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The Most Unequal Place In America

pourdeac said:
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Gains in productivity end up as cheaper and/or higher quality goods and services for everyone. Prices for equivalent products have basically halved over the past 50 years, inflation adjusted (or you get twice as much or much higher quality). Economists ignore that routinely but it means the same wage goes much further. Macro economists will believe we've been in a long deflationary cycle (due to increases in productivity) but that concept never seems to extend to individuals.
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Some consumer goods, sure. But not housing, healthcare, education, energy...
 
Poverty causes further poverty. It's easy to pick out the bad choices made by poor people and lay the blame of their poverty on those choices, but the circumstances that led to those bad choices are far more important. Wealth not only correlates with better lifestyle choices, but it mitigates the effects of poor lifestyle choices. When people don't have anything or anything to live for, they are going to do whatever they can to make themselves feel better, and quite often that means fucking like rabbits as soon as they hit puberty, drinking and doing drugs, and dropping out of school. Lifestyle education can help, to a point, but preaching abstinence to a bunch of horny 13yo's is worthless. People need hope and support to get out of poverty. The ever widening economic gap in this country is destroying the hope, and republicans seem dead fucking set on getting rid of the support as well.
 
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Yes they enjoy the fucking, but they also want family. kids/family bring joy and hope and love into human life. When you are poor and you don't get joy out of things like golf and eating out at nice restaurants and ball games and travel and tangible crap, you can still get it from family. Yes, these women had too many kids and couldn't afford them - and this irritates the fuck out of many conservatives on this board and their argument, on paper, is totally correct: if you can't afford kids don't have them and ask the taxpayers to support your poor decision. But yeah, it's not that simple. These people are human and have souls like everyone else...
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Poverty causes further poverty. It's easy to pick out the bad choices made by poor people and lay the blame of their poverty on those choices, but the circumstances that led to those bad choices are far more important. Wealth not only correlates with better lifestyle choices, but it mitigates the effects of poor lifestyle choices. When people don't have anything or anything to live for, they are going to do whatever they can to make themselves feel better, and quite often that means fucking like rabbits as soon as they hit puberty, drinking and doing drugs, and dropping out of school. Lifestyle education can help, to a point, but preaching abstinence to a bunch of horny 13yo's is worthless. People need hope and support to get out of poverty. The ever widening economic gap in this country is destroying the hope, and republicans seem dead fucking set on getting rid of the support as well.
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That's a hell of a post. Positive rep!
 
Taxpayers support a lot of poor decisions. Decisions that bring life into this world are much easier to justify than decisions that bring death like endless wars or by propping up financial markets to make sure the rich can stay rich and rain crumbs on the poor or by funding an ever growing prison system.

You'd think Republicans would rather spend more money housing and clothing and feeding a child than a prisoner. Sadly that's not the case.
 
PhDeac said:
Taxpayers support a lot of poor decisions. Decisions that bring life into this world are much easier to justify than decisions that bring death like endless wars or by propping up financial markets to make sure the rich can stay rich and rain crumbs on the poor or by funding an ever growing prison system.

You'd think Republicans would rather spend more money housing and clothing and feeding a child than a prisoner. Sadly that's not the case.
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Agreed. This is what is so vexing about a typical wrangor or jhmd post wrt poverty/entitlements.
 
WakeandBake said:
Yes they enjoy the fucking, but they also want family. kids/family bring joy and hope and love into human life. When you are poor and you don't get joy out of things like golf and eating out at nice restaurants and ball games and travel and tangible crap, you can still get it from family. Yes, these women had too many kids and couldn't afford them - and this irritates the fuck out of many conservatives on this board and their argument, on paper, is totally correct: if you can't afford kids don't have them and ask the taxpayers to support your poor decision. But yeah, it's not that simple. These people are human and have souls like everyone else...
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meh, I disagree. I doubt there is very much planning or purpose involved with impoverished high school girls having multiple babies and dropping out of school; That's a generalization, but I think it's an accurate generalization. What many people (especially conservatives) fail to understand is that bad decisions are often causal and symptomatic at the same time. Yes, it's stupid as fuck and cruel to bring multiple children into the world when you can't even support yourself, but terrible circumstances deter rationality and common sense. Common sense is just the learned result of positive and negative reinforcement, and many communities and environments just don't provide the requisite positive reinforcement for children to learn from.
 
