I was curious about the current homeless rates for families in this country, but when I searched for statistics in google, the only real numbers I could find were from 2005,

It seams that the poverty level of many Americans has been greatly ignored in politics and in America lately.

So further searching around I found that the dept. of Labor and Statistics does keep track of poverty levels in the U.S. and then I searched some more and then found this site . . http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2513/

My concern is this;

If this site is correct and poverty levels are based on only 3 times the cost of food for a family and nothing more. And its true that housing and transportation are not included in these numbers, it would seem that the latest economic conditions in America are throwing the poverty numbers way way off. Especially this year.

So if one figures in that the amount of money it takes to get to work (gasoline) has gone way up, combined with the rising cost of buying a house has gone up. The two numbers that have been left out of the calculations have hidden a huge downward trend in the economy

To conclude. It seems poverty levels are a recently widely ignored issue in politics this year, while the method of determining poverty seems to have grossly been thrown way off.

To make matters worse we now have people in politics who support a future flat or fair tax, which takes even more money from the middle classes take home pay, and adds that money to the only the most wealthiest's take home pay.

And why doesn't anyone in this country paying closer attention to such things?

If the gap between the have and have nots continues to grow without notice, How long will it be in this country before one of the main principles of communism eventually becomes true in this country. the one that states that an uprising will occur if the division amongst the classes becomes too large?

Tell ya what - why don't you tell your democrat party, the party that supposedly concerns themselves with such things, to worry more about that and less about their Bush bashing and their other head in the clouds crap like global warming, "affirmative action", abortion, africa, and cars that can run on cornflakes?

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Read this post quick before the mods delete it!

Tell ya what, why don't you and other Republicans commit yourselves to reducing the growing income and wealth gap in the US and we'll engage in much less "Bush bashing." Until then, don't pretend that your party is significantly committed to any objectives other than somehow rescuing its well-deserved reputation for mismanagement and blaming everyone else for the problems that only got worse during its watch.

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"To announce that..we are to stand by the president whether right or wrong..is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

How about you tell the rest of the world that you don't agree with them. Did you not read anything about the recent G8 conferences? Like how everybody in the world but America knows global warming is a problem. Or how we just committed $60 billion to Africa. The republicans complain way more about abortion than Dems do. Democrats are fine with it, Republicans seem to have a problem with it though. Cars that run on cornflakes? I'm sure that was meant to be a joke, but instead of humor I see ignorance. What exactly do you have against helping the environment and reducing our dependency on foreign oil? Other countries have hybrids that run extremely well, why don't we? Bush keeps preaching about how we need to decrease dependency on foreign oil yet he does nothing. Bush has already admitted global is there, why don't you just fall in line like you have always done when he's said something.

I believe neither in hugging trees or giving our peoples hard earned money back to their corporate employers. I write in my own picks on the ballot. I am notasheeple. I have no favorite party to follow around like a childish admirer. My democratic party?

You'll excuse me if I worry about poverty in an ever growing corporate world for awhile? won't you?

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America stated that all men are created equal.
Communism stated that they should br treated that way. . . . It would further seem neither of them practice what they preach

Another disturbing trend in American government is the sole preoccupation with only housing those families who are being thrown into homelessness through extreme poverty.

according to this website.
http://www.otda.state.ny.us/otda/bhs/default.htm
a New York program describes itself this way. . ."HHAP provides capital grants and loans to not-for-profit corporations, charitable and religious organizations, municipalities and public corporations to acquire, construct or rehabilitate housing for persons who are homeless "

Here are some photos of the projects
http://www.otda.state.ny.us/otda/bhs/photos.htm

Unfortunately in this country the numbers of good families ending up homeless is on the rise
http://www.misd.net/Homeless/statistics.htm
"Families are now the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, accounting for almost 39% of the nation's homeless. "
Meanwhile the government continues to fudge numbers or cook the books on homelessness while they in turn tax the working class and give their money to large corporations. And now they are mulling over the idea of giving the extremely wealthy an even larger (Fair or Flat) tax break. which will simply throw more and more families toward poverty and homelessness.

Now don't get me wrong, I support helping the homeless with housing for mentally ill and problematic homeless, and it is a step back toward the institutionalization that was once erased before causing a huge number of street people . but this housing is not a permanent solution for the newly increasing homeless families or for our free world.

