"There is no worse country in the world to be poor."

[kpete]

Saturday, December 22, 2007
"The system literally hates them."

There is no better country than America in the whole world to be rich. It is probably the only country in the world where the rich are loved. Conversely there is no worse country in the world to be poor. Of course these people are paranoid, the system literally hates them.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2007/12/i-have-no-idea.html

[cosmik debris]

1. Right, Darfur is a much better place to be poor.

Didn't that person engage the brain before opening the mouth?

[iamjoy]

4. I'm With You!

Compared to the fantastic wealth the United States has, the poverty in this country is shameful and painful. But, if compared to the situation in many African and Asian nations, I don't think it is as bad for our poor.

Our poor do not die of diptheria, measles, etc. Our poor more often than not still have access to clean water - they don't have to walk miles and miles to a river or well that is contaminated. Our poor children still get an education - and if it is not as good when compared to what children of wealthier parents get, they are still taught to read - if they can overcome their situation to learn.

I'm not saying there is no one in the US who may fall into those situations. I also know that while chronic hunger is a big problem in this country, there are few people in acute danger of literally starving to death (not counting other underlying conditions such as mental illness or abuse).

I do think of all the developed nations, our poverty is the worst. If it weren't for the government programs we have (the ones the Republicans keep trying to cut) it would be a lot worse.

Our poverty is shameful because it's the result of greed and apathy.

[XemaSab]

30. Word.

n/t

[OHdem10]

2. I have to sometimes laugh or I would cry.

CNN, Lou Dobbs, Newsek:
Our college graduates should be preparing themselves for blue collar
level jobs--HairDressers, Cosmetologists, Lauwn Service, Truck Drivers.
Look for jobs that cannot or most likely will not be outsourced or
transferred out of country. It is here folks. Yes if the more
educated get the hairdresser jobs etc. come, on --our middle clas
and poor will give Darfur a run for its money.

I love this counry, but it is not as rich as it used to be.

Charity begins at home.

[flashl]

12. US News: Even college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers

Last year, because U.S. News readers tend to be college educated, we included only careers that typically require at least a bachelor's degree. This year we've added four careers that don't. Why? More and more students are graduating from college at the same time that employers are offshoring more professional jobs. So, many holders of a bachelor's degree are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills. Meanwhile, society has been telling high school students that college is the way, so there's an accelerating shortage of skilled people in jobs that don't require college. (Why else do you think you have to pay $100 an hour for a plumber?)

U.S. News

The disappearing 'white-collar' job market has been an 'open secret' for years.

In the past, it was big news each year in June to report the number of colleges graduates finding new jobs, it simply stopped.

For me, it was noticeable after the Enron collapse took with it a sizeable chunk of pension systems. Workers approaching retirement after the Enron crash had to stay on the job. Subsequently, there have been various reports about ‘age wars’ because under-employed college graduates want the older workers to pass the torch (leave the workplace).

I do not foresee any improvements in future. At this moment, there are increasing concerns that pension systems across this country are INSOLVENT.

I will post full article in education forum.

[OHdem10]

13. Please post the article at GD so that it gets more time for people

to read. Thanks

[mcscajun]

14. US News is way behind the curve here. I've been saying that for the last 5 years

I used to work in IT. I've been telling parents (and their older children) for years now: "Get something that's hands-on, because if it isn't, it can be offshored. Period."

Wonder what finally woke up the folks at US News?

[Nay]

15. Yep. Sonny Nay is a computer whiz, but we advised him to go after

a trade -- so now he is a union electrician, doing very well. And guess what? He's the only one who ALSO knows all about computerized switching systems, etc. He's going to go far.

Having said that, the only reason the trades are still paying well is that large numbers of the workers are unionized. Once the rich decide they want cheap electricians and plumbers, they will break the unions and presto, H1B visas for foreigners to take those jobs, too. What's sad is that there will be plenty of DUers who'll say, "Well, doesn't that foreigner deserve a job, too???"

[flashl]

17. IT is a great example. Thousands paid to obtain degrees

AND certifications for a career path that was literally removed from the grasp of U.S. citizens within 10 years.

[flashl]

16. Inability to forecast careers?

[Occulus]

50. I haven't expected to 'retire' for years now

Not in the sense my parents did. Of course, they were in a position to save and not pay.

I submit the credit card companies behave in an inherently predatory manner, because of the nature of their business. I propose credit cards be abolished and banks be required to issue debit cards for all open bank accounts. You can keep using your checks if you wish.

