The 47% Solution: Yes, If You’re Poor, It Really May Be Your Fault
My last piece, “The Poor Get Poorer: 3 Character Traits That Undermine Prosperity,” received a mixed reception, at least if some of the comments are any indication.
If I can address just one persistent theme:
A few commenters raised the “problem” of “the homeless,” which only ever seems to be a “problem” when a conservative is in office, be it at the national level or a municipal one.
Just as it’s been said that it used to cost a fortune to keep Gandhi living in poverty, in like fashion, the “homeless” have made not a few people — professional fundraisers and “community activists” – if not rich, than certainly quite well off.
This is particularly amusing, in a grim way, because the “homeless” have never really existed in the numbers their advocates claim, particularly the “homeless veterans” without whom Hollywood producers and Law & Order writers would be unemployed themselves.
Goodness, even during “Tulipmania,” at least the tulips were real…
In any event, by sheer coincidence, Mitt Romney’s comments about “the 47%” made headlines around the same time, inspiring a national debate — actually, more like a barroom brawl — about poverty.
I don’t pretend to have a Grand Unified Theory on the topic.
However, all the statistics and theories and studies folks can throw at me can’t detract from my lived experience, and my observations of individuals — rich and poor — over the course of almost half a century.
“Here’s a final thought:
All those people who cheered when Obama mocked old-fashioned notions of intelligence and hard work are the very same people now outraged by Romney’s clumsily-stated remarks about the “47%.”
In other words: the same people who helped create the “47%” whose existence they’re now trying to deny.”
Kathy, your post was better than expected. Especially since i’m kinda getting used to hearing the ‘conservative’ pundits condemn non-federal-income-tax-payers and pridefully boast about how much they contribute to the government. Conservatives. So-called. Ironic. You are correct that Romney’s 47% comment was unwise. For many reasons. But, getting back to your post, I was curious that after a better than expected discourse on personal responsibility and the facts of life, you chose to conclude with the comment pasted above? The people who created the 47% are denying that it exists? By which I assume you mean the left? Kathy, if you paid taxes, voted for a republican or democrat, asked for or received any government benefit, than you helped create the 47%. Because nearly everyone contributed to the growth of government and its vast scope of responsibility, it is very unfortunate that you demean the truth and undermine your credibility by blaming only the leftists. Remember, Nixon established the EPA and Bush expanded tax credits to working poor, etc. The truth is, we ALL created the dependency culture. Most of all, the rich. Because they pay the bulk of the federal taxes, they are the most responsible for subsidizing the conditions the ‘conservatives’ now condemn. It’s just a fact of life that without all that money, the government would not have been so bloated in the first place. And, because the government is responsible for almost everything, an individual’s responsibility is circumscribed. There are only a finite number of things to be responsible for and for every one the government takes over, there is one less for us. Just try feeding the poor with sandwiches you made yourself. Try pumping your own gas in a full serve state. Or, burn a pile of leaves in your own yard, I dare ya. Just as the supposedly faith based charities are finding out, when the government does charity, it’s done at the point of a bayonet. Single mothers? Don’t make me laugh, the government and most pundits on the left and right sing their praises. It’s a good thing to be a single mother, it’s brave and stuff. And, the government is always there to save the day. Except when they don’t. And when the government is responsible, that doesn’t mean it will take responsibility. Nope, they are immune from lawsuits. Everybody still feeling all swelled with pride at paying taxes? Dummies.
Paragraphs. Try ‘em.
Hear, hear.
“An intelligent man is one who is able to make distinctions.”
… I don’t think you’ve really achieved that qualification.
Cheers
Thank you, J.M.
No, no, no. You can still get deductions and receive benefits and NOT be part of the 47%. The 47% includes people who pay NO income tax or receive back more than paid in. For example, most people pay in X, then deduct Y. but X-Y will still be greater than zero. And it’s NOT whether you get a refund. A refund is just the amount you OVERPAID! To deduct ALL your tax liability or, better yet, get a payment from the IRS, is something galling to us that pay a positive tax amount EVERY SINGLE year.
My only exceptions are for those on fixed incomes (social security, etc.) or TEMPORARY hardship (such as the year your wife had cancer or you lost your job). Even then, the IRS expects tax from unemployment payment. For many of those 47%, tax time is like second Christmas, where the government gives them money for their reproductive irresponsibility.
There are three constants that stop people from heading into poverty, particularly women and yet we consistently fail to stress them.
1. Finish high school – if possible go on to get some further education (doesn’t have to be a university degree), but at least finish high school.
2. Get married or at least get into a long term committed relationship. If it is with someone else who has finished high school that would be great.
3. Don’t have kids until you finish high school AND get into a long-term committed relationship.
Do all three and the chances of falling into poverty decreases hugely.
A guy sometimes packs up and moves away a good job or an education does not
Punctuation. Try it.
Yes, but the problem is that it requires “common sense”, which doesn’t seem to grow on trees these days.
Get married before you have kids, but don’t rush into marriage. Take a good, long, hard look at your own maturity and your perspective spouse’s character. Looks will fade with time; and looks are utterly irrelevant or even a negative if the person is scum. Scum is abusive, unfaithful and/or reckless (both in matters of safety and in matters of finance).
Today 20,000+ students will quit school. Strike one. Many have or soon will have babies out of wedlock. Many do not know how to get a job or are fundamentally unhireable. The jobs for high school dropouts are mostly in low end service or menial labor. Many will have addiction problems cigarettes to drugs. Many will go on foodstamps, earn unearned income credits, use title 8 housing, and whenever possible and with repeated attempts get on SSD.
I work daily among this group of people. All too often their behavior is passed down from uncaring parents and entrenched. We continue to accept this and entrench this group even more in there hapless life styles. I have respect for the working poor who all too often make really bad decisions daily. Also for those who truly because of mental, physical issues can’t help themselves through no fault of their own.
