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Rogue
Member   Posts: 199 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 6/3/2004 at 02:11 PM |
Anya, without overly belabouring it, let me say that I advocate responsible
capitalism. The competition among companies to make the best product at
the lowest price is good for the people. The competition to pay wages is
also good for the people, it keeps them from becoming too low or too high
for a given job (this does not count executive positions, which defy all
attempts to rationalise the pay). However, it needs to be responsible and
make sure that the minimum is really enough and that the gap between
richest and poorest is not too great because that causes great instability
and harm to the system in addition to the suffering of the have-nots. You
absolutely cannot afford to neglect the poor, sick, old, disabled because
that will come back to haunt you in spades. Global capitalism is what is
happening to the U.S. right now with the outflow or at least decreased
creation of jobs, we exploited the rest of the world and kept their
costs/prices down and pushed for opening the world's economies to a global
collective economy and now find ourselves priced out of the market. It is
fitting in many ways, and inevitable, as what we are seeing now is just a
balancing out of a previously created tension. Everybody lived high during
the last century and especially the 1980s, but now the national credit card
bill has arrived in the mail and is due in full.
As for the "poor boy makes good" stories, they are there and are true. My
grandfather was one of these, working hard and taking all opportunities and
making it. Not Vanderbilt rich, but comfortably making it with no drain on
the system. The question that is important with that though is one of
statistics. HOW MANY make it by Loraxing themselves up from the depths of
poverty? One in a hundred million? A few more? A few less?
Statistically, how many CAN make it like that, i.e. how many opportunities
and conditions are there in existence? You can always point to the person
who made it through their own efforts, like the CEO of a company for which
I previously (and still sorta do, they never fired me) worked who was born
in Nigeria and nearly died in an auto accident there before moving to the
States and making his way to the top. You could also always point to the
48 Mexican immigrants who died in a truck trailer while trying to do that
very thing, or the 52 Chinese immigrants dead in a shipping container in
the UK.
Capitalism behaves like a pyramid of varying dimensions, but it must by
definition get narrower at the top. There need to be more of the poorest
of the poor to keep it going, and fewer of the richest of the rich. If all
it took were hard work, or some get-rich plan from an infomercial, and if
all the people making less than $100k a year went out and did the work and
the plan...the whole thing would collapse almost immediately. Massive
inflation would run rampant and devalue currencies and suddenly the
previously poor who are making $100k now with the miracle programme find
that the $100k is just enough to get by once again.
I believe that the competition aspect of capitalism is valuable to human
progress and quality of life. I also believe that we are all responsible
for making sure that the pyramid is as short and narrow as possible, that
the gap between the richest and the poorest is slimmer and that the poorest
have the best quality of life possible.
Responsible capitalism.
p.s. There is one nation in the world to my knowledge that is practicing
this.
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic   Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 6/3/2004 at 02:46 PM |
| *pulls out his ball peen hammer for the capitalist system...* ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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Anya
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 656 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 6/3/2004 at 03:19 PM |
Alright, I definitely needed my face kicked in there. The illegal
immigration issue bugs me, but you guys are right, they're not to
blame...it's the people exploiting them that're doing the dirty work. My
biggest issue with it all is the fact that no more jobs are being made.
I'd not mind all of this globalization and "cheap labor" stuff if there
were more jobs made...that's my biggest approach to it.
As far as the Welfare thing goes, as I said, I don't want to completely get
rid of it, but I do think some loopholes can be closed. There are some
people who do need the support...I've faltered in the way I came across,
I'll admit the wrongs. It's just something that I think people need to
keep attention to and try to improve the system a bit.
Rogue: You hit my reasoning right on the spot. A big reason why I'm
mostly Capitalist is because of that. I think a lot of Socialist societies
involve a little bit of it, but pure Socialism leads to Communism, which I
think would not work well. There needs to be that drive to get someone
wanting to wake up, work, and keep productivity in society. It'd be too
idealistic to think that everyone is a Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa at
heart, I know I'm far from that. People need that drive, or else they'll
just screw around for they're getting paid as much as a hard-worker anyway.
Despite how there's up and downs in these debates, I actually enjoy them.
They help me realize how I can make my points come across better and even
help me learn a thing or two.  I apologise for
the several times I came across as black-and-white or a noisy idiot.
