That's true for some people, that's been acknowledged. But that doesn't mean all "such people" are gambling, smoking and drinking.Originally Posted by RandBlade
That's true for some people, that's been acknowledged. But that doesn't mean all "such people" are gambling, smoking and drinking.
Ah, right. Sounds like the Jersey Shore cast. They're not poor now, though.
Crazy to see how certain users are able to ignore the topic of "poor keep themselves poor" and instead focus on villainizing the poor as "fuck them, they did it to themselves." Even though they have no information on how likely that is (aren't medical bills the #1 reason for bankrupcty?), how long and hard it is to exit poverty (7 years for credit reports, bankruptcy shows for how long?), and ignore how the poor are the most likely to taken advantage of (rapid refinds, payday loans).
I like your touch of how you narrowed down "other stuff" to emphasize gambling, smoking, drinking. Ignoring all the other reasons, like the baby example you even quoted. Or housing/utilities, schooling, and/or healthcare.
You have hit the nail in the head. Rather than wait and save for something you want, too many need it now, now, now. That causes the twin problems of spending too much (because if you wait you may decide you don't need it) and getting into debt and paying interest, dead money, for it. If I can't afford something then I don't buy it, it's that simple. If I'm having a tight month the first thing to go off my shopping list is ... alcohol. Same as other drugs like illegal ones and tobacco it is 100% unnecessary and very expensive. Yet for some reason people apparently "too poor to buy nappies" can afford cigarettes, alcohol and illegal drugs.
You show me anybody in a western society who is too poor to buy nappies and doesn't gamble, drink, smoke or take drugs.
Feel a bit uncomfortable picking on an individual member but since somebody else brought her name up above, the forums resident alcoholic was named as such a "poor" person before but can always afford both tobacco and alcohol.
Right, this is precisely the attitude problem, a perfect example. "Oh it's only $15 a week". WTF? How can you complain about being poor, complain about not being "middle class" but then dismiss as irrelevant $15/week?
$15/wk * 52wk's/yr = $780/year. Don't know about you, but I could do with $780 quite nicely thank you very much.
I don't know how old you are or when you started smoking, most smokers I know started around the age of 14 and I'm currently 28 so I'll base this exercise on that.
$780/yr * 14 years = $10,920. Personally if somebody walked up to me on the street and said "Hi stranger, can you give me eleven thousand dollars" or if I could get that off someone, I wouldn't turn my nose up at it.
But then we're forgetting about the Time Value of Money and Compound Interest. Any credit card debts, payday loans etc? Or this money (since it wasn't needed elsewhere) could go into savings.
At a 5% interest rate (savings) you're talking about $16k after 14 years. I assume you intend to smoke until you retire say at 65? In which case after 51 years of smoking "just" $15 per week you're talking a cost of $185k
We've been talking not of savings though, but debt. Credit card debt, pay day loans etc ... 20% interest is far from untypical on those. If you apply 20% interest on $15/week then it becomes a lifetime cost of $105 million. Extreme, but "just" $15/week.
TIL nappies are diapers
A specific example is a good friend of Brandy's. She lost her job managing properties (to many went into forclosure or nonpayment). Two kids, no hobbies, no addictions. Commonly bounces from church to church for basic needs, diapers being one, and uses WIC for formula. Even has a social worker that feeds her gift cards for the baby, and is helping her through her classes to be a CNA.
Considering the problem we have with 99ers, who were made poor because of the economy and not bad/illegal habits, I don't think its a stretch at all to consider that people can find themselves in a pickle with some asshole lumping them with drug users and gamblers.
but its so much easier to blame them than to help them
It doesn't matter which is the majority and which is the minority. Even if you don't have any facts for it to go either way. You also don't have any information that would suggest how these people would react if they weren't put in the positions them find themselves in. How many people end up in the downward spiral that started because of something outside their control? You don't condemn an entire group of people from support because you think they might abuse the system. If that was the case, there wouldn't be government or charitable support for any person or any cause. Wait...this is Rand, this is Mr. "how does this help ME". Thats exactly what you want to see happen.
My sympathies for her and I'm glad that with support she is coping right now. No doubt that given that she doesn't live on expensive vices, she'll be able to pick herself back up shortly better than others canTIL nappies are diapers
A specific example is a good friend of Brandy's. She lost her job managing properties (to many went into forclosure or nonpayment). Two kids, no hobbies, no addictions. Commonly bounces from church to church for basic needs, diapers being one, and uses WIC for formula. Even has a social worker that feeds her gift cards for the baby, and is helping her through her classes to be a CNA.
Considering the problem we have with 99ers, who were made poor because of the economy and not bad/illegal habits, I don't think its a stretch at all to consider that people can find themselves in a pickle with some asshole lumping them with drug users and gamblers.
I've never opposed help for the genuinely needy.but its so much easier to blame them than to help them
No, I know here that most living on the system are abusing it.It doesn't matter which is the majority and which is the minority. Even if you don't have any facts for it to go either way. You also don't have any information that would suggest how these people would react if they weren't put in the positions them find themselves in. How many people end up in the downward spiral that started because of something outside their control? You don't condemn an entire group of people from support because you think they might abuse the system.
Which isn't what I've ever advocated.If that was the case, there wouldn't be government or charitable support for any person or any cause.
You say that like it is a bad thing. Shame too many others don't seek to get value for money.Wait...this is Rand, this is Mr. "how does this help ME". Thats exactly what you want to see happen.
