Poverty in America

opinion

some threads become played or pointless.
if its my opinion, I have a right to say so (or ignore it)

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Re: US vs Europe

According to the Swedish think tank Timbro if the EU were an American state it would be one of the poorest. European GDP per capita is lower than that of most American states and Europeans have the same level of prosperity as states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. The number of poor people in the US has diminished over time and while they are ‘poor’ by American standards they are better off than many ‘non-poor’ Europeans. The 12% of Americans classified as ‘poor’ are more prosperous than many European, e.g. 40 per cent of all Swedish households would rank as low-income households by American standards. Read it all at: www.timbro.com/euvsusa/
 
Re: US vs Europe

Just to be clear - I'm not anti-American. It is a great place to holiday, though I don't think I'd ever want to live there.

However, I just think that judging from this discussion, some people have swallowed the 'American Dream' myth that anyone can become a millionaire hook, line & sinker. The American underbelly tends not to appear on Friends - but it does exist.
 
Re: US vs Europe

However, I just think that judging from this discussion, some people have swallowed the 'American Dream' myth that anyone can become a millionaire hook, line & sinker. The American underbelly tends not to appear on Friends - but it does exist.
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yet again we see the Labour party intellectual and moral superiority complex. Stop seeing the world in black and white rainyday, you can't compare a homogeneous mono-cultural society like ours with the open multicultural, multi racial society that exists in the USA.
No one has said that the American dream is that " anyone can become a millionaire". The American dream is that you can do better and your children can do better again than you did, That you can have a stake in society which is a stake that you have earned, not one that you have been given.
 
US vs Europe

Could it be that the concept that the next generation can do better than the last, socially, economically and educationally, is the essence of the capitalist ethic. As the structure of capitalism is that it is always aspirant to bigger, better, and as that aspiration is on the individual and/or familial as opposed to the social, level, there will always be a relatively small minority in the "millionaire" class and because of the structure of the enterprise, the base of the pyramid will always be broad (there must be definition always be more "poor" than "rich").

The comment that the "gap" between rich and poor is widening surely only means that the STRETCH across the spectrum is wider? This can be looked at from either end of the telescope to mean that either the "poor are getting poorer" or "the rich are getting richer"........or for what it is, that there is a longer spectrum so it's a bit of a meaningless phrase, except insofar as at the poorer end of the spectrum people often die because they can't afford access to medical treatment, or are excluded from participation in the world in which they live because they don't have education or opportunity.

I got chatting to an elderly man on the train yesterday. He has lived in the UK since the end of WWII but was born and lived in Eastern Germany when it was communist. He was depressed at the direction his adopted country was taking (specifically he told me his wife and son both have mental health problems and he was just returning from visiting the latter who is an inpatient in a hospital 30 miles from where the parents live, which makes visiting him difficult. In addition the recently-announced increase in council tax was going to make life intolerably difficult for this family). This old chap was comparing his and his family's life in the individualistic, capitalistic "west" with his earlier years as a student and worker in "the eastern bloc". He said "As a person in the eastern bloc I was poor by western standards but my quality of life - education, medical care, social welfare) was very high and available to all without discrimination. Here in UK, I have personal wealth but the system is impoverished".

I am NOT either a communist or a labour-party supporter.....in fact I am deeply cynical about politics in general......but this is an experience not rhetoric. Statistically those in the US who do not have money or access to means of creating it (i.e. WASP) live a most restricted life and die prematurely......and that is an outcome of the structure, not a matter of individual inadequacy.
 
Steady on...!

Hi Purple,

________________________________________________
yet again we see the Labour party intellectual and moral superiority complex. Stop seeing the world in black and white rainyday, you can't compare a homogeneous mono-cultural society like ours with the open multicultural, multi racial society that exists in the USA.
________________________________________________

Now, now play nicely!

Ireland isn't as homogeneous as you think... After the last Census apparently there people from 169 different coutries that currently live in Ireland, so I think the transition to a multicultural, multi racial society is well underway...

________________________________________________
The American dream is that you can do better and your children can do better again than you did, That you can have a stake in society which is a stake that you have earned, not one that you have been given.
________________________________________________

For "can" read "used to". Given that wealth has been concentrated into a very small pocket, it's getting more and more difficult to break through the class barrier even on a generational basis.

In fact I seem to remember reading a book (Capitalism for beginners) which stated that the number of people moving the classes was quiet small indeed (and this was at the start of the 20th Century!!!)

Would you think/accept that movement between classes has gotten worse in the last 100 years in the US?

This probably is a reason why poverty is on the increase in the US.. Marie made an interesting point in relation to this - in the long run this assumption the subsequent generations will be better off the the current or previous ones will come severely under pressure.

Still, another crisis for captialism to deal with eh?

All the best,

OpusnBill.
 
Re: Steady on...!

The American dream is that you can do better and your children can do better again than you did,
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OK so I exaggerated slightly with the millionaire stuff, but Purple's vision of the American dream as your children doing better than you did is a gross exaggeration too.

Doing better than your parents is of little value if your parents were stuck in minimum wage jobs living in a slum, and you manage to do just a little better. The USA is a divided society, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why do they have approx 3 million people in prison, with a huge bias towards black/hispanic prisoners? The dream is more of a nightmare for many US dwellers.
 
it's all getting a bit polarised

OK rainyday, lets all try for a bit more balance on this. We've done it before on occasion, so if I stop taking swipes at the pinko's will you stop with the den of greed and exploitation stuff and we can both look at the good and bad points? :D
 
lets hammer pink champagne sociaists

Name a real pinko socialist state thats successful now or has ever been.

Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, USSR, East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania,...............................

The theory is nice, utopia and all that but c'mon back to reality.

The Market Economy as led by the USA is the best model so far (not perfect by any means)
 
pinko?

Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, USSR, East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania,...............................
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They were totalitarian communist, not democratic socialist.........
and don't have me defending the pinko's again!!!
 
/

wam you have to be the most simple minded man to grace this website ever.
 
I meant democratic socialist state

as Father Jack says, Feck Off thanks
 
f u

look out behind you wam...there's a muslim. He's trying to kill u. Quick. run.
 
.

thanks and nothanks cannot name a successful democratic socialist state, because there are none.

Long live the US and UK, who have defended world democracy so many times down through the last century.
 
Hi John,

________________________________________________thanks and nothanks cannot name a successful democratic socialist state, because there are none.
________________________________________________

Interesting you use the term democratic socialist, and all the references to former Eastern Bloc countries....

Well, if it's alright with you I'll name a number of social democratic countries or at least have the systems of social democracy and I would deem them to be quite successful eg.

Sweden, France, Germany, UK, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Finland etc.

Of course, I deem an economy to be of the social democratic model if it gives some tip of the cap (some do so more than others admitedly) to the fact that the market is not the be all and end of all of everything - I don't have a problem with the market system per se, but I don't for a minute accept that it works everywhere, everytime forever and ever amen.

So what do you do if the market doesn't work?
Shrug your shoulders and tell people to go back to Moscow (or something equally trollish??)

Perhaps a cheerful rendition of Land of the Free will sort it all out for you..... Interestingly enough, another economy with signs of the American excesses of capitalism could be China... Talk about over-compensating.....!!


_______________________________________________
Long live the US and UK, who have defended world democracy so many times down through the last century
________________________________________________

Well I have to say that I'm refreshed and challenged by this statment and what exactly it has to do with poverty in America :rolleyes

But no doubt some kind soul will put me right!

Regards,

opusnBill
 
Re. Poverty in America

Of course, I deem an economy to be of the social democratic model if it gives some tip of the cap (some do so more than others admittedly) to the fact that the market is not the be all and end of all of everything - I don't have a problem with the market system per se, but I don't for a minute accept that it works everywhere, every time forever and ever amen.
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Who does? Even the USA has some welfare and despite the propaganda if you are in a car crash you won't be lift to die if you have no medical insurance. The countries you list have had both center right and center left governments, as have this country, so you are not talking about socialist governments that seek to control the market. They are free market economies in the practical sense which tax and spend to support social projects. Just like the USA.
The only question here is one of degrees. There are no economies that operate a totally free market, just as there are none that operate a totally closed one ( OK, maybe North Korea).
Perhaps a cheerful rendition of Land of the Free will sort it all out for you..... Interestingly enough, another economy with signs of the American excesses of capitalism could be China... Talk about over-compensating.....!!
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And that's not trolling then I suppose?
But no doubt some kind soul will put me right!
Click to expand...
I've no idea either
 
Re: Re. Poverty in America

Long live Chavez......Long live democracy!!
 
"Even the USA has some welfare and despite the propaganda if you are in a car crash you won't be lift to die if you have no medical insurance."

- But you will if you have a heart condition. Bit like the public health system here I suppose...
 
Hi Purple,


"Who does? Even the USA has some welfare and despite the propaganda if you are in a car crash you won't be lift to die if you have no medical insurance. The countries you list have had both center right and center left governments, as have this country, so you are not talking about socialist governments that seek to control the market."

True enough, and I do fully accept your point about right and left in the countries I've mentioned. However the left wing governments have made considerable attempts to tweak/manipulate the market from excesses - I'm afraid the US really doesn't do it as much - I'll give you an example, in the late 1980's the state of California ALLOWED a health insurance company to cancel thousands of premiums (mostly of people who needed them most (ie sick people who had claimed on their policies).. The reason given? Oh, they had a bad year!!

"They are free market economies in the practical sense which tax and spend to support social projects. Just like the USA. The only question here is one of degrees. There are no economies that operate a totally free market, just as there are none that operate a totally closed one ( OK, maybe North Korea)."

Yep, but that's my point - the closest possible economy (in my opinion anyway) to the unrestrained free market is the USA.

The rest of the economies (the ones I've mentioned at least) are mixed (vis-a-vis Free market and Government intervention) but the degree to which the are mixed is actually quite considerable - I don't think it's as fine a line as you suggest.

As for me trolling, perhaps you're correct... Sorry, I must be learn to be more accomodating... you know there are intolerant people in the worlds and I HATE people like that!! ;-)

All the best,

OpusnBill
 
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