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Meranda_Jade
Fanatic   Posts: 511 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 6/3/2004 at 07:54 PM |
I've been sorta wanting to put my two cents in here, although I've been
apprehensive about it because the last time I opened my big mouth, I pissed
people off.
As I thought about what to write, people were making statements that were
almost word for word what I had to say. Callei, Kira and Schizo have told
about how the system really is and they're right on target about it.
Before you make judgements about poor people who are "working" the system,
you need to get a good look at it, as close to the inside as you possibly
can. Working at a homeless shelter for community service might give you a
bit of that, but not if you go into it expecting every one of them to be
useless derelicts looking for a free lunch before they go out and panhandle
that day's drug money. Pretend to be homeless for a day, go sleep in one of
those places. See how people treat you when you're dirty and wearing rags
and standing in a soup kitchen line. Feel the despair that comes with
knowing that you are invisible to most people and an object of disgust to
others.
When I was homeless, I wasn't a drug addict. I was a teenage daughter of
an insane woman and had no control of what my life was like. That shelter
was one of the scariest places I have ever been, and I will be scarred for
life by the one night that I spent there. Know who else was there? Two
small children who had been found abandoned in a car a few nights before I
was there. I doubt if they had any say about how their lives were either.
But hey, it really isn't as bad as it's dramatized to be, right?
There were some things I could do, I refused to go back to that
shelter and slept on the floor, under a table, in my grandma's one-room
apartment. Not one bedroom, ONE ROOM. I slept there for months and
finished the 10th grade with a floor for a bed. I managed to get a job,
because I had an address. Many places will not hire someone without an
address. It's a catch-22. Don't want to be homeless? Get a job. Don't have
an address? Can't get a job. When I wasn't at school, I was working as
many hours as I could, and they did not obey any child labor laws. I worked
very long hours and I was still in high school. My minimum-wage checks
went to my mother. I bought a car that barely ran and she took it so she
could go and use one of those wonderful perky programs (without which she
could never have risen past the point of extreme poverty with the condition
she was in.) to help her get a job. It took months before she could get us
an apartment of our own. By then, my first car had died. I never drove it.
Luckily, she could get one of her own so she could continue to work. Things
were still hard, that was the year of no christmas. At least we had a place
to live and weren't starving. Thank God for government programs. We did
pull ourselves out of being homeless, but it wouldn't have happened without
government aid or without my ability and willingness to work and get that
car. She couldn't have done it on her own. Those government programs are
very important to helping people climb out of poverty, and a lot of them
work exactly as they're supposed to. The people they're trying to help
sometimes don't know which programs to apply for or what they can do to
help it work right for them. A social worker is supposed to guide people
through the system, but they're overworked and apathetic about their jobs
and sometimes its up to the aid recipient to ask the right questions. It's
very hard for an immigrant to ask the right questions if they have trouble
with the language in the first place.
____________________
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 03:53 AM |
Not all homeless people even LOOK like homeless people! I bet you've
passed a lot of them on the street and never even knew it. Some of them
wash, and shave, and wear nice clothes that they bought before they lost
their jobs and homes.
I lived in what was called a transitional shelter, which was a small two
bedroom apartment up on the third floor of a semi-respectable apartment
building. Probably the nastiest apartment building in snotty Peterborough
NH, however. My boyfriend, 3 week old baby and I moved into one room,
while a girl with a baby (the father was in jail) lived in the other. None
of us looked homeless at all.
It was better than nothing, but it still sucked. No privacy, you couldn't
have your own furniture, and we were only allowed to have one vehicle,
since there was a building policy of only two vehicles per apartment.
Every week we had to get together with a social worker to evaluate our
situation. It was completely humiliating. Mostly we got bitched at for
having two cars, while in the next breath we were bitched at for not having
two jobs. And transitional shelter people have a bad rep with local
landlords, so it's very difficult to find a real home.
And the woman who was our social worker was forever cancelling our
appointments. But if we couldn't make it to one, we got in deeeeeeeep
doodoo, because that meant that we weren't responsible enough or something.
She wouldn't allow me to get a job until my daughter was 2 months old, and
then bitched at us for not saving money for an apartment quickly enough.
Well, finally they said we had to be out by January. We found an apartment
in December.
The car thing is very important - today, you can't get a job in many places
without a vehicle. Everything is so spread out, it would take all day to
walk. But buying a car takes money, which you can only get with a job.
