If You're Poor, You Didn't Get There On Your Own. Government Helped You Get There...

reply to post by muzzleflash

If you say so chief. Although, I find education and skill levels to be fairly quantifiable. Maybe it's just me!

Originally posted by glasshouse
reply to post by muzzleflash

 

If you say so chief. Although, I find education and skill levels to be fairly quantifiable. Maybe it's just me!

edit on 07/27/12 by glasshouse because: (no reason given)

I have met a ton of skilled educated folks who seemed totally inept at their jobs. Not able to figure out the most basic of tasks.

And then I have met totally unskilled uneducated folks who were able to 'catch on' and 'figure things out' almost immediately.

It doesn't always work that way, it's a mix between the various possibilities.

Point is, our system for determining who is "skilled" and who is "educated" has lost touch with reality.

You have been around businesses in the last 20years right? You can't possibly tell me they were all on the up and up?

I am not saying "skills and education" are not necessary.
I am saying the modern definition of the words "skills and education" don't have anything to do with, well, skills or education.

If they did...why do I always get poor service and all my products are poor quality?

Originally posted by glasshouse
reply to post by BritofTexas

 

I think there's a direct correlation between raising minimum wage and the decline in employment opportunities for less educated, unskilled workers. It could probably play a role in artificially inflating the price of goods and services as well. I think this would apply to "living wage" also. If an employer is forced to pay a higher amount for labor, that employer would most likely prefer to hire someone with a higher amount of skills, experience and education in order to get more bang for their buck. Because of the increased overhead, most business owners would probably raise the cost of their products or services as well. Due to that raise in cost of goods and services, the "calculated living wage" would surely go up.
Rinse, repeat.

edit on 07/27/12 by glasshouse because: (no reason given)

Wages have at best stagnated since 1980. Before that time with just a high school diploma you could get a job that paid enough to enable you to live reasonably well. Credit for mortgages, car loans etc was based more on income, length of service and in a lot of cases a reference letter from your boss. Not an imaginary three didgit number.

The price for goods and services is supposedly set by the market. So if you believe in the free market then surely prices would not go up as nobody would pay them. This however is a moot point as businesses are declaring record profits so could afford to pay there staff a decent wage.

Plus the more money in the hands of the working class means more money going back into the economy and less into Cayman Island bank accounts.

reply to post by muzzleflash


I guess it would come down to who is making the judgment and what factors they consider. You raise a fair point but I still feel like my assessment of minimum wage and living wage is generally correct. We can change the definitions of the terms experience, skill,and education but at the end of the day I think employers, when forced to pay an inflated wage, would still prefer to hire workers who possess the aforementioned attributes( no matter if they are accurately defined or not)

Originally posted by PvtHudson

Originally posted by pisssss
reply to post by The Old American

 

If that is a silly and emotionally angry post I don't know what is...

In conservative America, feeding people makes them hungry, I have heard it all before,
you guys expect the worst from people.

Conservative Americans are the most giving and charitable in the country.

I agree. After I've taken away from you, I can afford to be charitable and give back some.

Originally posted by The Old American
What I believe Obama meant to say:

"There are a lot of poor, downtrodden Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been on welfare, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so dumb. There are a lot of dumb people out there. It must be because I worked much less than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of lazy people out there.

If you were on welfare, somebody along the line helped you get there, and stay there. There was a government program somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this atrocious American system that we have that allowed you to stay poor. Somebody gave you food stamps and extended your stay in welfare. If you're on welfare, you didn't do that on your own. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we are poor, we stay poor because of our kollectivist "everyone is a victim" mentality. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody kept their own wages. That would be a hard way to keep you under our jackboots."

This is the reality of being poor in America. You are kept poor. You are kept enslaved. You are not encouraged to get off of welfare and make a life for yourself. You are a victim and must keep sucking on the teat of Mother Government.

And if you are successful, it is your responsibility to help keep the poor there. After all, it was your fault they were poor in the first in the place. You had some, they had none, therefore you were wrong. And keeping them poor gives the rich something good to spend their dirty money on. Because America can't thrive without victims.

Keeping the poor that way gives the guilty something to do. Something to make themselves Feel Better. And that's all we need, right? To Feel Better. "I helped someone today to feel good about being poor."

/TOA

Well...if we all kept our own wages and there were no taxes of any kind...then I suppose we could all be poor together. Taxes have made possible:

1. 100% of our modern infrastructure of roads, utilities, rail lines, harbors, and telecommunications.
2. The judicial system which allows for due process and an ordered society as opposed to one run by competing warlords.
3. The educational system which (most likely) taught you how to read and write.
4. Firefighters.
5. A military which once upon a time kept the Soviet Union from invading us.
6. The computer you are using to type this post, given that the modern semiconducting computer processor was originally developed for NASA.
7. About four million other things that you most likely take for granted each and every day.

