Poverty - the greatest evil?

The funny thing about conservatives is they believe every single person who benefits from Government welfare programs is a working aged minority male who should be working and not gaming the system, lol.

Majority of those who need assistance are the sick, children, and the elderly.

And since little babies don't have the capabilities of working for a living, it is kind of hard to deny those that have loser parents who can't make money.

But when you are the wealthiest nation in the world, it shouldn't be the hardest thing to sacrifice for the children, sick, and elderly that are apart of our society.

 

That is not true.

Well God (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) (*)(*)(*)(*)ing TRY.

I think that 40% of those "sick" are fraudulent, and the elderly have plenty of money, but they hide it from Government.

 

Lol. Get real. You are embarrassing yourself.

 

If it bothers you so much, why don't you get wealthy and then use your own money to help those people? This is where you people lose all of your credibility. You get all upset that the poor and the sick and the children (apparently) need all this help and yet you, yourselves, never aspire to any kind of position where you can actually help them. You just sit there content with your mediocrity, demanding that other people need to do more.

I don't know about you, but if something is really important to me, I'm going to do more than just pay lousy lip service to it. I'm going to actually physically do something about it.

Until you're working yourself into a position where you can actually help those people with your own money, then your complaints are going to fall on deaf ears. And they should. Because you're all talk. You only want those people's lives to get better if you don't have to inconvenience your own to make it happen.

 

I make plenty of money. So that defeats your theory here. And I give back a lot of my money to underprivileged kids... I even coach an underprivileged hockey team where we have to raise money to buy their hockey gear.

But I can only help a number of kids, I can't help every kid in the country. And since there is more cowards like you in this country that only cares about themselves it must be done through the Govt.

Coward!

 

I think taxing the impoverished through inflation is the real evil here. Don't get me started on income tax either. Forcing grandma to invest or lose purchasing power is equally as evil.

It is truly funny that people defend the devaluation of the currency and say things like "you should spend it anyways...or invest". Then the market crashes and it is woops!! Guess it was not a good idea to have granny invest after all.

Hard for people who are less educated in finance and monetary policy to know exactly what to do with their savings. It is a dream of mine...crazy dream indeed....for our currency to actually hold its value over long periods of time..say forever or what would seem like forever compared to the way it has lost its value over the last 100 years namely the last 40.

 

I doubt most posters in this thread have actually seen poverty first hand. Not the kind where someone doesn't have the lastest mobile phone or newest trainers. I mean real fullblown poverty.

 

And since you can't get a job, shoot the rich, don't eat, don't have any children, sell drugs, break the law till you get rich, like the rich - and never believe half-witted propaganda based on nothing but ole time religion about getting on where no-one can.

 

I would actually restate the title and have it read "great wealth, the greatest evil".

 

That might be interpreted as the politics of envy. There is nothing immoral about great wealth - how it is obtained is another matter entirely. My concerns, and those of the author of that article, are with the ongoing plight of the poor, and not just in the USA. I do agree that great and ostentatious wealth, alongside a high incidence of poverty (however that may be defined in the society concerned) is a recipe for social unrest and crime.

But the thrust of the article is that it is not as easy to escape from poverty and all its social ramifications, as those of us who are comfortable make out. Regrettably, it does become a matter of class, so even if one succeeds financially, the step to the next socio-economic stratification does not always proceed automatically. Try being a successful City 'barrow boy', and joining Whites of St.James - you will see what I mean.

But the main problem is the habits (often necessitated by circumstance) of the poor are passed on to the next generation. Of course there will be people who are sufficiently motivated when they are young to escape that circuit, but that is not the general rule. As for people being irresponsible for buying small luxuries when they cannot really afford them - as someone who seldom has any money of his own, I can relate to that, and have occasionally done the same thing. Until now, I have not been old enough to enter into time payment contracts, but I have spent money given to me for school activities, on an iPod. I know the temptation. Life is too short to be 'sensible' all the time.

 

'Cause that won't work. Draining a wealthy person of all their resources still won't help very many people. Taking a small, bearable amount of resources from everyone, that works.

 

Like that has worked so well over the last 50 years. Trillions taken by the govt for the "war on poverty", and poverty has steadily increased.

The problem is "taking". People are charitable, the govt is not. The govt is full of waste, abuse, social engineering, and favoritism. Get the feds out of the charity industry completely.

 

You know that isn't true just for the social programs. That is true for all. Including the welfare/taxing/regulation of the economy and businesses.

But I'd be pretty certain that without those social programs, our poor would be very destitute indeed.

 

That attitude assumes people are totally selfish and cold hearted and must be forced to help their neighbor.

Look how generous Americans are with their time and money. Even in this economy Americans donate to charity far more than the govt spends on helping the poor (2010 it was $310B to $190B). Add in the time people spend volunteering and the voluntary (non-govt) charitable work far outweighs the govt programs.

And the govt is not in the business of helping people, they are in the business of controlling people.

 

Thus the difference between society and government. One is a result of the best of us, the other to protect us from the worst. When government tries to replace society, problems occur.

Thomas Paine described it very well in the first chapter of "Common Sense."

 

While I agree with most of what you said, I still don't believe that it is not easy to escape poverty. I know people in my wife's family who were making $2 a day in the philippines, walk strait off the boat into the US and have managed to do pretty well for themselves. You simply have to be financially responsible and realistic about your financial situation. If you really care to be well off later in life, you will plan for it and it can be done on even a minimum wage job. I know a guy when I was a teen working a minimum wage job that ate turkey sandwhiches every day for lunch.. He lived with 3 other people in a shared appartment and he rode a bike to work every day. Not only was he very healthy because his diet was not full of fat and he got exercise every day.. he managed to save up $250,000 + over the course of 20 years. He planned on using the money to quit his job and open a business of his own.

 

the baby boomers come from a harder generation where they suffered in the great depression as well as the cold war and feel the liberals who spread their wealth to help the poor are being unjust since they were able to make it without a handout.

so now a newer generation of poor are created from them where new wars and economic downturns create neo conservatives who succeed despite their hurdles and neo liberals who unfortunately fail to continue the cycle of poverty of government dependence, drug dependence, and failed lives.

the question of is this evil depends on ones moral compass.

 

Stupid is as stupid does. But then again, when you believe in the omnipotent invisible being, of which the only evidence is two old books, which contract themselves, you cannot expect much logic from people.

 

Then bite the bullet and help the poor to have birth control.

Herein lies the problem. US "conservatives" do not want to help provide birth control and subsequently complain about the result.

 

12) Be born into a wealthy family, who are the only ones who can benefit from the American dream.

 

There are many charity organizations that provide free birth control - lots of those are founded and supported by conservatives.

Where did you get the idea that conservatives are against birth control?

 

On the whole this is the case: generally christian, generally unwilling to use tax payers money for the better good of the country.

And this should not be at the will of charities, not if you want to address the issue anyway.

 

Conservatives absolutely want to help - that is why they create and donate to those charities.

They just don't want a politician to increase their taxes to use a tiny percentage of that increase to provide things a charity could provide.

If I have the choice of giving $100 to a charity where 90% goes to the people in need, or $100 to the government where about 2% goes to the people in need, I'll pick the charity every time. It is a far more efficient way to help the poor.

 

Charities don't cover the entire country.

 

You really dont have a clue. Ginni index for the US is .378 while in your country its .345. The difference is insignificant. Even more so considering that the UK has a gdp / capita of $46,000 while the UK is $34,000.