America Has The Richest Poor In The World

I guess I would be poor since last year I only had a taxable income of $26,000 as a truckdriver. I own a 3 bedroom 2 full bath house that has no mortgage. All my vehicles are paid for which is a 2000 GMC Sierra and a 2006 Cadillac STS and a 2011 Harley Davidson ultra limited.


I do not get food stamps but my son does as he also gets SSI and has medicaid insurance.

Because of my low income I paid no federal income taxes this year I get it all back. I did not even claim my tax deductible charitable donations or money given to church

 

Exactly. I think people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates understand this. They even tried to create a group of billionaires to give half their money back to the economy. As long as we let the wealthy turn us in to a plutocracy our only hope is the Govt.

 

There is a smart way out of the problem, but those who are so horribly visceral in their GREED, would rather go down with the ship... than bail out a manageable quantity of water from the bottom of the boat. They keep standing on the upper-deck, pretending that they'll stay afloat, regardless of the condition(s) of those below them.

Even by 'helping' to a substantial degree, they themselves would not become 'poor' (or even middle class)... but their GREED has robbed them of vision and they persist in compromising the very VESSEL (this society) which keeps them afloat. If we fail, they will get what they deserve.

 

No problem.

Do unto others...

 

Funny thing is that if we all stopped buying TVs, corporations would start giving them away because they have a vested interest in everyone's exposure to all that constant advertisement and brainwashing. Or they'd find some way to make sure that there was a television everywhere you looked.

But in the end, a person can get by without television just fine. So the availability of televisions doesn't actually factor into poverty. Poverty is determined by necessity, and a television is not necessary.

Health care is necessary.

 

If you keep giving people more... what happens?

It's called enabling.

 

America basically does have the richest poor in the world, but I think that tells us more about the recklessness of the real estate industry than anything else.

There are various neighborhoods in my city where poorer people live in large houses that tend to have bad resale value. Foreclosures are aplenty, and while some of this originated from nicer neighborhoods that went south, a large portion of these neighborhoods cropped up due to hyperactive developers in an easy credit environment.

Some of the blame goes to the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act), but other aspects of it can be blamed on banks looking to make a lot of money off of ARMs and interest in general.

When the real estate market becomes more like the credit card market, that's not a good thing. It wasn't that long ago that real estate was the sort of thing you could consider a blue chip investment. That can't be said for most areas now.

So, the end result is that poorer people are living in homes they can't afford in the long run even with reduced property values, while banks are left holding the bag as these people walk away from huge piles of debt.

This ends up destabilizing the financial sector on a national level, while home values stagnate in all but the more affluent areas.

 

I agree. And it tells me that more effective regulations would surely have helped avoid the economic declines we are experiencing.

If we believe that "Speed Limits" are needed on roadways (it's human nature to want to go faster)... then surely it stands to reason that the clamoring for "profit" must also be regulated in the proper ways. The foolishness of relying upon the "market" to self-adjust, would only work if certain individuals and financial institutions weren't also GAMING the system and monopolizing various markets.

Bottom line: Regulations must exist, and be applied effectively at all levels. If human nature weren't a real thing, we'd probably be able to let the "market forces" handle everything; but we have unfair players and literal CROOKS out here. People have to be "watched"... so that they don't get away with whatever they think they might.

 

Terrible example. I think you can do better.

 

there is nothing wrong with enabling people to be supported by the wealthy who have excess

 

Sigh. I just can't respond to comments this stupid.

 

their being enabled justly, if they had better opportunities maybe they wouldn't need assistance.

 

You don't have opportunities when you do nothing.

If I sit at my house all day and do nothing... my life isn't going to get any better... a job just isn't going to offer itself. A diploma isn't going to just show up in the mail.

 

Yes there is...it's called 'mooching'.

If the poor want basic food/shelter/medical/dental?

Fine.

Beyond that...mooching, imo (if they are healthy).

 

the minimum wage is not a living wage so many of the 'rich poor' cannot afford to be educated even if they wanted to

the poor should get universal free education paid for by the taxpayers and shouldn't have to work at macdonalds to support them through college because they are the intellectual capital of the country and deserve easier lives than that.

