On 2/9/2012 10:03 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:09:23 -0800, George
wrote:
On 2/9/2012 8:36 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:14:20 -0800, Donn Messenheimer
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?
You're talking past each other with different definitions of "poor."
Late last year the Heritage Foundation (conservative) determined that
4% of those below the "poverty line" had no regular place to live and
had insufficient food. It looks like a good study. That's a big
number, actually, and right here in central NJ you can find plenty of
people who fit ranger's description. The church-run soup kitchen in
New Brunswick has plenty of them. My neighbor dishes out soup there
once or twice each week.
That study
(http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-americas-poor)
said no such thing. What they said was:
Over the course of a year, 4 percent of poor persons become
*temporarily* homeless. [emphasis added]
That's not all it said. What it ALSO said was that 1.5% are homeless
on ANY GIVEN NIGHT. That means,on the average, the "temporarily"
homeless are homeless an average of 4 months per year.
No, it does *not* mean that, because it isn't the *same* 1.5%. The
number simply cannot be massaged to show that any particular person is
homeless an average of four months a year.
They're probably in-and-out on a regular basis. They have, as I said,
no regular place to live.
No, the report does not say that a static 4% have no regular place to
live. It says that 4% - a *shifting* 4% - of the 15.1% categorized as
homeless experience temporary homelessness.
And, although the Heritage report appears to be well done, they've
spun their own numbers in a few places to further their (and your)
agenda. The "homeless" number is one such.
You, of course, have no evidence of any agenda-driven "spinning"; that's
just something that an extreme leftist needs to say.
Now, if by "no such thing" you were including my statement about
hunger, here's their spin on that:
"96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never
hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford
food."
Yes. So, 4% of poor parents reported that their children experienced
*some* episode of hunger during the year because of the parents'
poverty. That does not translate to anyone being chronically hungry.
"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."
I was being charitable to Heritage. I counted only children. They took
their data from an Ag Dept. study and credited it. 100% - 96% = 4%.
Right? And 100% - 83% is 17% of adults. Given the nature of
self-reported figures, the children probably were hungry more than the
4% figure, if the adults were hungry four times as often.
You're grasping. It's what political extremists usually need to do.
The simple fact is, we're *still* not talking about typical poverty; far
from it.
Even if it did, it's a pretty small number, actually. The percentage of
people living below the poverty line is about 15.1%. If four percent of
those are living in the conditions you stated, then that's 0.6% of the
population,
0.6% of the CHILDREN are sometimes hungry. As for the number of
homeless, if you can just brush it off, you're part of the problem.
There's no brush-off, just pointing out that it is far from typical
among the poor, and that it isn't caused by poverty /per se/. The left
have always misrepresented the extent of homelessness as well as who is
homeless. The left have pretended for decades that homelessness is
caused by economic dislocation, such as automobile factories and steel
mills closing in the 1970s and 1980s and those workers being unable to
find other work - that is, that these are people "just like you and me."
That's a politically motivated lie. Homelessness due solely to
economic dislocation, as opposed to being due to mental defects and/or
substance abuse, is but a small percentage of the total homeless population.
You and the other bleeding heart leftist want to pretend that this tiny
percentage (4% of 15.1%, or 0.6% total) are living in chronic
homelessness. That simply is not true.
Uh, I'd consider an average of 4 months per year to be pretty chronic.
The report doesn't document any four months of homelessness per year for
anyone, liar.
There are two main points in that Heritage Foundation study, both of
which I have been making he
1. Most poor people live materially better than the majority of people
lived even 40 years ago (early 1970s), let alone a century ago.
Most people *below the government-defined poverty line*. That isn't
"most poor people," because, as you say elsewhere, most of them aren't
really "poor" in the sense that most of us think of the term.
You haven't given any other measure of poverty, comrade.
2. The number of people living in destitution, i.e. extreme poverty,
is quite small.
Right. Which is what I said above.
The import of that is that Romney was right, even if he said it poorly:
there is no reason to worry much about the poor, as there is a safety
net that keeps all but a small number of the poor from falling into
destitution, and the repairs needed are relatively minor.
Of course he doesn't worry about the poor, and he wouldn't no matter
what the numbers were. That's the nature of his world view.
No, it is false to say he doesn't worry about the poor. You, along with
the rest of the left, are misrepresenting what he said. He said that
destitution can be handled by relatively minor fixes to the safety net,
and that he would do it.
But those "repairs" will never be made as long as there are people
like Romney in charge of anything. They would cut into
financial-industry profits, anyway.
yawn just more left-wing boilerplate and fomenting of class envy;
nothing new.