Why is poverty necessary in the USA?

Question

Why can't the USA just fund social services enough to get rid of poverty, hungery children, poor housing, no health care, unemployment, economically driven crime, etc.?

It is pretty lame that such a rich place treats it's poor, disabled, and elderly like animals while simultaneously taking so much more than most people need, throwing away and wasting so much, spending so little on care.

Don't write back insults, use your brain and answer the question WHY? What is the REASON?

It is "too" not "to" you mook.

So many appaulingly stupid people here! You dumbasses need to realize that if you are born poor, raped by your stepfather then sent out to be a waitress for years while never educated you are still and American. Just because you assnuts were born rich and never had problems don't dump on poor people. You should HELP them dillweeds! Well, I wish trauma on you and your family, then you will understand how greedy you were... and I hope some narrowminded bigot sputs your own nonsensical argument back at you, like spit in your children's faces.

BP - in that clip, the man basically says nothing. Not a bit of it is bore out by facts, not a bit of his argument is valid. He is saying - social services work to keep people down, but he neglects to say that without social services it would be far worse, kids without... families destitute as they are in many 3rd world countries... he offers no alternative and subtly supports a "free market system" where if it ever existed (it never has anywhere) would mean that people should go about thier lives seeking only more for themselves and to hell with granny next door who is eating dog food to afford her medicine, grampy who fought with this country in WWII who has to sit alone in a horrid stinky rest home. Get real... social services may be malfunctioning due to conservatives who attack the funding... if people were Left and intelligent they would operate fine ask a Swede... or a Venezualan for that matter.

Answer 1

We are truly selfish, we love BMWs to show poor people what they can earn if they work hard enough,,,,lol...
I think this is the rationale people have, that they need to be kicked in the butt to work....

I think the main reason is that the neocons and corporations use propaganda to convince the majority that it will come out of the taxes of middle class america.....
and middle class doesnt realize that they are being rearended by the corporations,,,,

in my head,,,, communal living arrangements are the cure for poverty, even to the point of generating their own power and growing foods.... teach minimalism ,,,, Also property values doubling in ten years was not good for the poor.....

edit,,,,,
I think most people enjoy having someone to look down too, it makes them feel like they are not so bad..... it is called a pecking order..... read about them,,,,,
The lowest on the pecking order are always so damaged they can not function, they make stupid decisions, but we created them through our rejection of them,,, and it is our responsibility to heal the ones we have damaged.....

i see the poor as malnourished by the culture and need love to heal them.... often this is an exhausting task, but we are evolving and this is part of it,.,,,,,
compassion.... try it....


The poor are damaged and can not get it right, no matter what, there is only one way to heal them, either embrace their children and teach the children values, while listening, empathizing and sharing the childs pain with them. Next is to re-parent the adult, with the same method. We as individuals must embrace the wounded of our culture, throwing money at them will not help... truly... it requires a campaign that we have yet evolved enough to understand,,,


the guy below me said "but, remember, there's no conspiracy or intention involved, just impersonal aggregate economic forces)."
I think a handful of corporations dominating the market have more control than an open market, there is profit intention by a small powerful group of people... I know that you can not handle this overwhelming idea, it is conceptual.... and you are a republican.

Answer 2

Well it isn't necessary to have poverty but it won't stop until welfare is ABOLISHED. Everyone always thinks that we need to give more and more, but in truth that is only hurting the ones in poverty. It isn't giving them the drive to become motivated and to have the self made man type of attitude that seemed to have disappeared since around the 70's.

You should listen to a black philosopher Thomas Sowell, here is a link to a video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1GqDe6zN_mk

Hope this will helps in that poverty can be stopped not through government intervention, but through support from both non-profit and faith based groups.


added:

The video was meant to introduce you to Thomas Sowell, not to have him explain everything in just those 3 minutes or so. Plus I then gave you my own answer in that welfare should be done by nonprofit and faith based organizations. It isn't the federal governments job to provide welfare, our founding fathers wanted the federal government to provide for a national defense and not really too much beyond that, so it should be left up to each state to decide. Anotherthing, the CONSTITUION never gave government the right to redistribute wealth which is basically what our progressive tax system does. A prime example of how a faith based organization is better than government welfare is in Utah, which has one of the lowest percentages of people living in poverty, and this is because of the LDS Church's Welfare Program. So there it is and I do suggest that YOU look up more on Thomas Sowell, I don't have to do it for you.

Answer 3

Proverty is necessary because of statistics and politics. Politicians help create the poverty line. According to the laws of statistics, there are always people who are more rich and people who are very poor distributed like a bell curve. It doesn't matter where you move that bell curve up or down the income scale since there are always people on the bottom of that curve. So the only way poverty is going to go away is when everyone makes the same or close to the same amount of money but we don't like communism.

Funding of social service to help with the problem of society is going to cost huge amount of money and I mean astronomically huge. Think about how are we going to fund all of these programs? Do the government increase the tax rates on the individual or charge the cost to businesses? Think of the consequencies if the government do either one. Is it fair for people who work hard for their money to be spent on people who doesn't? Do businesses want to investment money here and can they make a profit? You're acting like the government or USA have endless amount of money to spend everywhere. There's only a fixed amount of money.

Answer 4

Well, one Conspiracy Theory might go like this: Poverty justifies social services, which justifies a large bureacracy, which justifies high taxes, which makes the government big, fat, and happy.

