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Forums - General - Why an Obama Presidency is so important: The poor pay more for Necessities

mrstickball on 23 May 2009

Avinash - who in America cannot get a meal, shelter, or healthcare (if desperately needed)? We have soup kitchens and food pantries, homeless shelters, and hospitals cannot deny people without payment.

Yes, we should always, even under any circumstance, provide such services. There are many charities like the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity that provide said services. I don't think, however, that it's in anyones business to give them money when they've made such bad decisions.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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txrattlesnake on 23 May 2009
mrstickball said:






txrattlesnake said

       Well for one thing, he hit on one of his college professors, and as a result was thrown out of college.  He'd also been putting forth a lot of controversial ideas in his time in college that made some people that didn't want to hear them put him on their blacklist, so he's not really popular in the community where he lives, and he was raised in a very sheltered environment in a community where his family made quite a bit of money while almost everyone else in that community had very little education or were mainly on the working poverty line, so he never made many friends growing up (another part of the that was his dad was an alcoholic yet one of the most prominent people in his community at the same time, so the person was brought up to live in kind of a hush hush environment that further led to the separation that he had to put between himself and those others in his community.)  No one really knows him where he lives even though he's live there over 35 years, he has no references to put on job applications.


      Also, even though it is true that it is his fault that he was thrown out of college for the bad decision listed above, he was always brought up to believe that he would have strong family backing throughout his life and that he would always have strong family support and no real need to work for anything when he got older.  However, his parents got divorced, his dad married another woman, and had a heart attack a few years later and left everything to her.  And his grandparents that used to dote on him and give him significant amounts of money almost every weekend of his life died and their money went to their second son as he survived their first one.


The person I'm talking about didn't receive anything from those that he had been brought up to believe that he could always depend upon and he had none of the resources that formerly let him compete with the higher ups for the better things in life, so he thought how can I compensate for this loss, and decided to start playing dirty in certain ways to compete for the same quality of things that he had been led all his life to believe it was his right to compete for.  But the good or bad guys won instead.


 


Anyway after that bit of trouble he landed himself in he had great difficulty in finding jobs.  He did land a job as the maintenance man at a fast food restaurant but he primarily studied arts and humanities in college and after 30+ years of rather sedentary living where the heaviest things he generally lifted were video games, video tapes, and text books his body wasn't quite cut out for trying to be the guy that unloaded trucks and did the majority of lifting and cleaning at a highly rated fast food restaurant where maintaining those high rankings was really the only thing the managers and supervisors cared for.


I don't know if the sedentary lifestyle was entirely his fault.  He did have asthma that was originally believed to be cystic fibrosis by several doctors that may have led him to become lazy and sedentary  that coupled with the fact that there weren't many opportunities for him to play sports where he lived and where he didn't much feel like mingling with the other kids in his community after an incident where he was going to be in a church play when he was eight and on the way home he managed to say something about his father's alcoholism to the people that were bringing him home that day and he received a severe beating in the middle of the night that night after his mother told his father what he had said to the group of people bringing him home from church play practice made him a bit more reticent to speak to those in his community about himself.


Anyway, he did land the job at the fast food restaurant that I mentioned in the earlier post a few years after he was kicked out of the university.  But after a couple of years the early nineties luxury car that he used to travel to and from work each day wore out and he's been trapped in the small town he grew up in ever since then as he has no vehicle of his own and lives about 60 miles in any direction from even a small city. 

So your story, to sum it up, is:


Guy makes stupid decisions in college, punches his teacher, gets blacklisted, ruins his education, and is lazy and sedintary due to a medical condition. Has silver spoon pulled out from him, gets screwed by parents, and is forced to make ends meet on his own.


Correct?


 line somewhere.

     He didn't punch his teacher.  I said he hit on his professor.  He made suggestive remarks in an attempt to seduce said teacher.  She was 31 and he was 30.  And she made comments back to the effect of if you weren't a student blah, blah, blah.  But she did ask the department head who also was rather fond of this teacher to get involved.  And they had a meeting where the department head basically just said you're trying to steal my lady, I won't allow that.  But the individual was brought up to believe that he was just as good as anyone else yet the opportunities due to his reduced circumstances in life due to becoming disconnected from the lifestyle he had led for the prior 27 years (after most of the family money had departed for other realms) meant that he could either accept reduced circumstances in life and go quietly into that good night or at least try to make an effort to accomplish something grand in life, so what should he have done?

