was not an opinion, it was based on analysis of the historical record. Economists can argue that increasing the minimum wage will reduce jobs and increase prices out of control of those who just recieved the wage increase, but they would then be wrong according to the empirical evidence.

this seems to indicate that the number of people living in poverty is right about average since records started being kept... actually much better than it was in the 60s.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/h.../hstpov13.html

i think the biggest change is what people consider an "living wage" to be. what do you all mean when you say "living wage"? personally, i don't think a living wage necessarily includes home ownership or the ability to pay for a college education.

irateplatypus' working definition for a living wage: enough money to...
1) cloth yourself and all dependents modestly.
2) have 3 meals a day cooked at home.
3) pay heating and electricity bills.
4) have a living space big enough so that no more than 2 people live in a single room.
5) drive a safe vehicle
6) meet all those needs and still be able to save 10% of income or use as discretionary spending.

i think it's the government's responsibility (and sometimes that means getting the hell out of the way) to make "living wage" fit under something like those criteria.

that mirrors the definition I provided towards the top of this thread. Researchers call it a "self-sufficiency standard," and they found it to be $38,000 using the criteria you laid out.

Irate, it's important to note that the poverty threshold is currently set at $18,362 (2002) for a family of 4. But just as important, the bulk of families in poverty to not come close to that line. They do not, for example, make $16,000, but rather <$9,000. Without pulling my lecture notes out, the number is around half that live on that amount.

That is gross wage and includes transfers (subsidies, and etc., they don't get added to the 9K).


Increasing the threshold won't pull those people out of proverty (this is in response to a reply to me above from someone else), but it will make more poor workers elligable for services like health care, child care, low-income housing, and food stamps.

EDIT: pulled my notes out. BTW, professor is Elliot Currie (I think I already provided a link to an interview, but a google will give you a profile of him) and the course is Community Context of Crime. It's an undergraduate course and I'm the assistant (as well as his advisee).

man... it's so nice talking about something other than iraq or bush-bashing.

if we're talking about people needing to make a living wage while working 40 hours a week (as that seems to be the starting point on this thread), then consider this:

we'll start with a very conservative estimate... say just $8 an hour for unskilled labor. the cashier's at walmart start off close to that. for a couple...

$8 an hour, multiplied by 40 hours a week. 52 weeks in a year times 40 hours a week... double that figure to find total income for a married couple.

the figure comes to $33,280 for two unskilled fulltime incomes. i'm not saying i would want live on that, especially with a wife and maybe a child. however, that isn't bad is it? before anyone thinks i'm on a high-horse... i used to be poor. dirt poor. i'm a bit embarrassed to say my family even enrolled in welfare for a couple months when i was very young. still, for the basics of life... that isn't an unjustifiably low figure, is it? i know that here in Oklahoma $33,000 will take you a lot farther than most places... do unskilled labor jobs pay more in areas with a higher cost of living? i should know that.

Now that I've got my notebook out, I can provide some more info:
(all of this can be checked against the census data; if someone has an issue with it, go look it up):

The average amount of people in poverity is 12%, but that is only a snapshot.
If we examine how many people stay poor all year long, ~6% of our population remains constantly poor.
If we examine how many people move in and out of poverty in a given year (as in, a family falls below the threshold for 3 months), the number rises to 20%.

7 million families are poor. 3.5 million of them are married (stable, in-tact, dual parent homes). .5 million are headed by a single male.

Which leaves only 3 million women with children living in poverty (only because evidently we start to see that "welfare queens" aren't that large of the impoverished population relative to everyone else).

This does not count homeless (it can't, work figures are derived from household surveys, not umemployment rosters), illegal workers (both immigrants and black-market, under the table, etc.), or people in the correction system (prison, jail, or other supervisory authority = 2 million people and rising). These figures are also only part of the "civilian workforce" so it doesn't count government workers nor does it count servicepeople.

Hopefully that last line got your attention: there seems to be a large number of servicepeople on this board. Many of their families are going through very hard times right now. Guardspeople know best whether the pay is enough to raise a family. My understanding from the older guardsmen I know is that they supplement their income with it. In any case, their wives are home trying to raise children on their pay right now.