...now...we can CERTAINLY argue that the existing systems of taxation and regulation have become corrupted and are abysmally ineffecient...but that doesn't mean that TAXES are bad. It means that the WAY IN WHICH WE ARE TAXING is bad.

Same thing with spending. The amount the government spends each year is completely irrelevant. What matters is WHAT ARE WE GETTING AS AN ROI ON OUR INVESTMENT??

One manner of thinking leads us to stomp our feet and strive for a completely unachievable utopian ideal in which there are no taxes and everybody gets their very own unicorn...and the other manner of thinking leads us to merely holding the government accountable to the citizenry again.

Obama is partially correct...without taxes and governmental "redistribution of wealth" (gasp!) there WOULDN'T BE ANY BUSINESSES AT ALL...I'm sure the Apache's whom we would still be at war with would make certain of it.
That's not "kollectivism" or "communism"...that's called living in a democratically-inspired republic.

Get off the ideology of it all and start using your head to solve a problem or two.

reply to post by boot2theface


I get tired of the Conservative Propaganda as well!. I have never been on assistance myself but it isn't something "easy" to get on. You have to jump through a bunch of hoops.

Sure, is there a culture of "poverty" in some sectors of society sure.

But most people who are in the lower income levels have seen thier way of life go down. This is due to stagnant wages, the higher cost of EVERYTHING, food, health insurance, gas etc..

And then the housing crisis. I mean it is tough out there. It ISN't easy to start your own business and most small businesses fail in the first year.

I just wish the Rich Elite would quit penalizing the working class and lower income classes in this country. I think they must find them threatening or something and have to keep them down.

Plus the more money in the hands of the working class means more money going back into the economy and less into Cayman Island bank accounts.

EXACTLY!!

Sorry...but this game of avoiding taxes by hiding money offshore is quite simply treason.

reply to post by BritofTexas


I think the price of goods is, in part set by the market, but if it costs more to produce a product that product will probably rise across the board across all companies that produce it. Future market expectation would be dictated by that baseline cost. Do you disagree with the fact that artificially raising wages, in effect, prices many out of the employment market?

The research, conducted by Dr. David Neumark, economist at the University of California, Irvine, looks at the effects minimum wage hikes have had since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. The author focused specifically on the impact of minimum wage hikes on employment levels, wages, and income for teens and young adults. The author found that for every 10% increase in the minimum wage: • Minority unemployment increased by 3.9% • Hispanic unemployment increased by 4.9% • Minority teen unemployment increased 6.6% • African American teen unemployment increased by 8.4% • Low-skilled unemployment (i.e., those lacking a high school diploma) increased by 8% “Neumark’s research builds on 60 years of research showing the harsh unintended consequences of minimum wage hikes,” said Jill Jenkins, EPI’s Chief Economist. “Instead of raising the federal minimum wage, a stand alone increase in the EITC would more effectively help low-income families without putting people out of work.”

epionline.org...

reply to post by milominderbinder

I guess I missed the part where he suggested nobody should pay any taxes?
I agree that businesses benefit from infrastructure but without revenue created by businesses and the people they employ the government as we know it would not function.
Considering business doesn't rely solely on revenue produced by the government, I would propose that business is more capable of existing without government instead the other way around

Originally posted by Stormdancer777

Originally posted by jude11
Didn't get there on their own and now they have to climb back...on their own.

Vicious cycle.

Peace

And it is going to get ugly, once the money train stops, and it will.

There are no jobs,

If every person on welfare had to get a job there would be mass starvation.

edit on 113131p://bMonday2012 by Stormdancer777 because: (no reason given)

There are no jobs because the Government owns everything.

CAFR. Government is the major shareholder of all corporations in america, owning more than 51% of stocks in the exchanges, through their collective government (federal, state, local) investment funds.


A private person cannot compete with the government, nor with companies that get preferential government bailouts.

Therefore, all private people are currently looking for government welfare. The rich seek government bailouts, and the poor seek food stamps, and the middle class continue to get squeezed, and seek to become either rich or poor to get their government welfare check too.

The middle class is shrinking, because it is the disadvantageous place to be in the hierarchy.

