|
Point by Point:
• There are no poor people in the United States, except in a relative way. Everyone here has plenty of food and clothing. Not everyone in the US has every luxury, but no one here starves. You want to see real poverty, you'd have to go to sub-Saharan Africa, or some parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.
I could go on about this one forever.
First of all, he should go to the UN site and read their human rights mandate passed in 1948 and tell me what kind of quality of life can we as Americans call "good" ? Are we as a people supposed to actually say people should just be grateful to have food and a few clothes? He would find that this document points out that ANY poverty is a human rights issue and to allow it in any form is being inhumane. To allow with impunity, any poverty, homelessness unemployment and underemployment, ANY lack of healthcare, much less the lack or a paltry safety net for families, parents, children and the disabled, is akin to genocide. It should be a basic human right to have housing, food, clothing, healthcare, and a job with a livable wage. This document is for EVERYONE, not just people in remote parts of the world!
Has he ever checked the rise in homeless statistics with the millions of working families who are homeless in this country? How would HE like to choose between a home and food? Oh. So I got a free coat so I can huddle with my 2 year old in the park for a little longer before I go to beg for a meal so I can clean his home? Oh yeah what a wonderful quality of American life for me and my kid ~ I have a coat and food!
I also wish he could speak with my friend Margaret, A formerly upper middle class woman, who survived Somalia under nightmare conditions, who was able to get enough education to receives a masters degree there, before she came to America (to live here as a homeless woman and who contracted TB from the street population here). She explains to ignoramuses like this person that poverty in different parts of the world is like comparing apples and oranges. For instance, in America, in order to survive (eat, house and clothes yourself) you HAVE to be employed. In order to keep employment, you need things here that you would not need in Africa ~ like for instance, regular showers. She says in Africa, if you have even a little piece of land where you can squat and perhaps raise a garden, you can survive, could you say the same here in the middle of NY city or Seattle?
Margaret is not my only friend, I could also point him to people from South America, Asia and other countries who would tell similar stories about poverty there versus poverty here. They say the cost of living compared to wages and our cultural expectations for Americans is different here. you might be able to clean house for someone in India in rags, but you would not get into the door here in such get up. A minimum wage job after taxes in this country would not pay the rent for a studio apartment in many cities, much less feed and clothes someone. They would laugh at people like this man who thinks he is so right when he is nothing but ignorant. He actually thinks someone should be grateful to have clothes and food? How about considering a basic human right to have it, especially if we as Americans are going to go and brag to ourselves and the world about how "great" we are while we turn a blind eye to what is going on right under our noses? Hypocrites!
• He says that he doesn't know what she means by a "living wage". Enough to buy a new car every three years? Or, enough to feed your family? Because if it's the latter, then Wal-mart certainly pays a "living wage" or its employees couldn't work.
See above. I repeat: what a hypocrite!
• Re: eating McDonalds, he says that obesity is caused by consuming more calories than you burn and that it doesn't make any difference where the calories come from. He says that if you include the breakfast menu, you could eat quite healthy by eating the stuff that's on the menu at McD's. Just so long as you don't eat the same thing off their menu every time you eat, you would be much healthier and better fed than virtually all of sub-Saharan Africa. Exercise, and be careful not to eat too much, and you'd be set.
Most low income people who become obese come from the diet they are forced to eat. Food stamps today allow around a dollar a meal per person. Tell me, what kind of meal could you eat on that? Families often combine this, so for instance, for a family of four this means 4.00 per meal, but tell me what "feast" could you make on 4.00 that would provide all the nutrition for a family of four? The diet of a poor person is high in starches and fats, low in fresh produce, dairy, and meats as those are the most expensive foods. Few poor can even afford to eat at McDonalds, although that would be a treat if they did eat out, as they could not afford to eat anywhere else.
• He also went on about welfare. He doesn't like being told what to eat b/c he values his "freedom." He said that some people, "especially in the lower classes," fear freedom and that there's a culture of dependancy & "feel-goodness."
Oh so HE is not dependent on all those wonderful services he gets? Does he realize in the state of WA the poor pay almost 20% of their incomes in regressive taxes, while he probably complains about the puny 10% he pays with a whole lot more disposable income and credit at his fingertips? Is 1000 the same to someone earning 10,000.00 in a year as 1000.00 is to someone earning 100,000.00? He needs to learn math if he thinks this is hunky dunky. The low income worker, btw, contributed almost 30% to the national budget as well ~ while the rich paid nothing. So he does not use publicly funded education (even colleges are funded by tax dollars those low income people could NEVEr afford even with those subsidies). So he never drives on publicly paid roads, uses publicly financed utilities or eat foods raised by federally funded mega-farms that are killing the family farm? ALL of this is welfare. He enjoys all of this welfare paidn to him, unless he is out there fixing potholes and watermains himself, growing his own food, pumping and refining his own fuel ~ and he is not the only one who paid for them, his fellow POOR paid at least 20% of their own incomes contributing to them.
Also so he thinks that raising children is “doing nothing” for this country, and that working a minimum wage job making some white man richer, is “doing more” for this country? His is what he expects out of a parent raising the future generations of this country. Why does he hate his people so much? why does he hate family values? Who will take care of him, run this country educate his grandchildren, and raise his food, when he is old? There certainly is not any rich kids in Iraq, and believe me when he gets old he does not want a resentful, ignorant, underpaid person changing HIS diapers, does he?
Lets just hope his idea does not manifest itself into his myopic, selfish, un-American valuless inhumane life!
GAWD, people like this man, who have full bellies, are the most callus and their unconscious love of Nazism is disgusting. Have I mentioned today how much I HATE these people?
Cat In Seattle <----use whatever you wish to conteract this nimrod!
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