Still there is a sizable group who use the system and have been told they are victims and are entitled. The elites who expound about our responsibility to take care of the poor all too often haven’t come within a mile of a poor person nor do they understand the poor from the other poor and seem self satisfied that tossing more money down the hole will fix everything. If that were true poverty in America should have ended a decade ago, but it is worse. Of course more money down the hole only entrenches poverty deeper in the system. I have daily contact with all kinds of poverty and most of it isn’t very pretty and all too often self inflicted.
There are ways to fix some of this like building factories in poor areas and providing skills training and jobs to those able to work. If they don’t want to work take them off the dole. I have plenty of ideas, but they will probably seem harsh and this forum doesn’t want to here my book length narrative. Still the system currently in place to ‘solve’ poverty is infinitely broken. Thanks
You forgot one – Hold down a full-time job.
Not forgetful; the point is that this is what you need to do to *get* that full-time job.
A few years ago, there was a study that made the same claims about the chances of not ending up in poverty. IIRC, your odds were 85% of not ending up in poverty if you did those three things. Those three things especially apply to young women.
I would add a 4th thing – stay away from addictive elements like drugs, alcohol and gambling. I’ve seen very successful people taken down by addictions including a former boss of mine who wiped himself out financially by gambling.
Sadly Romney was the man who discovered the 47% Obama was too busy hanging with the 1% to notice
In other words: the same people who helped create the “47%” whose existence they’re now trying to deny.
I’m reminded of Julia Carson, long time (Democrat) Congresswoman from Indianapolis (her grandson represents the city now as Congress’ second Muslim) and Gwen Moore, the current (Democrat) Congresswoman representing Milwaukee.
They worked very hard to overcome early poverty and “single motherhood*” and racism with education and ambition and hard work…then went to Washington and work very hard to make sure black girls don’t follow in their footsteps. Ambition and hard work? You don’t need it, everything is provided for you. If you persist in remaining ambitious, you can’t work too hard, or you lose your “benefits”–the free childcare and energy assistance and free cell phones and other things progressives claim people should have to use to “get out of poverty” but in reality keep them mired there.
* I really resent the thing where proggressives decided “serially unwed mothers” and “widows with children” were all the same group of women, for the purpose of hijacking the goodwill decent people feel toward the latter group and awarding it to the former. You can follow Maureen’s “do this to avoid poverty”–but number four “Don’t lose your spouse to cancer or car crashes” isn’t something within one’s control…unlike continuing to sleep with the guy who isn’t paying child support for his first three babies.
I seem to recall that there are a number of studies that indicate that children who have lost a parent to accident or otherwise uncontrolled misfortune still have a comparable success rate to children whose parents remained married. This is in contrast to children whose parents divorced or otherwise separated of their own free will.
I wonder if the poverty statistics are similar?
Oh, another thing- part of providing for your family is making a contingency should something happen to you. Every parent should have a will that includes chain-of-custody for the kids as well as sufficient savings or life insurance to see that they’ll be taken care of, as well as a disability rider in case an illness or injury leaves you alive but unable to work.
Get used to it. The debate is always framed by using a group no one could reasonably object to. If you want to cut government spending, then you are against police and fire-fighters for example; they never ask you how you could possible be against studies of shrimp on treadmills or the drinking habits of Chinese prositutes. They know those are indefensible.
In this case, it’s not about serially unwed mothers or mothers who have three kids by as many different fathers; it’s about how you could be against those poor widows or homeless vets – the subject of the article we’re discussing. They want you to feel like a heel and shut up so they don’t have to defend something.
A distinction needs to be made between “poor” and “broke”. Both involve a lack of money but the long term effects are very different.
Broke is temporary, if you are prepared to keep working to turn things around and refuse to give up then you WILL succeed and get back into the black. I suspect many members of the 47% fall into this category due to Obamanomics and the economic depression it delivers.
Poor is permanent, it’s a mindset and the actions that flow from it. The members of Obama’s “Free S**t army” are poor AND will stay that way until they put in some WORK to change things.
TOTALLY agree.
The able-bodied workers who WANT to work VS the able-bodied workless who want to be the parasites living off of the work of others? HUG dif. HUGE.
Yes! My favorite Dave Ramsey quote, “Poor is a state of mind. Broke is ‘I’m just passing through’”.
I embody the American dream. I was broke. I applied for government assistance. I worked my way through college, got a job, and within the first five years of paying taxes, paid it all back 10 times over. Let me clarify, I paid it back to all of YOU, as far as your tax dollars were provided to me for help. So thank you! And I’m not talking about my subsidized student loans either (those took 10 years to pay back in FULL). I’m just talking about the FREE money, like a Pell grant and assistance for living expenses. That is how the system is SUPPOSED to work, for able people. I never considered myself to be dependent. I just thought, this is America; here, anything is possible, but it’s up to me to WORK for it!
I recognized a lot of “poor” people around me, including myself. I had an abusive parent, and an alcoholic, abusive husband. My husband’s brothers and sisters all pitched in to help one of their sisters (22 yr old, unwed mother of two) to pay to abort her third pregnancy. It was not just a social status, but a state of mind. They had lost all their dignity. They had become so dependent on government assistance they had no shame, no hope, nothing but apathy. Their very souls were impoverished. Frankly, this scared the hell out of me. I fell on my knees and prayed to God for help, and He answered, and He opened doors and I never looked back.
I do blame both sides of the aisle for this mess we’re in, partly. It’s not enough to give people handouts. People need to be spiritually, mentally, and physically cared for, and the government is not qualified to provide all those needs.
Fuzzylogic, You make a great point. The PELL grant was supposed to be an investment, ultimately being paid off through future taxes, etc. Now, it’s seen as a cash cow by higher education who dumb down cirricula to keep the PELL dollars coming in. Many of those receiving PELL grants will never finish school or will graduate with such a low GPA that they will never succeed enough to repay the grants through taxes.
