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The middle class has a moral obligation to help its poorest citizens

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Ackmed said:
I would like them to stop getting hand outs that I pay for, and actually do something to benefit society. But that will never happen, because most are lazy pieces of shit who think they deserve to get free money because they're poor.
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How about giving them jobs at $20 an hour respectable wage and see how many show up for work? I'm willing to bet, it'll be more than you expect.

That's the problem, the unskilled manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas which is 65% of the problem. Then there's no public education to train job skills and college education costs are insanely hight. That's another 20% of the problem.

As for laziness, I won't say it doesn't exist but it's the last 15% composed of basically those who dropped out of high school or couldn't pay attention in school. That is impossible to fix but 85% of things are fixable.. like put a 10000% tax on imports so even a made in china screwdriver costs $300. You'll have more than enough people working here in the USA, contributing to social security and everything, that laziness won't be a real problem.
 
Indus said:
How about giving them jobs at $20 an hour respectable wage and see how many show up for work? I'm willing to bet, it'll be more than you expect.
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How about you progressive advocates for less "inequality" give them those jobs paying $20/hour out of your own pockets then? Until then this is just one more example of you saying "it's a collective action problem" and waiting for some member of your imagined "greedy rich 1%" scapegoat class to do the hiring/paying higher taxes/etc. for you. Go do something proactively without being forced to, until then you're just a worthless piece of shit who likes to complain but not do anything even though you have the power to do so.
 
Clearly with our budget deficits, our regulators ignoring blatant criminality in the financial sector enabling fantastic gains on a market that has diverged from any semblance of sense or good judgement now is the time to reform entitlements by spending more on them and taking that money from the middle class which is doing gangbusters apparently.

Let's do it and see what happens, as long as there are appropriate consequences for the engineers of the almost inevitable failure. Oh also, let's read it first.
 
glenn1 said:
How about you progressive advocates for less "inequality" give them those jobs paying $20/hour out of your own pockets then? Until then this is just one more example of you saying "it's a collective action problem" and waiting for some member of your imagined "greedy rich 1%" scapegoat class to do the hiring/paying higher taxes/etc. for you. Go do something proactively without being forced to, until then you're just a worthless piece of shit who likes to complain but not do anything even though you have the power to do so.
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With that post, glenn logged out of P&N and set out on a journey that would take him and his dog Cuddles to the White House.
glenn1 2016
 
glenn1 said:
How about you progressive advocates for less "inequality" give them those jobs paying $20/hour out of your own pockets then? Until then this is just one more example of you saying "it's a collective action problem" and waiting for some member of your imagined "greedy rich 1%" scapegoat class to do the hiring/paying higher taxes/etc. for you. Go do something proactively without being forced to, until then you're just a worthless piece of shit who likes to complain but not do anything even though you have the power to do so.
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Please. Middle class people don't have the power to directly change the employment situation because they have no capital. We can only do that by placing constraints on the financial elite, much as we did during the post-WW2 era shaped by New Deal policy.

Middle class Righties always think in terms of their own level of finance, where taxes affect lifestyle. That simply has no bearing on the finances of the uber wealthy where only a small % of earnings are actually used for lifestyle purposes.

Righties who are jealous & resentful of the lifestyles of poor people are, of course, free to join their ranks & many will if the ongoing concentration of wealth & income is allowed to continue. Poverty is imposed by greed at the top, not by some sort of inferiority on the part of poor people. It's easy enough to see it the other way, unfortunately, because we all like to think we're masters of our own destiny when that's far, far from true.

That's too scary for most Righties to contemplate, so they don't. They accept the false frames of the vast right wing propaganda machine instead, blame the victims rather than the perps so that they can feel safe.