Alternately Conspiracy Theory: Big Evil Corporations need masses of misserable poor poeple to serve as an object lesson and instil terror in the hearts of the working class, so that they can hire them at to work in hazardous condition for low wages since, "it's better than being unemployed and poor."


In reality, of course, nobody wants to perpetuate poverty, but it's a very intractible problem. There are many factors that keep it around in spite of the best efforts of dedicated, idealistic, and occassionally even smart people. (Some of them are going to sound like the affore-mentioned conspiracty theories, but, remember, there's no conspiracy or intention involved, just impersonal aggregate economic forces).

One rather obvious problem, for instance, is that people who are born and remain poor, tend to have more children than rich or middle class people. This is not just because of the structure of Welfare (more kids = more cash), it happens throughout the world, even in nations where poverty is much more widespread, or where the poor do not recieve assistance on that criterion. That means that every year, even if you try to pull people out of poverty, there are more poor people to pull.

To make matters worse, people tend to remain in the economic class into which they were born. Relatively few people are so ambitious as to climb the social ladder, or so incompentent as to fall completely off of it. Most of us manage to muddle along, staying aproximately as prosperous as our parents were at the same stage of life.

Next, some jobs need to be done that can't be done for a living wage. Some people - who lack the skills/ambition/luck to do other work - get stuck in these jobs. If they're stuck doing that work for too long, they're mired in poverty. If no one does that work, society suffers - and, if wages for that sort of work are pushed up to the 'living wage' level, it triggers inflation, which errodes real wages, dragging other, marginal workers down into poverty. (The solution, in theory, is to eliminate the need for such jobs, through technical advances and/or capital investment, BTW).


I could go on an on... maybe I'll update this answer later...

Answer 5

I don't know why this question is being directed toward the government.

Those who have should take care of those who don't.

I have very little, but I help others out whenever and wherever I can.

If all the 'caring' citizens who routinely ask these sorts of questions did the same, there would be a lot fewer disadvantaged people in this country.

Answer 6

If the individual was incapable of creating wealth in the US, their wouldn't be as many illegals risking death to get in.

The poor have bought into entitlements. No it isn't a flip of the switch I have wealth. It is very hard work. My little brother wants the same entitlement type solution. He is more into the idea of his short comings than into creating with his talents. He is creating his own poverty. His addiction to being Christ like is causing his poverty. If he wishes to get others to convert to his religion he needs to acknowledge that one is judged by the fruits that they create. Even in the Bible it says you will be judged by the fruits you create. It also says it is more blessed to give that receive. His GOD is also being judged by his lack of fruit. Read how many of Job's friends said he should curse his GOD. I don't curse my brother's GOD, I pity my brother & his need for the Rapture to come in his life time.

President John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
MLK in his I have a dream speech said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. "
Both of these great men talked about contribution of the individual not about taking from the community.

By the way I'm an agnostic in part because of the churches hand always being out. One gives in thanks for what one has received, not out of guilt, because of what others don't have. In turn they don't expect someone else to refill that open area just because it is open. I've seen too much of that as well.

Answer 7

Really, you should ask the poor why it's necessary for them to be poor when there is so much opportunity.

You are asking me why I don't want to work 10 extra hours a week to give the money to strangers. The truth is, I'd either like that time off to spend with friends and family, or have the money from those hours to spend on my friends and family. It's my life we are talking about, my time, my effort.

I don't demand that someone who has more than me, give me their money. If I want more, it's up to me to figure out how to get it, and go after it.

Last point....we've spent literally trillions on the poor for more than 40 years and there are still poor among us. If you wanted to make this group temporarily "not poor", get rid of the bureaucracy between them and the money, and cut them all bigger checks. Paying for welfare buildings, the electricity, equipment, staff, etc. eats up 85% of whats intended for the poor. Now I do know something about the group called "the poor"...many of them are completely dependent on the government, and they have no intention of changing that. Would you like me and others like me to continue to write checks directly to them forever, so they aren't poor? Do you have a plan to prevent them from spending all the money at once and returning to "poor" two days after they get their check? This dependency/compassion thing is very complicated.

Answer 8

Jesus " The Poor will you have always "

Poverty is the result of our Captialist society as in ours and all other captialist socitiey there are both winners and losers.The Winners are always thoese who already who are wealthy. There may be a very few who are lucky to become rich a very very small percentage of us. A lucky few Corporations get paid, poor people get put out into the cold.

Answer 9

americans are a pice of **** I have no home no food and nobdy even cares that upsets me I have no car no phone and not one god dam person will help me I cant get on pice of **** welfare everybody else canget help why the hell cant I I am being discriminated against I also cant have a god dam birth certificate that is just plain mean and wrong that should be illegal to deney me of a home and food and a dam birth certificate America is plain mean and rotten its not a good place to live at all hell you cant even live here iam denied of so many god dam things that nobdy else is that's just plain mean and wrong americans you pice of **** must hate the adoptee americans hate me the adoptee

Answer 10

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I would suggest reading "The Grapes of Wraith". It is a depression era book that is surprisingly relevent today. Capitalism almost demands there to be a "poorer class". Those in charge would rather let food rot, rather than distribute it to the poor, out of fear of driving the price down and cutting into the profit margin. There is also the fear that if you provide for your poor, they will just breed even more poor. I do not like this system either, I suppose it is up to us, the individual to make certain that we are not one of the forgotten poor in the richest country in the world. I think more can be done, I like to believe that education is the key. I hope someday, a college level education will be a right as a U.S. citizen, not just a privilege. Thank you for your question. I hope this helps.