Bottom line: In the past, fewer people could afford to go to college, but the value of the degree remained high. Academic-based scholarships helped cover those who excelled but could not afford. Business did not require a degree to get an entry level management job. The result was that higher education was not Big Business. The minute “free” government money enters the equation, the motive to keep costs down is eliminated. The PELL grant is probably the single biggest contributor to the runaway cost of college education.
You are so right! Poor is a state of consciousness. How many times have you heard people describing their upbringing and saying “we were poor, but didn’t know it”. As you say “broke” is temporary. Poor is hard to fix and requires effort to achieve a new mindset.
When I was younger, I made a lot of bad decisions. I ended up being what is now called “homeless,” living in my van, then trading off my van for things I shouldn’t have been consuming and having no home of my own for some time.
Eventually, I realized that my life sucked, and that most of the vacuum was generated by my own actions. I started making some better decisions and stopped making some of the same bad ones over and over, and my life became magically better. It eventually became a habit to try to make my life better by ending bad behaviours, and I still do so to this day. I am not “rich” today, but I make a decent living, have a wonderful wife and can afford to eventually get many of the toys I want.
Oddly, even when I was at my worst economically, I didn’t ask for or receive any kind of food stamps, medicaid or other government handouts. I guess that you can be a bum and still have some self-respect…
Apparently the impoverished street hustler pictured can afford cigarettes. There must be a message in that.
LMFAO! Seriously. Cigs are like bartering with effin’ gold now! You gotta love the ‘homeless’ with their brown-baggin’ dranks and cigs and cell-phones.
Oh, I weep for the impoverished!
NOT.
As the saying goes, “Being poor is a financial condition but poverty is a way of life”.
The article “How not to be poor” by Walter E. Williams tells you pretty much all you need to know: “Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.”
It really doesn’t help society to hand people a “paycheck for failure” but those living in poverty really aren’t failures. They, and their benefits, guarantee re-election of the hand that feeds them plus their self-destructive behavior leads to more government intervention and control. It’s a win-win for tyranny. It’s pretty clear that “Public Assistance” = “Public Control”. There’s a vast difference between giving somebody some short-term private aid to “get them back on their feet” and putting them permanently on the government dole. But only one of those options turns them into beggars…
“Michael Gerson apparently had to read a book written by another rich guy so he’d have a poor person to write about.”
You’ve given a capital example of the mind set and herd mentality of modern academia and Hollywood’s “caring” hypocrites; the same people who, in another vein, claim to be shocked and outraged at the (99% non-existant) racism against poor blacks and other oppressed minorities all across the land – but who would NEVER associate with those same people for any reason, except for photo opportunities to be displayed on the NYT’s front page, to prove how “caring” they truly are.
I believe it was Sweden some years ago who’d a horrible situation with unemployment and unemployment benefits.
Sweden’s original unemployment laws allowed persons to collect unemployment for 5 years.
When finally realizing this was feeding the graft, the unemployment law was then changed to 2 years.
Lo’ and behold Sweden’s dire unemployment all but disappeared very quickly.
Uhbama, Illiberal’s and RINO’s believe indefinite-like unemployment benes is necessary and ‘helpful’. Pure idiocy.
Regarding Dolph Lundgren’s above sound bite with Adam Carolla, I’ve great Finnish friends who were told the same by their family and came to the states for the very same reasons.
It was Machiavelli, I think, who first observed that fortune and initiative both played a part in determining one’s circumstances, and that possibly initiative was a bit more important. That may have been a turning point in Western culture away from Christian determinism. It certainly isn’t trendy these days to point at Christian theology as an explanation for anything, anything at all.
But the story about the stripper’s child illustrates an important Biblical principle: sin is pervasive and ruins everything it touches. It’s a principle that resonates even in the Lord’s name, which He proclaimed to Moses:
> “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
“Visiting the iniquity.” I know a little something about that myself. My dad was a hopeless and abusive alcoholic, my mom an abused child who did not have the personal reserves to deal with his problems. Even though I graduated high school in the top 5% of my class, I simply was not well-equipped to go into the world making sound financial decisions. I loved music, so I majored in it. I threw away a perfectly good career in the Air Force, not once but twice… once when I gave up my ROTC entitlement for an officer’s spot, again when I left the Air Force Band program as an enlisted man. When I was in my mid-twenties, I had a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) and yet I was alone and poor, working the 11 PM – 7 AM shift at a diner, making about $100 a week.
Fortunately, that was the low point. It could have gone lower yet, but for a good woman (who married me) and the Lord’s grace. I inherited my mom’s intelligence (unfortunately, also her predilection for making flighty decisions) and parleyed that into a decent career as a database programmer.
But I do know a few things about poverty that some of my middle-class friends and colleagues cannot comprehend. For example, I know that, regarding economic achievement, barriers in the psyche can be just as devastating as societal, cultural, or educational barriers. I am (finally) good at making money, but will never be good at husbanding it.
But one of the advantages of Christian determinism is that knowing there are no accidents, that without the Lord’s knowledge and consent not even a leaf falls from a tree, it’s very liberating. Perhaps my bout with poverty made me just a little more empathetic than the typical conservative regarding the circumstances of others.
But I am just as convinced that state programs are better designed to keep poor people mired in it.
If you lose your job and cannot find another one then you become poor. At some point you find a job and you are no longer working three part time minimum wages jobs at once on 4 hours of sleep a night then by a miracle your morals have improved and you are as good as the other people.
The problem is two fold. Obviously if you are broke you have to rely on yourself , and you have to blame your self, for practical reasons. Especially if you are a man you are on your own jack. However this comfortable belief that there are no homeless people and that poverty can never happen to you if you don’t get divorced is silly.
