What data do you have that supports this causality?
Here is the root of a lot of disagreement between the left and the right.
For the right, this is held up as dogma, just as surely as the left uses the dogma of "our society causes poverty"
Personally, I think it is probably something of a self-feeding cycle. To completely blame poor people for being poor is as irrational as saying they have no choice in the matter.
Well we know one thing for sure. Government sure
cant do much about poverty either, can they. They
have poured trillions into programs for them and many
of their off-springs are still collecting their bennies.
If anyone can do anything about being poor is the person
who is poor. Many escape that fate every year by their
own efforts.
Some, because of physical or mental problems do need
help. But many choose to stay in the situation.
You ignored the bulk of my post.
I didn't "completely" blame poor people - but, realistically, there is NO WAY, short of picking the six right numbers, that they can become anything other than poor except through their own actions.
Besides, we were talking about access to medical care; you're off on another left-wing rant. Have you ceded the point on access?
Does my brother in law count?
Someday, the hatred in your heart will consume you, if you do not give it up.
Ray, I wish you well.
(shakes head and walks away)
(humor) He might even be able to multiply and divide.
I fully acknowledge that poor choices lead to poverty, of that I have no doubt.
BUT
Poverty can have some rather ill effects that increase the liklihood of poor choices in the first place.
Put any given kid in a harsh, poor environment, and see what happens. (shudders)
Ok, time is up. Gotta get to work.
You are quick to judge a person aren't you. I hold no
hatred for anyone. On the Contrary I am for anyone to
succeed. I am for encouraging the young to complete
their education. For any person of any age going to
school or for additional training to further themselves
in life. I think that charity is good and should be freely
given.
But obviously you think government should take your
and my money without our consent, use it as the
government sees fit. Just because I don't, don't be
so quick to judge, lest you be judge yourself.
I have faith in the individual, you don't. So I disagree
with you, so therefore I hate. Real sense of reasoning
you have there. If someone disagrees with you, they
are haters.
I don't read anything hateful in what Ray said; some truisms, but no hate.
I don't disagree; but the alternative? To COMPLETELY even the playing field for all? Read Plato's Republic; he had that as his Utopia over 2,000 years ago.
Upward mobility in USA has greatly declined.
if you're born to middle-class parents who went to college, you'll probably go to college and be middle-class (not that there's anything comfortable about middle-class anymore, since househeld debt is 125% of income).
If you were born poor, the overwhelming odds are that you will stay poor and not got to college, the cost of which at state schools now exceeds the poverty income for a family of 4.
The "bad choices" is pure right wing bull , straight out of the conservative think tanks manned by wealthy, privileged "thinkers" and implementing their decades-old "vast right wing conspiracy" to protect the privileged and superrich, to destroy opportunity, to destroy egalitarianism. eg, see dubya absolutely refusing to "support the (mostly lower-class) troops" with proper veteran medical care.
Fight our oil wars, suckers, and then go yourselves.
Poor stays poor overwhelmingly, well-off stays well-off overwhelminlgly, and the classification/stratification of US society continues unabatedly toward severity. Just like the "social/economic Darwinian" conservatives think it should be. Level playing field? GMAFB
Now, more than ever, the government pays people to be poor.
Ultimately, we get what we pay for.
"the government pays people to be poor."
any evidence? links? right-wing think tank reports?
I'm not poor; I don't get money from the Government.
My brother in law IS poor, he gets money from the government BECAUSE he's poor.
He gets paid to be poor. (May be a shock to you, but there are others like him)
Unmarried mothers get checks from the government.
If one has an additional child, they get a bigger check from the government.
The Government pays for illegitimate children, too.
Just one AR rice grower pockets $500M/year in subsidies.
Corn ethanol gets $50B in subsidies.
Oilco's were given $15B by head for "research"
BigPharma pocketed $300B when dubya allowed them to patriate foreign profits they had stashed overseas to avoid US taxes.
etc, etc, etc.
Poor people and illegals are what's killing the USA? GMAFB
Who said poor were killing the U.S.?
You said there are more poor.
I said of course there's more poor, we're paying for people to be poor.
You said prove it.
I did.
You freaked out, and accused me of, well, whatever you accused me of.
I'm against farm subsidies; and subsidies to Big Oil.
Have a soft spot for basic scientific R & D.
#1. There's no direct profit motive for it; so business won't do much.
#2. Wife's a Ph.D. Biochemist.
Oh, and the Corn/Ethanol debacle is wholly ridiculous.
boutons, how would you know. As far as you are concerned the United States has been in the dark ages since you were wetting you pants.
There are so many people in this great country that
would disagree with your statement that upper
mobility has declined. If anything we have more
millionaires today than any time in our history. So get
back under your rock and suck your big toe and pick
your navel. You are a loser and always will be a loser.
I would hope boutons would read the following two articles written by Dr. Thomas Sowell. I consider him much more informed on matters than boutons. But in a oblique way Dr. Sowell and boutons to agree with one another. Just for different reasons.
