They are poor not because there is not enough wealth to go around. They are mostly poor in buying the American dream and blaming themselves for their poverty. Not everybody can make it.
I don’t know what could be done. A first step, however would be to ask the rich to pay their fair share of taxes.
What are ones who “make it” doing which is different from the ones who do not make it? Can the poor do those things? If yes, then proceed to doing. If no, then what is preventing it? Identify the obstacles and decide what to do about them.
No that’s not the first step. It might be one of the steps at the end.
The first step is to identify a problem. The second step is to figure out why a problem exists. The third step is to research solutions which have been tried. The fourth step is to propose a variety of solutions. The fifth step is to analyze the proposed solutions and decide on one (or more) which is worth trying.
When there was nothing for people in the past, they put belongings in bags and hiked to a new area. Now, no not so much. Why the reluctance to go to new frontiers? Why stay where competition is incredible? And it is competition.
Split up , tear apart corporations and wealth and jobs , money resources will be lost. Have them pay an increase in tax sure but, destruction will cause too many issues.
Here it is: Humans are schizophrenic. Out of touch with reality; out of touch with their environment; out of touch with their own needs and capabilities.
One symptom of this in industrial society: to quantify wealth in $ units. To count the assets of a man or a nation in money distorts the comprehension of both and results in huge, costly, destructive misunderstanding, misjudgment and mismanagement.
A handful of scribblers (and uncounted unrecorded regular people) of each generation have done this. The problem exists because we have not [?yet] reconciled our animal nature with our superhuman ambitions. The animal needs are simple and readily satisfiable, but this is often neglected in favour of the aspiration of a few to godhood.
You’ll need to be careful to compare previously tried solutions to the same problem.
You might like to discard any solution wherein the decisions are all made at the top and the blame is all laid at the bottom. This would include the structure of all previous civilizations.
Quite a few have been proposed. Some are even possible to implement in tandem, in sequence or overlapped.
Hurry up. Time is seriously running out.
They went to New York and died at 45 in a sweatshop. They went to Tennessee and coughed their lungs out in a mine. They went to British Columbia and died in a rock-slide building the railway.
Some of their children and grandchildren survived to join a union and earn minimum wage. That’s how fortunes are created. https://fileandclaw322.wordpress.com/audiobooks/the-history-of-the-great-american-fortunes-gustavus-myers/
Really? Then what’s all that hollering about illegal immigrants “taking our jobs”?
https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration-applications-filed-each-year/ Of the 6 million applications every year, less than one million are allowed into the US - even provisionally.
Some are not allowed out; some are not allowed in; some can’t afford the fare; Some are held in refugee camps; some drown en route.
Or did you mean Americans moving around inside their own country? When you have a minimum wage job and have been cut back to part time, can you really afford to lose the deposit on your crappy apartment and the furnishings you’ve bought on credit, yank your kids out of school, travel on spec to someplace where there might be a job - which, if one of the other fifty people in line ahead of you gets it, nobody will rent you another apartment, even if you managed to save up first and last months’ rent plus security deposit. If you are first in line and do get the job, the other fifty are still plum out of luck*.
And, no, China is not currently welcoming American workers.
The more manufacturing and service jobs are shipped off-shore, the fiercer the competition for those that remain, and the lower the wages and less safe the conditions and harsher the requirements. The employers can get away with it. They always could.
Competition sounds all right. Its advocates neglect to mention what happens to the losers in any competition for limited resources. They also seem reluctant to trace those resources, where they come from and where they go.
Here’s a thought. All those people who call themselves “job-creators” and demand tax cuts on their $multi-million/year profits, should have their taxes pegged to the number of full-time, secure, living-wage jobs they actually create. In their own country.
*I’m not making this up. I once migrated to the west coast (the final frontier) and stood in line for three hours before opening, with 57 other people, at a dog-grooming salon that advertised one single minimum-wage job.
As I mentioned in an earlier post … stepping beyond the mundane and profane is intimidating … especially for those with the intellectual capacity to do so.
Poverty can’t hurt you … but … the fear of poverty can kill you.
Poverty is a mental construct … a state of mind … a state of consciousness … so indelibly imprinted in our consciousness from birth. We treat it like the plague … worse than leprosy … it is repugnant and to be avoided at all costs … it is to be completely eradicated from the human race.
What bollock!
Lady Poverty is a noble and virtuous role model … the legend of St Francis of Assisi lives on … albeit in a terribly watered down version.
The shift in consciousness can be abrupt … there are countless examples of people who woke up one morning and found themselves with a diametrically opposite world view from the one they had been living for many years.
To those who would go forth with a simple wooden bowl, I recommend reliable birth-control and steely continence.