Was happy to know there are no homeless people. I used to live in a just plain dump next to a substation where homeless men slept on the grass at night.
You are merciless witch to dump on poor schizos living in the park by the way. Unbelievable. One day I was working on my car and this homeless family came out and helped me to rock the car back and forth so i could adjust the valves.
What a joke, and you think you know something about the world.
As someone upthread said – You can become poor through circumstance, but poverty is a lifestyle. The choices you make define your circumstance. And yes, bad choices can and almost always do lead to bad circumstances. Sometimes, uncontrollable accidents of circumstances can also lead to bad circumstances. However, it’s the choices you make in response to bad circumstances that will define whether you are just poor or will dwell in poverty because you have compounded your previous bad choices with further bad choices or because you responded to an uncontrollable accident of circumstance with bad choices.
“john” — didn’t you have any friends or family? If not, ask yourself why you had no friends (family can be lost to tragedy; friends can only be lost to neglect and abuse).
“The choices you make determines the choices that you can make.” Words from my mother and grandmother, that have proven true. A corollary to that, as I’ve discovered, is, “One bad choice usually forces another.”
During my time in the military I observed that the least rewarding and most demanding labor went to those with the least education. This brings me to your comment; “My friend was furious after the tactless brother (her’s) had blithely chirped (I now think he had Asperger’s…): “My dad makes more money than your dad because he works harder.”
Naturally, I forced myself to agree with her that that was a horrible thing to say. And it was unnecessarily blunt.
But (and I didn’t say this to her at the time) it was also true.” To which I respond, Maybe! Unless you observed both fathers doing their respective jobs over a period of time, you have no evidence.
Digging a hole with a pick and shovel is a lot more and harder work than using a backhoe. However, if by ones choices all one has only a pick and shovel, the work is harder and longer, to get the same result.
The Road Not Taken.
There are many people who are poor through their own errors. Whatever their starting positions, their life choices led them to where they are now. Which is a gross improvement over where bad life choices would have got them 10,000 years ago- eaten by bears.
It’s just an unfortunate fact of civilization: the choices are no longer as obvious. “Study Math!” just does not have the same immediate feedback as “Don’t go in that cave!”
But it’s quite true. If you are ten years old, poor, of minority background, with none of the elite connections that get the children of the rich into the cushy positions they get, you can apply yourself to math every night instead of video games. Then, when you are 18, being poor, dark skinned, and a math whiz, you will get plenty of scholarship offers. You will be set.
Not doing so is the modern equivalent of going in the cave and poking the bear. It’s just that it will take a lot longer to die.
Romney’s error was not in pointing out that these people exist, or that he has no chance with them.
He did err, though, in describing their numbers. This “47% who don’t pay federal taxes” includes retired social security or pension recipients. It includes vets on permanent disability. It includes business owners and investors who fully offset last year’s income with losses- and many of those will vote for him.
There is no excuse for a blunder like that.
And most of those people know to whom he was referring and will not take it out of context as the left invites them to do.
My husband was a sophomore in college when he lost his mother to cancer. His father pulled up stakes and moved back to Tennessee and told him that if he wanted anymore family support that he would have to go, too. At the time, my husband had two years invested at the university, so he took the plunge and stayed behind. At that point, he had $50 and a bicycle. I met him a year and a half later. He’d gotten a campus maintenance job for the summers and worked his dorm desk during the school year. It enabled him to retain his finacial independence along with student aid.
My husband’s family did a pretty good job of raising him into a wonderful human being. However, he grew up poor. He and his older sister are the first ones to successfully finish college. Part of the poor issue is horrific money management skills, and we’ve battled that all through our marriage. We’re just now getting it under firm control to the point where he can ably manage a budget. And, believe me, it wasn’t an issue of intelligence so much as an issue of ingrained habits from years of living with parents who would spend his money if he didn’t spend it right away because they had spent all their own. As has been said, poverty or being poor is a matter of poor choices as much as it is anything else. Breaking that spend impulse has been devilishly difficult.
In my book, “Advice for my Granddaughter: For when I’m gone” [Royalties go to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation}, I told her that some people are poor through no fault of their own. But also that most people in America could avoid poverty by following four rules. 1. Don’t have babies until you are married. 2. Don’t have babies until you get an education. 3. Work fulltime, even at a bad job, developing job skills, reputation and a career. 4. Don’t get involved in drugs, including heavy alcohol use. I should have added a fifth: Don’t ruin your reputation through crime or dishonesty. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog. (www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com)
Robert A. Hall
Massachusetts Senate, 1973-83
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my 80-page book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
And even if you screw up, it’s not beyond repair. I met a guy who got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 17, and education was turning into a dead-end for him. He married her and joined the Navy. Now he’s an E-6, they have two kids, and they’re doing quite well.
Don’t do: Drugs, Booze, Cigarettes, Gambling.
Do: Work, Read, Exercise, Eat correctly.
There is no mystery.
Through the 80′s, I was working poor. I had dropped out of college, and worked in the fast food industry. As a single, white, male, I didn’t seem to be eligible for any tax credits or relief programs. Every one of those lean years, I still paid state and federal income taxes. Always making just enough to not be tax exempt.
At the time, I beefed a lot about not getting any of the government gravy. However, I got tired of cut-off notices, mooching rides, and payday loans from my friends. I went back to school part time and worked, got a degree, and my life substantially improved.
I was brain-washed at the time into thinking that the only recourse was hoping that the government would loosen their purse strings so I could get some benefits. Well that never happened, and probably never will for a SWM (you hear that Occupiers?).
As I like to tell people, “Why did I quit being a Democrat?”. Because when I thought I needed them, they let me down. Money for women, minorities, and kids, but not any for men down on their luck (or MAYBE just a little lazy). The implication at the time was that white men are responsible for their own circumstances. I now agree wholeheartedly. And just MAYBE some of these women and minorities are also responsible for their own circumstances.