The point is: Tens of millions of Americans (and another ~10 million non-americans) are impoverished in this country. Some are lazy, dumb, and cheats, but obviously we can't write off 30-40 million people to that status.

No, you are right in that it isn't bad. And I'd be willing to be somewhat mollified if workers were getting that.

Unskilled jobs do not pay more anywhere, whatever Wal-Mart pays over there it will pay over here.

The problem becomes if the couple has children. We could argue that they shouldn't have children, but if they do, they need child care in order for them to work. I would rather someone stay home, personally. I think we know by now (in terms of crime and violence) what happens when children raise themselves. But they can live on it, I'll grant that, I just don't see it as socially desirable in the long run, personally. I used to be dirt poor, too, BTW (and still am by government figures, but everyone here knows that should change when I get my degree, so it's a different situation nowdays).

I think you realize that they won't be able to save anything for their retirement with that amount of money. This is one of my greatest concerns with the social security issue.

How much taxes do they pay on that? If they are, say, in a 15% bracket, they really only get ~$28,000 right? Then we add in state taxes, sales taxes, and misc. taxes, and we start to see the money isn't quite working out anymore. But I'll grant that it may still be livable in some states. We need people to be able to live in California who works these jobs, too. I would like to have someone besides a Ph. D. graduate hand me my bucket of chicken. I don't know of anywhere one could live on a dual income of <$28K in Southern California. It's true the price of living is out of control. But dense cities have a high concentration of both low-paying jobs and low income people. So something is going to give--usually it's the prison walls.


The real problem, irate, is that not many families are getting 2 full time jobs. Not because they don't want to work, they aren't to be had. Many people are working multiple jobs, although I don't have the current figures. They have to do this because Wal-Mart is not one of the companies that allows full time work. Their upper management employees have full-time work and benefits, but their rank and file doesn't--they fall into that category I mentioned up above: "involuntary part-time workers" comprising ~3 million people of our workforce.

Raising the minimum wage is a band-aid and doesn't solve the problem wholly.

What needs to happen is the spending of more REAL dollars on education for the children and displaced workers.

A rebuild of the manufacturing sector and a tariff credits for debt payoff with countries we have deficits with.

The only problem is that you would have to increase the minimum wage by over 60% to get at $18,000/year.

That is a rather large increase that would never, ever be approved by any political party.

What manufacturing sector, pan?
Manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the US for a long time, if ever.

I do agree that we need our education to be better funded and would add that it needs to be directed toward the creation of new economy sectors.

I disagree that raising minimum wages are a band-aid. Even if it is, I still place band-aids on my cuts until they scab over so I don't get infected during the interim.

This is similar to what I said, except for the tariffs. And tariffs would be a horrible idea, unless the US is willing to wage economic warfare against the majority of other economic heavyweights.

You raise tariffs to an extent that other countries have on our goods and manufacturing will have to come back for people to afford anything. Increase of a HUGE tax base.

Plus, you offer tax initiatives and incentives to re-open plants.

I would also cut any aid to countries that did not have a liveable minimum wage and that violated our worker's laws. Savings of HUGE amounts spent in the name of foreign aid.

While I did state raising minimum wage is a band-aid it would require what Nixon did in '73 when the dollar was freefalling. That is a price freeze on all utilities.

What I would recommend is a voluntary raise in minimum wage jobs to $10/hour. Those companies participating would get tax credits and would get even more if they trained the workers for higher paying jobs. Small businesses, I would implement some form of credit where the wage increases and training were not a financial problem.

Those companies that did not participate would be taxed more, however they could get credit back by donating to local schools and colleges.

I would still use a price freeze on all utilities and food goods.

However, unlike Nixon I would keep this program implemented for a period of 5 years, not just short term.

Simultaneously, I would lower all tuitions at state funded colleges that accept federal funding. I would also put a limit on the money Dean's and other school officials make. There is no reason ANY dean needs to make over $500,000 and yet there are quite a few that pay their deans that.

This wouldn't be a long term government plan just long enough to hopefully invigorate the middle class and have it grow. Therefore raising tax revenues.

I would also increase money for the infrastructure, such as roads, rebuilding of government buildings and so on, so that construction would increase dramatically thereby adding even more money into the economy, more better paid workers who will be paying more in taxes. Not more by %age but more because they make more.

