Wow, tell me how poverty is optional Yoshi.

Poverty is anything below 10,000 dollars in the US, if I remember right. The lowest paying job at McDonalds and other equivalent fast food restaraunts etc etc is 12,000 if I remember right.

Yet somehow 36 MILLION people are below the poverty line.

Yep. It's called Welfare--the easy way out. Though that is somewhat unfair--there are people out there who are legitimately in poverty. Most people just don't try hard enough to get out, though, because they're resigned to being in poverty.

No one wants to be poor.

I'll agree with that--but sometimes it's easier to be poor than to give the effort to be comfortable. Trust me, I know of this firsthand.

beign poor sucks and sometimes it's unavoidable.

i went from taking home $4000/month to taking home $1400/month in one day. then 11 months later, after applying to over 50 companies in 7 different countries, selling my house and moving, i went down to making $0/month. then 6 weeks after making $0/month and applying to over 200 different comapnies i started making $400/month washing dishes part time.
try providing for a family of four with that kind of income. if it weren't for my parents we'd all be living on the streets in toronto.
it's amazing how easy it can be to find yourself in that situation.

no one wants to be poor. no one wants to be in that situation.
and **** anyone that says someone in my situation didn't try hard enough to get out of it.
ever apply to the same donut store 6 times in 6 weeks and then have them tell you not to bother anymore.
talk about a boot in the nuts.

It is unavoidable at times, and I said that, so don't misconstrue what I said. But there are even more times when it is avoidable. People just don't try hard enough to get out of poverty. But as I said, I was in one such situation.

Are you kidding? Look in a text book how many nations have been created in the past 100 years... Hell, Germany wasn't even a country until ~1873.

You want to talk about a country that came from nothing and almost conquered the world, look at Germany between 1919 and 1945...

That's unfair. Germany has always been there, the people that inhabit it are of the same type that inhabited it for centuries before. It's not the same with the US. In fact, those who inhabited it centuries (more than 3) before us are now the minority, by far, and have so little to say with the government it's not even funny. Bad example.

Tell me, what do you see in down towns? That's right, bums. People who don't work, but don't care because they're getting money from the government anyway. They also get free meals, and free housing. Sure they don't want to be poor, but they like not working more. If you want a job, you can get one. You may not like the job, but they're there.

It has nothing to do with who was there in the past, it has to do with being raped by the whole world post-WWI and then coming back and kicking everyone's arse in like 20 years.

OVer 50% of those below the poverty line are children or senior citizens - those too old or too young to work at all.

Wrong, you lose.
Tell him what he's won Johnny!

NOTHING, BECAUSE YOU'RE WRONG.

I know a lot of people with educations, and homes, and health who want jobs and can't get them. MANY people don't have these things, and you think they can get jobs?

Define child and senior citizen. Anyone over 15 can work, anyone under 65 can work.

Define.

Child, anyone under 15
Senior citizen, anyone over 65

:p

"What's that? You're only treating two human beings like animals, forcing them to your will and physically beating them when they fail to do it for you? Well, that's alright then. But if it were three, why, you'd just be a monster with no concern for human rights."



I agree with the first part (preserving the union, bla bla bla), but disagree with the second. Unless it's "states' rights" or something.

My history lecturer had an amusing anecdote about what people learn the cause of the American Civil War is at different levels.

Primary School: Slavery
Secondary School: States' Rights
University: Slavery



The trouble is, kids can't make responsible decisions. I wish, now, I had tried harder in high school. I can barely remember Primary School, but to this day I can't do long division, and that's because I never bothered learning it at Primary School. If someone had forced me to learn it, I might have been annoyed then, but I'd be glad now.



I have a degree at one of the best universities in the country. I can't get a job answering phones. I've been applying for jobs for eight months (somewhat sporadically, I admit), and I've gotten but a single interview out of that. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. I was "unsuccessful", as they put it, at getting the job. It would have been nice for them to tell me why, at least. And I have it pretty good; I'm still living at home, and my food is paid for. I do a bit of work for my dad to keep my car running. I don't want to imagine what it must be like for those whose family aren't in a position to help them out.

Anyone can get a job, but not everyone does.

Mmmgllhjfmm.
Mmlujthggfm.

Bleh. Who put all these words in my mouth? Oh, right. I was simply attempting to disperse an apparent commonly-held idea that all slaveholders were rich, whip-cracking demonic monstrosities, and the North was the empathic union who truly felt for the plight of the black man.



The reason they ceceded was their belief that the states should hold precedence over the federal government.



I don't know about your university, but mine teaches that it was for states' rights that the majority of the South supported the cecession.

True as that is, women can still show their bare faces in America without being raped and stoned.



I didn't say America is perfect. I said we constantly strive for perfection. Of course we've had our screw-ups, but we also try to learn from our mistakes and fix them. We are the world's first sole superpower to have not expanded our borders by force, despite having fought in many wars which could have easily given us direct access to countless valuable natural resources. We aid countries in need at great expense even when it is not in our own national interest. I'd say our country is doing all right.