Newsflash- poor people aren't dragging us down. Greed at the to is pushing us down & there's damned little to be done about it through hard work on the part of the individual.
 
glenn1 said:
How about you progressive advocates for less "inequality" give them those jobs paying $20/hour out of your own pockets then? Until then this is just one more example of you saying "it's a collective action problem" and waiting for some member of your imagined "greedy rich 1%" scapegoat class to do the hiring/paying higher taxes/etc. for you. Go do something proactively without being forced to, until then you're just a worthless piece of shit who likes to complain but not do anything even though you have the power to do so.
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I like how Glenn's response to collective action problems isn't to try and deal with them, but to simply become even more enraged at people who tell him they exist.
 
Indus said:
How about giving them jobs at $20 an hour respectable wage and see how many show up for work? I'm willing to bet, it'll be more than you expect.

That's the problem, the unskilled manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas which is 65% of the problem. Then there's no public education to train job skills and college education costs are insanely hight. That's another 20% of the problem.

As for laziness, I won't say it doesn't exist but it's the last 15% composed of basically those who dropped out of high school or couldn't pay attention in school. That is impossible to fix but 85% of things are fixable.. like put a 10000% tax on imports so even a made in china screwdriver costs $300. You'll have more than enough people working here in the USA, contributing to social security and everything, that laziness won't be a real problem.
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Why do you feel that these simple solutions have not been adopted?
 
eskimospy said:
I like how Glenn's response to collective action problems isn't to try and deal with them, but to simply become even more enraged at people who tell him they exist.
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That's because it's all about him, about exploiting the system strictly for his own benefit. Having found a way to do that, criticism of that system makes him feel insecure, threatened.

He has to establish some sort of moral superiority to feel comfortable with that & avoid cognitive dissonance. In his own head, he can't maintain self esteem & justify doing better than most if he isn't really better than most.
 
Jhhnn said:
Please. Middle class people don't have the power to directly change the employment situation because they have no capital. We can only do that by placing constraints on the financial elite, much as we did during the post-WW2 era shaped by New Deal policy.

Middle class Righties always think in terms of their own level of finance, where taxes affect lifestyle. That simply has no bearing on the finances of the uber wealthy where only a small % of earnings are actually used for lifestyle purposes.

Righties who are jealous & resentful of the lifestyles of poor people are, of course, free to join their ranks & many will if the ongoing concentration of wealth & income is allowed to continue. Poverty is imposed by greed at the top, not by some sort of inferiority on the part of poor people. It's easy enough to see it the other way, unfortunately, because we all like to think we're masters of our own destiny when that's far, far from true.

That's too scary for most Righties to contemplate, so they don't. They accept the false frames of the vast right wing propaganda machine instead, blame the victims rather than the perps so that they can feel safe.

Newsflash- poor people aren't dragging us down. Greed at the to is pushing us down & there's damned little to be done about it through hard work on the part of the individual.
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To be fair the middle class did kind of willingly give up their capital for a depreciating BMW and reverse mortgaged the house to send their kid to Price Gougé University only to have them move back into the basement and work at starbucks.

So the middle class kind of failed at the capitalism game.
 
Indus said:
How about giving them jobs at $20 an hour respectable wage and see how many show up for work? I'm willing to bet, it'll be more than you expect.

That's the problem, the unskilled manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas which is 65% of the problem. Then there's no public education to train job skills and college education costs are insanely hight. That's another 20% of the problem.

As for laziness, I won't say it doesn't exist but it's the last 15% composed of basically those who dropped out of high school or couldn't pay attention in school. That is impossible to fix but 85% of things are fixable.. like put a 10000% tax on imports so even a made in china screwdriver costs $300. You'll have more than enough people working here in the USA, contributing to social security and everything, that laziness won't be a real problem.
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Even a lot of the skilled ones have been.

And trade schools have been gimped over time, even from insurance issues at the least for decades from what I've seen.

Used to be you had wood shops/metal shops in schools.

I do not have kids but used to be a FIRST mentor, but I think a lot of schools have none of that in general these days.
 
