The poor is not your enemy. Open your eyes!

reply to post by gentledissident


Well, I can't honestly dispute with you there. I agree 100%

Like the poster below you said; everything is politics now and it stumps our growth as a people. Hell, as a planet.

Thanks for your thoughts and level-headed responses.

Originally posted by JadeX
You can't have parents saying "don't teach my kids about socialism, or evolution, or climatology, or genetics" and still end up with a well educated, well rounded population

I'm sure they'll do just fine.

reply to post by JadeX


I also have to echo your sentiments. Check out Charlotte Iserbyte on youtube; if you haven't already. She was a high level education offical during the Reagan years. She tells the story of how our education system was sold out.

Gone are the days when we learned about the classics and multiple languages in school. Now we only get the basics. Just enough, not to be noticed. I feel for our youth.

Thank you, too for your well-thought contribution.

It has got to the stage where workers have to do around twenty years indentured service to pay for all these handouts. Not just to the poor, but to rich farmers, millionaire librarians, politicians etc.

We should hate them for this.

I believe that people should help one another. I think the spirit and soul of both giver and receiver are uplifted when someone takes of their time and/or resources to help someone in need or less fortunate. Love is the essence of Charity.

What I strongly object to is the notion that because I want to keep the property that I rightfully earn and not give it to a corrupt and inefficient government who will dole it out at their leisure to whom and what they may, that somehow I'm against the poor and want to keep them down. On top of the donations I am forced to give via the government, I give to other charitable organizations to help cloth and feed the poor, as most spiritually minded conservatives do.

So I agree - poor and unfortunate aren't our enemies. Those that exploit them for policical purposes are the real enemies. Those that have a vested interest in keeping them poor are the real enemies. Those who claim to do a good thing (government programs) by doing an evil thing (taking your property under threat of force and punishment) are the real enemies.

This is why I say democracy doesn't work. Most people are too damned stupid to govern their own lives, nonetheless society. The poor will always vote against their own interest while bowing down before their rich overlords. And every company that's shipped jobs overseas is a traitor and their ceo's should be fined and/or imprisoned.

Some people are actualy DISABLED.....

I have not been able to have enough energy to stay awake for the last 20 years, I have tried everey diet home remedy, antidepressant, excersize program, you name it,,,, I just cant seem to get my body to create energy to get me feeling alive...

I have felt envious of people in wheelchairs, cause at least they can feel awake and stay in a conversation and have self respect.

I nag at myself 24/7 to try harder, and research day and night ways to get healthier and become able bodied and able minded, but I still havent gotten there.

I would LOVE to have the energy to at least use my talents, I used to be an amaizing artist, interior designer, musician, singer, actress, writer, I just can't get myself back....

If I would I could, and I am not lazy, I do my best 24/7, and that is all I can do.

I couldn't agree more with this thread, and would like to add my perspective / opinion from being here over 6 years.

I'm from the USA and grew up there, and moved for the first time to the Philippines to setup a company, but I will leave that part out. Upon arrival I immediately saw the difference in the quality of life standards, and the stark contrast between those who have money and those who don't.

To be fair, I did not have a problem with people being poor, but I did think of myself as a higher class for awhile, which I am now ashamed of.

After many years of living and working in Manila in a corporation, I got burned out and had a feeling like I lost my soul and turned into a machine... So I quit and moved to the Northern mountain region about 2 years ago, which is about a 6 hour drive from any fast food chain. Everything I owned in Manila was given or sold away, and my car was packed full of things I wanted for a one way trip.

The first few months in my new life was a comfortable shock. It was a good, quality lifestyle with amazing organic produce and clean spring water, along with a minuscule (compared to USA) cost of living. To keep busy I collected firewood in the mornings, went on hikes, reading, internet sometimes (only through cell phone towers), swimming or whatever.

I first visited a "poor" village about 15 months ago. What the village lacks in money it has an abundance of wealth in family, love, land, food, clean water and air. The village has been around about for around 500 years now and is less than 1000 people. They got electricity less than 10 years ago and there is still no road going to it, you have to hike there. After visiting that village many times my perspective of "life" in the West was obliterated. These people in this "poor" are living longer lives and are in general more healthy and fit than most any Westerner. They have food, they have family, and there are no police or the government in general influencing their lives. They have locally elected leaders, but that's about it. You can build anything however you want, there are no regulations except that you respect your neighbor and their land.

Point is, my worldview has changed around and now I understand that being "poor" is a belief in a system where money is god. Around here, wealth previously would have been stored in food/animals like rice, cows, pigs, etc. and villages would trade their wares among neighboring villages. Money as the West knows it was introduced here and has since, in my opinion, drives corruption in this country.