Jewish World Review April 22, 2008 / 17 Nissan 5768
The Economics of College
By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College."
The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the difficulties that both students and parents have in trying to borrow the money needed when their current incomes will not cover college costs.
All that is fine for a purely "human interest" story. But making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories — which is what politicians increasingly do, especially in election years — has a big down side for those people who do not happen to be in the categories chosen to write human interest stories about.
The general thrust of human interest stories about people with economic problems, whether they are college students or people faced with mortgage foreclosures, is that the government ought to come to their rescue, presumably because the government has so much money and these individuals have so little.
Like most "deep pockets," however, the government's deep pockets come from vast numbers of people with much shallower pockets. In many cases, the average taxpayer has lower income than the people on whom the government lavishes its financial favors.
Costs are not just things for government to help people to pay. Costs are telling us something that is dangerous to ignore.
The inadequacy of resources to produce everything that everyone wants is the fundamental fact of life in every economy — capitalist, socialist or feudal. This means that the real cost of anything consists of all the other things that could have been produced with those same resources.
Building a bridge means using up resources that could have been used building homes or a hospital. Going to college means using up vast amounts of resources that could be used for all sorts of other things.
Prices force people to economize. Subsidizing prices enables people to take more resources away from other uses without having to weigh the real cost.
Without market prices that convey the real costs of resources denied to alternative users, people waste.
That was the basic reason why Soviet industries used more electricity than American industries to produce a smaller output than American industries produced. That is why they used more steel and cement to produce less than Japan or Germany produced when making things that required steel and cement.
When you pay the full cost — that is, the full value of the resources in alternative uses — you tend to economize. When you pay less than that, you tend to waste.
Whether someone goes to college at all, what kind of college, and whether they remain on campus to do postgraduate work, are all questions about how much of the resources that other people want are to be taken away and used by those on whom we have arbitrarily focused in human interest stories.
This is not just a question about robbing Peter to pay Paul. The whole society's standard of living is lower when resources are shifted from higher valued uses to lower valued uses and wasted by those who are subsidized or otherwise allowed to pay less.
The fact that the Soviet economic system allowed industries to use resources wastefully meant that the price was paid not in money but in a far lower standard of living for the Soviet people than the available technology and resources were capable of producing.
The Soviet Union was one of the world's most richly endowed nations in natural resources — if not the most richly endowed. Yet many of its people lived almost as if they were in the Third World.
How many people would go to college if they had to pay the real cost of all the resources taken from other parts of the economy? Probably a lot fewer people.
Moreover, when paying their own money, there would probably not be nearly as many people parting with hard cash to study feel-good subjects with rap sessions instead of serious study.
There would probably be fewer people lingering on campus for the social scene or as a refuge from adult responsibilities in the real world.
Jewish World Review April 23, 2008 / 18 Nissan 5768
The Economics of College, Part II
By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing.
Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good — and how good compared to other uses of the resources required.
In other words, education is not a Good Thing categorically in unlimited amounts, for people of all levels of ability, interest and willingness to work.
Nor is there any obvious way to set an arbitrary limit. These are questions that no given individual can answer for a whole society.
The most we can do is confront individuals with the costs that their choices are imposing on others who want the same resources for other purposes, and are willing to pay for those resources.
Those who cannot bring themselves to face the tough choices that reality presents often seek escape to some kind of fairy godmother — the government or, more realistically, the taxpayers.
When the idea of conscripting taxpayers to play the role of fairy godmother for some arbitrarily selected favorites of the intelligentsia, "the poor" are often used as human shields behind which to advance toward their goal.
What will happen to the poor if there are no government subsidies for college?
If this argument is meant seriously, rather than being simply a political talking point, then there can always be some means test used to decide who qualifies as poor and then subsidize just those people — rather than the vastly larger number of other claimants for government largesse who advance toward the national treasury, using the poor as human shields.
Another option would be to allow students to sign enforceable contracts by which lenders would pay their college or university expenses in exchange for a given percentage of their future earnings.
That way, students would be issuing stocks to raise capital, the way corporations do, instead of being limited to borrowing money to be paid back in fixed amounts — the latter being equivalent to issuing corporate bonds.
Not only would this get the conscripted taxpayers out of the picture, it would also make it unnecessary for parents to go into hock to put their children through college.
Still, the financially poorest student in the land could get money to go to college, with a good academic record and a promising career from which to pay dividends on the lender's investment.
More fundamentally, it would confront the prospective college student with the full costs of all the resources required for a college education.
Those who are not serious — which includes a remarkably large number of students, even at good colleges — would have to back off and go face the realities of the adult world in the job market. But not as many jobs would be able to require college degrees if such degrees were no longer so readily available at someone else's expense.
If individuals issuing stock in themselves sounds impossible, it has already been done. Boxers from poor families get trained and promoted at their managers' expense, in exchange for a share of their future earnings.