     If you make an effort to do something great and fail you're really not a loser, but if you don't make any effort you're just a quitter.
    



txrattlesnake on 23 May 2009

n

mrstickball said:






txrattlesnake said

       Well for one thing, he hit on one of his college professors, and as a result was thrown out of college.  He'd also been putting forth a lot of controversial ideas in his time in college that made some people that didn't want to hear them put him on their blacklist, so he's not really popular in the community where he lives, and he was raised in a very sheltered environment in a community where his family made quite a bit of money while almost everyone else in that community had very little education or were mainly on the working poverty line, so he never made many friends growing up (another part of the that was his dad was an alcoholic yet one of the most prominent people in his community at the same time, so the person was brought up to live in kind of a hush hush environment that further led to the separation that he had to put between himself and those others in his community.)  No one really knows him where he lives even though he's live there over 35 years, he has no references to put on job applications.


      Also, even though it is true that it is his fault that he was thrown out of college for the bad decision listed above, he was always brought up to believe that he would have strong family backing throughout his life and that he would always have strong family support and no real need to work for anything when he got older.  However, his parents got divorced, his dad married another woman, and had a heart attack a few years later and left everything to her.  And his grandparents that used to dote on him and give him significant amounts of money almost every weekend of his life died and their money went to their second son as he survived their first one.


The person I'm talking about didn't receive anything from those that he had been brought up to believe that he could always depend upon and he had none of the resources that formerly let him compete with the higher ups for the better things in life, so he thought how can I compensate for this loss, and decided to start playing dirty in certain ways to compete for the same quality of things that he had been led all his life to believe it was his right to compete for.  But the good or bad guys won instead.


 


Anyway after that bit of trouble he landed himself in he had great difficulty in finding jobs.  He did land a job as the maintenance man at a fast food restaurant but he primarily studied arts and humanities in college and after 30+ years of rather sedentary living where the heaviest things he generally lifted were video games, video tapes, and text books his body wasn't quite cut out for trying to be the guy that unloaded trucks and did the majority of lifting and cleaning at a highly rated fast food restaurant where maintaining those high rankings was really the only thing the managers and supervisors cared for.


I don't know if the sedentary lifestyle was entirely his fault.  He did have asthma that was originally believed to be cystic fibrosis by several doctors that may have led him to become lazy and sedentary  that coupled with the fact that there weren't many opportunities for him to play sports where he lived and where he didn't much feel like mingling with the other kids in his community after an incident where he was going to be in a church play when he was eight and on the way home he managed to say something about his father's alcoholism to the people that were bringing him home that day and he received a severe beating in the middle of the night that night after his mother told his father what he had said to the group of people bringing him home from church play practice made him a bit more reticent to speak to those in his community about himself.


Anyway, he did land the job at the fast food restaurant that I mentioned in the earlier post a few years after he was kicked out of the university.  But after a couple of years the early nineties luxury car that he used to travel to and from work each day wore out and he's been trapped in the small town he grew up in ever since then as he has no vehicle of his own and lives about 60 miles in any direction from even a small city. 

So your story, to sum it up, is:


Guy makes stupid decisions in college, punches his teacher, gets blacklisted, ruins his education, and is lazy and sedintary due to a medical condition. Has silver spoon pulled out from him, gets screwed by parents, and is forced to make ends meet on his own.


Correct?


That's the story of many poverty-line people, sir. I don't think you understand how often that resonates with various people. I've heard, and seen almost every story imaginable. People make bad decisions all the time. The thing that separates the winners from the losers are the ones that get back up, and try again, rather than sucumb to the mentality of mediocrity.


I must ask: Why didn't the person ever manage to even attempt a technical school that wouldn't care about blacklisted candidates? Why not learn something via self-teaching such as web developent or programming? There are many careers available that one can learn in their spare time, and may not even require schooling. You yourself said the gentleman was lazy. Should he be given a handout despite being lazy, or should he mire in his $8.00/hr job because he does not desire to work harder to learn a more solid career?


 

     I said after living a mainly sedentary lifestyle from the age of four until past the age of 30 he was lazy (and I actually believe the shots he used to take for asthma and allergies contributed to that laziness).  However he worked just as hard as others at two jobs he received later in life.  Ie.  He scraped all the muck off people's dishesat one restaurant almost twelve hours a night risking communicable diseases at one job.  And at his last job he did far more than any of the other employees.  He had to work in inhumane conditions several days trying to clean a basement where the sump pumps were almost always backed up with sewage yet his employers would always just say oh that's just dirty water even though the sewage company would come to clean those wells out, he had to work around carcinogens and antifreeze, he did most of the lifting for everyone at that job despite the chronic pain in his sides it caused him.  As mentioned before he had to get up at 4 am to clean up to drive 45 miles to a job where he would often have to work from 6 am to well pas 2 am before he could make the 45 mile drive back home, so I wouldn't describe him as lazy later in life but probably he wasn't as fit at 34 to do that type of work as someone that was 18 and had always been healthy.

Circumstances just tended to work against this person.  At one point he wanted to join the armed services however he felt that he would have to tell the doctors at the evaluation place that he had had asthma earlier in life because he figured be honest about it now and not get in or go overseas and then have some kind of attack and receive a dishonorable discharge that would follow him for the rest of his days, so he decided to confess to his asthma and of course that kicked him out of the armed services.

