mr dave

and you're prejudiced. see how calling people names works? i made a funny based on the stereotype of typical conspiracy theorists that i know both in real life and encounter online and you took me for an idiot who needed to be told about society.

just so you know... i've been living below the so-called poverty line my whole life. ironically enough it's not until i went to college and heard idealists going off about the state of society that i realized that i had actually grown up quite 'poor'. i knew we weren't rich, but not everyone is supposed to be either.

the main reason ends aren't meeting is because the individual is allowing their wants to outweigh their needs. if more people stopped trying to keep up with their neighbors and just dealt with what they had they might find that it's easier to accomplish than they perceive it. while i've never been above the poverty line i've never gone hungry or not had a roof over my head.... funny how not drinking 3 nights a week and cooking at home makes it a lot easier to pay the bills. an active social life is not a basic human need.

then again it all depends on how people want to define 'making a living' does everyone NEED to have a nice 4 bedroom house with a big yard and a white picket fence out in the burbs with 2 cars and 3 kids and a dog? or is it just what a lot of people WANT?

i never mentionned tax breaks and the 50-100k worker but that sure as **** is NOT poor wages. i've also lost 2 jobs in the last 5 years to outsourcing, i'm quite familiar with its effect. but something you don't seem familiar with are the clauses with the government loans to those corporations (at least in canada) that require them to hire X amount of canadian employees within a specified time frame or their deal goes bust. mind you, the government can't exactly force a company to retain those employees forever either.

i'm not sure where you're coming from about the drug use but i agree that there needs to be more in place to help addicts. but i think the real issue is the so-called drug education most kids receive in school, along with the attitude i alluded to earlier with the inability to balance wants and needs. at which point the drug becomes the crutch the individual can use to blame their inability to satiate the desires of their ego at the expense of the health of their being.

you do it to yourself
you do
and that's why it really hurts.

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jibber

I was actually talking about the situation in the states, which is what the original poster was basing his thread. This was why I referenced outsourcing, because as far as Im aware, the US government doesnt have as many incentives for corporations to keep jobs in the country. I know about the loans and incentives the canadian government has in place, but thanks for the reminder. I wasn't saying that the 50-100k worker was poor, I was alluding to the op's original reference about the shrinking middle class. In the US, minimum wage is often not enough to pay grocery bills, rent, and medical bills especially. canadians have a smaller minimum wage, but they dont have to pay such high health insurance premiums and since they're in such a low tax bracket they get quite a lot of it back in income taxes. this is not to say that we still dont have a problem, especially in calgary where affordable housing is expensive at best and non-existant at worse. I understand now that you grew up poor, but I think you have quite a warped reality of what most people who are really poor live like. spending money drinking all the time isn't what I'd call an "active social life", it's called a drinking problem. see my drug/addiction section. you called me prejudice at the start of your post, well now i'm pulling that out on you in regards to your attitudes on addiction. yes, it was their choice to start using drugs and by consequence get addicted. but, if you've grown up seeing crack deals go on in your house since you were 2 years old, its not such a stretch that you'll be using in a decade or so as well. Plus, your use of the word "crutch" is a HUGE understatement. I'm sure you're aware of the effects a narcotics addiction (yes i'm including alcohol in this) has on a person's brain chemistry. it's not that their using this as an excuse (at least, its not only that), their brains have been altered to a point that it is often impossible for them to quit on their own. any good social welfare program has strict no-drug rules, one relapse, and they're back out on the street. as well, a lot of people who are on the streets (or close to it) have mental disabilities that really hinder their ability to function on a day to day basis. these are the people i'm talking about when i say the working poor. people who have full time jobs, but can't even afford to eat (yes, these people DO cook at home, SHOCKING!) you're explanation of the "working poor" is apparently someone who would like to have a 4 bedroom house, dog, and a white picket fence, but can only afford a cheap appartment. kind of hard to have a white picket fence when you live under a bridge or in a homeless shelter huh?

oh, and just so you know, I work in the non-profit sector for an organization that deals strictly with poverty and homelessness. this isn't a new topic for me.

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TheBig3KilledMyRainDog

Those addicted to substances should be left to their own devices. Life has a way of balancing things and when you fail to allow that balance to occur, you ruin things for yourself.

