That's it, I have had enough.

THIS! I know many people who are just poor due to a disability (SSI) who just can't work. i.e., cancer, epilepsy, MS, Parkinson, dystonia, whatever the illness THEY DIDN'T ASK FOR. I know they would rather work then be sick any day of the week. None of them are drug addicts.

 

are they skinny from malnutrition? are they cold because they cant afford shelter? or perhaps they live in a country so rich that they have a support network that provides these things.

again, if you care about poor people, then you should worry about people who do not live in the US. else you simply care about poor americans, who dont really exist, and makes you are relatively ammoral nationalist.

if you claim to care about poor people, then one of the most important thngs you can do is favor an open immigration policy so more actual poor people can move here where they will get fat and happy like us.

of course i do not claim to care about poor people.

 

hey i dont disrepect our veterans. you say that because you think it is a hot button issue that you can use to get knee jerk reactions against me. thats ok i dont mind, you are a emotional little thing, and i think that is cute. stupid, but cute. women dont really need to be smart, so no worries.

thanks for the prayers, lovely.

its true, right and wrong are an illusion!

 

Perspective, people!

Understanding Poverty in the U.S.
By Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield

September 13, 2011

The U.S. Census Bureau’s annual poverty report, released this morning, found that 46.2 million Americans, or one in seven of us, were poor in 2010. The prolonged recession, with its high levels of unemployment, clearly has swollen the ranks of the poor.
But high numbers for poverty as defined by the Census Bureau predates the current recession. In most years for the past two decades, in fact, the Census Bureau declared that more than 35 million Americans were “living in poverty.” Last year’s number was 43.5 million.
These figures sound ominous. But do we really understand poverty in the United States? What does it mean to be poor?
To the average American, the word “poverty” implies significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter and clothing.
Activists reinforce this view, characteristically declaring that to be poor in America means being “unable to obtain the basic material necessities of life.” The old-stream news media traditionally amplify this idea: Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden waiting to eat in soup kitchens.
But the actual living conditions of most of America’s poor—that is, the poor as defined by the Census Bureau—differ greatly from these images, as we document in a new research paper from The Heritage Foundation called "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts about America’s Poor."
This is in part because in calculating income the government agency doesn’t count most means-tested welfare assistance --on track to top $1 trillion this decade alone -- and in part because of exaggerated depictions of the poor.
According to data compiled by other government agencies, the typical household considered “poor” by census officials has a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household has cable or satellite TV, two color televisions, a DVD player and a VCR. If children (especially boys) are in the home, they have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household has the ordinary conveniences: refrigerator, oven, stove, microwave.
Half the poor now have a personal computer. A third have a widescreen TV (plasma or LCD); a quarter have a digital video recorder such as TiVo.
In all these cases, U.S. Department of Energy data say so. Consumer items that were luxuries or significant purchases for the middle class a few decades ago have become commonplace in households defined by the Census Bureau as poor. In part, this is a result of the normal downward trend of prices in the years after a product is introduced. Initially, new products tend to be expensive and available only to the affluent; over time prices fall sharply, and the product saturates the entire population.
The Left uses the declining relative prices of many amenities to argue that it’s no big deal that poor households have air conditioning, computers, cable TV and widescreen televisions. They argue that even though most poor families have a house full of modern conveniences, the average poor family still suffers from substantial deprivation in basic needs such as food and housing.
Fortunately, that’s not the case.
Let’s look at housing. The old-stream media usually present America’s poor living in real deprivation: a large family crowded into a leaky, rundown trailer, for example. But only a tenth of the poor live in mobile homes, according to government data; half live in single-family houses and the remaining 40 percent live in apartments.
These homes in most cases are in good repair and almost never overcrowded, according to the government’s own statistics. Poor Americans, on average, live in larger houses or apartments than does the average, non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.
The media cry with alarm that “nearly one in four kids” in the nation are hungry. Again, government data show otherwise. Fully 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during 2009, despite the severity of the recession, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Of course, these facts don’t mean that all poor Americans escape hardship. Although the overwhelming majority of the poor are well-housed, around one in 70 poor persons was homeless at any specific time during the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
And although the majority of poor families have an adequate, reasonably steady supply of food, many worry about keeping food on the table. One in five poor adults experienced temporary food shortages and hunger at various times during the year.
Those who are temporarily hungry or homeless will find no comfort in the fact that their condition is relatively infrequent. Their distress must be a real and serious concern for policy makers.
Regrettably, however, most discussions of poverty in the U.S. are riddled with exaggeration and misinformation. Effective anti-poverty policy must be based on an accurate assessment of actual living conditions and the long-term causes of real deprivation—especially the collapse of marriage and erosion of the work ethic.
Over the long haul, as we conclude in “Understanding Poverty in the United States,” grossly exaggerating the extent and severity of material deprivation won’t benefit the poor, the economy and our society as a whole.
Robert Rector is senior research fellow in domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, where Rachel Sheffield is a research assistant.
First appeared in Real Clear Politics

