‘A perfect storm’: US facing hunger crisis as demand for food banks soars no

Discussion in 'Coronavirus (COVID-19) News' started by Space_Time, Apr 2, 2020.

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  1. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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  2. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    A lot of poor people live in their car or don't have a home. More than half of the students in the middle school where my niece is principal eat two meals a day at school, and don't have a tablet or cellphone at home.
     
  3. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do you think that any of the parents ever spend their money frivolously? Do you think any of them smoke? Drink beer? Partake of the weed? Any of them have tats? Vehicles they really can't afford? Do they give 100% effort to improving their lives, or are they complacent and accepting of their financial situation?
     
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  4. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes reality can make a person cry.

    Most service sector workers have no choice but to live within their means to keep from being homeless .

    Since this kind of life is directly the result of the disembowelling of working people who have to work in a low wage service sector doing the work our high schoolers once did because of the greed of a few elites and the govt they own , blaming Americans for this is really stupid . Thoughtless.

    And evil given why these bastards did it.
     
  5. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Steve Bannon says we have younger generations today that most will never own much of anything including homes . Because of what our elites and both parties have given us as an economy. Low wage service sector. In exchange for the model that gave us a history making large middle class.

    The poster I replied to does not consider this at all. Our economy is a serf economy once the living wage jobs were sent to communist nations that exploit their poor and allow them to be used by our most greedy elites.

    Our model now allows only the professional class to prosper by their work. But no one else .

    This fact is ignored by the right but nnot by many trump voters.

    You cannot make an omelet without eggs and yet the ideological right will never blame the economic model and believe one can make an omelet without eggs. They dont do well with analogies at all .
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  6. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Can't just blame the business community. American consumers must also accept their share of the blame for sending the living wage jobs to communist nations.
     
  7. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I imagine this important to you, but how are you going to enforce whatever orthodoxy you think is important? What do you hope to accomplish?
    Again, what's your point? They shouldn't get help? Their children shouldn't get help? We should monitor their activities?
     
  8. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Huh?
     
  9. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am frugal too as my patents wete depression era people and taught me to be frugal even when I owned my own manuf business . I am now in my mid 70s and retired. Yet I was never frugal when it came to my coworket's wages and perks. And in my sector of business my competition paid just above min wage. The industry average . These owners lived the life of Riley , owning huge homes and several new cars as they vvacationed in eexpensive locales iindulging in conspicuous consumption. I lived in a modrst home and never paid for that new car smell . lol This allowed me to pay a living wage. With so little employee turnover. Unlike my competition .

    If someone earns a working poor wage and have the money to get drunk or stoned with eexpensive tats they have to live with parents.



    For a working poor pereon has to pay rent , utilities, cell phone service ,food and car iinsurance, assuming his car was given to him , and food to eat leaves no money for booze ,dope and tats. A calculator is handy and figures dont lie but liars can figure

    My grandson is 18 works and has a ddisposable income at 10 bucks an hour . Because like all of his peers lives at home and isnt paying any living expenses but he pays for his clothing and shoes . If he had to pay rent and the common living expensrs he would not earn enough to live on his own and buy booze dope and tats. My calculator does not lie. Lol

    His friends all work service sector at barely above min wage and dont have much of a future in our ddisemboweled service sector economy and ggig economy unlike myself long ago when one could get a living wage job in mmanufacturing and get married and raise a family .

    No wwonder our youth are not gettinh married !!
     
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  10. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure what you think happened to American workers who formerly worked at manufacturing jobs for pretty much what they work for now in the service sector. Those manufacturing jobs here went overseas to workers making $2/hour or less.

    If you want those jobs back, we'll need to have a tariff wall to cover our workers making $20/hour so we can compete with foreign producers. Of course, foreign countries will retaliate with tariffs on what we produce.

    Our workers are in a world labor market where their advantage is having exclusive access to service sector and construction jobs here. Illegal immigrants are their competition for those jobs.

    What we've lost are low skill, high wage jobs. Are they coming back? I don't think so.
     
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  11. Marcotic

    Marcotic Well-Known Member

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    So you acknowledge that things are becoming harder. That's good, you're learning.

    But where you're wrong is that its *more* than responsibility.
    Read that again.

    So I repeat, pretending that people can't get ahead because they aren't taking responsibility (being smart, frugal etc) is inherently flawed.
     
  12. Marcotic

    Marcotic Well-Known Member

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    If I ever own a business it will be one where I am proud of the living my employees can earn working for me, or I'll do the work myself. That seem(ed) to be your method, and its a damn shame we don't see more of it.

    Stay awesome.
     
  13. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    How they do it is easy: live within their means.

    For years, FEMA has been suggesting keeping food storage and saving money. http://ready.gov has a lot of recommendations. Also, from FEMA, Food and Water in an Emergency suggests a 2-week food supply minimum.

    That a pandemic is (was) coming is universally known by those who are thinking about their families and their well-being. In fact, a pandemic is still coming. After this one is over another is still coming. Be prepared. The Internet is full of information on preparedness without going to the extreme of those on shows like American Prepper. There's no excuse - zero - for a head-of-household to not have prepared to care for their family in an emergency.
     
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  14. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I wish I could like this post a dozen times...

    I like it.
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  15. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Really? I think yours is showing if you think his post was racist. You must be equating something he said to a particular race when, in fact, there was not a hint of racism in his post. As usual, it is the leftists who have always been, are now, and apparently will always be, the racists.
     
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  16. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We've fed them, over and over again. First with SNAP, next with school provided meals - 3 a day, including weekends even though SNAP was already supposed to feed them quite well, and then there's always someone collecting for a foodbank.

    There's no one hungry in America that isn't hungry because of their own choices - or the negligent choices of parents. A little hunger would go a long way toward teaching responsible living.
     
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  17. TheAngryLiberal

    TheAngryLiberal Banned

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  18. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, not everyone will make 50 to 80K a year but everyone who quits whining about how poor they are and tries to do so will make 50 to 80K - or far beyond that - a year. Poverty is a choice. It's not even the result of a string of bad choices; it's an explicit choice. People decide they'd rather have something to complain about rather than to do something about it. They make a choice to NOT earn more and then they whine about the consequences of their choice.

    You're correct; there are a lot of Americans that are not failures and that are not lazy who make less than 50K a year. If they choose other rewards from life, such as more time at home with family, or living in a small or rural town, or just living simple without the stress that climbing the financial ladder includes, that's OK. Those choices are legitimate choices as long as the person making them accepts the consequences of those choices.

    Luck is part of life; bad luck. Some people have devastating accidents, etc, for which they couldn't have prepared but those are, overall, quite a small percentage of people. On the other hand, many who suffer such traumatic accidents don't let the accidents hold them back and achieve personal and financial success anyway. Luck comes to those who work for it.

    I grew up poor - most likely far more poor than you did. I also taught myself computers but all those hordes from and in India haven't hurt me a bit. In fact, I have teams of Indians working for me onshore and teams of Indians working for me offshore. And they actually raise the salaries of Americans. The immigration system sets minimum wages for Indians in IT that are actually quite high and hiring Indians in the US actually raises the marketplace for American workers as well.

    Point is, I have no sympathy for the hungry in America. I have sympathy for young people whose parents victimized them to get more from government so I mentor a lot of young people in taking responsibility and ownership of their own futures but if they choose not to do it then I have no sympathy; I respect their choice to be poor and miserable.
     
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  19. LogNDog

    LogNDog Well-Known Member

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    A guy once told me that he was a "visionary". He actually was hallucinating.
     
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  20. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    How about providing an example of a typical poor person who is poor out of no fault or choice of his own?
     
  21. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Seriously? After all the money they get from SNAP they are still dependent on schools for half their meals? Sounds like parents are selling some SNAP dollars for something - perhaps, even probably, drugs.
     
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  22. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's how you enforce it: No work, no eat. If your children aren't eating you're going to jail. When you get out of jail, if you don't want to go back, you'll feed your children.

    Oh, and no, the children shouldn't get help until the parents are in jail for neglect.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2020
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  23. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    a huge chunk of America fits the category you described, not everyone has great jobs, most do the best they can

    that does not mean the right should support the rich taking advantage of them by not paying them a living wage
     
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  24. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    it's sad to hear people put down the working class because they don't make enough in their eyes to be worth a real living wage

    the sad thing is, many of these same people are now considered the essential workers during this crisis
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2020
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  25. Levant

    Levant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Employers pay market wages. They're not welfare departments, paying what a person wishes they made.

    When I go grocery shopping, I go to the cheapest place. I used to use coupons and get the newspaper ads and drive around town but I don't have time for that so I go where the overall price is lowest. I don't go to the lowest price and then pay them more than the market price for my groceries; that would be stupid. Paying more than the market price for labor would be stupid, as well.

    No American is forced to work at any job. If a job doesn't pay what they want to earn, don't take the job. Start their own business and make what they want to make. Or learn new skills so you can make a living wage. Anyone who doesn't have a great job doesn't have a great job because of their own choices. Go get a great job.

    People working at McDonald's shouldn't make a living wage. No one doing unskilled labor should get a living wage. They should get a starting wage and then, when they've actually learned to do something representative of a head-of-household, as in improving themselves and working to get ahead, then they can get a job paying a working wage.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2020
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