I have found that love, family, and community are much more important than money could ever be. I am now happily married to a woman from that village now and don't see myself going back to live in the US or any major city anywhere ever again. =D

reply to post by Philippines



Currently, I am not too far from there. I would love to come visit.

Thanks for your story and contribution, my friend.

"He who needs the less is the wealthiest"

reply to post by mellisamouse


I wish you the best, mellisamouse. Just don't forget that you are always special, no matter your energy. The world is lucky to have such a honest and creative person.

reply to post by intelligenthoodlum33


It is the system which those who desire to control and own everything have set up which is mostly to blame for this. They blame for poor because are unable to fully give everything to the top rulers of society.

The elites wants us to work them, give them almost all the profit from our production, give them our culture so they can exploit it for more wealth, give them our life so they can do with it as they seem fit, give them what little wealth we are afforded by way of taxes and give them a even ending supply of consumers to buy the products we produced in the first place.

The poor cannot give them all of that so they hate the poor. The poor are poor due to the class warfare which the elites feel benefits them because it drains society of the needed will to work together for the benefit of everyone. The poor need more of the wealth the economy producers so they will not be so poor and have a better overall life.

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
How is it that we, the supposedly 'enlightened', let politics turn us into the biggest hypocrits of this century?

We have let 'double speak' and appeals to our baser instincts turn us into people who hate the poor. Both parties accuse each other of starting class-warfare and yet they both are to blame. Now we, the public, have become infatuated with pointing to the poor as the reason for the ills of our society and economy.

We say they are lazy:

No one remembers that we are still coming out of the worst recession since the 1930's or that corporations have been sending jobs overseas at frantic rates to avoid paying fellow Americans (their biggest consumers) a living wage.

We hypocritally support such unconstitutional ideas such as drug tests for those who receive government support, yet where were you when we used tax money to give support to Wall Street after they raped our economy and drove up the housing costs in some places almost triple their actual value?

Did you rally for Wall Street to take a drug test? Doubt it.

In 2010, the US gave $52.7 billion to other countries in foreign aid. We 'nation build'. We spend more on ways to kill people than the top ten militaries in the world, combined. However, when it comes to our own people in need, we become obstinant...we become holier than thou and put our noses up in the air. We let ourselves be duped into hating the oppressed by the very people doing the oppressing.

"A nation greatness is measured by how it treats it's weakest members" - Ghandi

We are better than this, people. We are not the selfish, every man for himself, robots that the PTB would like us be. These tactics only serve to keep us divided and distracted from the real issues facing us these days.

We all need some kind of help sometimes. It isn't a sin...it's a fact of life. Some people actually do take advantage of the system, but should we throw out the baby with the bathwater?

“Investing in poor, young children has a phenomenally high economic and social rate of social return,” he says. “Because on the one side early investments in childhood development have huge returns later in life in labor-market productivity [and] at the same time they avoid the enormous social costs of crime and unemployment.” -The director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

By the same tolken, the wealthy and higher wage earners are not your enemy either. They are not evil, don't lay awake thinking of ways to hurt people, they don't go about raping and pilliaging, and don't eat babies for breakfast.

reply to post by NavyDoc


You quoted my post, but sounds like you didn't read it. No where in that post did I say the wealthy were the enemy.

This isn't a finger pointing thread...it's a "The poor are not our enemy" thread.

I deplore the divide and conquer mentality that so many of us fall victim to. How do you know I'm not wealthy?

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
reply to post by mellisamouse

 

I wish you the best, mellisamouse. Just don't forget that you are always special, no matter your energy. The world is lucky to have such a honest and creative person.

Thank you so much, it means more than so many could ever know, to just not feel looked down on by someone.

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
reply to post by Philippines

 

Currently, I am not too far from there. I would love to come visit.

Thanks for your story and contribution, my friend.

"He who needs the less is the wealthiest"

Sure, if you're serious send me a PM =)

I can give ya some info, but I am very cautious about meeting internet 'folk

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

You quoted my post, but sounds like you didn't read it. No where in that post did I say the wealthy were the enemy.

This isn't a finger pointing thread...it's a "The poor are not our enemy" thread.

I deplore the divide and conquer mentality that so many of us fall victim to. How do you know I'm not wealthy?

No, I read your OP, but the implication in the underlying premise is still in keeping with the class warefare nonsense we have been hearing lately. Apologies if I missed your point.

The poor are not my enemy. I was once very, very poor myself. The people who want to take from me what I have worked hard to achieve against my will are my enemy and therein lies the issue. The middle class does not hate the poor, nor does the upper class. The erason why this sort of rhetoric is tossed out there is because people are demanding more and more forced removal from one person to give to another. One would naturally resent such things.

reply to post by NavyDoc


You say class warfare is nonsense then proceed to parrot the rhetoric we hear on T.V. all day.