All the convenience of the credit card, but with a credit limit set by your bank, based on your history with them. Checking defaults to savings when checking is empty, and there's a built-in, from-the-beginning $1000 buffer against overdraft, which does also apply to new customers.

(These are the things- except the credit limit part, although they very well may have an internal policy to that effect- I get from my credit union, and I have a great deal of peace of mind in some respects because of it. It's like having insurance without the middleman.

I LOVE my credit union, and I would never ever trade it for a bank.)

[treestar]

58. That whiner Lou Dobbs is a liar, too

The low income jobs are moving because we have the higher income jobs here. Soon we won't have any hairdressers, they'll all be illegal immigrants. That'll give Lou Dobbs something to cry about. :nopity:

[BadgerLaw2010]

3. You ever seen the slums in Rio?

[OHdem10]

5. Denial is one way to cope, I guess

[Orangepeel]

24. yeah, but outrageous hyperbole doesn't work as well

being poor in the US is terrible, particularly in comparison to the obscene wealth. And, it is getting worse instead of better. But there is no worse country in the world to be poor?

Statements that are designed to make a point end up defeating the point when they are so over the top. But, "worse country in the list of, say, top 10 developed countries generally considered desirable to live in" doesn't read as well.

[Chulanowa]

42. The conditions of poverty are worse elsewhere

But no country works as hard to create poor people, keep them poor, and then punish them for being poor as much as the United States does.

[ileus]

6. Is there any better country to be poor? you can get free everything in America.

Free education, Free Healthcare, Free Housing, Free Cable, Free Clothing, Free daycare. The list goes on and no...

[annabanana]

9. Jeez.. line me up for some of that. .

I thought only the French had it that good. Please, supply details esp. in regards to that "free healthcare" part.

[Occam Bandage]

21. Free healthcare? Walk into your local emergency room.

They have to treat everyone, at enormous cost to the system. What Republicans don't understand is that we already have universal single-payer care; we're just looking for a way to add preventative care, making it more cost effective.

[annabanana]

22. they won't schedule my colonoscopy, or my mammogram...

[Occam Bandage]

31. Which are both preventative care, which is not covered. Only emergency care.

Which everything eventually devolves into requiring.

[pitohui]

26. wow if you don't know what you're talking about why do you post?

in the united states you are not given free health care in an emergency room, they are ONLY required to give you enough care to stabilize you, an ER will not do most health care functions and they'll just leave you sitting there a dozen hours or so until you get the hint and figure it out and leave, they are there to service emergencies

if you have a genuine emergency (you've been shot, you're currently having a seizure) the ER will treat you whether or not you're insured

but you are not getting routine health care for free there, not at any ER i know, plus the savvy hospitals are closing down their ERs so they won't have to deal with uninsured emergencies at all

[Occam Bandage]

32. "you are not getting routine health care for free there,"

which is why I specifically said that the issue is whether or not we add preventative care to the mandated free emergency care. I never claimed otherwise. I never claimed America's free health care was comprehensive. Perhaps you should try looking at what I wrote, rather than what would be a convenient position to argue against.

[annabanana]

38. OK. How can I get free cable?. . . n/t

[frankenforpres]

47. go to jail? n/t

[Occam Bandage]

49. Did I suggest you could?

[saracat]

41. Really? Every emergency room I have been in has demanded a health insurance card first!

And you state it will cover emergencies, not preventive? John Edwards recently pointed out you can't get chemo at the emergency room, or do you consider that "preventive" too?

[Lorien]

43. No they don't have to treat everyone

the laws have been changed. No proof of insurance? You can be put out on the street to die, as a number of homeless people have since BushCo signed the change into law.

[Aristus]

46. Free care at the local ER. That's the foulest myth of our broken health-care system.

The ER will only get you stable. It won't cure what's ailing you. I volunteer in the ER at a local hospital, and I was horrified one night to see the ER discharging a man with an agonizing and humiliating bowel condition. His vital signs were stable, and he was in no immediate danger of his life. But he was in severe pain, disoriented, and had no place to go. He was homeless, and they put him right back out on the street. This, from a hospital ranked one of the "Top 100" in the country. I can't remember the last time I felt so awful...

[eShirl]

11. let me guess: you're not poor, are you?

