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Elephants and Jackasses...

Discussion in 'Permanent Threads' started by Nettdata, Oct 14, 2016.

  1. trojanstf

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    You know poor doesn’t equal stupid right?
     
  2. shimmered

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    Weird.

    It’s like there’s something else holding their potential for exceptionalism back.

    When every door out of the poorhouse is nailed shut what can anyone expect?
     
  3. xrayvision

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    I can’t imagine what you are talking about. Surely it’s not the pervasive mentality that poor people are stupid. Or just lesser people. It’s almost as if that kind of contempt for those who are without affects how they are viewed by those who are more fortunate. Or that breaking a cycle of poverty is as simple as not being stupid.

    No, it can’t be that.
     
  4. xrayvision

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    Again, you’re being obtuse. “All they’ll ever be” is talking about how they are defined by others as people and not just their economic status.
     
  5. Aetius

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    So it looks like we're moving into the "paying off porn stars" portion of tonight's program.
     
  6. Puffman

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  7. ODEN

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    What do poor people in America lack? Are they not given an education? Are they not given welfare? Is there no access to medical care for poor people?

    EDIT: Would you say it is important for the Government to regulate equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?
     
    #5127 ODEN, Jan 12, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2018
  8. Gravy

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    Generally speaking, poor people in fact do not receive good educations. Poor brown people especially don’t receive good educations.
     
  9. xrayvision

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    I would say equality of opportunity is the way to go. Equality of outcome would lead to a communistic and ultimately violent society. But its a loaded question because it ignores the realities of what its like to live in poor areas that typically receive less funding for school due to poorer overall performance. People generally care less about these communities because they supposedly have the same shit everyone else has but utilize their opportunities poorly. They might have similar government provided amenities but that is where it stops. Kids often times come from broken homes without good support.

    Think of it like you started on 2nd or 3rd base and they are trying to barely get a try-out to be on the team.
     
  10. shimmered

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    I need to ask my brothers which one of us is the poor stupid sibling. It might be me and I don’t know it.

    Y’all my parents were sharecroppers. Their parents were bootleggers, linemen (hey Arizona my granddaddy ran line across you), truckers, and cotton pickers (pickers. Not farmers.) and raised my parents to be trash.

    My daddy grew up off and on in houses with dirt floors and newspaper stuffed in cracks and my mom was shuffled around her relatives after her mom died of cancer.

    Hell, I grew up in trailers, lived on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma, in houses with no plumbing or heat source, and ultimately in a single wide trailer in the back of the woods.

    I got knocked up at 16. My brother became a daddy when he was 18.
    I’ve eaten possum, squirrel, rabbit, poke sallet, and perch caught on cane poles with mustard greens and shallots my mom found LITERALLY GROWING IN THE FUCKING WOODS.

    All in all I’m pretty familiar with poverty and how it affects a family. Especially when you’re *juuuust at that line* of over limit for “needing help” so you fall through the cracks because your parents both have jobs and your mom drives a 22 year old pickup so she’s got assets that she can sell for money but if she sells the truck how does she get to work? If she doesn’t sell the truck wtf do her kids eat and wear?

    What did we lack as kids?
    Food. Try sharing a can of ravioli between five people. Or waking up in the middle of the night with your stomach cramping because dinner was a mayonnaise sandwich and now you’re fucking starving but you can’t eat because if you eat now you can’t tomorrow so instead you drink two big glasses of water and hope you can go back to sleep.
    Clothing. We got one pair of jeans and one pair of shoes to last an entire school year. I spent my 7th grade year - the entire year - with ingrown toenails because my boots were so small during my sixth grade year.
    At times heat. Propane trucks didn’t like driving that far out. Oh, that also meant we couldn’t cook.
    Healthcare. We only went to the county clinic for vaccinations. I didn’t see a dentist until I was 20 years old and had to have four root canals. Thanks to my first husband those were handled. He at least had the sense to push me toward Medicaid while I was pregnant with our son.
    Teachers who cared. We were poor, and obviously poor, and hungry, and very obviously hungry. They looked at us the same way you’re talking about poor people here on this board. We were punished for things out of our control. Think spending a week without recess because your parents can’t afford to pay for the required binder so you’re getting red cards. Or being bullied and picked on because of your poverty and rather than stopping it the teacher joining in saying “girl you’ll be lucky you ever see anything beyond your parents’ trailer.” Or needing supplies for projects and getting zeros because projects cost money.
    It’s a fact that public education in poor school districts isn’t as good as education in more affluent ones. Throw in that in poor school districts the kids often work to try to bring some money into the house, and education suffers.