And explain to me why a government should do a anything to keep a business or manufacturing in the country.

If people would vote with their cash, you wouldn't have this issue. If you want businesses to remain stateside, you should only buy items made stateside.

The problem is people don't want to change if they have to leave their comfort zone. They'd rather government mandate it.

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mr dave

seems to me it's more like people want government to act like a babysitter while maintaining the illusion that the individual is in complete control.

jibber - paragraphs. please.

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sleepy jack

Shit it's the classic "How do I respond!? I know I'll point out something that is an excuse for my lack of reply that is somehow her own fault!" Seriously there is quite clearly paragraphs in there, you see that giant space between the two big groups of words? I know you do champ!

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The Unfan

My brain exploded reading half of the posts on this thread. So quick run down of opinions.

Capitalism is good because it allows people to succeed on their own individual terms as opposed to being forced to be equally.

Drugs are bad, but the government shouldn't be our baby sitter. Rehab programs should be available to those who want it, but nobody should be able to force another into a rehab program.

Outsourcing is good for global economy but bad for local economy. I'm sure we'd create a better long term global economy if we helped them develope new technologies. It'd cost more in the short run but we'd not need to outsource later, assuming they're compitent.

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TheBig3KilledMyRainDog

Well forget success, capitalism is economic Darwinism. What people want, they can get, and what no one has any interest in dies by the way side.

Its objective, theres no morality in capitalism. Theres no political affiliation. If you want guns, theres a market. If you want solar power sprinklers you can get them.

Look no further than 19th century conservatives (state side) who wanted an agricultural economy because capitalism allowed too much "sinful" activity to permeate society.

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TheUsed2lguy

Capitalism is OK in a mixed economy. It's just the laissez faire capitalism that Republicans are pushing towards that is a problem. Capitalism is great in the sense that supposedly the hard work and studying is proportionate to how you'll be compensated. (I wish it was always the case).
The problem, though, with capitalism, is that with something like oil, which almost all Americans have an infinite amount of demand for, they can just charge you whatever the f*ck they want.
They say barrels up to $132 a barrel today, but we don't know those numbers to be definitively accurate.
The idea of having some government is that they will look over oil prices objectively without having special interests.
What's interesting is that politicians would probably screw us first hand in that kind of scenario, but at least we could say, 'hey, this is bullsh*t' to them. But with all this privatization, they have managed to create a bad guy without a face. We say, 'Oh, all those damn corporations are screwing us', but we don't even know what their faces look like, so it just makes me stew about it, and then the politicians are still screwing us by taking lobbyist money.

TheBig3KilledMyRainDog

Well actually thats flawed for about three reasons.

The oil company's charging whatever they want is not the problem. As I mentioned above, its people unwillingness to change. I ride a bike or take public transit most everywhere. I'm not so sure most people are willing to do that because they want their heat or their AC, they want their radio and they don't want to have to plan. They want to leave when they want and change coarse at any point.

Simply put, if you don't like something about oil, stop buying it. People don't want to use capitalism to do the work they want to have the government fix the problem for them. Theres nothing wrong with capitalism in this regard.

As for politicians and lobbiests and all that, this is the same syndrome in a different manner. Instead of using your money to change things, you have to use your vote. With half the country not voting it should be easy to eliminate politicians that aren't doing the right thing. Money persuades those who aren't paying attention and will likely not vote in local or statewide elections.

To those who are paying attention without being coerced, one should be able to bring up a bad voting record or terrible policy making to influence their decisions. If you don't vote correctly or at all, you have only yourself to blame.

As for the capitalism the Republicans practice you've got two things wrong. Theres nothing "hands off" about how they practice it. First off all, their tax break policy toward big oil so they don't have to drill as much has led to massive and misproportioned profit margins for exxonmobil. Hardly hands off.

Secondly, in order to secure a more perfect capitalistic environment, the republicans actually championed anti-monopoly laws because as anyone whose ever been to the DMV knows, when you have no competition, thats when things get really ugly.

People are lazy and to prove my point, I'd like to use this video to enhance my position...watch the whole thing.

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