Wow....good article. That's actually very, very true....many people think they're better than everyone...but they're not perfect....yep...that's a good message....hmm...you must have been doing some heavy thinking lately...I look forward to more....(These are kickin' ass... )

~Zoo

"They are because we are. They are BECAUSE WE ARE"

 

Putting it in caps doesn't make it more correct. I can casually walk away because I am many others just liek me or worse have come from "disadvantaged" homes and still made it. I will help who I please and ignore those I please. This is America suck it up and move on. I suggest you look at Gideons take on the matter.

I don't know what it seemed like to you greywar, but I wasn't trying to say anything about homeless people or people that ask for money on the streets in particular. I know that what those people need is jobs. I know that those people basically got themselves there, "Most" of the time. I'm not talking about solving the homeless problem or the job problem I'm talking mainly about being more helpful, and the caring and believing problem.

To be frank and honest, your opinion, which it is, is really what I'm talking about.

I can casually walk away because I am many others just liek me or worse have come from "disadvantaged" homes and still made it. I will help who I please and ignore those I please.

Does that make it any more right not to help someone? Because you came from a disadvantaged home you can say "I've paid my dues, who cares about other people?" It's your choice wether or not you want to help ANYONE, not just someone "disadvantaged". (I didn't put it in caps to make it more right this time either.)

I'm not trying to be rude, but that kind of attitude isn't helping any more than mine. I want people to start caring again. I want people to realize that people who are "disadvantaged" are still people. Is there anything wrong with that?

This article is about the values that America once had that it shuns now. It's about my opinion on how to get those values back. It's cool if you don't agree, or if you want to say something. In fact, I want you to say something. Get it out there in the open so we can talk about it. Real discourse is about talking about the differences we have, and find out where our individual experiences can help each other (In my opinion).
Puting something in caps doesn't make it more right, but repeating something does add more emphasis to it.

Peace,
Beebes

     I help who I like... No one else gets to tell who to help and who not to help... that idea has been tried on a large part of he Asian continent and failed miserably. I do not heap scorn upon you but on a silly idea. Helping folks who have a proven record of wasting that very assitance helps no one in the logn run. The only hope is for people to pick up their pouting lip and move move themselves. There are already services provided, they can take themselves to the shelter get food, cover, and in moany places a shower. These are the thigns you need for a job interview. I ave yet lto live in a city where Wal-Mart or McDonalds doesn't need another worker. There are homeless folks in the town I live in despite the fact that employers are *dying* to get help. Anyone on the streets of Copperas Cove is there for a reason of their own making.

And to that point I agree with you.

But help isn't wasted. You said yourself that there are programs out there for people, which is a definate kind of help.

I guess life is what you make it. I'm not going to be so haughty as to say that you have to help someone. People need to do things theirselves, but help will always be there, and it will always do it's best to make something a little easier.

Again, this article, except for the beginning paragraph, is mostly about lost values.

God Bless, and Peace

Beebes

Nice article Beebes. I really can't say anything about it, just because of the fact that i'm not very good at talking about these kind of things.

~carebear~

The US spent $37 billion last year just on food stamps. Even if you assume 10% of Americans are "poor" that would be around 30 million.  That would be over $1200 a year in food aid for every single one of them.  That's not counting the other types of aid.  $1200 just in food aid per person.  A poor family of 3 would be getting $3,600.   That's almost half average income of someone living in Mexico and we just give it out in federal food aid alone.

That figure doesn't even count state food aid which is roughly equal to that.  Americans already spend more in aid to the poor per person than almost any country on earth.

There will always be a certain percentage of people who just can't make it.  The United States creed is based on the idea of self-reliance.  We'll help those who want to be helped but only to a point.

As a child who grew up in a single parent household whose mom worked for minimum wage while we lived in a small apartment trying to make ends meet I don't have very much sympathy for poor people. I lived amongst them for a good chunk of my life and most of them were just losers. People who were too foolish or stupid to live responsibly.  The woman who lived next door paid me 10 cents per bag (when I was 6 years old) to take her garbage out to the dumpster.  Her money came from welfare. In the entire time we lived there, she never got a job. She had 3 kids, each from a different man. She had money for cigarettes though. Money for booze.  But couldn't get a job.

Some people aren't willing to work their way up. I was willing to take this woman's trash to the dumpster (about 100 meters away from the apartment) filled with the most disgusting stuff, in the dead of winter, so that I could make money to save for college, buy Star Wars figures, and baseball cards. 