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PhDeac said:
Taxpayers support a lot of poor decisions. Decisions that bring life into this world are much easier to justify than decisions that bring death like endless wars or by propping up financial markets to make sure the rich can stay rich and rain crumbs on the poor or by funding an ever growing prison system.

You'd think Republicans would rather spend more money housing and clothing and feeding a child than a prisoner. Sadly that's not the case.
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Great post. People are quick to chastise people like this woman for her situation, but don't bat an eye when the wealthy make a poor decision or game the system. If poor people use the system to their advantage, they're lazy moochers...but if the wealthy take advantage of the system, they're just savvy business people.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
meh, I disagree. I doubt there is very much planning or purpose involved with impoverished high school girls having multiple babies and dropping out of school; That's a generalization, but I think it's an accurate generalization. What many people (especially conservatives) fail to understand is that bad decisions are often causal and symptomatic at the same time. Yes, it's stupid as fuck and cruel to bring multiple children into the world when you can't even support yourself, but terrible circumstances deter rationality and common sense. Common sense is the product of positive and negative reinforcement, and many communities and environments just don't provide the requisite positive reinforcement for people to learn from.
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Hmm, I think this is true in a few cases, but I think by and large when hopeless young women who don't have much get pregnant, that baby is something that they cherish and that they are very proud of and that gives them joy and hope. Rich girls and middle class girls get abortions, poor girls have the baby. Nothing can take motherhood away from them, it's not something you buy off a rack in a store.
 
Strangely what makes someone a moocher in our society is that they have little before they mooch. Someone who has more when they mooch isn't considered a moocher at all.
 
WakeandBake said:
Hmm, I think this is true in a few cases, but I think by and large when hopeless young women who don't have much get pregnant, that baby is something that they cherish and that they are very proud of and that gives them joy and hope. Rich girls and middle class girls get abortions, poor girls have the baby. Nothing can take motherhood away from them, it's not something you buy off a rack in a store.
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It's human nature for a mother to take pride and joy in their children, thus the term "pride and joy", but the percentages of teen pregnancies that are "unintended" is considerably, overwhelmingly higher than the amount of planned teen pregnancies. I can't quickly find a comprehensive research study, but this article on teen pregnancies near Memphis TN puts the number at 80% unintended.

http://www.alternet.org/gender/one-heroic-womans-war-poverty-and-teen-pregnancy
 
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I was addressing unintended in my post. I assumed none were intended. Doesn't change my point.
 
WakeandBake said:
I was addressing unintended in my post. I assumed none were intended. Doesn't change my point.
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so you agree that the vast majority of these teen babies, and children born to poverty, are the result of irresponsible fucking, not poor girls seeking a possession to cherish.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
so you agree that the vast majority of these teen babies, and children born to poverty, are the result of irresponsible fucking, not poor girls seeking a possession to cherish.
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Absolutely. The unplanned pregnancies are the result of the irresponsible fucking, the children are a result of keeping the baby to cherish.

My posts on this thread have been addressing all pregnancies not just teen, though. Not sure where it turned to just teen.
 
WakeandBake said:
Absolutely. The unplanned pregnancies are the result of the irresponsible fucking, the children are a result of keeping the baby to cherish.

My posts on this thread have been addressing all pregnancies not just teen, though. Not sure where it turned to just teen.
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ok, don't want to get further off topic, I was just trying to figure out what you meant.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
Some consumer goods, sure. But not housing, healthcare, education, energy...
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That is a pretty weak statement. If you want the same housing, healthcare, and energy that you would have gotten at the 50-year-ago cost (small apartment, shot-bandaid-pat-on-the-ass, no A/C, three lightbulb and AM radio house, car that blows its tires every 500 miles and its engine at 30,000), then I would argue that it would cost roughly the same now as it did then, inflation adjusted. But ignoring that the 3BR/2BA apartment with central A/C requiring electricity to run appliances and TVs (on all day), MRIs, CT scans, joint replacement, chemo, and cars that run for 100,000 miles without any major maintenance are of a completely different quality than what you are comparing them too from 50-years ago ignores a huge, and maybe most important, part of the comparative issue.
 
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