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Bruce Leroy posted:It very much is, but so many Americans are obsessed with the idea that they themselves will one day become one of those rich authoritarians that they don't want to do anything about it (e.g. enact a living wage, "card check" legislation, decouple healthcare coverage from employment, etc.) because it would work against them later when they want to oppress their employees. I'd love to know the money making schemes of each one of these people. Do they really think they'll squeak into the richest 10 percent or so by scrimping and saving? Or be lucky enough to be noticed by some big shot who drops in on them out of nowhere and is impressed by their industriousness a la Ragged Dick? The only common idea I remember is a lot of people were looking on getting in on the house investing craze before Stuff Happened in 2008 (even my otherwise skeptical pop was considering it), or even dumber people investing in Beanie Babies back in the 90s, thinking they would appreciate in value forever.
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Apr 30, 2012 04:20
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Pththya-lyi posted:How does he imagine a poor person will actually take that? Just move into the woods and live off the land! I dream about doing it all the time after watching reruns of Little House on the Prarie! If anything, I envy our spoiled poor by being able to leave it all behind easier.
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May 6, 2013 22:29
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"Oh, silly me! Of course I can move away from the freeway! After all, costs of living are the same everywhere. I can't imagine what I was even worried about."
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Why yes, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, I *do* happen to have a bunch of money just sitting around to finance a whole year of loving off in another country. Also, it should indeed be totally mandatory for everyone.quote:I’m delighted to announce that the winner of my 2014 “win-a-trip” contest is ... Not one mention of the low number of students travelling abroad possibly having anything to do with not being able to afford it. There's the whole idealist.org thing, but it seems highly unlikely any of those positions are willing to hire some kid right out of high school.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:46
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Berke Negri posted:I wanted to go to Chile to do immersion and history research in undergrad but I guess I'm a provincial American because I didn't have 8000 to spend on top of my to increasing every year tuition. Probably should have took out more loans so that Kristof could write an op ed piece next week about American students blowing student loan money on luxuries like "eating food" and trips abroad. To be fair, he's come out in the past strongly in favor of more funding to public education. Of course, in a typical centrist fashion, he thinks SSI should be slashed in order for this to work. Education then would be a silver bullet that will eliminate poverty if only poors chose to stop being lazy.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:31
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Increasing funding in education to double the number of poor kids going to college certainly isn't a worthy cause because it isn't perfect. Right.  Meanwhile, I wouldn't have much of an objection to his promotion of vocational blue collar jobs if a) He encouraged "successful" (i.e. rich) kids to get them too, and b) he acknowledged that the number of good blue collar jobs is actually a lot lower than many people imply. All in all, however, the article definitely comes off as more of the same "poors are too stupid to ever get ahead" mentality that I've come to expect from even "liberal" publications like Salon. ProperGanderPusher fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 20:54
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Eulogistics posted:My family was on welfare when I was growing up (including free/reduced-price lunches at school) and my mom was a member of the Communist Party in the 70s. I don't know what happened to her. Like all the other boomers, the minute she or her husband started actually making money, they abandoned their leftist principles entirely. Classic FYGM.
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Apr 18, 2014 18:15
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Eulogistics posted:She is poor now, she's never been better off than lower-middle class. She takes donations from a local church group or something and works 2 crappy part-time jobs. If my little brother wasn't getting Social Security to cover his disability, she wouldn't have any money at all. She just doesn't have time to follow the news or something and believes what the retards around her tell her, I guess. Forgive me for jumping to conclusions. Her story simply sounded identical to many others I've known and read about who went from commies to died-in-the-wool Republicans. It clearly isn't, of course. In fact, she may have a point about kids refusing to eat healthy. I know there's certain periods of my childhood where I was such a picky eater that I literally skipped lunch or only ate the bread off my sandwich or whatever. I do still think a healthy lunch program is better than no lunch program at all or one in which kids are served nutritionally bankrupt garbage.
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Apr 18, 2014 23:59
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I was just about to post that. It's funny how he brings up What's the Matter With Kansas?. The book basically says that poor Americans are often swayed by culture war bullshit, namely the narrative of honest God-fearing, hard-working, home-owning folks vs. godless, effete, elitist academics and lazy urban poors. In other words, the book denounces exactly the attitude the author is espousing. There's also a lot of "a few leftists I knew were dicks so gently caress left-wing politics" sentiment there as well.
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Jul 25, 2014 01:00
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MaxxBot posted:The pope is a liberal CINO I know more than a few people who have converted to Orthodoxy over Catholicism with that in mind. That's not to say the Orthodox don't care about social justice. It's just that it's way easier to ignore a patriarch/bishop's call for caring for the poor if you aren't under his jurisdiction. That also doesn't negate the writings of church fathers like John Chrysostom and Basil the Great who basically said that private property is theft and that the only proper storehouses for food are the stomachs of the poor.
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Oct 31, 2014 18:16
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computer parts posted:And (at least pre-White Flight) there were many incidences of Blacks & Hispanics being beaten by Italians for wandering into the wrong neighborhood. Here in San Francisco, Chinese people used to risk getting the poo poo beat out of them if they went past Broadway into North Beach. Then Italians were promoted to white status and most of them immediately fled to the 'burbs. Many remaining locals still bitch about those goddamn Cantonese peasants barking at each other in their moon language in THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD, of course.
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Feb 1, 2015 05:08
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