And for those that shake their heads, and say what about hands off business government, very simple. Like I said they don't have to participate. They just get no federal aid such as loans, contracts etc. Yes, it is blackmail but it is what is needed to get this country on top again.

And everything I said has been implemented in one form or another in times of financial difficulties in the US and every time they worked. Especially in the late 40's and 50's.

To all of you who say that paying a higher wage would massively hurt a company, this just isn't true. Studies done by MIT and the <a href="http://www.cura.umn.edu/reporter/04-Summ/Markusen-et-al.pdf">University of Minnesota</a> have shown that raising the pay of workers (not too high though) results in an increase of productivity. This in turn lowers the total cost of employing people. Take Costco and Wal-Mart for instance. Both are very succesful, though Wal-Mart is obviously bigger. One of the common things Wal-Mart does is to higher many workers part-time so that they can avoid paying any benefits to them. Costcos on the other hand pays their employees very well, on average $15 an hour compared to $6 or so for Wal-Mart. Most of their employees are full-time and also recieve full benefits. The prices at each store are still comparable. When one pays a low wage the company tends to have a higher turnover as well. This results in higher training costs and administrative costs.

I am personally sick of making $7 an hour for risking my career every day and would like to get paid a decent wage for flight instructing.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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....

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! :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!!!"

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."
-

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.

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.

Good post, until this comment.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

What you're talking about is theft. You couch it in terms of "social welfare", but stealing is what you're talking about. You play the race card beautifully, without even mentioning race. Unfortunately, it's still crap. For your reading pleasure:

Your position completely contradicts this position.

If you truly believe this, I feel very, very sorry for you.

Although it's obvious you need no illustrations, I'm sending you this one anyway.
Perhaps you will find it useful in dealing with people who are determined to spend your money.

"A Republican and a Democrat were walking down the street when they came
to a homeless person. The Republican gave the homeless person his
business card and told him to come to his business for a job. He then
took twenty dollars out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person."

"The Democrat was very impressed, and when they came to another homeless
person, he decided to help. He walked over to the homeless person and
gave him directions to the welfare office. He then reached into the
Republican's pocket and gave the homeless person fifty dollars."

"Now you understand the difference between Republicans and
Democrats."

I will be happy to point out your deliberate misstatements if I see the slightest interest expressed by someone else in this thread. I've already saved them, though, so it won't do any good to go back and edit them.

But it's rather off-topic to document the things like your confusion/contradictions about where you've lived.

Would you expect this, too?

http://www.reclaimamerica.org/pages/...asp?story=2228

Most Charitable States Coincide with Voting Patterns
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

By Sam Kastensmidt


Each year, the Catalogue for Philanthropy determined the nation’s most charitable states. To determine which states are most charitable, the organization used 2002 federal income tax returns. The results show a clear correlation with the 2004 Presidential election.

The Methodology

The Catalogue’s generosity index is computed by the following equation:

The state’s average income ranking / the state’s average charitable contribution ranking

The Order of Most Charitable States

1) Mississippi – Bush
2) Arkansas – Bush
3) Oklahoma – Bush
4) Louisiana – Bush
5) Alabama – Bush
6) Tennessee – Bush
7) South Dakota – Bush
8) Utah – Bush
9) South Carolina – Bush
10) Idaho – Bush
11) Wyoming – Bush
12) Texas – Bush
13) West Virginia – Bush
14) Nebraska – Bush
15) North Dakota – Bush
16) North Carolina – Bush
17) Kansas – Bush
18) Florida – Bush
19) Georgia – Bush
20) Kentucky – Bush
21) Montana – Bush
22) Missouri – Bush
23) New Mexico – Bush
24) Alaska – Bush
25) Indiana – Bush
26) New York – Kerry
27) Iowa – Bush
28) Ohio – Bush
29) California – Kerry
30) Maryland – Kerry
31) Illinois – Kerry
32) Maine – Kerry
33) Delaware – Kerry
34) Washington – Kerry
35) Vermont – Kerry
36) Oregon – Kerry
37) Hawaii – Kerry
38) Virginia – Bush
39) Arizona – Bush
40) Nevada – Bush
41) Pennsylvania – Kerry
42) Michigan - Kerry
43) Colorado – Bush
44) Connecticut – Kerry
45) Minnesota – Kerry
46) Wisconsin – Kerry
47) New Jersey – Kerry
48) Rhode Island – Kerry
49) Massachusetts – Kerry
50) New Hampshire – Kerry

It would look more favorable to the Kerry camp if a way were devised to report how much of OTHER people's money the Kerry crew likes to "donate."