I will state with authority that many of the poor are there by their own making. How do I know? Because I was one, and now I’m not. I got there on my own and I got out on my own.
I’m in Toronto Canada and as a 56 year young guy have never been handed anything.
The only constant is change everywhere in our world.
My wife and I always had thousands in the bank in the early 90′s and late 80′s.
Thnigs changed …a lot and now at 56 I’ve had to do whatever I have to do to feed myself and my kids since my so called good job is long gone.
We have rebuilt and continue to do so since I realize no one is going to give us a damn thing.
I work a very nice part time job now and we parked our car temporarily to stay afloat.
And I spent 5 years part time studying SEO and online marketing since it’s not going away so I can do it into my old age.
Now we have an extra income growing and soon will have the car back on the road and continue to spirl upward.
I simply do not want hand outs or welfare.
I also do another thing which is stay fit and healthy into my late 50′s since like many I’ll be having to produce for many more years.
Now I am blessed with supreme health and I really do feel for those with health issues and for those folks I would pay more taxes or like to make enough to help those folks privately.
So like you Tom it really is a matter of trying harder.
Some how this can’t be said in our PC world.
I say f— the PC world and get to work at something.
Try harder.
We will ALWAYS have poor people.
The whole fallacious ideology that we can ‘end poverty’ is retarded. Why?
Because:
A. Some people are effin’ retarded
B. Some people are effin’ lazy slobs
C. Some people learn how to milk the
gov. teat, milk WORKING people’s
generous hearts
and…for the final one…
D. Some people just don’t give a damn
and have worn their families out, their
gov. checks out and ultimately, they want
to just be drugged/drunk/nuts. You can’t
‘fix’ that. EVER.
I send mega hugs and kisses to all of you
people who have had to deal with nut-job
family members though. NOT fun.
Sad sigh off/
First thing you have to understand is that people Gerson make up stories, and like Obama edit for dramatic effect. I know them well and they don’t know their lives, being raised in very closed communities: really all they do is retail gossip.
Being blue-collar, I know the good and bad, and at the least is a level of contributory negligence at worst, and willful desire to escape all responsibility.
Sadly I think the churches have adopted the social gospel business, and the politician use the rhetoric.
DB, ‘word salad’ is their main dish (that and the Kool-Aid®).
And (side-note): Be proud of your ‘blue collar’ status…it means you probably work harder than most shmucks and you can actually do stuff that means stuff when the going gets rough.
There are many causes for poverty, and yes, especially in this day and age in the United States there are many cases where it is the individual’s own fault. But only fool would say that it is always, or even in a majority of cases, that it is the individual’s own fault. Sometimes things just happen and send one’s life on a terrible course. I’ll give the example of a well known radio talk show host (Rush Limbaugh) who has a hearing problem he developed after having a national show for a decade and who has made a career of praising individual initiative, passion and entrepeneurship as sure paths to success: but what if he had developed that condition at 21 in the early 1970s, decades before anyone had ever heard of him? No radio career or $250 million contracts and probably a life wondering what might have been…
There always have been and likely always will be people who are too mentally or physically handicapped to support themselves. I know of no one who begrudges them their assistance.
There are also many people who have made a series of stupid decisions and have a hard life as a result. If they learn from their mistakes, then that’s fine. I’m willing to help people who’re making serious efforts to turn their life around.
If they keep making the same stupid decisions, well, stupidity should be painful.
Yes, there are sad cases where just plain bad things happen to people.
When Viet Nam fell and created the human misery of the boat people (thanks to the Democrats, as usual), America took in many thousands of Vietnamese people (as did Australia and a few other countries).
90% of them wound up in Orange County, California, where I lived at the time. My mother spent the last years of her career at the County handling all of the Vietnamese foster children caseload.
Thanks to Jimmy Carter, the only thing any Vietnamese refuge had to do in order to get welfare was to show his immigration papers. No needs test, none of the usual requirements. The majority came here with nothing but a few clothes on their backs, good values, and a dream.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any Vietnamese people on welfare today. As a percentage of their population, it’s miniscule.
Yeah, they had bad things happen to them. Really bad things.
Instead of whining, they got busy and WORKED.
Now they aren’t poor. Some of them are filthy rich. Many are quite well off. Most are comfortably middle class.
That’s how it works.
The MAJORITY of poor people in this country are not poor because of outside circumstances. They are poor because they make bad choices, because they have bad values.
And not just the majority – the OVERWHELMING majority.
The other problem is unlike in prior generations, the parents of these poor families, don’t seem to make the same sacrifices that the parents of the last several generations did. My parents, who were high school educated, consistently did with less (as did our entire family) so my sister and I could go to college. I see so many poor families, unfortunately, mostly minorities, who instead of sacrificing for their children, believe they’re entitled to everything “right now”. I’ve seen a woman with brand new Iphone paying with EBT cards at the grocery store and VDH gave an example of trying to help someone with a big screen TV at a Best Buy, until he noticed her EBT card on her keychain. The poor, especially the entitlement poor, believe their standard of living should be equal to everyone else’s standard, whether they work or not. THey believe this because they’ve been told this by their democratic masters. They are not sacrificing for their children- in fact, they’re virtually ensuring their children will also grow up in poverty, by refusing to take fiscal responsibility, as well as sexual responsibility (how many families are poor because they had child after child, when under no circumstances should they have had children).
The poor want their “Obama money” now and the government’s creation of wellfare, food stamp mentality, has, I think, create far more poor then it has ever solved.
It’s disheartening that there are so many teat sucking lemmings in our country. Pathetic.
I was the first born child of my family (regarding sibs and cuzzinz) and I was always the ‘go to’ babysitter. I grew up very fast (I pretty much had to) and I’ve survived a lifetime of shitastic crappola that NO PERSON young/old should have to live through.