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Ackmed said:
Fuck the vast majority of the poor. They're poor, because of their own fault. Sure some got dealt a shitty hand, suck it up and do better. And some do that, and succeed. These lazy mother fuckers with their ebt cards piss me off. Never working because they get so much free money and food. They feel so entitled too, makes me sick.

And I agree with Overvolt. Their bodies would be decrepit.
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You need help
 
OverVolt said:
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/11-ragstoriches-underdog-success-stories--xJJY99ASlg
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There's lots of billionaires, a new one just about every week -- sadly, the people that work for them, the middle class, is shrinking.

It would be nice if everyone was a billionaire but that would only mean the price of a slice of bread would be $10K -- assuming you could get someone to make it.

Also, without the folks working for them and the folks buying there goods and services they wouldn't be billionaires. When there is no middle class we will start to see a decline in the number of billionaires -- and millionaires -- and thousandaires...


Brian
 
Indus said:
So you want people who have worked since age 14, paid into social security their whole lives for 51 years till they're 65 to wait another 5 years?

I might agree with some of the programs but a slash here is retarded.
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It is entirely possible to introduce a staggered age increase over a longer time to ease the transition

OverVolt said:
To be fair the middle class did kind of willingly give up their capital for a depreciating BMW and reverse mortgaged the house to send their kid to Price Gougé University only to have them move back into the basement and work at starbucks.

So the middle class kind of failed at the capitalism game.
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While not the only cause of the issue much of the damage to the middle class has been self inflicted by heavily investing in a single egg: home equity. Home equity made up over 2/3 of the middle class wealth before the housing market crash and many middle class americans fled the stock market when it crashed. Today stock ownership is at an all time low despite the past 7 years being one of the best times to own stock in the history of the market.

http://time.com/money/3723764/nasdaq-5000-middle-class/
 
Exterous said:
It is entirely possible to introduce a staggered age increase over a longer time to ease the transition



While not the only cause of the issue much of the damage to the middle class has been self inflicted by heavily investing in a single egg: home equity. Home equity made up over 2/3 of the middle class wealth before the housing market crash and many middle class americans fled the stock market when it crashed. Today stock ownership is at an all time low despite the past 7 years being one of the best times to own stock in the history of the market.

http://time.com/money/3723764/nasdaq-5000-middle-class/
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Stupid middle class!

Along with their 36% drop in wealth they should have been investing with all that extra money they had laying around! It's not like their income wasn't raising at the same rate as the wealthy!


A study financed by the Russell Sage foundation found that the median household’s net worth declined by $32,000 between 2003 and 2013, from almost $87,992 to $56,335. That means a typical household lost 36% of its wealth in 10 years. Yet in that same 10 year time-span, not only the Nasdaq has boomed back. The S&P 500, the most commonly used indicator of stock market health, is up 60%.
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The phrase, "it takes money to make money" comes to mind.
 
Most people who bash the poor honestly don't want them to do better - they want them poor so said poor can turn to crime and get busted/punished.

It's no different than these claims of freedom of speech against Islam - no one is really practicing freedom of speech; they just want to piss off Muslims, get them riled up and then say; "See, they are violent!!!shift+1!!!"
 
ivwshane said:
Then it should be easy to back up your statement with hard cold facts.

We'll wait.
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What is so unbelievable about his statement?

He said some get dealt a shitty hand: True, some are born in bad conditions, single moms, dads in prison, drug addicted parents, parents who died in their younger years. You think these don't happen?

He said some overcome and become something, My parents were both drug addicts and made no money, I bettered myself I'm nothing special millions have done that. On to next not stretched fact.

Many of them collect benefits now and don't come off cause they are being fed as it is, again this is true and happens all the time. The slang for POW in the ghetto isn't the same as you suburban white boys know it, it means Pussy on Welfare and they have a name like that cause it's all too common. I know I've lived next to many of them in my lifetime.

So again where is he so far fetched he needs help? Cause he says many of them don't help themselves? well they DON'T! You hear these sob stories about how they struggle but then you look at their life choices and they spend their money on JUNK. Happens every day.
 
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