I haven´t read throught the whole thread but:
-Isn´t the relative poverty line defined at the lowest 20% earners in a country, therefore you will always have 20% poor people.
-You can´t increase wages unless you increase efficiency, if you force raised wages for a larger group of people these(the raises not the people) will be eaten away by a raise in living costs.

Short and sweet: Nobody is forced to work a low-income job but most often it´s better than all other alternatives avalible to you. I myself work a low-wage job and I recognise the whining fom my co-workers that we are payed to poorly and work too much and I can tell you that considering what we do (working as a train conductor) we are payed way to much and I´m pulling of studing economics at a university at the same time so I guess we aren´t working to much either.

From post 66 YOUR words Daswig:
Think you just proven yourself a liar in regards to your attack on me.

Either way this thread for me is done, not once did I get a solid answer to how to chnage things from the opposition, all they do is point fingers, throw blame and attack personally.

Maybe if you ask the wrong question you don´t get the right answers. You made a statement and asked for justification, opposition thought your statement was wrong and therefore felt they didn´t need to justify it but intead pointed out the wrongs.

What was your solution again? Oh, yes, it was was a rewording of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Now that you're spending less time on the computer, maybe you should consider a second job.

Wait, that solved the problems of two people you disagree with!

On second thought, you should just engage in dishonest business practices. By his own admission, that works for Manx. He didn't care to hear about people who improved their lives by, for example, hard work.

ENOUGH
 

Here we go again.

Please keep the debate civil....no personal attacks.

I hate to do this to you and get into parsing words, but you said: I didn't say you were "bailed out all your life", I said, as you quoted: "I'm glad you have parents with money. It must be nice to have a cushion to bail you out when you keep failing." You're misreading what I said. Please try again, but with carefully reading what I actually wrote, and what you say I actually wrote. If you're intellectually honest, you'll see that they are two different things. And I'll accept your apology for calling me a liar whenever you wish to tender it.

You're not going to get an apology.

In fact, if you look directly above your post, you'll notice that a moderator said in polite terms as possible to quite childishly bickering with people attempting to have what began as a mature discussion.

3.....2......1...........
 

and i've got his back...

The bottom 20% is referred to as the lowest quintile.

Relative poverty is defined as making less than half the median wage.

If the value of the dollar isn't constant, why would one have to increase productivity just to keep earning the same approximate wage over time?

Of course I would. Misrepresentation and off-topic responses are required in order for your opinion to have any weight.

How about if I ignore your attempt to paint me as a racist simply because you fail to grasp the affects of ongoing generational oppression upon large groups of people.
I'll also go ahead and ignore your misplaced sense of pity simply because you are so desperate to believe in the honesty of man when ALL evidence demonstrates there is no honesty in capitalism.

And there's honesty in Communism or whatever system you're advocating??? Tell that to the folks that died in the Gulags. As for my failure to "grasp the affects (sic) of ongoing generational oppression upon large groups of people", well, hate to tell you this, but I'll take the guy who said this: over your opinion on race relations any day. History has judged him, and it was 4.0s all the way.

There is no honesty in man. And most certainly not in capitalism. But nice attempt at deflecting yet again.
Nonsense. Your continued efforts to discount generational oppression on the psyche by ignoring it completely are entirely without basis. Your delusion of equality is founded on nothing whatsoever.

Speaking of misrepresentations:

I'm not sure whether this was directed to Daswig or sob, but the above is a blatant misrepresentation of what they said.

Their point was that they invested HARD work to overcome difficulties.

I guess your philosophy of being dishonest is quite a bit easier.

Oh, I understood the point about the charitable states, too. Perhaps this post will put it in context for you:

I understood very well what their point was - they did "hard" work, which is actually easy because "anyone can do it" to be successful.

That is most certainly a misrepresentation on their part.

It's nonsense.