Meh. Am I stronger for it? I’d like to think so. But, there are days when I am a weak @ss lamer and I curl into a fetal position and just wail at the moon.
The peeps with their ipods/internet/fab-footwear/etc. ad nauseum can kiss my sweet, firm arse.
I grew up living on rice and beans, second hand clothes (including nasty ass second hand bras and undies<==UGH). So, excuuuuuuuuuse my supposed 'white privileged' hiney if I don't have much sympathy for the current loads of teat-suckers on the dole as of late. Am I so callous and cruel? NOT! If someone wants to freeload on MY DIME after I barely survived my own lot in life which was pretty damned harsh… Well, EFF-YOU, scumbag.
Delia, I didn’t have it as bad as you. But I had second hand everything in my first apartments. I had a 13″ B&W TV until I was 30, no VCR, a 20 year old car, hamburger helper without the hamburger, no credit cards – so basically no cash, no purchase.
But I hear the anger in your post – and I feel it too! Did I whine with self-pity at the time? You bet I did! But I finally realized that no was going to bail me out, except myself. And I became a better man for it. And was it easy? Hell no it wasn’t! But you’d be surprised how much inner strength you might possess when your back is against the wall and you’re your only recourse.
I have compassion for those who get slapped hard by bad luck and for those who make a mistake. But there are too many out there who can’t and won’t learn from mistakes expecting to be bailed out every time. Baby after baby. Multiple jail sentences. Fired from job after job.
I get so mad that after a life of being told to suck it up and work harder, now when I expect others to do the same, I’m told what a hardassed, unsympathetic bastard I am.
Totally hear you, Tom T. Your post makes me feel less alone because it’s good to know there are other Americans who didn’t take the easy way out and never gave up faith in Country and in their fellow man/woman. Good on ya, brother. Good on ya.
I see snarky and snide comments chiding posters for a lack of punctuation. I see well meaning comments suggesting a path to not falling into poverty.
But mostly I remember FDR creating the start of this mess. I see President GWB spending like a liberal. I see John Boaehner and Mitch Mitch McConnell spending and enjoying their own stay at the top. Even the perks the receive have perks. not a bad gig if you can get it. I see greek , Spanish and British citizens protesting austerity measures that are beyond needed.
I am a cynic and while I am not a fatalist I cannot see anything but that the only place this world is headed is toward a human manufacturerd Armegeddon?
I see snarky and snide comments chiding posters for a lack of punctuation. I see well meaning comments suggesting a path to not falling into poverty.
But mostly I remember FDR creating the start of this mess. I see President GWB spending like a liberal. I see John Boaehner and Mitch McConnell spending and enjoying their own stay at the top. Even the perks they receive have perks. Not a bad gig if you can get it. I see greek , Spanish and British citizens protesting austerity measures that are beyond needed.
I am a cynic and while I am not a fatalist I cannot see anything but that the only place this world is headed is toward a human manufacturerd Armegeddon?
Yeah, it’s all Boehner and McConnell’s fault.
Never mind the 550+ other members of Congress, or the thousands who held the office before them. All their fault…
If you work in the real world, you realize that most people are poor because of their bad choices or lack of work ethic. I first learned this when I worked on a farm one summer to help pay for college. In ten weeks on the job, I worked with nine different partners. I was the only worker who stayed all summer. In fact, I was the only person who worked longer than two weeks! This was in a poorer rural area, and all of my work partners were “poor.” Once they discovered that the job required actual work, getting up early, etc., they dropped like flies and went back on welfare and food stamps. My boss said he saw the same attitude all of the time. He said trying to help people get out of poverty was almost useless because government welfare gives people incentive NOT to work.
We have employees that are trying to do what is right and get off the system(s). However, if we try to give them more hours or a raise they cry and say they can not work or have to work less or they lose all of “their benefits”.
Why? It is all or nothing with government agencies. I had an employee turned down for much needed food stamps for his entire family because he made 50 CENTS too much! Really?
Instead of using the system as temporary assistance or an incentive for improvement, people are pushed down and kept down by being taught that the handouts can be permanent if they are kept in specific parameters. WHOO! WHOO! FREE MONEY!
I have ideas too, it is not rocket science. Ideas that would actually benefit the government and the people. The issue is the POLITICIANS get in the way of resolving anything.
Remember this. It is not power for the people. It is power OVER the people.
Yes, I’ve seen the same thing. The welfare system is for the social workers more than the beneficiaries. They have no incentive to help people get off welfare because fewer welfare cases means fewer social workers. On night many years ago, I wasn’t able to sleep so I turned on CSPAN. They were having congressional testimony on the federal welfare system. One thing that struck me is when they said that about 80% of the funds allocated to the welfare programs go to the government employees who administer the programs.
Things like the all-or-nothing cutoff for benefits tends to keep people in poverty. A phase out of benefits would be more effective in lifting people out of poverty but I’m not holding my breath on that ever happening. Follow the money and the votes and you’ll see why ending welfare will be very, very difficult.
We do not have “poor’ in the USA! In comparison to much of the world, our poor are considered “rich”. I know many immigrants (all legal) and they would do just about anything to get here and once here work extremely hard. We are talking 80 hour work weeks starting out doing menial labor and just plain very hard work. They save money, get an education, to make more money to provide for the future. It used to take 3-5 generations for an immigrant to raise their social status to the next level, now it takes only 1-2 generations. Back in their home countries you will get nowhere in life unless you are “connected”. The poor are kept down by the rich 1%. There is no middle class and there is no advancement.
African and Asian immigrants look at these Americans and think they are lazy and foolish and they are completely right. These immigrant workers take the night shifts and holidays and weekend hours no American wants to work. They get relied upon when others call out sick in July for a day at the beach. These immigrants don’t want the governments money but they don’t want to pay high taxes either. They are full of pride over their accomplishments. There is a difference between “immigrant” and “Illegal Alien” so when I say “Immigrant” I mean legal immigrant!
