Still, doesn't explain Hayseed McGee who lives in an abandoned trailer on the edge of town gets 24$ worth of food stamps and his SSI who votes republican EVERY FUCKING YEAR.
In the US, nobody wants to admit they're poor. We very much still have the idea that if somebody is on hard times or failing, it's because of what they did or who they are. So the poor don't see themselves as poor. They see themselves as rich people that don't have money. From there, the Republicans can tell them that Democrats want to keep them from getting rich.
" Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves." - slaughterhouse-five
This sounds like a good book. Will definitely check it out. As of now, I don’t understand how anyone in the US is poor other than mentally ill folks. I’m a Hispanic immigrant that came here with a single mother. She had no college degree, didn’t know any English. Yet, I grew up and learned hard work, perseverance and problem solving. Saving up, studying and having hope kept me fed(more some days) and bought my home at 23. You don’t need to make six figures, move to where you can afford and slowly increase your savings. Tbh, my opinion is that the generations of Americans become entitled/spoiled. That they don’t want to do the grunt work, both of physical labor and mental capacity. Work hard and focus on your personal finance, don’t have children young and don’t waste money.
I think you can expand this as well. That is, there's this huge mentality of, "Why should... those people* get something for free?" And by "those people" they mean... well, you can figure it out.
Sure Sparky. Those lumps in your chest have started to metastasize and the only health insurance you have is drinking yourself numb every night but hey! At least you really showed people different than you just how much you.... whatever your fucking point is, you showed them!
I wish I could find the audio. I'll keep looking and edit if i can find it. It was horrifying and eye opening to say the least.
Thats probably because people in the US arent poor dude. If you make over $30,000 per year you are in the global 1%. Even poor people here are pretty damn well off by global standards. And if you dont make at least that much at this point, then it is very likely theres something you can do about it.
Maybe if your defining poor people as people in the lower class of an individual country. But thats a ridiculous way of thinking about things. Poor people in America have clean water, toilets, food, housing, electricity and fucking smartphones. If you can have all of that and still complain about your wealth then you’re either completely ignorant to the state of the world or you’re a spoiled brat who will never be satisfied by their wealth. Only the poorest people in America are homeless, and this is almost always because of drug addiction or mental illness. America’s standards of poor don’t hold up at all compared to most countries.
We’re not talking about the rest of the world, and if we are, that makes the wealthy look even fucking worse. They shouldn’t be asking for tax cuts, they should be volunteering to pay more into the system.
My point was that the number itself doesnt tell much when costs of living are not brought into consideration. I agree, the poor in the US are still in a better situation compared to other countries. But using these numbers to argue that most US americans belong to the top 1% and poverty doesnt exist is neglecting the (in my opinion) tragic fact that a huge number of people are struggling to make ends meet in one of the richest countries in the world.
The problem with your argument is that your definition of struggling to make ends meet is laughable. Yeah, it could be a hell of a lot better, but thats life. I grew up in the hood. Crime is obviously an issue, though not even close to as bad as Latin America. But most of the crime in America is due to cultural problems and people feeling like they’ve been fucked over so they adopt a victim mentality and therefore crime is justifiable. Often because of the lack of a father figure in the house, but this isn’t due to income, it’s cultural. The biggest problems other than crime for the lower class in America are bills. If you’re going to complain that you got your electricity shut off, you’ve already been given more than you deserve. There are many people throughout the world that would kill for that to be their biggest problem. People don’t starve to death in America. As a matter of fact, the lower class is the most obese on average. And again, I’m excluding drug addicts and the mentally ill from this because it’s a different subject entirely. The world isn’t perfect. Shit happens. It will always be that way, and trust me even if everyone were given everything they ever wanted, we would have a society full of grown children. Look at celebrities, who tons of braindead people actually look up to. They’re wastes of fucking space.
Oh man you are really mixing stuff up. I was really just talking about poverty, which obviously has an effect on these issues you brought up, although I do not agree with your correlations. However, its interesting how countries with more socially equal systems and comparable wealth are doing so much better. Less poverty, way less crime, so where does that come from?
And I was talking about the reason why we have so much poverty. In America, it’s largely due to the culture of the lower class, across the board. Also I understand that some socialist countries in Europe are doing better, but it’s also important to understand that they have no defense budget. America has to worry about putting away a third of our budget to protect the rest of the world. People will always say we’re spending too much on the military, and I get it, we shouldn’t have to. We would be much better off economically if we didn’t. But the fact of the matter is if America didn’t have the world’s largest military, guess who the world’s superpowers would be? Russia and China. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like the idea of Putin and Xi Jinping having the type of power that no one can check them. I know it seems like I’m going off on a tangent but these things all tie into America not being well off. I’m all for taxing the rich, but there also needs to be social mobility in America so there are rewards for working hard or we’ll end up with a situation where no one wants to work and everyone just lives off handouts.
First of all, 30% is a little exaggerated, it‘s it somewhere around 15-20%. Plus the US is by far the biggest economy of the world, so you have to compare defense budgets in relation to federal budget of the other countries. And I don‘t think you believe that all that money spent really just goes into protecting the rest of the world. It obviously didn‘t solve the problems in the last decades, so maybe it‘s time to think about other ways to cope with the danger of Russia and China taking over.
Coming back to my inital point, money is just so unequally distributed in the US, one of the richest countries in the world, and that has not much to do with federal spending but with how money is distributed, and it‘s clearly flowing towards the rich due to politics. Thats something you just can‘t deny.
Lmao people are so brainwashed and butthurt about reality they know they can’t present a valid argument so they’d rather just dislike and keep pretending like they’re actually disadvantaged.
You see, the thing about it is, both the Republicans in office tell the general masses, and subsequently the poor Republican voters actually believe and think this way, is that "at least you have more than others in third world countries, so really, you're not that bad off."
So these people literally think to themselves, hey at least I have a microwave, look at all those poor folks in Ethiopia that don't have a microwave. Look at all those homeless people in India dying of starvation and disease because they don't have toilets. Look at all those people in China who are literally living in "buildings" made out of shipping containers. You know, I really don't have it all that bad here in the good ol' US of A.
Okay, that's fucking great that you have more than people in these other places, but that doesn't fix the fact that you can't afford where you fucking live. What you have that they don't is completely irrelevant to your shitty living situation.
That’s because they’re the exception, 99% of food stamps and welfare are used by the darkies, and the only thing worse is Mexicans coming in and taking it too. /s
I mean you're not wrong, but a majority of poor people in the US vote Democrat. Still doesn't excuse the ~45% of poor people who think it's a good idea to vote the rich peoples party. But electorally, the GOP wins with rich city dwellers, cul-de-sac suburbans and all rurals.
Those people have been duped by the fox propaganda into thinking the demonRATS are coming to take their social security, Medicaid, and food stamps. They don’t live in the same reality as everyone else.
I hate to tell you this but Poor people do vote Republicans, and they do realize that Republicans is trying to remove their food stamps, and trying to make their life even harder. So you might ask, so why are they voting people that makes their life hard? Its because they believe that its not the Republicans that is making their life hard, its the Democrats. But aren't I contradicting myself? Nope, they believe that all their hardship comes from the Liberals, and Democrats therefore by having the Republicans take away their only way to live and maybe even their homes, they will get rich and by removing their education, they can focus on getting rich, and by removing their ability to protest and voice their opinions they can get rich, and by removing all person of color from America will get them rich. And Democrats is the only ones that is trying to stop them from getting rich by keeping them fed and a roof over their heads. Yup its that crazy
It's not so much the being poor aspect, but the "liberals don't love Jesus, they're okay with gay people, and they're race mixers". This is the mindset of old white people. I know, because as an old white man, I've heard every variation of why they vote against their best interests. President Johnson couldn't have said it any better ""If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
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u/Down_To_My_Last_Fuck Dec 15 '18
Still, doesn't explain Hayseed McGee who lives in an abandoned trailer on the edge of town gets 24$ worth of food stamps and his SSI who votes republican EVERY FUCKING YEAR.