On 2/9/2012 9:17 AM, rangerssuck wrote:
On Feb 9, 11:14 am, Donn
wrote:
On 2/8/2012 8:07 PM, rangerssuck wrote:

Fer crissakes, you can walk around pretty much any suburban
neighborhood on garbage day and pick up perfectly serviceable TVs,
microwaves and computers for free. If you want to believe that there
are no poor people in America, fine. Go right ahead. But seriously,
John, you may want to take a walk through a homeless shelter some day.
Yeah, they're all livin' the high life there.

How about the families that are splitting a can of soup five ways and
calling it dinner? How about the people who are making a choice
between feeding their kids or buyng their medications? How about the
kids wearing hand me down clothes that are three sizes too large
because it was a choice between paying the rent or buying a pair of
pants at the salvation army?

This is a caricature. It doesn't even have the status of true
anecdotes, let alone an accurate description of a big problem.

I have met some of these people, right here in "affluent" Northern New
Jersey.

I'm sorry, I don't believe you. I don't believe you have met anyone who
has split a can of soup five ways and called it dinner. I don't believe
you have met people who have had to choose between food for their
children and medication.

And no, I'm not going to post their names, addresses and
pictures for your edification. I will, however, suggest that you spend
a little time outside your own comfort zone, and see what's going on
around you. Get some perspective.

Why don't you start from the perspective of telling the truth, rather
than taking extravagantly extremist and *untrue* political rhetoric and
treating it as evidence?

Why don't you grow up. Come to the Englewood, NJ Center for Food
Action, and I'll be glad to introduce you to some of those people.
They most certainly are not "anecdotes," nore are they "extremists" or
"untrue." You really need to turn off Fox "news" and get outside more.

I don't watch Fox News. Why does every leftist who encounters a view he
finds displeasing always reflexively make a snide comment about Fox
News? It's an /ad hominem/.

The simple fact is, poverty is not the problem leftists want to claim it
is. One of your fellow left-wing whiners has already said that only 4%
of the poor - who are 15.1% of the population, so we're talking about
0.6% of the total population - live in destitution. Even that is an
overstatement, because he was pretending that it is chronic destitution,
but it isn't - it's temporary for the vast majority of that already
minuscule minority.

You aren't seeing normal - mentally competent and generally able to work
- people at these food centers on a repeat basis. What you're seeing
there are people with severe mental defects and/or substance abuse
problems. When you leftists whine about "the poor", you're pretending
there are legions of able people who simply can't find work, or
sufficiently high paying work, to be able to care for themselves.
That's simply a lie.

As the Heritage Foundation report - the one your fellow leftist tried to
misrepresent - stated:

Liberals use the declining relative prices of many amenities to
argue that it is no big deal that poor households have air
conditioning, computers, cable TV, and wide-screen TV. They
contend, polemically, that even though most poor families may have
a house full of modern conveniences, the average poor family still
suffers from substantial deprivation in basic needs, such as food
and housing. In reality, this is just not true.

Although the mainstream media broadcast alarming stories about
widespread and severe hunger in the nation, in reality, most of
the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its
household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed:

* 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were
never hungry at any time during the year because they could
not afford food.
* 83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat.
* 82 percent of poor adults reported never being hungry at any
time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.

Other government surveys show that the average consumption of
protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and
middle-class children and is well above recommended norms in most
cases.

Television newscasts about poverty in America generally portray
the poor as homeless people or as a destitute family living in an
overcrowded, dilapidated trailer. In fact, however:

* Over the course of a year, 4 percent of poor persons become
temporarily homeless.
* Only 9.5 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or
trailers, 49.5 percent live in separate single-family houses
or townhouses, and 40 percent live in apartments.
* 42 percent of poor households actually own their own homes.
* Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than
two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
* The average poor American has more living space than the
typical non-poor person in Sweden, France, or the United Kingdom.
* The vast majority of the homes or apartments of the poor are
in good repair.

By their own reports, the average poor person had sufficient funds
to meet all essential needs and to obtain medical care for family
members throughout the year whenever needed.

http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-americas-poor


The leftist caricature of poverty is so misleading as to be for all
intents and purposes a lie. You take what is in fact an extremely
unrepresentative sample, of people who clearly are not typical of the
poor, and call that the typical face of poverty. It's lying.