Originally posted by whoshotJR
The sad thing is that you think this is bad right now just wait or go visit a real 2nd world or even 3rd world country. We are living like kings compared to them, and that includes our poor and out of work.

Your 19 and have no job yet on a computer, that puts you well ahead of the curve right there.

I lived dirt poor when I was a kid. Never much food around. Out house had a piece of tin for a door. I've also seen third world countries and by comparison I was living pretty good when I was a kid. Yep, the poor and unfortunate afflicted masses in the US don't understand what poor is. Poor is wondering if you will get food in time to live. You can't eat a wide screen television. When you think you might be poor your not, when you are actually poor you know it.

Yes we have, to an extent, in my opinion. Countrys used to fear us,a nd we gianed their respect..we had the best falwless job security amrket..tahs is failiingl thier being outsourced to anywhere but HERE in the continental USA> our eduction systm has dropped like a potato sack full of rocks...up to about the 1980's we had the best education ssytem reknown in the world...throught he 80's how many times have we alll heard on the news, teens bringiinng guns, knives and pipe bombs to schools, adn nothing was really done, toher than erecting fences and security gurads on campus or grounds. Look at some of those hot bonde teachers having sex and giving birth to some 13/14 year old kid..isnt that mathemtics or english or history time? where do we get our values from? thers a key phrase... seems every generations gets dumber and dumber and dumber...really ever see the movie Ideocracy? where everyone in the future was dumb? lol it was a comedy, but sad truth is, at the rate we are going, THIS Is going to be us. meanwhile other countrys are passing youg students in nucela physics and buisness...what do we have? accountats, lawyers and broom sweepers?
Whatever criotical thining we achivd, has been vastly flushed down the toilet. its time to regaine knowledge and power! Thats my view..stay educated,. WANT to be educaated, stay away from sex, booze, and the cigga, and those huose partys..as fun as they are, its mind dumbing..really it is. You never hear from most others oh over in india we threw this big alcoholo party, or over in china or russia, yuo never hear about them sliding down stairs into a inflatable pool full of rum n beer...why? they stayed educated..and loko at what they become comapred to us today./..the ones standing tall.

sorry about the typos...kinda embarrrasing to post,,w ith some chopped up words lol...had part fo a nail come off at work, so got a nice fabric bandaid over it..messin up my typing

Originally posted by Apollumi

Originally posted by whoshotJR
The sad thing is that you think this is bad right now just wait or go visit a real 2nd world or even 3rd world country. We are living like kings compared to them, and that includes our poor and out of work.

Your 19 and have no job yet on a computer, that puts you well ahead of the curve right there.

I lived dirt poor when I was a kid. Never much food around. Out house had a piece of tin for a door. I've also seen third world countries and by comparison I was living pretty good when I was a kid. Yep, the poor and unfortunate afflicted masses in the US don't understand what poor is. Poor is wondering if you will get food in time to live. You can't eat a wide screen television. When you think you might be poor your not, when you are actually poor you know it.

Wow, being poor must REALLY suck if what I have is awesome in comparison.

It seems to me that designations like "first world" are comparitive rather than absolute...that is, it depends on our position RELATIVE to other countries.

So has the standard of living really plummetted in ocmparison with other places? As a well-seasoned traveler, I would have to say NO. I just spent a week in Northeastern China near the North Korean border so perhaps my perspective is a bit out of whack, but I can tell you there is misery and poverty aplenty out there.

As I noted recently in another thread, the longtime writer for Asia Times who goes by the anon pen-name "Spengler" once wrote that the sure way to tell a country has come down in the world is when (to put it a bit crassly) it starts selling off its women to foreigners, in the form of mass prostitution, "mail order brides," and so on. You can certainly see this with Russia and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, more recently in Iran, and of course this sort of thing has long been endemic in South East Asia, parts of Africa, South America, and so on.

This strikes me as an excellent (if a bit grotesque) index of decline. By that standard, the US still has quite a ways to fall.