Welfare, Food Stamps, Free medical, free phones, discount housing, early Social Securty, Disability, etc. these are NOT benefits, they are the CHAINS of the oppressed! The liberals care not for the poor except to keep them in power. They will grow the poor and illegal immigrants to build their coffers. The Communists and Socialists appeal to the working man. It’s the “Workers Party”, it’s the workers who are getting screwed over and it’s the workers who deserve more. But it’s all a lie. Once in power, the Communists who fought for the “workers” turn them into “slaves” while the party officials become the “elite” and the middle class is destroyed.
Ask any former Communist defector what they think of today’s Democrats and you’ll get an earful because they have seen it all happen before and they know the outcome all too well.
This is not to say Conservatives don’t care, we care a great deal. Most of us give more money to charity than any liberal, we just don’t brag about it. We aim to give these people a leg up, a helping hand, not a crutch on government aid. I mentioned disability, I have witnessed far to many phony disabled people. That money should be going to those who are truly disabled and it’s disgraceful to find fakers stealing it.
My wife is an immigrant and we’ve been sending money to her family. They don’t understand how hard we work for it, they think we are insanely rich. So they keep asking for more. For years now, the asking doesn’t stop. We refuse to just hand them money. We have someone we trust (a local family friend / accountant) who doles out the money and controls it or it would be spent immediately. We have to ensure they are spending the money on school and essentials. This takes a lot of work and overhead for us. For the government to do it is crazy, they will simply fail. That is what they do. Every project is a disaster and millions are wasted or outright stolen.
We spend way too much on feeding a man a fish for a day, every day then we do on teaching him to catch his own damn fish!
And this leader, our President, gives us ” African Americans ” ( whatever the hell that is )for Obama. The two biggest racist in America live at 1600 Pennsylvania ave.
47% are still being supported by something and it’s not apparent that whatever the something is lays around the house or hangs out in DC.
The biggest bar to overcoming personal poverty is child care. If we want people to work, we should be offering the working poor subsidized or free child care. Another tactic would be to change the welfare laws to encourage a man in the household, instead of incentivizing single parenthood.
I realize how expensive child care is, but I totally disagree to free childcare to those who cannot afford it. Talk about a slap in the face to those who work hard and are barely able to afford it! And, hey, why stop there? Why not free cars, so they can get to and from those jobs? Oh, and they need free auto insurance too! The biggest bar to overcoming personal poverty is apathy and a lack of personal responsibility. And I’m not waxing philosophical here; I pulled myself out of poverty, and I practice what I preach.
I do agree about encouraging the ideal family model. But it depends on what kind of “man” you’re talking about. Our society spends more time shoving gay pride in our faces than encouraging men to be, well, men! I weep at the sight of this latest crop of whiny, effeminate, Justin Biebers my generation has produced.
Free child care is already offered. It’s called school. The local elementary offers before school care that also comes with a free breakfast, courtesy of taxpayers. After that it’s a free lunch, courtesy of taxpayers. Ending with after-school care with a free dinner, courtesy of taxpayers.
Parents are dropping children at school before 7 a.m. and not picking them up until 6 p.m.
What else can we do for these parents, board their children in our own homes?
Yeah, that’s what we need. More government programs to separate the children from their parents.
We like what that’s done so far, so lets do more of it!
I just say thank god there are still people willing to kick the poor.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is to kick him in the pants.
But liberals would rather feel morally superior than to actually do the hard things that HELP people.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan repeat the Republican fable that they can balance the budget and promote economic growth by cutting taxes for the wealthy so “trickle down” job creating investments will be made. However, if America needed investment capital as claimed then Romney and other plutocrats should repatriate hundreds of millions they have in offshore bank accounts.
But Romney and others in the global elite do what’s in the best interest of profit, not America. In fact, Romney exposed the disdain he has for many of his fellow Americans in a speech at a Boca Raton $50,000 per plate fundraiser when he put into words what most plutocrats seem to think when he said “Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax… who believe that they are victims… who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it… And the government should give it to them.”
However, facts shows most of the 47 percent non–taxpayers are created by wage suppression and vulture capitalists like Romney and Bain Capital; and that other private equity companies are destroying thousands of American jobs daily with leveraged buyouts and offshoring jobs to Asia.
Bain Capital is closing Sensata Technologies in Freeburg, IL, and transferring the high–paying jobs to a new plant they built in China, and importing Chinese employees to be trained by American workers on the equipment being sent there.
Bain invested $8 million to gain majority interest in GST Steel of Kansas City; after which Bain borrowed money to pay themselves dividends and for other reasons. The company eventually declared bankruptcy in 2001 but a 1/6/2012 Reuters article reported that “Bain profited on the (GST) deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.”
Romney says Bain helped create Staples, Sports Authority, and Domino’s Pizza; but http://www.glassdoor.com, which allows workers to post their salaries anonymously, shows the average sales associate at any of the three companies makes around $9 an hour. Thus, Romney and Bain helped create the 47 percent non–taxpayers he insults.
“But Romney and others in the global elite do what’s in the best interest of profit, not America.”
Please explain to me how investment of my highjacked tax dollars into Solynrda was “good for America”. How many phones could Obama have given to the poor (in exchange for votes) with my tax dollars, instead of being wasted on Solyndra’s utter failure? Well, I agree with you on this much, on his quest to benefit America, Obama sure doesn’t do what’s in the best interest of profit!
News flash, Barney, the number one function of any business IS to make a profit. You sound like you get all your education from the likes of MSNBC. Thanks for once again pointing out the symptoms, rather than discussing the cause. My family runs a small business, and the government taxes and regulates the crap out of it, so that it’s seems hardly worth it anymore. Perhaps we should follow Bain to China, where we might actually have a chance to be successful and make a profit.