 

Since you have elected not to answer my question I can only assume that it is because you are wrong.

I am not stupid enough to think you will ever admit you were wrong because that would require an iota of humility.

I have nothing against you, my friend, but like Red and SouthernTgr said, you are contrary for the sake of being contrary sometimes.

 

couldn't have said it better myself.....

 

dude, i dont know what your question is. asking me to justify something is not a question. its your fault you have no evid3ence to disprove something, especially when you could with one single counterexample. but you cant. not one. not one of the millions and millions of people in america. cant find one counterexample.

what am i wrong about? and how have you demonstrated that i am wrong? you cant even provide one singe example of a hungry person in america. you have never even seen a malnourished person who wasnt a drug addict, except for africans on tv. the idea that anyone would ever not get enough calorties in ameica is crazy. my point is overwhelming! poverty is a big indicator for problems, not with starvation, but OBESITY! i couldnt be more right. you could stack up all the things that ever were right and i would be sitting right on top, challenging you to provide me with one singke example of a proper poor person in america, a person who is comparably poor to a poor person in a third world country, meaning they lack the essentials of food and shelter.

one of the poorest places in america is the Mississippi delta, small rural towns in LA and miss. and it used to be years ago, the government would send aid there because the kids were tiny and malnourished with distended bellies like african kids. now the same area is afflicted with horrifying obesity rates! becasue the poor folks there are uneducated poor decisionsmakers that eat too much. they could take the money they waste on way too mch food and better themselves, but they are too dumb. and thats too bad for them, they are dumb. but they are not starving or freezing like a real poor person.

so again, in america, we are talking about people who are relatively poor. but relative poorness is not nearly as crippling as actual poorness. this is wht the guys at occupy wall street need to understand.

nope.

have you people never met anyone from a third world country? have you ever read a single word about another place besides america? do you have any idea what china and india are like? people there are actually poor. they sell their kids as sex slaves so they can eat. the idea of obesity is completely insane to them.

 

ah, Mr. Spelling Bee...do you know how many words you have misspelled in these sentences (again) yet you still claim to have won many spelling bees. Is spelling America, calories or what hard for you? smh.

Oh wait, women don't have to be smart.:rolleye33: I am sure with out a doubt you will try to squirm your way out of your spelling errors. "It was just a typo." Martin cries.:insane:


yes, I have stated on here many times that my brother is a priest. That means he goes to 3rd world countries and does missionary work. He will soon be leaving for Haiti and just got back from Nepal. So, yes, some of us are in touch with reality.

Let me help you out. A REAL MAN ADMITS TO HIS MISTAKES AND DOES NOT NEED EXCUSES. PERIOD. THE END.

 

Another epic fail in Martin's life. I,myself, have pointed out many times where you have misspelled words on this forum. According to you, you have only done it once since 2003.

So you admit to being lazy but you are willing to call out people who are poor for reasons you don't know about.:insane: