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America as two countries… literally?

mandown

mandown

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Jun 1, 2004
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Toshi said:
Poor America isn't the market: Poor America's GDP is $15k as compared to the $30k in government services received per capita. Barring individual level "deficit spending" (credit card debt, largely), those numbers indicate that they're not consuming to a great degree.

Rich America, for better or worse, are the consumers thanks to their incomes, which are admittedly based in large part on the cheap labor that Poor America provides.
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They are buying food and clothing. And it isn't just consumption, but also labor production I was pointing to. They do work, and many at jobs I wouldn't want to do.
 
mandown

mandown

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Speaking of housing, the poor are also consumers of it, they must be paying rent to someone. I know this because I work for a company that makes money on low-income housing. We take money from rich investors, then use it to construct and operate rental property for those deemed "low-income", including those who receive housing assistance from the government. The government then gives my company tax credits for operating low income housing (since it obviosly isn't as profitable as market rate housing). We then reroute the credits to our investors via pass-through tax entities, thus giving them a return on investment, just not in the form of cash dividends, by allowing them to reduce their federal tax liability each year.

...wait, did I just state that the government is funding Rich America by giving money to Poor America, only to have it result in Rich America paying less tax and thus reducing the source of funds available for the government to use to help Poor America? I sure as fvck did. Don't pay attention to the man behind the green curtain. Poor America is a consumer base for Rich America and a "mule" for smuggling government funds to the pockets of the rich.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
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Black males are most definitely caught up in the quagmire of Poor America, for whatever reason:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/the-uneducated-jobless.html



The above figures are for the whole population. Break it down by ethicity, as The Economist does, and you see a more dire picture yet:

The decline of the working American man has been most marked among the less educated and blacks. If you adjust official data to include men in prison or the armed forces (who are left out of the raw numbers), around 35% of 25- to 54-year-old men with no high-school diploma have no job, up from around 10% in the 1960s. Of those who finished high school but did not go to college, the fraction without work has climbed from below 5% in the 1960s to almost 25% ... Among blacks, more than 30% overall and almost 70% of high-school dropouts have no job.
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jonKranked

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
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mandown said:
Speaking of housing, the poor are also consumers of it, they must be paying rent to someone. I know this because I work for a company that makes money on low-income housing. We take money from rich investors, then use it to construct and operate rental property for those deemed "low-income", including those who receive housing assistance from the government. The government then gives my company tax credits for operating low income housing (since it obviosly isn't as profitable as market rate housing). We then reroute the credits to our investors via pass-through tax entities, thus giving them a return on investment, just not in the form of cash dividends, by allowing them to reduce their federal tax liability each year.

...wait, did I just state that the government is funding Rich America by giving money to Poor America, only to have it result in Rich America paying less tax and thus reducing the source of funds available for the government to use to help Poor America? I sure as fvck did. Don't pay attention to the man behind the green curtain. Poor America is a consumer base for Rich America and a "mule" for smuggling government funds to the pockets of the rich.
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low cost housing sounds like socialism.

also, i guess its better to have "low income housing" than it is to have shanty towns made of corrugated aluminum cardboard, and other refuse that exist in other countries.
 
Greyhound

Greyhound

Trail Rat
Jul 8, 2002
5,065
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Damn...and here I was, poor and happy...and I'm from the South.

Now I just gotta figure out a way to get that paint off of my shirt from that broad brush I just got hit with.
 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

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Feb 2, 2007
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As good a place as any to put this.
The 100 richest people in the world earned enough last year to end extreme poverty suffered by the poorest on the planet four times over, Oxfam has said.
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"We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many - too often the reverse is true," said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking.
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stevew

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
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jonKranked said:
low cost housing sounds like socialism.

also, i guess its better to have "low income housing" than it is to have shanty towns made of corrugated aluminum cardboard, and other refuse that exist in other countries.
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they just lack vision....

 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

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$tinkle

$tinkle

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Feb 12, 2003
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Toshi said:
How Poor America lives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/12/15/waiting-for-the-8th/?hpid=z1
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i was just back in the area until yesterday, and across the river in alexandria, @TC Williams h.s. (where the movie 'remember the titans' was based), they have a breath-taking waste of gov't funded food in their cafeteria. it's a newly renovated multi-million dollar food court, and the amount of prepared food that is thrown away is criminal. got my intel from the mother of a friend who i had dinner w/ mon nite. there is no program in place to take away the days' leftovers & distribute them within the community. makes me sick.
 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
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Unconscionable.
Money may be protected speech but apparently, speech that asks for money is not.

Two recent legal cases about money and free speech unveil a contradiction in our application of the First Amendment. One deals with the right of the rich to influence politics with a lot of money, the other deals with the right of the poor to ask for a little to buy a meal or bus ticket.

On October 8, the Supreme Court heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) that could open the floodgates on unlimited campaign contributions. If McCutcheon succeeds, the case could lift limits on how much money an individual can spend in an election cycle.

If the Court sides with McCutcheon, it could strike down aggregate limits on campaign contributions in the name of free speech. Currently, the donation limit is $48,000 per cycle, which enables giving the maximum amount of money to 18 national candidates per election. Even if the FEC could still limit donations to a single campaign, rich donors would see a new rush of power, gaining influence in more elections. Every politician in the country would basically need to beg this small group to finance their next job interview with the American people.

If the court overturns years of campaign finance reform, it will take a constitutional amendment to distinguish unlimited campaign money from protected speech.

Meanwhile, the homeless and unemployed are experiencing the right to express their need for money taken away.

In Arizona, a 77-year-old woman was arrested for asking an undercover cop for a bus fare under a state law that forbade panhandling. This law was subsequently challenged in federal court and overruled, but other similar laws exist nationwide.

Since the recession, the U.S. has passed a litany of laws making it illegal to ask for even a small amount of cash. Cities and states across the country have banned panhandling and “loitering to beg” in response to increased poverty.

The state of Michigan faces a similar challenge to its panhandling law. Even some more liberal cities have proposed or implemented panhandling bans, like Baltimore, MD,Bennington, VT, and Worcester, MA.

We are becoming a nation where free speech is granted only to the rich and powerful while the rest of us are increasingly rendered utterly voiceless.
Money may be protected speech but apparently, speech that asks for money is not.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/if-you-can-speak-your-money-then-why-asking-money-illegal
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StiHacka

StiHacka

Compensating for something
Jan 4, 2013
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There is no justice in this country for the bottom 99% any more. The process itself is devastating and life altering even if you are innocent.
 
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$tinkle

$tinkle

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Toshi

Toshi

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I'm ok with a rising tide lifting the top 10%, as most within that stratum (me included) work for a living. It's the 0.1% that bugs me, the non-working extravagantly rich.
 
jimmydean

jimmydean

The Official Meat of Ridemonkey
Sep 10, 2001
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Toshi said:
I'm ok with a rising tide lifting the top 10%, as most within that stratum (me included) work for a living. It's the 0.1% that bugs me, the non-working extravagantly rich.
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Born Rich

There was an interesting article a few weeks back (can't find it now) talking about how many of the current multimillionaire/billionaire types made their money vs inheriting it. A small portion of the top 1% actually eared it.

Jen watches a show called Southern Charm about spoiled rich kids from old money and how worthless they are. :rofl:
 
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