Land of the Free?, page 2

Originally posted by Amuk

Originally posted by yergen
Amuk

Did you know that unemployment rates are calculated as a share of the total available workforce. The definition of workforce is those who actively are looking for work, if not already working. This means that the share of 5% unemployed is really much larger. Still, there aren't enough jobs to go around. So, the people who cannot find jobs because of recessions should starve? It's their problem, right? In Sweden, people don't have to leave their homes and live in cardboard boxes because they are laid off. This is what I mean with freedom from poverty. Not the kind of thing you were talking about. In the U.S you have around 10% of the total population defined as poor. Is that because they are lazy or because they are free?

I have NEVER had a problem with finding a job. Sometimes I had to take jobs that most wouldnt accept but I had work to support my family. I have been classified as poor ALL my life and I have a big screen TV, air condishing, hi speed internet, a nice car, three bedroom house with a TV in every room, washer/dryer, and just refurnished the place. Being poor in America does not have to mean starving in the streets as much as not having a summer home

Most of the REALLY poor and/or homeless in America are mentally ill and I will be the first to say our care of them is a discrace, but they make up a small fraction of the "poor" that you speak of. Those that will not take a job because it is beneath them can live in a cardboard box as far as I am concerened.

What I am talking about is the freedom to DO THINGS. The government is not a free mans babysitter, I would never trade freedom for securty, and those that do deserve the chains they will wind up wearing.

I totally agree with Vergen. Good points, Dude.

You can't start a post asking which country is the freest without considering ALL kinds of "freedoms". It seems to me that you asked the question in a general manner which everybody answered, but when they gave you their honest answers and you didn't like them, you tried to change the "rules" of the game.

Sorry, Amuk. But I put homelessness and poverty and the unemployment rate WAY above my own personal rights to own a gun. That's WAY at the bottom of my priority list, Dude.

You need to consider that just because you have always been able to get a job, everybody else might not because everybody else isn't YOU.

I think that when you see lines and lines of people applying for minimum wage jobs (just after 9/11, I had to compete with over 200 applicants for a minimum wage convenience store job), that it's totally unfair, not to mention CRUEL to sit there in your own comfy little set-up and call them "lazy" etc etc. This is Bull#. People WANT to have jobs and feed their families and live the good life. There is no way you can convince me that the homeless want to be exactly where they are. That's exactly the kind of conservative/republican bull# my mother spouts and I get so tired of hearing it mostly because it is so insensitive and unempathetic.

If this country was truly free their would jobs for EVERYONE that wanted one. You can't tell people they have to pay to EAT and not provide for them a job.

And I tell you this. It's the corporations to blame mostly for hard times like these when people can't get jobs. Why, you ask ? Because in hard times when so many are looking for work, corporations know they can be picky, choosy bastards and pretty much demand your firstborn before they hire you.

Don't blame the people. Blame the #ing corporations.