If the government had let the big banks fail, lots of small banks would rush in to replace their service business, and lots of jobs would be created. The inefficient bankers who only know how to fail would have been removed, and new people would have been able to try their hand at banking, the marketplace would then weed out the inefficient bankers automatically. Instead, the government pops up the bad bankers, and suppress any good banker from entering the business, since new bankers can't compete with those established failures that continue to get government support.

When government gets involved with private business, it selectively determines who will succeed and who will fail, and prevents the marketplace from doing its job.

The consequence? Government ends up owning everything, everybody gets their checks from the government, either directly, or indirectly through government support of their corporate business, and very little incentive exists to create new jobs in the private sector, because the government holds all the cards.

They may not know it, but everyone works for the Government, one way or another.

It was supposed to be that the Government worked for "The People", but fate has twisted it around.

I believe many interpret "trickle-down economics" to mean because one person has a lot of money, they GIVE it away to the poor. That was never what it meant. How many people making $30K a year are going to hire YOU for a $30K a year job? If someone makes a lot of money, they will invest it into their company to make it grow which will require more people to be hired. The "trickle-down" effect is the presentation of additional OPPORTUNITIES for the poor to get a job because someone had invested capital. Trickle down never was some welfare or charity benefit of wealth redistribution either voluntary or forced.

Yeah man,The Mans keepin us down LOL
No seriously though,it isnt the Goverments fault I and so many people are poor...but they are responsible for robbing us of oppurtunity,which is equivalent to making us poor..

Meh I hate playing these stupid games.

I believe what was meant is within what this link discusses...

www.newyorker.com...

Originally posted by glasshouse
reply to post by BritofTexas

 

I think the price of goods is, in part set by the market, but if it costs more to produce a product that product will probably rise across the board across all companies that produce it. Future market expectation would be dictated by that baseline cost. Do you disagree with the fact that artificially raising wages, in effect, prices many out of the employment market?

The research, conducted by Dr. David Neumark, economist at the University of California, Irvine, looks at the effects minimum wage hikes have had since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. The author focused specifically on the impact of minimum wage hikes on employment levels, wages, and income for teens and young adults. The author found that for every 10% increase in the minimum wage: • Minority unemployment increased by 3.9% • Hispanic unemployment increased by 4.9% • Minority teen unemployment increased 6.6% • African American teen unemployment increased by 8.4% • Low-skilled unemployment (i.e., those lacking a high school diploma) increased by 8% “Neumark’s research builds on 60 years of research showing the harsh unintended consequences of minimum wage hikes,” said Jill Jenkins, EPI’s Chief Economist. “Instead of raising the federal minimum wage, a stand alone increase in the EITC would more effectively help low-income families without putting people out of work.”

epionline.org...

Wages have been artificially decreased. This happened with the easy accessibility of credit cards.

You don't need a pay rise inline with inflation. Just get food stamps and another high interest credit card.

As I stated earlier. As a nation we are propping up businesses that are paying low wages while making record profits. They are the true welfare recipients.

reply to post by BritofTexas

I see what you're saying but that doesn't change the fact that when government artificially imposes a wage raise it adversely harms many of the same people it was meant to help.

reply to post by glasshouse


Raising minimum wage is not a magic bullet that will cure all the worlds ills. That I will admit.

We need to bring jobs back to the country and invest in the infrastructure. With low unemployment wages will go up by themselves due to the law of supply and demand. If businesses have to dip into a smaller available workforce to operate their companies then they would have to make the package more enticing. Can't see this happening for a while though.

There is, however, a magic bullet.

Get the money out of politics.

If, as soon as you get to Capital Hill you have to start raising funds for your next election, you are going to take more notice of whomever gave you a few thousand than whomever gave you one vote.

reply to post by BritofTexas

I think I mostly agree. I wish our government would make policies that encourage businesses to keep jobs here as opposed to creating a hostile environment and then threatening additional punishment for sending jobs elsewhere.

Originally posted by pisssss
reply to post by The Old American

 

If that is a silly and emotionally angry post I don't know what is...

In conservative America, feeding people makes them hungry, I have heard it all before,
you guys expect the worst from people.

I'm sorry but it is Obama that truly expects the worst in people.
By promoting misery, that is the only way he can ensure miserable people can continue suckling on that government teet.

Originally posted by glasshouse
reply to post by BritofTexas

 

I think I mostly agree. I wish our government would make policies that encourage businesses to keep jobs here as opposed to creating a hostile environment and then threatening additional punishment for sending jobs elsewhere.

You've done it now. I would pretty much agree with your statement there as well. And we didn't even get to the name calling yet either. That is not how the Political Forums on ATS are supposed to work.

Thank you, Glasshouse