 

I'm sorry buy being lazy and getting anything free from someone else is mooching.

 

So I guess under Clinton there was no poor or people on entitlements?

 

One issue is that banks are naturally conservative by nature when less government intervention is present regarding things like bailouts.

For example, if Goldman Sachs knew ahead of time that failure on their part wouldn't result in a bailout, they wouldn't take as many risks. Because bailouts happen periodically, they have no incentive to play it safe.

So bailouts are a form of government intervention that actually decreases market stability.

It's better to have the risk of a true, total collapse in the cards, because that naturally keeps companies from becoming "too big to fail."

Certain regulations are a good thing, but encouraging banks to lend to poor people that can't really afford owning a house isn't. This is why the CRA went too far.

The regulations that are probably better to tighten up involve things like leveraging limits, derivative market limitations, and banning high frequency trading -- since the software involved in that destabilizes the market overall.

 

This is an international issue. It mostly started in Asia, and spread to Europe, then the US. It hot most of the world years before it hit us.

How would regulations have prevented this? Unless we enact 100% isolation, and stopped all imports and exports, that will never happen.

You can't tax a nation into prosperity. And you can't regulate financial success. You have about as much of a chance as ordering your pet to not eat food as to accomplish global financial stability by fiat.

 

Actually...


mooch
verb /mo͞oCH/ 
mooched, past participle; mooched, past tense; mooches, 3rd person singular present; mooching, present participle

Ask for or obtain (something) without paying for it

http://www.google.ca/search?sourcei....,cf.osb&fp=e0c563e9c2c335c0&biw=1024&bih=653

 

And why exactly is this?

And yes, minimum wage can be a living wage, it simply depends on where you are at. If it is not enough money, then people should move to where it is a living wage.

And community colleges can be very reasonably priced. And there are plenty of grants available, like PELL and BOG. At this time, somebody of low income can qualify for an annual grant of $5,550 a year.

Not a loan, a grant. Paid for by the taxpayers.

How much more should we give them? These grants have been around for over 46 years now. Should we give them a patt on the fanny and a cash payment to get them to even bother to apply for school in the first place?

And sorry, the poor are the "intellectual capitol"? Are you kidding? Please tell me you are. Because most of the poor in my opinion are lazy and spoiled adult-children, that tend to want to have everything from food and housing to insurance given to them on a silver platter.

If these were really intelligent, then why are many of them 2nd and 3rd generation poor? At least some of them would have discovered this thing known as a Pell Grant, and gone to school to get themselves out of their situation.

Or an even better way, which I know of a great many lower income people having done to improve their situation over that of their parents. Join the military.

3 years of your life, a formal education, an employment record, full health insurance, free college while in the service, and 4 years of education paid for when you get out. I know one gal that in 3 years has almost completed her BBA. She intends on useing her Post 9-11 GI bill to get her MBA.

And yes, she is black, from Detroit, and she lived her entire life in the projects. She is adamant that she will never step foot into a project ever again in her life, unless she is visiting her family.

 

Hey, you should be able to understand it. Even so, we need to regulate things PROPERLY... or the same things that happened in 2008 will happen again.

 

The MAIN reason BANKS and GOVERNMENT allowed things to be handled the way they generally were, is because of MONEY.

Time to GET MONEY OUT of politics. People's voices are being MUTED by by sheer wealth. In my view, that just takes us a few steps closer to situations like those we see now in Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

If we (The People) aren't truly being represented as a result of money gagging our voices... that is just plain dangerous. Unrest is sure to occur, the longer that is the case.

 

we should give them more taxpayer assistance, what good is a free community college education if they cannot sustain themselves while being educated?

they need their housing and food allowances paid for by the government since minimum wage is not a living wage in most parts of the country.

no one should be forced to join the military for these benefits, war is horrible

 

Actually, being poor in the U.S. would be not to unprosperous..

..if Big Land Rent didn't exist and geoist-capitalism were put in place.