Oh, and if you are fortunate enough to have a job, and you, like all the rest of us, squeeze out every deduction you can find on your income tax return to maximize your take-home pay and minimize your taxes owed, then what you said makes you a complete hypocrite. Or, are you going to tell me how you pay more than you owe, just to support your fellow Americans?
The “poor” in this country have more disposable income than the working class suckers that PAY for them.
I cannot afford “the poor” anymore.
To fuzzylogic,
Investment in new manufacturing technologies is a necessity for continuation of American technological dominance, and Republicans seem to be too ignorant to realize or remember how American taxpayer investment in sending men to the moon resulted in hundreds or maybe even thousands of scientific breakthroughs, and led to U.S. technological dominance for 20 years or so. I.E. until the election of Ronald Reagan and it has been all down hill ever since “free-market” Republicans started gaining control of the federal government.
Instead of investing in manufacturing technology Republicans invested in two wars without paying for them; and lied to pass them by using a “sunset provision” to limit the Bush tax cuts to ten years, thus removing $100s of billions from amounts that would have triggered PAYGO sequestration that would have prevented their passage because of the Senate Byrd Rule.
Fuzzylogic says his tax dollars were wasted on Solyndra but has no words of criticism for GW Bush’s two multi-trillion dollar wars which were paid OFF-BUDGET with supplemental appropriations.
Bruce Bartlett’s 11/26/09 Forbes article also says that “Republicans have been characterized by two principal positions: They like starting wars and don’t like paying for them. George W. Bush initiated two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but adamantly refused to pay for either of them by cutting non-military spending or raising taxes… Bush and his party, which controlled Congress from 2001 to 2006, never asked for sacrifices from anyone except those in our nation’s military and their families.”
“The Cost of War”
(http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/25/shared-sacrifice-war-taxes-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html)
Tax policy is written by those who have the most in order that they gain the most from it. Since the wealthy have most of the wealth they will gain the most from capital gains, dividend, and interest tax cuts.
According to the 9/17/12 Forbes article; “In 2009, according to Internal Revenue Service studies, six of the 400 U.S. tax filers with the highest adjusted gross income (meaning AGI of at least $77 million) paid no U.S. income tax, while 19,551 U.S. households with income above $200,000 owed no U.S. or foreign income tax.”
“Memo To Mitt Romney: The 47% Pay Taxes Too”
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2012/09/17/memo-to-mitt-romney-the-47-pay-taxes-too/)
At what point, if any, does a company put America first? Selling to the Nazis and Japanese during WWII would have generated much profit; would you condone that in the interest of profit?
Major U.S. corporations sold Saddam Hussein all the WMD material he needed to make poison gas during the Reagan and GH Bush Administrations. Do you agree that Reagan and GH Bush should have allowed it in the name of free-enterprise?
Right up to GW Bush’s Iraq war Dick Cheney’s Haliburton sold more oil related equipment to Iraq than any other company. In the search for profit maximization do you agree with it?
I was raised poor. My mentally ill mother was abusive and cold but she was an extremely hard worker. By the time we were old enough to work (14 years old) my sisters and I found jobs – packing peaches and apples as teens and then fast food as we grew older. We were required to buy food for the family as well as desired items like clothing and shoes. I finished high school and then got married at 21, divorced at 28 with two small children and a $1650.00 a month mortgage (during the Carter years with 16% interest). I worked 6 days a week at a union job, missed most holidays with my children so that I could support us. I would cry myself to sleep wondering how I would make it next week…but I did make it.
My children both went to college – paid for in cash, no loan debt for my children. I am remarried now to a great man who is a great provider. I just graduated from college (in my 50′s now) and have obtained a full time job in my health career field.
It has been tough many times in my life but I could always work and I worked harder than anyone else. I had to – I had two kids to support all by myself. That is what is missing today. When I was young we did the work that illegal aliens do now. There was no shame in that work like there is today. Our kids and our poor don’t want the jobs that the illegal aliens are doing right now because we have turned those jobs into a stigma. We need to remind our citizens that the stigma is staying home on your butt and letting some young mother with two kids to support support you too because you wouldn’t be caught dead working in the fields or at a fast food restaurant. There is no shame in an honest day’s work…how did we get so turned around that being a deadbeat is now honorable and working in fast food is beneath our dignity?
Heart wrenching and very touching story.
Thank you for sharing. I can so identify with you on so many levels.
May your life be always blessed…
Research “Rge Frankford School”. Research their planks. You’ll have your answer.
I am a member of a very selective class, a Great Depression Baby, born in the last days of the Hoover Administration, 1932. Many of our neighbors lost their homes to foreclosure, my parents didn’t. They managed this by renting the property, moving to a smaller, cheap apartment and boarding out my brother and me to relatives on the family farm, while they both worked at the best jobs they could find.
The chief lesson learned here is that if you need a helping hand, look to the end of your own right arm. If you want a handout, look to your friendly government, which will give you stuff, for free, just like the friendly drug dealer down on the corner. Once they get their hooks into you the price goes up far and fast and rehab is a much tougher road. Addiction to alcohol, drugs, or free handouts destroy any semblance of self reliance and self respect.
The first axiom of Economics is “there ain’t no Free Lunch, somebody has to pay”.
The corallary is, you can pay now, through hard and smart work or you can pay later through taxation, when the cost has gone up considerably, with interest, administrative expense and government waste.
When more than half the people in the country expect the other half to pay their way, collapse is inevitable.
The complete disregard shown for the GAB by Governments Federal and State is nothing short of criminal. It is not just Governments but huge/large companies and many stakeholders who seem to think the GAB is an endless supply of water, WELL THEY ARE WRONG and must be educated and all users of water from the GAB must be made to pay for what they use!