You have spent so much time in Socialist la la land that you forgot that America is a capitalist country. Capitalism is a good thing. Economic Darwinism. You are going to have winners and losers. It sucks to loose. If you do not want to be a loser (because it sucks to loose), try harder!!! Sure you want to have a safety net for the unfortunate, but at what level should that net be place. The people of East Timor get along just fine on $400 per year, but in the US you are in poverty if you earn less than $9,800. Have you notice, though, that all the poor people in the US are FAT. They are not missing any meals. They gorge on federal food stamps, state, local and federal assistance and grants, social security, "disability", "unemployment" and all they have to do to get free medical care is to present themselves to any ER in the country (the hospitals must provide medical services in spite of the patient's inability to pay). The vast majority of the fatsoes in poverty in the US are in poverty because they are LAZY. Being a loser sucks, but to them, working sucks more. If they got off their fat asses and worked rather than relied on the entitlement system in this country, they would not be in poverty. Another major source of poverty in the US is poverty in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. How would the poverty levels in Austria look if 12.5 million of the poorest of the poor and uneducated from Africa illegally moved to Vienna and started breeding dark skinned Austrian citizens like rabbits. Since Clinton's days, the USA has absorbed over 10 million impoverished breading Mexicans, but the number of people in poverty only increased by 4 million (see below). That means that the US economy took in over 6 million third-world peasants and raised their standard of living above the very liberal poverty level of the United States. I'm no fan of mass immigration of poverty, but I look at those statistics and I think: "Damn, America's version of capitalism rocks!" And all this while at the same time recovering from the economic shock of 9/11, paying for two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and dumping $110 billion into a bottomless pot of Creole Jambalaya.
Go back to your socialist cocoon protected by the umbrella of American military might. Or if you want, move to that model world citizen China (Human rights, no religious freedom, forced abortions, Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, Tibet, etc.). I'm sorry. I tried to ignore that idiotic "Fine China" reply, but I couldn't.
On Aug 30, 2006, at 5:14 AM, xxxx wrote:
America's wealth of poverty
New numbers from the Census Bureau show what a disaster the economic policies of the Bush administration have been for middle-class, working-class and poor Americans.
When President Bush took office, 33 million Americans, or 11.7% of the population, were counted as living below the poverty line. By last year, the ranks of the poor had swollen to 37 million and the national poverty rate was stuck at 12.6%. Here in New York City, almost one in five struggles to get by on $20,000 - or less - for a family of four.
When Bush took office, 41 million Americans were without health coverage. Today, the count of the uninsured stands at 47 million. When Bush took office, the median income for men working full time, year-round was $42,209. As of 2005, that typical salary, when adjusted for inflation, had shrunk to $41,386. Although the real median household income crept up 1.1% - the first such uptick since 1999 - the wages of full-time, year-round workers continued their southward slide, down 1.8% for men and 1.3% for women.
These are the anemic results you'd expect to see in more difficult times. But the economy is cooking, with steady growth, moderate inflation, low unemployment and strong corporate profits. The rising tide should be lifting all boats. Instead, it's working only for the yachts.
Many forces are eating at the paychecks of American workers, including global competition, rising health care costs and the declining clout of organized labor. Some factors are beyond the control of any presidential administration, but the White House and Congress do have an obligation to, at the very least, ease the blows.
Bush and Capitol Hill Republicans have focused instead on plumping the pillows of the well-off. Witness five years of tax cuts for those at the top. Witness the refusal to raise the minimum wage, whose purchasing power is at a half-century low. Witness the fact that the top 1% of earners pull in a larger share of income than they have in decades.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently acknowledged, "many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits" of a strong economy, but there's little sign of a course correction from the White House. Democrats are seizing on the issue as they angle to take control of the House and Senate in the fall elections. We hope they make the most of it.
| Tom, your
logo makes me bust up laughing every time I see
it. As for America's greatest fear, check the
following out from todays NY Daily News...
|
As I've always said, clean up your backyard instead of bombing other's while chasing the infamous "boogie man" of radical muslims...
DR