Itinerant poverty is just no fun with young children in tow.
You’re right … I forgot!
Parent child time is another casualty of the system.
Latchkey children are so much healthier … and than there are the the unknown consequences of the aborted children too!
Forgot to mention …
… declining birth rates are good for our popular immigration programs
… many countries may have to come up with an “early death plan” since life expectancy is simply too long for the shrinking populations.
Phyllo,
The problem is self evident. Out of the fear of dearth people use people as resources for capital. There is no dearth. There is only the problem of distribution of wealth. If we buy survival of the fittest, that is aligning with our low animal nature, not with any sense of morality. What is needed?
- a fair system of taxation
- a minimum wage that reflects the cost of living
- free two year technical colleges
- socialized medical care
- restrictions on insurance agencies
- zero population growth–two children per family
- taxing churches
Etc. Etc.
duplicate
You want me to pity people who do not stand up to their employer, no.
Outside of cities are towns and other small communities, why pity people who flock like birds fighting over crumbs instead of going to places where competition is less.
You want me to pity people who get neck deep in debt and tie themselves to poor conditions.
I pity the children who were born to thoughtless parents for they may have inherited thoughtless genes. Having kids and not being able to care for them proves idiocy or selfishness. Why pity it.
Humans live happily in tents, hauling water, finding food, working to make and get a better life without having to kiss someone’s ass to keep a shitty job to pay on unnecessary debts.
I can’t pity humans that stay in environments that they know is wrong when walking a few hundred miles can make life better, sometimes it is not even a few hundred , sometimes it is more. Complacency is not worthy of respect or pity. If people allow themselves to live in fear rather than stand, they then are to blame.
The one percent only have such control because of fear. Fear of not having luxuries. Food can be found in the wild or grown on a plot of ground. A roof and house can be made of canvas or simple wood cabins. But no , people want plumbing, electricity, government handouts, etc.
Then they blame their employer that did not hold a gun to their head to accept a job that was crap. You stand in line with fifty seven people to apply for a job. I would have walked and have. Why did you not walk and go into businesses selling yourself? Door to door application is generally productive for the persistent and intelligent.
I will help those that have medical issues(physical, mental). I will help those that are actually striving to become more. I will not help others.
Redistribution of wealth is a farce and fantasy. It cannot work. If humans are unwilling to stand up to get better environments then they will not handle responsibly any gift of the governing body. A few will, most will not. Capitalism is not at fault, the idea that one is owed a roof and food just because they happen to live is at fault. Would you diaper your child for its entire life? Seems like folks think that government and bosses should.
It is a wonderful thought that even the lazy live equally to the ones that strive . It is a wonderful world that rewards people that give up, never think , never have to try. Yep just so civilized.
If you think Socialist or Communist countries are so much better, tell me one of their leaders that reside in a run down apartment eating only crackers or other crap or stand in food lines.
And as long as immigrants are here legally, then they have every right to any work they find. I have worked with legal immigrants, they tend to be decent employees and people.
I still can’t buy the assumption that the majority of have nots in the US are either ignorant or lazy.
My friend , I would prefer it as well. But, when one accepts scraps rather than hunt their own, what is that? You want to see us farther away from animal nature then we really are. We have not overcome pack/herd to get to true civilization. Our individuality is still ruled by nature, still ruled by the need to obey leaders and accept crusts instead of choice. I cannot pity what can be changed by will and motivation.
You seem to be stating that a man with only one leg can run the race as well as anyone with two. I live close to the streets. The farm dream is gone. There is no longer a frontier that can be conquered by a rugged individual with true grit. Here on the streets you can be shot simply because you live on the wrong side of town. It’s survival of the fittest.
I’ve been unable to work for the last ten years of my life due to major depression with panic and anxiety attacks. One hospitalization could destroy my meager savings. So I am supposed to buy the Western lie that anyone here can make it?
Will and motivation will not undo my handicap. I’m neither stupid nor lazy. I worked for nearly 40 years.
The seven propositions I mentioned above have nothing to do with redistribution of wealth. They have to do with everyone paying their fair share of taxes according to their incomes. In all cases charitable contributions should involve tax breaks. The poor should pay taxes even if it only amounts to a dollar.
A one-legged man is not going to win the race. That’s the way it is.
The social safety net would ensure that he does not starve and that he has a ‘decent’ life. That’s all.
Unfortunately, a lot of social activists want to rig the race so that the one-legged man wins or nobody wins or everybody wins.
I agree with your last statement. I’m not a social activist. Nobody wins if anybody loses.
There will be winners and losers in the race. But there are other ways to find success and fulfillment. The one-legged man may become an artist, a teacher, a photographer, a writer…
He won’t get the prize money from the race but he may win a different prize.