Even some college students have already gotten money to pay for college in exchange for a share of their future earnings. However, in the current atmosphere, where college is seen as a "right," there has been resentment at having to pay back more than was lent when the recipient's degree brings in large paychecks.
What is truly repugnant to some people about college students issuing stocks as well as bonds is that this not only takes the government out of the picture, it takes the intelligentsia out of the picture as prescribers of how other people ought to behave.
Reality can be hard to adjust to. The most we can do is see that the adjustments are made by those who get the benefits, instead of making the taxpayer the one who has to do all the adjusting.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
Ray, I have seen you post here for literally years. I think that is sufficient for me to make some small guess at what is truly in your heart and mind.
As much as you think I am something of a "bleeding heart", I think your heart could use a little bleeding.
Please provide a link to the last charitable or compassionate thing you have said about anybody in poverty.
Or alternately, think back about the last compassionate thing you said or thought about anybody in poverty.
If you can think of anything quickly, and type it out here, I take it all back, and apologize.
In the above post. I said
Ray, I have seen you post here for literally years. I think that is sufficient for me to make some small guess at what is truly in your heart and mind.
As much as you think I am something of a "bleeding heart", I think your heart could use a little bleeding.
Please provide a link to the last charitable or compassionate thing you have said about anybody in poverty.
Or alternately, think back about the last compassionate thing you said or thought about anybody in poverty.
If you can think of anything quickly, and type it out here, I take it all back, and apologize.You cannot be more charitable than believing in people.I have faith in the individual, you don't. So I disagree
with you, so therefore I hate. Real sense of reasoning
you have there. If someone disagrees with you, they
are haters.
And I know people do care about other people and do
many things to help others. In more ways than people
like you can even imagine.
I am a conservative and make no apologies for it.
So you can like it or lump it. I could care less your
opinion of me. As you more or less feel.
It might surprise you to read this, but I agree.
"The government" as you put it is an elected one. It is where we pool our collective resources to accomplish things that need to get done.But obviously you think government should take your
and my money without our consent, use it as the
government sees fit.
If you got your way by some magic wave of the wand, and our government was replaced by the free-market fairies, you would still be paying some kind of money out of the economy for firefighting, police, food inspection, air traffic control, etc. etc. etc.
There would still be bureaucracy and there would still be some involuntary nature to it, as the fees would be rolled into some other bill that you pay for.
You spend too much time worrying about HOW your money is taken, and not enough about how it is spent once it is.
If you had taken all the time and effort you have spent over your lifetime ing about taxes, and actually gotten involved in government to affect how those taxes are spent or allocated, we would have [insert magic thing here].
That is what someone told you think about liberals, and you have sucked it up as gospel without ever really asking any of them.I have faith in the individual, you don't.
I have a lot of faith in the individual. The enormous success of Western civilization is owed entirely to tapping into the power of the individual and rewarding people for creativity and industriousness.
Give people the right tools and the right incentives and let human nature do the rest.
No. I disagree with lots of people who aren't "haters".So I disagree
with you, so therefore I hate. Real sense of reasoning
you have there. If someone disagrees with you, they
are haters.
But everybody who reads things like
knows exactly what emotion you feel towards poor people when you refer to "them and many of their off-springs".
Perhaps I'm wrong about this. Only you know what is/was really in your heart at the time, and the written word doesn't allow for much expressiveness.
Not by a long shot.
To support your assertion that we shouldn't provide more access to preventive care to people, you said that life insurance companies don't consider it a factor in underwriting.
Is that because there is no real hard data on how much access to preventive care affects risk, or because it is unreasonable to conclude that giving people preventive care might save lives?
No, I think the Life Insurance companies have hard data on EVERYTHING that relates to how long a person lives. It is the way life insurance companies make money; anticipating when someone will die - and collecting a premium to insure that life. If they are too far off they are either going to go broke because claims are too high; or go broke because premiums are too high, and people are buying from other carriers.
So, if there was a significant difference in life expectancy between two people based on whether or not they receive "well care" or "preventive" care - the Insurance company would ask. They don't. Which, to me, indicates there probably isn't any difference.
Also, that wasn't the only argument I used...aside from data you can look at the nature of illnesses that kill us, and how those illnesses/diseases are discovered. For the major killers, preventive care isn't going to make a big difference.
What would make a difference? Lifestyle choices. Frankly, it is a fear of mine that when the government becomes the primary payor for all of our healthcare - making unhealthy lifestyle choices will be legislated against. Those bad individual choices will be seen as bad for all of us, since all of us are paying for them. I think it is inevitable, frankly that laws punishing those behaviors will be proposed, and given enough time and tax increases, pass.
Oh, and on Today this morning they were in an uproar that, specifically, WOMEN are living shorter lives now.
Well, they fought for the right to be like men, didn't they? I think the narrowing of the gap in life expectancy would have been part and parcel of that. Apparently it is.
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