[undeterred]

18. Where can I get free healthcare, housing,and cable please?

[Lorien]

45. and the free daycare and clothing

my friends with children would certainly like to know...

[AllieB]

23. That's why many single moms have to decide between low-wage jobs where they have to choose between

groceries or paying for healthcare and childcare, or collecting welfare and still having to pay for healthcare, though not as much.

Even liberal Massachusetts doesn't provide free housing. Section 8 does not mean free.

Free education? Where do you live?

Free cable? Comcast raises rates every six months. I doubt they're charitable enough to give it away to poor people who really, really need their MTV.

You are delusional to think they poor get any handouts. Most of the time it's a choice between eating or healthcare, or robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. Who gets all that stuff? Nobody I ever heard of.

Socialist hellholes like Norway and Sweden provide those things; the U.S. sure as hell doesn't.

[Lorien]

44. You're living in Fantasyland, not America.

List references to all of these "freebees" you claim are out there, won't you? My tax dollars pay for your kid's educations, and as far of the rest of it goes; WTF??

[leftofthedial]

59. LOL

how's the weather there on planet nebulon?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. Vanity Fair quoting a blogger named Seaton?

There's an authoritative source on global economics.

I suspect that they just don't get out much. There are plenty of worse places to be poor. (Better ones, too)

[NoPasaran]

8. That explains why so many of our poor

Are seeking a better life in Mexico, right?

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sam sarrha]

19. there are as many homeless in india as the entire population of america, sorry but i have lived in

africa... donkey carts go gown the streets and pick up the dead before sunrise..

that statement is sooooo arogant..and i heard on DU, i cant believe that.

[Common Sense Party]

51. Why can't you believe that?

Some of the most idiotic, insensitive and unprogressive things are said here on DU, every minute of every day.

No one internet site has a corner on stupidity or arrogance.

[sam sarrha]

57. but with villages with 65% AIDS infection in africa with millions of orphan children with only a few

old people with no money trying to teach them to grow beans before they starve.. one village had 500 children and a hand full of elders left.. the rest of the adults too sick to do anything while dying of neglect... because no one knew what to do

i met a guy in FL who went to S Africa, he met a S.A. nurse on the plane who told him to have his own syringes medicine and sewing kit, and under no circumstances to even enter a public clinic or hospital. if he did it was a death sentence, she said people who even visit them frequently are infected with fatal disease,

the disinformation is unbelievable... the world is in chaos

[Occam Bandage]

20. In China, on the street,

I have seen 12-year-old burn victims, with not a hair on their body, with scar tissue covering them head-to-toe, scarcely able to move, begging on the street.

I have seen elderly men fall over under the weight of the bricks they are trying to carry on their backs, trying to do the work of a young man so they might eat.

I have seen amputees, who lost a limb in machinery, without compensation or hope of ever being employed again, with no options but to beg from those almost as poor.

And that is in the gleaming, modernized city of Shanghai, in the nation of China. I saw worse in India. And there is worse still in Bangladesh, and worse still in Africa. The OP is Amerocentric hyperbole.

[tabasco]

28. Yay! We're better than China!

We might not be the worst but we have failed to improve as have Western European and other industrialized countries.

Can I send my student loan bill to you?

In Germany, my fiancee and both of her brothers got free college educations.

[Occam Bandage]

33. Did I claim we were the best? Or even good?

All I claimed was that the OP's claim of us being "the worst" was patent nonsense.

[Deja Q]

62. What do you expect?

With 1.3 billion people and their government's previous attempts to thwart rampant breeding failing, they're not going to give a shit what happens - not to themselves or anyone else.

Besides, of some of the things you're describing, it's happening in America just the same too.

[killbotfactory]

25. People don't understand how bad it is here

I'm sure there are worse places in the world, but if you compare developed countries we are at the bottom.

Ever lived paycheck to paycheck and try to maintain a regular checking account? It's almost impossible without racking up fees that will wipe out all your money. They'll put holds on your paycheck, stack your bills so the biggest ones process first and wipe out all your money, and then they let all the little payments go through with a 30 dollar fee attached to every one of them, etc. And that's just with a "respectable" bank. I learned much too late that credit unions are a much better deal. People tell you to be smart and save, but any medical problem can ruin you, no matter how frugal of a lifestyle you lead. If you don't have any friends or family to help you out, it's even worse.

[Djinn]

27. no everyone does understand that

To anyone living in the rest of the developed world the US economic system is an appalling injustice HOWEVER the author of this article didn't say worst developed country to be poor in, they said worst.

