Most Of America's Poor Have Jobs.

[ivwshane]

It's not that simple. There are not necessarily enough jobs to go around for the people who have the skills to work those jobs. There is such a thing as having an oversupply of skilled people in certain fields. We probably have oversupplies of people in all fields except physician, and that's only because the supply of physicians is kept in check by a shortage of residency spots and limits on the number of alleopathic medical school seats.

In his mind it is indeed that simple, it's black & white. Sure you could show him how people don't stay on government benefits for long, you could show him how a majority of poor work, you could show him how minimum wage hasn't grown at the same rate as inflation, you could show him how more and more minimum wage jobs are being taken by older people, you could show him how people are more educated than in the past, etc, etc but it would all be a waste because his eyes would be closed and his fingers would be stuck in his ears. You can't penetrate a thick skull that's protected by the gut

 

[nickqt]

Listen. No one ever loses a higher-paying job after they've made a decision to buy a house they could afford with that higher-paying job. And they certainly never have children that they could afford with that higher-paying job and then lose that higher-paying job.

There are never economic downturns like the one we didn't have in 2007-2008 that precipitate vast changes in employment and career paths.

Poor people choose to be poor, because freedom.

Also: Benghazi.

 

[ElFenix]

The point is, these are all avoidable expenses but people prefer to have them. Same with having a smart phone, cable TV, high speed internet, and an Xbox with the latest games.

If you are living below middle class, smoking is a foolish endeavor. You are wasting money for no reason and you can't afford it.

if you're a working single parent do you want your kids raised by the xbox or the youths down the street?


anyone else find it ironic that people defending our particular brand of capitalism decry the purchases that fuel it?

 

[smackababy]

if you're a working single parent do you want your kids raised by the xbox or the youths down the street?


anyone else find it ironic that people defending our particular brand of capitalism decry the purchases that fuel it?

If you're any parent and the Xbox or the youths down the street are raising your kid, you're a bad parent.

 

[HTFOff]

If you're any parent and the Xbox or the youths down the street are raising your kid, you're a bad parent.

I tend to agree but you have to be realistic. As someone who grew up in a single parent household, sometimes mom/dad can't always be there. That's why after school programs/curriculum are so important.

 

[nickqt]

If you're any parent and the Xbox or the youths down the street are raising your kid, you're a bad parent.

Yes, but if mom or dad or both want to make enough money to be GoodParents™ in terms of not relying a safety net, then that may not be an option for them to be constantly at home watching their kid. Perhaps they'll have to entrust a neighbor baby sitter, or have their child stay home alone for a few hours while they're at work.

It comes down to, do we gut the entire safety net because some people may abuse it, or do we provide it so that society isn't paying even higher costs down the line because the safety net didn't exist, and some kid that might have been OK grew up even poorer in an even shittier neighborhood thus increasing the risk of the kid becoming a criminal?

That's the debate, right there. An open society isn't free. Taxes are the cost. Period. The debate should be about what that tax rate should be, and what it should cover. And it used to be that while one political party was always about expanding that safety net, the other political party wanted to check and balance the expanse to make sure that it wouldn't be a waste of money, or counterproductive.

Of course, to avoid having the debate some people will call any type of safety net "stealing from the makers", because, well, it allows people to avoid having the debate. Very few liberals are going to call for taking away everything you own to pay some poor person to live in your house and crap in your pool (although there are posters here who say that is exactly what liberals, progressives, and SJWs are going to do). If you want to quash debate, just make that claim and change the conversation. Once you change the conversation, then it becomes the typical defending reality vs. delusional sky-is-falling argument you can see in almost every single thread here and elsewhere. Increasing the marginal tax rate to what it was 40 years ago will end America and bring in Soviet-style communism! FREEDOM!

Over and over and over.

 

[FelixDeCat]

This is clearly Obama's fault. His radical socialist agenda is putting people out of work. I can only hope the next Republican president can undo all the damage he has done.

 

[Jhhnn]

Working hard and being a good guy doesn't guarantee that you'll have an amazing income.