People give McCarthy too rough of a time. Sure, his methods weren't great, but he had good intentions. There was a communist conspiracy, the problem was that he used a shotgun to fix the problem rather than a rifle. But again, Reagan rode in and fixed the problem quite effectively, and now we ain't got no more Soviets running around with their nukes and whatnot.



At risk of altering drastically the direction of this thread, I will say this: Palestinians mass murder civilians intentionally. Israelis mass-exterminate terrorists, and unfortunately there is the occasional occurnece of collateral damage. Huge difference.



Why should we share our power? We got it fair and square. If you wanna be awesome and powerful like us, then just encourage an era of laissez faire entrepeneurism and generate a multitude of wonderful technological and medical advances to put you on the forefront of the world stage.

Now stop whining or I'll kick you off of our Internet.



Two problems. First: Why does everyone here assume that when I say 'we have more bombs', I mean specifically nuclear warheads? I find cruise missiles to be much more fun and useful. We use those far more often, and we have more of them...

Second: Well, there are two problems here connected with this second point. Terrorists do still hate Europe. Remember Madrid, and all the European hostages being kidnapped in Iraq?

Anyway, the terrorists hate us more because we're more powerful and are more of a symbol of Western cultural influence, and the terrorists at least find some common ground with Europe in being anti-American.



You honestly think they hate us because of bases in Saudi Arabia and support of Israel? That may be the reason for a few misguided peons, but the the leaders are smart enough to have more self-serving reasons than that.

Wrong. If you're a single parent with two kids, you have to make more than $15,000 a year or $7.30 an hour full-time to meet the poverty line. One kid requires making $5.80 an hour. A minimum wage job will only keep a single person out of poverty. (website)

Furthermore, various studies have shown that the poverty line is set ridiculously low, or about half of the actual cost of living for a two-parent, two-child home. There are 39 million people (20 million of them children) in "low-income working families", or families making less than twice the poverty line with a least one adult working or actively seeking work and at least one child.

So, stop talking and fear the numbers. Millions of people and their children are poor because they aren't earning enough, not because they aren't earning.

Wolfy: All slaveholders were demonic monstrosities, whip-cracking or not. It goes with the title.

That's a total red herring. He said Western countries.


I hate to disrupt your fantasies, but the Soviet Union didn't collapse because of Reagan. It was because of a whole bunch of internal problems.


You don't even know what you're talking about.

And your sig is completely ridiculous, for multiple reasons.

Yoshi, just like everything else in American government, the poverty line is much more complicated than a single threshold. here is how the U.S. Census Bureau determines poverty. It's a lot like determining taxes.

Edit: /me just now notices the post by Ictus. Damn that guy always says what I would have said had he not said it earlier.

I know, but I'm just talking about how the average person really shouldn't be in poverty. Bah, forget it, nobody's going to listen to me anyways. Have fun.

Wow. I can see this getting mentioned in the history books two hundred years from now and school children being taught about the tension between the U.S. and Canada that lead to the huge war...

And the school children that survived will be Canadian.

They can't get easy high-paying jobs. But they could get a job digging ditches. It's hard and it's not fun, but it is a job. kids and old people don't have jobs because they should be provided for anyway!

Not really, no. Assuming that Mr. John Employer hasn't taken advantage of the flux of incoming immigrants who'd work for less than half of what John Employee would, the kind of paycheck for a job you're describing does not and can not adequately provide for a family of four.

Wolfy, Obi is right. And by the way, illegal immigrants should be paid the same wages as the rest of us, and then we wouldn't have that little problem anyway.

I didn't say that immigrants shouldn't be paid as much as non-immigrants.

osama is one exterme, she is another. if tv is correct terrorists hate you all coz yorue christians and youre free. ann hates us all brown people because we're muslims n we're not. theres mad people everywhere, n personally, my aunt saw that clip in ireland and she got a horrible impression of americans, mind you i then told her if shes gonan believe what her tv says, then she's no better than all the people who support the wrong things. bah, i wish all the good people from all the countries made a super country..like a colony on mars :p

You DO realise that you HAVE to pay for college/university..... And you DO realise that you pretty much must have a college or university degree just to get a decent paying job of at least $15 dollars an hour... Which isn't really much to get by on these days.

Just because you don't wear rags and barely eat, doesn't mean you're not poor.


Who the hell cares what country has more of what, who's got less of what, who's more powerful.....America is a stupid country that is part of the whole world. There is no separation other than the petty differences we have, and the vaintity and ignorance of claiming which nation is greater. America is a normal country like every one else. It has more than other countries do in some ways, and it has less than other countries in some ways. America is better in some ways, yet in others it is not. There's no point in claiming your nation is the greatest.

Financial Aid, scholarships, job on campus (which are ridiculously easy to get, though they don't pay well), etc. That nulls out your argument of colleges take money--as long as you bring home the grades, you can get into college (compiled with SAT score, ACT score, etc). It's not really that hard--especially for state.