That is self obsessed myopia in the extreme and offensive.

[Occam Bandage]

34. We understand how bad it is. We also understand

that in most developing countries, it is significantly worse. That is a distinction that OP did not make, and in doing so claimed that all the people living without hope in the slums of Lagos or Rio, starving in African droughts and North Korean famines, and dying of cholera in Sudanese refugee camps, all have it better than an American living paycheck-to-paycheck.

[XemaSab]

35. I can't imagine that being poor in... let's see...

virtually all of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East is a cakewalk.

[Guaranteed]

36. I think some people are missing the point, here.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about this in "Slaughterhouse Five."

Poor people in other countries have their self-respect. They just don't have that in the United States. Poor people in the U.S. are looked down upon, as if there is something wrong with them, as if their plight is all their fault.

In other countries, poverty is seen as a product of the system itself.

[Occam Bandage]

37. LMAO.

Yeah.

Oh, sure, Mr. Sudanese. You're dying of cholera in an overcrowded refugee camp--but you're shitting out your intestines with pride. And you, you got burned in an industrial accident, and are now a deformed monster unable to do anything but beg? You're begging for pity with self-resepect. And yeah, North Korea, you're starving under a media blackout and an oppressive, paranoid, kleptomaniacal government--but chin up, because your poverty is the system's fault, not your fault! Hey, there, slum-dweller. Yeah, you've got no job, nor hope of real employment, and you're packed into conditions unsuitable for cattle. But nobody's telling you that your poverty is your own fault! Things are much worse in America, where the working poor are burdened with self-doubt and scorn. Those are much, much worse than starvation and disease.

Pride and respect are luxury commodities. They don't weigh heavily on the minds of the desperate.

[pintobean]

40. This has to be

the best response that I've seen on DU in months!

[EstimatedProphet]

39. There are people in the Phillipines that live on garbage dumps

Their entire lives are lived on garbage dumps. Whole families of them - children born into a garbage-dump-world.

[fujiyama]

48. I don't buy that.

The poor in the US have it bad, but it does not even come close to the horrors of being poor in a developing country, where people practically starve on the streets.

We're not quite there...yet. Granted, with another republican administration in power...

[Raine]

52. Yeah it's a real joy being poor in India

Africa, Mexico and hundreds of other places. :sarcasm:

Being poor in America is not so great compared with being rich in America but still being poor here is something poor people in other countries would certainly prefer.

[MonkeyFunk]

53. That's a pretty dumb statement

No, I take that back. It's a very very dumb statement.

[Two Americas]

54. poor in America

Yes, there are places in the world where people are more vulnerable to disease and are materially worse off than the poorest people here, although we are headed in that direction. However, that is only part of the story.

In other countries people have communities of mutual support and compassion, and meaningful and sustaining traditional culture. In other countries poor people are not treated as pariahs or moral lepers. In other countries poor people are not blamed for their own misfortune.

America is the worst country in which to be poor because it is so damned expensive to be poor here, in so many ways, and because you must endure sneering and taunting from your fellow citizens - even from liberals.

[many a good man]

56. I concur

Well said. I heartily agree with you and disagree with the others up thread.

[Common Sense Party]

60. I disagree.

"In other countries poor people are not treated as pariahs or moral lepers."

Yes, they are. They are not certainly not celebrated and admired. There may be some token efforts of giving them free stuff, but the poor are treated pretty shoddily anywhere you go. Much worse in other countries.

[Two Americas]

61. yes

I wasn't clear, and you are correct in what you say.

In other countries, the upper class certainly treat the poor with contempt. However, what is lacking in this country is any support within the communities, any stable solid communities of moral and material support. So it is not so much a matter of comparing poverty from one place to the other, as it is comparing attitudes toward the poor from one place to the other. I don't think that there is any place in the world where so many people equate material success with moral rectitude the way people do here. In Latin America, for example, only the very few privileged upper class people think that the poor have no one to blame but themselves and that there suffering is somehow the result of something that is wrong with them. That attitude is pervasive here in the US. Any thread about poverty on liberal and Democratic will inevitably feature someone expressing that attitude.

[eridani]

55. Shouldn't that be "industrialized country"? n/t

[leaninglib]

63. You don't get around very much, do you?

Rich, poor, middle class...? There is no country better than the US--period.

(20 million Mexicans can't be wrong)