Originally posted by Squid Vicious
'Tis all relative. It's probably like here in Australia... theres plenty of people who cry over how poor they are, but in reality it's more like they just want what their neighbour has instead of what they have.
Then they get all depressed coz they can't afford the mercedes the neighbour has, because the neighbour is a doctor and they're only labourers, among other excuses, and drink themselves half to death instead of buying food.
"poor" is a psychological condition.
As Riomacleod said: "starving" is not a psychological condition
The problem in US is, there are some social standards one has to meet within the boundaries of US. For example, if you drive a car, the car must be safe to drive and meet the standards of the road. If you want to eat, you must be able to work in a private enterprise system. If you get sick, you must be able to pay for the doctor's and hospital's services - not to mention drug purchases. There is no witch doctoring allowed. It has been documented that some poor people have to resort to ciminal activities so that can get go to jail to be cured of cancer. Our social safety net has not kept up with changing of the times since the great depression.
It is a sad state of affair. It is easy to say these are stupid people or lazy people - but the truth is, a primitive society can not exist inside a technologically advanced society. These people who fall through the crack is not because they did anything wrong, but the CEOs of mega corporations did take decision that affected them. Dont get me wrong - I am pro-business but for every business activities there are flip side to it. While Capitalism does produce tremendous growth and benefit to a society, it also has cracks that produces a lot of poor, hungry and destitute people, some of which go postal that try to burn down the country.
The solution is not to blame the Capitalistic system but use the same system of innovation and wealth to solve these social issues. It is like the R&D department in a company that looks the strategic view point, the long term health of the company. Because it is a systemic problem, no one company can solve this but a collaboration of business, government and people is needed to address these issues.
Today, while companies have five year business plans and strategies, no one uses those plans to see how it is going to affect the community. I was involved with a company that had plan to move their operation to overseas in 2 years. But they did not say a word to their employees because everybody would leave. Someone has to re-train these people to be absorbed into society once they find themselves out of work ahead of the curve.
Anyway...even though in America, poor people have refrigerators and washers and dryers - what they dont have is health, food, transporation and training to get a job in private sector.