As Jim Rohn once said "You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for bringing value to the marketplace." This is why people are paid accordingly.

It's great that people work 2-3 jobs, but it's not going to amount to a hill of beans unless they get the skills necessary to increase their pay.

Finally, the middle class and upper middle class pay the bulk of taxes. The poor don't make enough, and the rich are too smart.

So you're saying that people shouldn't be responsible? That responsibility should be the government's job?

Wrong. If you want to survive in today's world you need to change your mindset. Having more children than you can afford is going to handicap you. That's the reality today.

The world is much different than it was 20 years ago. You either adapt or you'll have a very difficult time. You'll go thru life blaming the rich for your issues. That's not a good way to live.

Pretty superficial, I'm afraid. What's different about the world today? Why is it different & what forces drove those changes?

At the personal level, that's a constructive way to look at the world but it really ignores the role of politics & leadership in shaping our world.

I mean yeh, you're right, so far as it goes. It doesn't go deep enough.

Our over indulgence & over-reliance wrt the financial sector has both driven inequality & made the economy less resilient when the masters of the universe create a financial crisis.

It also makes it more likely that they will if history is any guide. Your Market reference is interesting in that respect. Bankers got paid unbelievable sums in the run-up to the demise of the housing bubble & in lending Greeks money. Were they really adding value to the economy? Or did they just make it look that way at the time? What happened to the ROTW as a result?

What happens when the people who are best at squeezing out the last nickel squeeze it out of everything? Do we just keep letting that happen?

 

[Jhhnn]

This is clearly Obama's fault. His radical socialist agenda is putting people out of work. I can only hope the next Republican president can undo all the damage he has done.

I didn't realize you were a parody poster.

 

[alcoholbob]

Oh, I understand that completely. However, the free market advocates often seem to fail to understand that. One of the common arguments they will make is that the poor failed to work hard enough or failed to obtain an education or failed to invest themselves in obtaining marketable skills. Of course, in reality, there are only so many decent middle class jobs to go around in an economy where the free market has resulted in massive amounts of wealth going to a tiny percentage of the populace (who, according to the dogma, worked very very hard for every penny of it). Everyone could obtain "marketable skills" in a seemingly useful field, but if you produce four times as many STEM graduates as their are jobs for STEM graduates, then 75% of them will end up unemployed or underemployed-out-of-field.

What the Free Market Dogmatists might fail to realize is that the evil socialists also believe that people should be rewarded for their work; capitalists don't have a monopoly on the concept of a work ethic. The notion that many of the super wealthy people have not actually worked for and earned the wealth they are obtaining but might rather be expropriating it from the actual workers never occurs to them (because their minds are too small). It's not all about getting a magical Obama Phone.

The jobs leaving the United States isn't exactly a free market phenomenon. The U.S. up until the 1990s had around 20-25% of its jobs in manufacturing and which has dropped to 4% today and still and declining. Japan and Germany throughout that period maintained 20-25% of their workforce in manufacturing.

In a normal free market situation the U.S. dollar would have crashed as a result of 60,000 factories moving to China, and market forces would have rebuilt manufacturing in the U.S. since no one in the U.S. would be able to afford imported goods. However there's two forces preventing this crash. One is China holding trillions of dollars and keeping them out of circulation. The second, probably the much stronger force, is the U.S. government's commitment to the 1973 ARAMCO deal which backed the U.S. dollar with Middle East oil, when the London Gold Pool failed and it became apparent that it was no longer sustainable to maintain a peg of $35 to an ounce of gold (and DeGaulle famously sailing to New York harbor with the French Navy demanding its gold). The problem is the U.S. government has a stake in maintaining its implicit security guarantee of OPEC nations because it allows the U.S. government to spend far more then it collects in taxes without causing an appreciable amount of inflation. (You can look up "Petrodollar recycling" for more details on this phenomenon).

The problem is conflict of interest. The government wants to spend money without reforming the system, and it knows if OPEC does not back the dollar with its oil, the American people will suddenly feel the real effects of losing 85%+ of its manufacturing base, and the government won't be able to service any of its obligations without hyperinflating.