There is no redistribution center waiting for you to go to work, so they can steal your bigscreen T.V. and give it to a poor person. All those news speak words and phrases like: entitlements, welfare state, hand-outs etc were coined to give us a sense of superiority over others. It was meant to divide us permanently to win elections. Fortunately, the majority of the country refused to buy into such divisive nonsense.

I refuse such propaganda. Welfare has been around since the 30's and with a national poverty level around 15%, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

en.wikipedia.org...

We can either complain till we're blue in the face or get over it and find practical ways of reducing spending. How many threads do you contribute to that denounces our over-generous foreign aid policies? What about outsourcing jobs?

I will never understand how people can come to a global forum and insult their own countrymen for needing a hand, yet stand by and say nothing when we give money, weapons, jobs, bomb and rebuild (at astronomical prices) other's infrastructures all over the world.

Someone said: "Distance breeds respect, while proximity breeds contempt."

I believe we are better than that and I will never stop.

Apology accepted.

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

You say class warfare is nonsense then proceed to parrot the rhetoric we hear on T.V. all day.

There is no redistribution center waiting for you to go to work, so they can steal your bigscreen T.V. and give it to a poor person. All those news speak words and phrases like: entitlements, welfare state, hand-outs etc were coined to give us a sense of superiority over others. It was meant to divide us permanently to win elections. Fortunately, the majority of the country refused to buy into such divisive nonsense.

I refuse such propaganda. Welfare has been around since the 30's and with a national poverty level around 15%, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

en.wikipedia.org...

We can either complain till we're blue in the face or get over it and find practical ways of reducing spending. How many threads do you contribute to that denounces our over-generous foreign aid policies? What about outsourcing jobs?

I will never understand how people can come to a global forum and insult their own countrymen for needing a hand, yet stand by and say nothing when we give money, weapons, jobs, bomb and rebuild (at astronomical prices) other's infrastructures all over the world.

Someone said: "Distance breeds respect, while proximity breeds contempt."

I believe we are better than that and I will never stop.

Apology accepted.

Fair enough. However, it really is not nonsense, it is coercive redistribution, really so that politicians can get votes...which is really the underlying reason for these programs.

Actually if you have followed me in my posts, I have stated that I am for elimination for all foreign aid and a non-interventionist foreign policy.


We should neither be the world's police nor be the world's EMT. I have no problem not getting involved in other country's conflicts as long as we are also not going to help out for natural disasters either. It seems everyone hates us and wants us to leave them alone. Fair enough, just don't call when there is an earthquake or tsunami to be consistent.

At the government level, there is no difference between either party.
The ones running the government and making policy are not poor people, Joe Six Pack etc but people that hail from Multi-National Corporations and Wall Street Banks.

You should be mad at these people and not the poor for stealing my tax dollars.

Originally posted by soulshn

Originally posted by ColeYounger
reply to post by soulshn

 

But where is that 28% really going? It is not going to the poor of this country, it is going to drop bombs on people who have never done a thing to harm anyone in this country.

Sorry, but that's a fantasy perpetrated by the left. While I agree that the military-industrial machine takes a huge piece of the pie, likewise, a huge piece of the pie is going towards welfare and various social programs. Where do you think that money comes from? There's like 45 million people getting food stamps!

First off, i think that is incorrect, but more importantly do you think voting republican is really going to change anything? Bush was responsible for the largest increase in medicare spending ever. Romney invented the ideas behind Obamacare.

YOU ARE ALL FIGHTING OVER WHICH SIDE OF THE SAME COIN IS BETTER! There is no real difference between the R's and the D's! Can you not see this?

And who is to blame for the ones taking our tax dollars to support them?

If I steal 10 bucks from your wallet and give it to Larry the Bum, will you be pissed off at me or Larry?

The Multi National Corporations and Wall Street Banks do not believe in Capitalism, because they want me and you to subsidize them with our productivity and tax dollars and say that they are doing it for the poor, while the heads of the business rake in million dollar bonsues. A good example is Foodstamp JP Morgan or the Obama Phone made possible by the telecommunications industry.

I absolutely hate the head CEO's of these companies and banks that have taken over our governmen, stealing my tax dollars to fatten themselves with.

Originally posted by MidnightTide

Originally posted by intelligenthoodlum33
reply to post by DarthMuerte

 

Please stop with the divide and conquer labeling. I am neither a liberal, democrat, conservatist or republican. I am a human who thinks for himself and can figure out the difference between 'bad guy' and scapegoat. Join me.

How about you answer the question though?

No one is against giving someone a helping hand, but when the helping hand is expected indefinitely then we have some problems....and yes, we have raised generations of those who feel they deserve a handout.

(and yes, we have an TON of lazy people out there - I personally know a few of them.....who play WoW all day and go clubbing every weekend, and hey - one of them gets a babysitter paid so she can go relax)