One begs to wonder that if the economy and the gap between the have and have nots continues. if . . .
Once no simple family worker can afford to live and drive to work while feeding their families in this country due to rising gas prices, housing, high taxes, and poor economic growth. If more and more Americans, through the continuing growth of homeless families in this country, will be living in degrading communal housing complexes just close enough to their major corporational employers, so that they can get to work, and in turn so they (Our corporate government) can sell their labor goods overseas to competing slavery labor country market, with a new free trade policy?
One can only wonder if this is the direction America is heading.

I would rather think that a better way to decrease the future homelessness of American families would be to. . . increase the min wage to above poverty levels, for corporate ceo's to pay American workers what they are truley worth, And for congress to reverse the ever widening gap between the rich and poor in this country by not continuing to write in laws which do just that. (which by the way, draws heavy criticism from the wealthy voting political public.) Don't get me wrong. I am not in favor of putting any burden on the middle class, in fact to reverse this epidemic trend in America it would most likely not phase them at all.

But one thing is certain. if we continue in the direction we currently are. It won't be long before we have even more and more problems than simply the Iraqi,s and our terrorist enemies.

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America stated that all men are created equal.
Communism stated that they should br treated that way. . . . It would further seem neither of them practice what they preach

Look at both these posts.
It another blame game instead of talking about the topic this thread was created to talk about.

Waa waa The Dems did this.

Waa waa the Reps did that.

Grow up people!!
Is that all America has become?
The blame game?

Neither of you talked about what was said in the original post.
You are too busy hating the other party.
Must be nice to sit around in a nice home in a ice area of a city and play the blame game while other Americans are literally HOMELESS and living on the streets.
It's not the Dems or Reps fault.
BOTH parties are equally to blame for the problems in America.
BOTH parties are to blame for illegal immigration.
BOTH parties are to for the poverty in America.

These are issues that have been around for generations and BOTH parties were in power at some point and chose to ignore the problems.

September 12, 2001 was the first only only time the blame game STOPPED.
For one brief period in American History, people were united as one.
Is it going to take another terrorist attack and thousands of innocent people to die before America comes together as one again?

Even the hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans did nothing to bring your country back together.
You still played the blame game.
AGAIN BOTH parties had a chance to fix the problems before that city flooded.

STOP THE BLAME GAME AND START FIXING YOUR COUNTRY "TOGETHER!!"

Instead of Blaming why not discuss the issue that is the title for this topic.

"The collapse of freedom:: The widening gap between the haves and the have nots"

Do you think either of you can discuss the topic instead of playing the blame game?

[quote]I've done more than that, on several occasions I've told "the world" (i.e. the elite euro left) that they can get f_____!

Ooooooo - science is based on votes? Skipped that course in physics.

Africa is a rathole, that money will end up in dictators swiss bank accounts and their flunky's pockets.

Nonsense - none of the national republicans have even the guts to mention it, and it is the singular obsession and acid test for appointments of liberals down to the dog catcher.

You saw the humor? You're a sharp one. I have made proposals to solve the energy crisis, and none of them are like liberals gimmicks of trotting out impractical alternative cars for photo-ops, and certainly not bio fuels which would dramatically run up food costs, or the nuthouse idea of throwing government money at politically-connected reserachers to repeat the multi hundred million dollar "alternate energy" boondoggles of the 1970's.

You're full of beans, I've actually called for Bush's impeachment on this forum, and you've got to come up with a better reason than "other countris are doing it".

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Read this post quick before the mods delete it!

I don't want to "come together" with liberals - they are destroyers, everything they do wrecks and is intended to wreck this country.

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Read this post quick before the mods delete it!

Fair enough, I'll admit my post was somewhat immature. I disagree that both parties are to blame, but that isn't the point of this thread. I apologize for getting away from the point.

I actually read an article the other day about how while the gap between haves and have nots is increasing, it's because more people are becoming rich, and not the other way around. But I do agree that homelessness is a huge problem that we need to work on, but whenever I talk about this I get labeled a socialist.

I agree that we do need to increase the minimum wage because 5.15 is ridiculous and it is not a living wage. CEO's do not deserve what they are making. The make billions and get hundred million dollar bonuses. It's ridiculous and it's unnecessary. Look at hom much the CEO of Wal Mart is making, yet he pays his employees minimum wage. He may say "Well if I paid them more the prices would go up." No, if you stopped taking $500,000,000 bonuses on top of your billion dollar salary, you wouldn't have to worry about it.