And no, we're not like any other country. We have a compilation of societies which makes us totally different, we are COMPLETELY different from most of the rest of the world, etc. Trust me, I've been to other countries. They're not the same.

And my country's the greatest. Say something about it, please.

Like bankrupting themsleves in an effort to keep up with US spending?

Quite correct. He did. However, the original point was that we're more liberal sexually than most Arab nations. In actuality, the statement that America is more conservative than Europe was a red herring.



Like the collapse of their economy due to the Reagan-introduced arms race? How about when Reagan invaded Grenada, overturning what, if memory serves, was called the Kruschev Doctrine that said once a country turned red it didn't go back? It was because of the death of this belief that the Soviet government elected Gorbachev leader, who proved to be a mere bully when what was needed to hold the USSR together was a tyrant.

By the end of his term, Reagan had Gorbachev groveling at his feet, thanks to his prowess at foreign policy.

Sorry to have diverted the topic.



I suppose if you're the type who sympathizes with Arafat, you're beyond all hope of subjective reasoning anyway.



*sigh* You're quite right again. Your perceptiveness deserves a cookie. Now, if you can point out to me one person engaging in this debate who has not exhibited some display of self-righteousness, you'll receive another cookie.

The video is about canada. You are talking about the poverty line and where it actually lies.

Have you been to college? Not everyone recieves financial aid. Not everyone that recieves the financial aid recieves the total ammount they need. Regardless of how much aid they get, a lot of people end up having to pay that back after graduation (i.e OSAP in Canada). Jobs on campus are filled up quickly, and as you said, they dont pay well enough to even support yourself. Not everyone gets scholarships, and not everyone is totally adept when it comes to getting good grades. Does this mean they deserve to live poor? No.




I've heard it said by a comedian before, Lewis Black, "When Americans are held up in their own country for a while, they start to develop the belief that their country is "multicultural". These people need to ****ing get out more". America is a multicultural place, but nowhere near what Canada is. Nowhere near what some other places are as well.

My point was that you're not like any other country, but you are. You have different ways, people, laws, etc. But you're the same in the sense that you're no better than any one else. How can you be. If you're the country that believes in being equal with everyone, why do you constantly like to claim you own the throne? You don't. You never will. There is no throne. America is a regular country in that sense compared to any other country. Just because you own more bombs, more money, etc. That doesn't make you "better" than anyone else. And yes, it's been said a lot in this thread without directly saying it, Americans think they're better than everyone else. Your above statement and below statement make that more than clear



Constant arrogance, ignorance, poking your nose into other countries businesses. Your lower state levels have more than enough of a population of incest bred families. Your lower state levels still can't seem to get over racism, and racism runs rampant in America (lower states). America went to war over slavery, which is the most dumbass thing I've ever heard of. You start a war in another country, regardless of how much you think you needed it, against the recommendations of about 80% of the UN. You then cannot justify the fact that "weapons of mass destruction" have yet to be found, dodge around that issue by saying "We did what needed to be done", still to this day that issue has yet to have gotten a clear answer. You constantly claim you're the greatest, based off the power that's gone to your heads, when it's most likely that if another country were to say the same thing, you'd use those fantastic bombs to destroy them to claim back your "throne".

I'm not saying my country has it's faults, but at least I can see that even though my country has it's greatness, it also has faults, and it's most certainly not the best in the world and that we're better than anyone else by that respect.

Oh yeah, and you've got a monkey for a president :p

Well, no. It's a shame that the people who wanted to treat black people with the full rights that a white person had were very few. This does not take away the fact that the South started a war to keep slavery.



States' rights about what? Slavery. The North did not want Slavery to spread to new states, the South did. The South seceded so slavery could stay.



Get a map of the USA in, say, 1750, and compare it to now. How did the USA get land? It took it from the British. How did it get Hawaii? Guam? The Philippines? It invaded Hawaii, and got Guam and the Phillipines by starting a war with Spain.



Such as all that aid to Iraq and North Korea and Iran?



Uhh... what? Communist conspiracy? Cite? So what if a person were a communist? Doesn't mean they'd sell the country out to the Soviets. And Reagan's as much responsible for the Soviet Union collapsing as Bush was for 9/11.



It's not YOUR internet, any more than Apollo 13 was German.



Gee, not betraying your sadism here at all, are you?



The other result of that, of course, is that the richest 1% doubled their wealth while the middle class's went DOWN. (http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html)



Please, keep your hands where we can see them. This isn't the "whose corpse would you go gay for" thread.

There is a lot more to the collapse of the Soviet Union than Reagan's involvement. It was largely torn apart by corruption and other internal things. Perhaps Reagan sped it up, but saying that he rode in and saved the day is inaccurate, and comes off as some weird worship of him.


I never said I sympathize with him. I'm no fan of Arafat. But I don't like Sharon either.


Fine. I misjudged it. I figured it might not be serious, but there's no way to tell.


Lot's of places in Europe also have problems with racism.

I hereby declare "Freelancer's Law":

The quality of a thread is inversely proportional to the average number of quotes per post.

Edit: New sig!