The poor in America live like kings by other country's standards.

reply to post by My.mind.is.mine


To clarify I didn't mean you. To clarify I wasn't implying you were a left winger but used 'you' rhetorically for the reader of my post.

Im sorry, but like kings in other countries? Really? So kings in other countries have to eat garbage? They have no access to true medical care? Or education?

Lets get real. The poor here, as posted many times, are one paycheck away from losing everything, as are many working class people, living off of credit, and bound to be indebted the rest of their lives, and never to retire. Keeping in mind that 40% of our nation lives right around the poverty level at 20k a year, they have no real access to true medical care, only sick care. They have little chance of getting a true education, or of ever improving their place in life. The only thing that they are provided is the chance to be good consumers.

The food they can afford is processed refined garbage, which provides no true support for healthy minds, deficient in many essential nutrients and loaded with chemicals, which promotes ADD, and does nothing to help them maintain healthy neurotransmitter levels which are essential for emotional well being.

Every other western industrialized nation in the world provides free healthcare, and free education, but in the US those are the two greatest expenses that keep the poor from getting a better station in life... So great. They have a tv, a car, and air conditioning. Its good to know they have just enough to be able to hopefully continue to pay on their lifelong debt. Who needs the hope of ever attaining self sufficiency?

Just because poor kids in thailand have to deal with rape and prostitution does not mean that starving kids in africa should be happy with their own lot, and similarly, just because other nations poor (which we have largely inflicted upon them) have to deal with starvation does not mean that we should just appreciate our own bondage.

I think the problem with studies like this is the government's definition of what constitutes poverty; It usually has to do with a person's or family's REPORTED income, what they claim to have earned on their tax returns. Based on my reported earnings, my family is living in poverty. The thing the government doesn't see is money that people make under the table.

Many people deemed poor by the government are actually part of the underground economy and use their unreported income to just barely get by. It has become necessary for most families to earn part of their livings "off the books" to prevent the government from taking away what they need to survive.

People living "off the books" throw off government statistics on poverty. They create the perception that there are many more people who are desperately poor than there actually are. Unfortunately, they also give these conservative think tanks the ammo they need to point out that the "poor" are getting by just fine, living a life that would be considered luxurious in most other countries. They give the conservative the talking points they need to dismiss the poor in America and belittle their problems.

There are real poor people in America today. They are real and they need our help. We shouldn't allow conservative studies like this to harden our hearts against the less fortunate. Most of us are just one paycheck away from joining them.

reply to post by FortAnthem


I guess when the so call "experts" did their report the forgot to come down here in my neck of the woods where the poor and the elderly die during the summer from heat for lack of air conditions in the humid heat and from hypothermia during the winter for lack of heaters.

Or worst the incidents of death by fire are actually higher than hypothermia, every year we get tragedies of families dying during the night by fire because space heaters trying to keep warm.