Poverty?

[AMP-d]

So, let's discuss poverty.

Specifically, what causes it, whether or not poor people are to blame, and the subject of taxes on the poor.

Personally, I believe that most people have control over their own lives, and they should work hard to earn their way up the social ladder, but the fact of the matter is that some people inheirit things they do not deserve. On the other hand, some people are poor because they cannot pay for basic things such as electricity or water on top of medical expenses, saving for their kids, etc.

Again, my belief is that those who are less fortunate deserve a break, and those who are well off can afford to pay more taxes, but anyone who has dragged themselves up won't want to pay a larger percentage, and people who are lazy probably don't need lower taxes.

It's a bit of a Catch-22.

What do you think, Politics users?

P.S. - I tried surviving a conversation with my peers about this issue, but I couldn't take the yelling. Let's hope Politics can rise to the challenge.

[PantyWipe]

Let the rich pay the most, they can afford to. Its pretty shitty that the middle class always has to take the bumps come tax time. As a poor kid, I appreciate it, tho, So thank you, middle class!

[JudgeDredd]

At 2/19/08 09:10 PM, AMP-d wrote: So, let's discuss poverty.. It's a bit of a Catch-22.

Poverty is when you fine someone who can't afford to do what you're fining them for.

[carbanonzo]

Poverty could more be defined as a social calamity than widespread instances of poor choice. I've heard people make the argument that the only reason people live impovershed lives with minimum wage disempowering jobs is a lack of education and effort. This argument is at once easy to see through, "everywhere there is a cafeteria or a resteraunt there are going to have to be people who wash the dishes and it's sure not going to be the owners. Some of my coworkers had been to college and had nothing to show for it but debt" (Qtd. "Expect Resistence" by the Crimethinc. Ex-workers Collective) this could be extended from doing something as simple as eating at a resteraunt towards more day to day occourences in industrialized society. Buying food at a grocery store for instance, we must acknowledge the fact that in order for us to recieve the food we are purchasing in such a way there is going to be some poor disempowered worker who will have to spend a large part of his life in the hot sun tediously harvesting said food. An industrialized society requires such infastructure, to say that a persons poverty is simply due to her tendency to be lazy in school and poor decision making when it came to education is rediculous. It is however odd that the very people who maintain the infastructure that holds up elite society are the ones so disempowered and mistreated by that very society.

Poverty is in some sense also hereditary. Through a study or our nation's geneology I feel it would be easy to prove that a large part of this countries wealth traveled here from europe and is maintained by those same families today, the obvious exception can be made for movie stars or suave businessmen who make a "big break" of some sort, but as the above argument demonstrates this exception can hardly be extended towards the girth of society. George Orwell examines the prospects an impovershed man can expect for his life in his book Down and Out in Paris and London, the exact quote I can't remember but it ran along these lines: He will never marry, he will never have a home or children, nor will he experience a steady diet. If these are the prospects of a poor man's life it can go without saying that "he will never escape poverty" should be added to the end of the list. I remember as a child in the car with my mother evertime she saw a homeless person with a sign she would almost without fail say "Why don't they just clean themselves up and get a job at McDonalds or something?" As a child this seemed perfectly logical. Now I realize that my mother has never in her life filled out an application for employment and not known what to put in the "living address" box. How demoralizing that must feel. Not to mention homeless people who've developed alcoholism or drug addiction, what kind of employment would they recieve?