And maintaining it takes more money. And gas takes an incredibly huge
amount of money. Even job-hunting is very costly. I remember back when I
was about 7 months pregnant, selling my CD's little by little to make
enough gas money to drive around with my boyfriend to go job-hunting.
Hoarding every last penny we could, rationing the CD's out so we wouldn't
be tempted to spend cash on anything but gas. Or to use gas on anything
but job-hunting.
I remember my friend's landlord bitching us out for driving the Subaru and
leaving my boyfriend's Ram Charger parked in his driveway. Even though
this man kept toilets and bathtubs in his yard. Obviously, the Subaru took
a lot less gas. But we did what we had to. Because of this, my boyfriend
(who wasn't allowed to sleep in the house, thanks to the landlord) could
not even park the Ram Charger in the driveway at night to sleep. He had to
take it into the woods. I lived in mortal fear that the baby would come in
the night, and I wouldn't know where to find him so he could go with me to
the hospital.
Just trying to give people a picture of homeless America and how they
really live. I kind of think that the homeless may be one of the last few
minorities that it's OK to discriminate against. You can say shit about
blacks or gays or fat people, and everyone gets all offended, but it's open
season on those dirty, lazy homeless people.
Hey, we're just people. People without a home. It can happen to anyone,
for any reason. We're just like you. We have faces, hopes, dreams. We
have music we like, and hobbies. We have parents, children, siblings. We
have memories. All we don't have is luck, money, a house. True, some of
us are lazy. Some are drug addicts. Some are alcoholics. But you'll find
all those vices among the ones who have homes. You hear every week about
some celebrity and his substance abuse. But he has a home, so it's
different.
I'll tell you one thing, you don't really learn about desperation, about
being willing to do anything, ANYTHING, about hanging on by the skin of
your teeth, about fear, about humiliation, and about the value of little
things like showers, refrigerators, screen windows, and thermostats until
you have experienced homelessness. And then you realize, no matter how
poor you are, no matter how ripped your fishnets are and you can't replace
them, no matter how old your car or how small your bedroom or how limited
your CD collection, if you have the basic amenities of life, you are
rich.
I see America through almost third world eyes. What most of you call
necessities, I know are the greatest of luxuries. You CAN live without
cable and a DVD player and a computer. And food and shelter are not always
guarantees.
I'll shut up now, but I could go on and on about this. This is me, Schizo,
once homeless, unemployed, nothing. Go to the galleries. Find my picture.
Find Meranda Jade's. Print them out and put them in your pocket. And
whenever you hear the word "homeless" again, pull those pictures out and
look at them. THAT is your face of the homeless. And maybe them you'll
stop thinking of us like some lump sum that adds up to nothing and
worthlessness. Maybe then you'll realize, it could have been your face. ____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and the
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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Anya
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 656 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 09:24 AM |
Well, I noticed how I made an ass out of myself on saying that all poor
people are abusers of Welfare. It wasn't my full intent, but it sure came
across as that. I'm sorry for offending you on the poor issue. I know
there are some out there that really need the help, I really do...but I
guess my bitterness got the better of me to where I generalized them into
one category.
I now can walk away and have a greater echo of "not all of them are like
that" in my head. I normally have that mindset, but do not know what went
over me this time. As I said, I plan to go to a poor home sometime for
Community Service hours to see what I been missing out. Some people do
need the boost and will sure get their selves somewhere with it, I suppose
I was more mad at the ones that didn't and mistook those as the whole poor
population.
As I said, I apologise for coming across like that and making an ass out of
myself. It may not make up for the deed, but now I know where I faltered.
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Zero
Fanatic  Posts: 459 Registered: 15/2/2004 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 12:43 PM |
| At least you had the guts to share you're oppinion (all I could do was
watch, like a dear caught in headlights)...and the courage to admit you
were wrong....that makes you OK in my book. ____________________
"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak." ~
The Sandman, Dream Country
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 01:15 PM |
| Anya: everyone has a fuckwittage moment... at least you speak ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 01:48 PM |
It's OK, Anya. There are people out there who sit around waiting for a
handout. Way too many of them, too. It's mostly the media's fault, I
think. Everyone sees and hears about the "picturesque" homeless, in other
words, the grimy old drunk on the park bench, or that drug abuser on the
street corner. When in reality a huge percentage of the homeless
population are families with children.