    I got lucky and wormed and worked my way through some difficulties. All three of us joined the military. It paid off better for them than for me but whatever. I’ve made my own opportunities along the way.
    Sheer force of will and a complete lack of acceptance that poverty would define me, or us, moved me forward.
    My parents did their best too - they were resourceful and hard workers. Mom volunteered her time so we would be able to do things with other kids, including camps and sports. Dad worked. He left at 5 am and got home close to 9 pm. Every day. Six days a week. For years.

    I’m not interested in answering your gotcha question. You’re not asking with the intent to broaden your perspective. You’re asking so you can respond with whatever bullshit you’ve got drafted.

    I’m only interested in the acknowledgment that being poor isn’t a character flaw.
    Despite the reality that it’s not a character flaw, and that it doesn’t have to be an inescapable hell, our current system and mindset doesn’t support people leaving poverty.
     
    #5130 shimmered, Jan 12, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2018
  11. Kubla Kahn

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    You are still ignoring the economic realities of the endless flow of illegals. Again why does Canada that cares just as much for the plight of the world get to have much higher standards and the mere suggestion here is answered with xenophobia claims and emotional side steps like yours? Shouldn't we focus on helping our poor people first? Get our own homes in order first?
     
  12. shimmered

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    It’s almost like a nation with more resources would be able to do both.
     
  13. shimmered

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    So you’re ignoring the limitations that living in lower socioeconomic classes places on a person and instead saying that if a person is poor it’s their own fault.

    When people aren’t taught to make good decisions and to utilize the window when the door is closed, they’re absolutely going to stay in that maze. But part of being taught to make good decisions is a result of having the opportunity to learn.
    Something poor kids don’t often get because their parents are absent due to work/prison/life/whatever is the opportunity to see their options. Instead they’re told “you’ll be lucky to ever see anything beyond your parents’ trailer”.
     
  14. Kubla Kahn

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    Yet somehow fails to do either.
     
  15. toytoy88

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    I think there's quite a few of us here that grew up dirt poor and pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps to exceed the expectations others had for us.

    I grew up 60 miles from Canada in house with no insulation...we wrapped our home in Visqueen in the winter to try and hold the heat in. I had to fish all summer to make sure we had fish to eat in the winter. I hate fish with a passion that knows no bounds now. While my friends were out playing, I had to go get firewood because winter was coming. My clothes never fit me because I grew so fast, other kids made fun of me for it, blah, blah, blah....

    But we all share one thing in common...somewhere along the line we learned that it's up to us, no one else, to make sure we have a decent life. It's not up to the government to take care of us, it's on us and no one else. We learned to be independent.

    And that's the problem I have with unlimited immigration. I think liberals hearts are in the right place, I really do. But the sad truth is you can't help everyone and you especially can't help those who don't know how to help themselves by giving them free shit. We have a country full of people that are now on the third generation of LBJ's "Great Society" who have never worked and have no idea how to take care of themselves without government intervention. And folks want to bring in more people that are unskilled and uneducated? We have plenty of those already that the rest of us are supporting. Perhaps we should do something about improving their lot in life before we import more.
     
  16. Gravy

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    Do you think immigrants come here with a "the government just gives you free things attitude?" You should probably tell all those guys I grew up working with. So many hours stomping around in cow shit and for what?

    But your post is contradictory.

    You implicitly say you don't think the people already here should be helped any more because help just translates into dependence. If that's the case, it doesn't matter if someone immigrates here and competes for the same low skill job. If we helped the people here, were just condemning them to a life of being dependent right? Shouldn't our citizens just compete in a free labor market? Why do they need government intervention?

    You're not interested in the government helping anyone, citizen or not.
     
  17. Nettdata

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    Did I miss something? Who mentioned "unlimited immigration"?

    My rough understanding is that around 45-50% of immigrants are close family relatives of existing US citizens, another bunch are brought in on work visas, and some 3-4% are part of the immigration diversity lottery.

    And less than 1% of the lottery applicants were actually selected... and that represents around 100k people.
     
  18. Aetius

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    Let's not pretend that Trump was making some compassionate but resolute point about the limitations of America's ability to absorb the economic woes of the wider world. He was saying that only shit people come from shit hole countries, and we should keep them all out as a result.
     
  19. Gravy

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    It's good to go watch his clip from the campaign when he raved about Haitians in Florida and how he was going to be super awesome for them and blah blah blah.

    Cut to now when he has said all Haitians have AIDS and he wants the Haitians who are here under temporary protected status to GTFO.
     
  20. toytoy88

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    Close family = Mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin

    And once you let in the cousin, their Mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin

    And since you let in that cousin, they can sponsor their Mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin

    And on and on and on.