Poverty in America

Getting a job is not the problem, being able to afford living expenses and the occasional catastrophe are. The car battery is a perfect example. Perhaps the government should give the companies the emergency funds to help their employees since the companies themselves don’t give a shit about helping their employees through a crisis. The company uses the emergency funds to buy the employee a car battery so they stay employed, but that still doesn’t earn them enough to buy their own fucking battery.

I’m still over here waiting for you to share or is your answer that they just don’t think ahead…whatever that means.

Wendy, I won’t answer for Faust, but I want to address the not thinking ahead. Not only do many of these people not think ahead, they CAN’T think ahead. It is just one problem stacked up with the others. OK. I knew that the fucking battery in the piece of shit car was dying and I needed to get a new battery. BUT… the electric company is going to shut off my power for non-payment the last three months. My daughter (or son) has a severe ear infection and I need to get a prescription that I have no money for. Someone hands me a hundred dollars. Which problem do I solve and which ones do I let go? And this scenario is repeated ad infinitum. There is no thinking ahead. There is only careening from one crisis to another.

Because that’s true. If you eat rice, and go without electricity for a year so that you can get some money in the bank, then your chances of being able to invest go up dramatically. People need to realize that without some income other than what the average person can earn, you wont have more money than the average person. Like when poor people spend their tax return taking the kids on vacation…if you’re poor, you should put that money into a drip plan for the kids, so that maybe they can have money later on. Fuck Disney World.

Someone bought me 1 share of southern company for 5 bucks when I was a kid. I ignored it and left it there for years, until I was about 28 or so. The 5 bucks had turned into 500 or more. Several splits, and years of appreciation. Now think about what would have happened if they had put 5 more dollars each month. But they didn’t. My parents were financially illiterate. But there’s no excuse for that now. Anyone can read the news, anyone can open a brokerage account with no minimum, and anyone can put aside a little cash each month if they work and have some discipline. If you’re drinking coca cola instead of water, and you don’t have any money to save, then you’re drinking your retirement and you’re an idiot.

If they earned a decent wage, they wouldn’t need someone to hand them $100. That’s my issue, them being underpaid from the get go.

Thinking ahead means that you started putting a little money in the bank years ago. Almost no one can honestly say that in the last 10 years they couldn’t have put at least something away. Like I save money and deny myself some things I could otherwise have, and you don’t. Then 10 years later, you want some money, so you ask the government to raise my taxes so that you can have some of what I saved. That’s just immoral.

:laughing:

Less painful to sell plasma every week or so. :laughing:

No they can’t (especially without electricity), but you are smarter than anyone (too bad less scrupulous…there’s that trade-off I guess) and you were coddled with stock which most aren’t. Plus, you wheel and deal…simple folks cannot effectively do that at all or on a scale that truly benefits them.

The only reason that a company is valuable is because it produces something. That requires that people work there and there is so sort of product coming from that work. Stock trading loses sight of that fact … a company becomes valuable simply because people want to buy the stock … it need not produce anything. Only picking up on the financial trends is important. Most financial instruments are now just ways for making money without making product.

The result is a society which is not based in anything tangible and it can collapse at any moment when enough people realize that there is nothing holding up the system. It’s a system of paper profits.

Exactly.

If you can post on ILP, you can read the news.

Coddled with $5 worth of stock? Did you read the post?

So Wendy, people who are able to wheel and deal should have to subsidize people who arent?

Seems like some people want the rewards but they don’t want the risk.

Wendy, I won’t answer for Faust, but I want to address the not thinking ahead. Not only do many of these people not think ahead, they CAN’T think ahead. It is just one problem stacked up with the others. OK. I knew that the fucking battery in the piece of shit car was dying and I needed to get a new battery. BUT… the electric company is going to shut off my power for non-payment the last three months. My daughter (or son) has a severe ear infection and I need to get a prescription that I have no money for. Someone hands me a hundred dollars. Which problem do I solve and which ones do I let go? And this scenario is repeated ad infinitum. There is no thinking ahead. There is only careening from one crisis to another.
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If they earned a decent wage, they wouldn’t need someone to hand them $100. That’s my issue, them being underpaid from the get go.
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I don’t think it’s that easy. Without some education and discipline, it wouldn’t make any difference if they were given a thousand dollars or making a so-called living wage. Within a very short period of time they would make the bad decisions that put them in the poor category in the first place. Not all of them, there are many who are downtrodden through no fault of their own, but the vast majority would and will remain poor no matter what we do.

Like people who get insurance settlements and spend the money and go right back into debt instead of paying off what they owe. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone get money, and immediately dispose of it without doing a thing to ensure they can benefit from it long term.

So that’s it? Don’t pay them for their work because they will misspend it anyway? What? They are doing there part at their jobs, they deserve to be paid a decent wage for it. End of story. The companies are making the money in profits, they need to pay their workers. End of story. Why is this so hard for you boys to understand?

Who wants to lobby with me to have the minimum wage be $20, allowing all hard working, full-timers to earn over $35,000?

$35,000 is what a single person needs to live a decent lower class life in most areas of the country. Of course, technical jobs, jobs dealing in trust (ex. money intake), dangerous jobs, and disgusting jobs would pay better.

All that would happen is that prices would rise and their money would be sucked out of their pockets leaving them again in the hole.

You can’t solve the problem just by throwing more money at it.

Then mass revolts, strikes, are the only solution for 60-70% of the labor force. What would you suggest to eliminate greed? How do you re-educate humans to go without six cars, two boats, three homes, $500,000 in jewelry, etc., etc.? To survive with less than $10 mil in assets? How do you replace their material goods with a good soul?

When people hit an income of $250,000 a year they seem to quickly lose touch with reality. Sure, the more you earn, the more you spend, but why are you spending it all on yourself? What is the need that compels people to become shallow? To live a material life rather than a spiritual life? I don’t get it, I really don’t. Crap, I’m ranting.

I’m not poor, I’m not very rich.

Many former middle class people have become lower class people. The middle class has decreased, the lower class has increased.

The United States have one of the developed world’s largest income gap between rich and poor.

I don’t suggest that it be eliminated at all. It’s a fact of life that we need to work around. Revolutions do not get rid of greed.

That’s a small group.

As I said, there has to be a shift from the philosophy of instant gratification. And that applies to everyone in every class. It’s not just one class that has to be “fixed”. Everyone has to be part of the solution.

There is a decline in returns once a certain level of affluence is reached. I think that a lot of them feel the emptiness of material wealth. Yet, the marketing message keeps droning on : “you just need to get this and you will be happy”.

I doubt that the rich are more shallow than the poor. The poor also spend their money selfishly.

As Sherlock Holmes said : “The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

That’s certainly a cause for discontent.