 



vgchartzgirl on 23 May 2009

Go Obama!



Avinash_Tyagi on 23 May 2009
mrstickball said:
Avinash - who in America cannot get a meal, shelter, or healthcare (if desperately needed)? We have soup kitchens and food pantries, homeless shelters, and hospitals cannot deny people without payment.

Yes, we should always, even under any circumstance, provide such services. There are many charities like the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity that provide said services. I don't think, however, that it's in anyones business to give them money when they've made such bad decisions.

A lot of hostpitals have shuit down their ERs due to expense, there are a lot of homeless shelters that have to turn people away due to too little funding, the fact is we can't always supply those minimla serivces to everyone, and even where we can the expense is higher than it would be if the governemtn were to take the role and do it themselves directly



 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)

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CHYUII on 23 May 2009
txrattlesnake said:

     For all of their talk about keeping America safe,  the Republicans almost never talk about what can be done to lift the burdens on the poor in this country or how the poor can actually be able to attain a more equal footing in America.  That is why after eight years of a keep the rich rich and do nothing at all for people that make under $50,000.00 a year president that it is so important that at this time we have a president like Barak Obama that really does want to help the poor to elevate themselves in this society.  Whether it is through placing heavier taxes on rich individuals or rich corporations in order to relieve them a bit of their excess wealth and redistribute it to the poor, Obama is the first president in eight years that wants to do something for the benefit of most Americans.

    Today The Washington Post ran a story detailing the plight of the poor in this country.  Poor people in America have to pay a larger percentage of the money that do have on necessities than richer people have to pay for similar services and very often they can't afford things like the most inexpensive automobiles that many of the wealthier citizens take for granted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html?g=0

 

 

 

As to how much of either Obama is guilty of I do not know- I am all for helping the poor but at the same time I do not want the rich to be bullied out of their possession because if I were them I would not like it.

All things need balance.

 



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Tomorrow is the day tomorrow dies.

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TheRealMafoo on 24 May 2009
CHYUII said:

I am all for helping the poor but at the same time I do not want the rich to be bullied out of their possession because if I were them I would not like it.

All things need balance.

 

Yea, like you, millions of Americans are for helping the poor. That's why we are the most charitable country in the world.

The best way to take that feeling of giving away from people, is for the government to say "this is now our job".

As for the people making the rich pay for it, it reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw, that made me laugh. It said:

I am a Democrat, because spending other peoples money makes me feel better about myself.

I am of the philosophy that if you want to help poor people, go help them. Don't make someone else do it for you.



HappySqurriel on 24 May 2009
TheRealMafoo said:
CHYUII said:

I am all for helping the poor but at the same time I do not want the rich to be bullied out of their possession because if I were them I would not like it.

All things need balance.

 

Yea, like you, millions of Americans are for helping the poor. That's why we are the most charitable country in the world.

The best way to take that feeling of giving away from people, is for the government to say "this is now our job".

As for the people making the rich pay for it, it reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw, that made me laugh. It said:

I am a Democrat, because spending other peoples money makes me feel better about myself.

I am of the philosophy that if you want to help poor people, go help them. Don't make someone else do it for you.


There is also a major difference between how efficiently some charities can deliver aid to individuals as compared to the government.

Recently, the local food bank did a major push for donations from people in apartment buildings because of how large the demand increase has been this year. When they did this they included a pamphlet to tell people the kinds of foods they were looking for in particular, as well as gave some statistics about the food bank. One thing that stuck out for me in particular was how they claimed that because of the partnerships they had developed with producers, a monetary donation was able to provide 4 times as much food as could be bought in a store. The reason for this efficiency is simple, the food bank is a large and well respected charity which can get food from massive companies at close to (or below) their cost, and since their workforce is primarily volunteers their overhead is tiny.

In contrast, being that companies don't get any good will from their customers for working with the government the only savings they would receive from large companies are volume discounts, and the added expense of the (typically) unionized government workforce would push the cost of providing a similar service to (at best) a similar cost to buying food from a local store. When you add to this the inefficiency of collecting tax, the cost associated with the bureaucracy of determining who should receive help, and the "loss" associated with people exploiting the system (after all, far more people would take advantage of the government than any respected charity) it potentially costs several times as much per person helped to deliver this kind of aid to people through the government than through charity.



mrstickball on 24 May 2009

I can only wonder how much food could be provide for needy people if the government handed over 100% of Food Stamp money to charities.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Avinash_Tyagi on 24 May 2009
mrstickball said:
I can only wonder how much food could be provide for needy people if the government handed over 100% of Food Stamp money to charities.

Not everyone who needs foodstamps would be helped by charities

 

Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!!  Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)