Suuure, Mr. "200%", you know that.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I've never opposed help for the genuinely needy.This is the insane part. That you don't/can't see the conflict in these 2 statements.
In the US, statistically, the reason is usually medical, followed by going from being a two-parent household to a single parent household.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
You should be able to prove something you know.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Such people?! Like "Those people"?! It is quite unfair to lump everyone who is not as comfortable as yourself into one basket and call them "such people". I admit that many of the poor abuse the system, but then the system has been abusing the poor since the beginning of civilization. They are taken for granted, paid low wages, forced to attend the worst schools, given only the minimum of representation in the courts the workplace and the government. Why? Because what are they going to do about it? But, there are those that figure it out, take control of their own destinies, and rise above their circumstances. Most, however, find a way to simply survive. "By hook or crook", as my grandma used to say. If you don't like the way they decide to get by, then offer them better and more accessible options.
The worst job in the world is better than being broke and homeless
You can't possibly know that.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
I think all our societies would be able to get very far on effective interventions for reducing abuse of (or addiction to) alcohol, tobacco, etc, and on effective behavioral interventions. I hear there were about 1.5 million people in Sweden who were abusing/misusing/down right addicted to alcohol and/or various prescription drugs in 2005. Back then there were about 9 million people living in Sweden, and since the source may be a pathological liar the numbers may be off... but probably not by very much. Maybe with the right interventions you could get people to save 80 bucks per year. giving an addict money doesn't exactly cure them of their addiction, it's an illness that has its basis in biology and whatnot.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
There is a powerful force that leads to abuse of drugs, alcohol, tabacco, etc. That force is boredom.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
9% of their pay on lottery tickets? Not doing that would stop a cycle of pay day loans. Or the consumption of other vices. Sure you have worse choices when your poor but its by no means hopeless.
You're.
The number of people abusing our abundant welfare network has been going down, and while they as a whole took an impressive sum, it is a small fraction of what was expended to actually house and feed people in need.
Of course this thread is laden with the idea that we can't ever support Lebensunwertes leben, so take that for what it's worth.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I think he was talking about chavs and the like
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Well so long as they're un-people, let's kill them
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
How is this known?
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
just because you can't understand fractions, I responded to that at the time. Not my fault if you're thick and don't understand percentages.
There is no conflict, see the word "genuinely"?
Still, you're making broad, sweeping and moronic statements without anything to back them up, my dear. Did you somehow overlook the rest of the answers to your inane statement?
You also missed the POINT and promptly chose to go off on a completely irrelevant tangent: Answer the question - HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
except you've already lumped everyone into a "they could get a job if they wanted", drug using, drinking, alcoholic mess who are out to abuse the system. You don't have to help anyone because they will never reach your level of justification. The worse part is that you have no statistics, no real information, to prop up this attitude you've taken. Its simply a defense of "you got yours, fuck everyone else"
You respond to the 200% BS claim you had already made in another thread, that shows you to be an utter moron that doesn't understand the most basic understanding of fractions, that you reiterated here despite having already had that fabricated claim completely and utterly rebutted immediately last time ... do that and then I'll respond to you. Sorry to ask a "have you stopped beating your wife" question, but either you're thick or your deliberately lying by saying "200%". A 10 year old can understand fractions better than you it seems.
Lets cut to the chase and I'll list types of people I find to be genuine:
Those whose circumstances have recently changed.
Those with physical, mental or other disabilities.
Those with medical issues.
I specifically said in response to your story regarding the young mother friend of yours who recently lost her job that she was the sort of person I sympathised with, so to turn around and say that nobody meets my standards is garbage. I believe in a welfare "safety net", which is what it was created for, not an optional way of life, a choice. It is the long-term unemployed that I have the least sympathy with.
except before my specific example that type of person didn't exist to you. Hell, you've ignored all the other more general examples. Thats part of your problem. You're hiding behind a copout to not help anyone else unless you're entitled to their individual and very personal sob stories (yet another version of your "what am I getting out of this" attitude); even then, how far do you go to justify what is and isn't real or an exaggeration?
Thats not how you activate safety nets.
We've already had plenty of threads that rip apart your idiotic stance on the long term unemployed. That, again, ties into your unverified claim that there are enough jobs for everyone. This debate concept of yours, that you can make sweeping claims on a group of people you obviously know nothing about, and that you're right unless someone provides an example otherwise....its really, really, pathetic.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 01-30-2011 at 12:04 AM.
And here we have a prime example of an utter dickwad who does not even answer any question and continues to rant off his high horse.
AGAIN: HOW DO YOU KNOW "No, I know here that most living on the system are abusing it."
Moron. How often do Steely, me, Ominous, Fuzzy, Being and the rest point out to you that you're full of shit in this regard? And the 200%, by the way, were also in response to your completely unsubstantiated, made-up-on-the-spot "statistics", if you haven't grasped it by now.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I've responded to Ominous, I'm not responding to you until you explain why you think 1/16=50%
Again, that "200%" is a response to "I make up numbers from thin air".
Shall I repeat that 3,165 times until you actually get it?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
What backgrounds do the long-term unemployed generally come from? What do their childhoods tend to look like?
They need help at least as much as anyone else.
They frequently also have mental health problems. maybe you're one of those who don't accept eg. addiction as a mental health problem, i dunno
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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