Poverty in America

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.

That’s a reason for riots!

OK, but don’t you dare burn down my Starbucks!

With no electricity, no phone/laptop charging, no phone, no internet, no ILP, no news. :confused: No, no, no. :evilfun:

I know that catastrophes bring new starts. But in the case of our globalism, the catastophe needs to be a global one, highly likely.

Wendy wrote:

Wendy, I agree with everything you have written.

If people think the poor enjoy their existence, let those people change places with a poor person for a week, perhaps sleep on the street in winter time, not eat regular nutritious meals, not have a place that is safe to go to, not have medical or dental attention or a sense of purpose. It takes more than the minimum wage to live adequately in this day and age.

Poverty is a dark place, where nobody willingly goes.

Yes, they do and they are a much smaller area to have such high records of sin.

It is obvious that most of those who have posted here have a pretty good idea of what poverty means. There are a few differences, but in the main… I re-read all of the posts, sifting through all the bitching, moaning, and complaining looking for one thing: SOLUTIONS. Short of burning the whole fucking world down, where are the solutions? Either we come up with plausible workable solutions or this thread is like so many others. Blah blah blah, blather blather…

What is a solution? It isn’t “We should do this”. A viable solution addresses not only what, but HOW, WHEN, WHERE, replete with concise definitions of what is intended. Hard work? Painful thinking it through? Damn betcha. That is the challenge.

I apologize to those who only posted here to rant and have no interest in actually acting on their convictions.

I’m not sure what you are asking for Tentative? Study history and sociology for a shift, a time-line that can be pointed out, tracked, and correlated to today’s income disparity looking for what went terribly wrong, then define that? You are confusing me!

If my suggestions below are missing your mark, you’re going to have to get us started.

Wendy’s hard workers union USA (has a certain ring to it) for all full-time working citizens, the little guys and gals who earn under $40,000 a year are organized and represented in the government, at their worksites, in the media/public platforms to earn a living wage of $20.84.

Research labor laws for every state (they would need to be unified)
Research corporate laws that favor the industry over the worker
Get rid of government regulations that hurt both the industry and the workers, except in cases of safety practices, workplace safety/product safety/public safety

Slogan: An honest days work for an honest days pay. Old school, but effectively true today.