Don't stress out over it, though. Live and learn, you know! ____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and the
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest
of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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Anya
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 656 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 04:47 PM |
Zero: Well, it's the mature thing to do to admit when you're wrong when
you find out. There are those who are too arrogant to know where they're
wrong or to even admit to it. I'm extremely opinionated and sometimes come
off as callous, but I always feel that it's essential to balance those
darker traits with some humility when I see where I'm dead wrong. Some
things are a matter of opinion, but I kind of came off generalizing when
not everyone was on the same boat; hence I made an ass out of myself. I
normally am tactful in word choice, but I came across too impulsive this
time.
Feral: Lol, got that right.
Schizo: I'm a bit on the Darwinian side, but I'm not to the point of
having utterly complete lack of government control...that'd be chaotic. I
see a lot of the poor in my block to be the type you just described. I
used to give them some change just to see them drinking alcohol or smoking
a few days later, which sickens me. It made me stop giving change out to
people. Sometimes, though, if I see someone and they do not ask for
anything, I'll spare some if I feel generous. Otherwise, I'm aware that
there's some out there that really needed the help. In fact, my mom was on
Welfare for two months when she got pregnant with me and got off it as soon
as she could. She was likely a lucky case, though...eventually my family
got its crap together and decided to help her raise me while she finished
college.
Puerto Rico is REALLY big on those bums (not bullshitting, everyone that
begged me usually have some needle holes in their arms or extremely
bloodshot eyes)...at least when I was last over there three years ago. I
used to think low of Puerto Rico due to it all, but I met a few that
changed my mind about things. They had a strange system over there,
though. Doctors did not make appointments and could choose not to show up
for the day and get away with telling people after the people wait eight
hours for him/her, you could wait thirty minutes to an hour for something
because the employees would rather gossip than do their job, and you could
get away with breaking traffic rules and quotas if you were a Puerto Rican
(seriously, there was someone who charged my family more on a purchase of a
product and charged half the amount with a Puerto Rican). Their government
received almost 12 billion dollars a year from the US and paid no federal
taxes - Kansas gets nearly half of that money and pays both federal and
state taxes and had a higher employment rate, even during the economic
down-turn. Roads, construction, and cleaniness was poor over there. I
would think they used that money productively, but it didn't seem so.
On top of that, they had the anti-American flare going. We owned an island
over there "Vieques" and they were protesting against the bombing over
there...they received money over that too, but eh. As a yankee who lived
there for almost two years I was really sick of the situation over there
and that experience almost gave me a low opinion on the poor
population...it took seeing some hard working ones to dispel the "pick on
the whole poor population" mindset that I had back then...Hell, maybe I
still fight it to this day.
My mom also had a friend in the area that would come over asking for money
half of the time when she had a house, a car, and a working husband...then
her husband supposedly "hurt his back too much" to work anymore - why did
he come over to our house walking fine? Don't know. Either way, that "too
hurt of a back" qualified the guy for Social Security over there...the same
went for a man with athlete's foot at my stepdad's work place (he was an
airplane mechanic at Raytheon back then). What was even funnier was that
the family would pick on my mom for being fat and nitpick at each other to
"not be fat" and assumed I gained weight when I wore nightgowns...while
thinking it's okay to use our stuff and use some of our finances and that
Social Security that I don't think they needed in the first place.
At the same time, there were also some people who were more disabled than
those people that didn't need all of that extra help so people of the
mentioned really had no excuse to be jobless. This isn't something you
really hear much on the media or anything, but this was my personal
experience in Puerto Rico. All I have to say is that I would rather have
it as a visiting place, not a place to live. (Beaches were nice,
though.)
There are some poor countries out there that need our extra boost, but I
personally think that we can cut Puerto Rico off and save a lot of
money...unless they decide to become a state and start paying federal
taxes.
What the government should really do is reform the Welfare system as a
whole and somehow have something that keeps an eye on people like Janine in
that one article and cut them off, then save the unabused money for the
people who really need it or even use it for other programs. Like you guys
have tried to get through my head, some people really need it. I'll not
deny that, just those who abuse the system are hurting them in the process.
[Edited on 3/8/2004 by Anya]
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Anya
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 656 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 7/3/2004 at 04:50 PM |
Come to think of it, the big guys in Puerto Rico were very similar to some
of our current businessmen who just stick the [corporate in the business
man's case] money in their pockets and not use it for anything productive,
like stabilizing things in the country more or making useful jobs or
industry..so that they would not have to be so dependent on us.
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