When I was 14, I got my first hourly job. My summer job was to paint, by myself, a giant chain link fence that surrounded a 5 acre property. In the dead of summer with temperatures in the high  90s, low 100s. But I did it and I got paid minimum wage.

When I was 15 I worked in a garage cleaning the crap out (sometimes literally) and helping the guys fix the "shovels" and other things that came in (it was a garaga for escavation equiopment).

I took some of the money I saved in those 2 years and bought a Chevette for $1,500. Crappy care. Rich kids at school whose parents bought them cars made fun of it.  But with that car I was able to get a nicer job at the mall. Still working minimum wage, it was at least air conditioned and eventually I got raises to making a little bit more.

When I was 18, i was able to use my 2 summers working at the mall book store (as "experience") to get a job at the bank. My first job was driving a van from bank to bank to pick up the deposited checks to take it to the district bank which gave the checks to the proof machine operators.  It was a highly unpleasant job and mindnumbingly boring. But it paid much better ($6 per hour in 1988 was not too bad).

When I was 19 and 20 I got "promoted" to being a proof machine operator.  When you get a canceled check back in the mail, you'll notice at the bottom of it is a computerized number that takes your chicken scrawl and makes it into something that the computer scanner can read. Back in 1990, that meant some poor schmoe had to actually look at your check, make out what you wrote, and type the number and account information onto a keypad and run your check through the proof machine.  I did that for 40 hours per week. I still have occasional flashbacks to that as it was incredibly repetitive.

But partially because of that job, I also became incredibly fast at typing. My typing speed got up to 100 words per minute by that point (still not at the 120wpm it is today). 

But despite working at the bank, and working all those jobs and having saved money all my life, I couldn't get much aid for college. Why? Because my mom and I had lived responsiblily and hadn't piled on huge debts.  I had a scholarship thanks to my high ACT scores but it wasn't nearly enough.  So I started a company selling computers to the faculty.  I knew how to get computer parts wholesale and could then undercut the local computer store.  I called the company "Stardock Systems".

In 1992, OS/2 came out and I felt I could get a competitive advantage by pre-loading OS/2 onto the computers I sold. I became quite familiar with OS/2.  In early 1993, I thought there would be demand for an OS/2 video game.  The only problem was that I didn't know how to program.  So I bought a book called "Teach yourself C in 21 days" and a book called "OS/2 Presentation Manager Programming".  With those two books I programmed Galactic Civilizations.  Anyone who ever played the game and also knows programming can verify that onlyt he techniques in OS/2 PM programming are in that game.  What that meant is that all the "graphics" were merely iconic windows, not real images because OS/2 PM programming didn't include chapters on how to do graphics programming and I couldn't afford any more books.

And from there on Stardock did very well.  By 24 I was a millionaire.

So why should I feel a heck of a lot of sympathy for people who don't try? I'm not particularly intelligent. I don't enjoy working any more than anyone else (just ask my mom).  But I did what I felt I had to do.  And now I pay 6 figures in income taxes of which a large percentage of it goes to other people.  If I can make it, why can't others? If you are able bodied, what's stopping you?

I think Americans are very generous people.  As a nation, we spend more on programs to help the poor and downtrodden than any other nation.  We provide more aid to the poor of the world than any other country.  And our country is rich in opportunity for those willing to work for it.

Often that work is mindnumbingly crappy but opportunity lurks for those who are persistent.

Again, this article, except for the beginning paragraph, is mostly about lost values.

 

My apologies, sometimes I write about what I want to see and not what was actually said.

Brad - Hell of a story.. it would probably make a great article.

But help isn't wasted. You said yourself that there are programs out there for people, which is a definate kind of help.

And I th8ink that's why nobody should feel obliged to "loan" change to the poor on the streets, because in a sense, they already have.

This article is about the values that America once had that it shuns now.

Yes, and it should hit equally hard on both sides of the fence.

The values upon which America was founded are simple. Let's go back to Jamestown: "Don't work, don't eat".

As it has been pointed out, even individuals of rather low intelligence can do something. When the work ethic returns to more of the American poor (rather than a mentality of victimization), then maybe compassion will return to more of the American wealthy.

For the record, I make about 2/3 of the poverty level for a family my size, so we're hardly middle class folks making this declaration (and no, we accept NO public aid whatsoever).

And I th8ink that's why nobody should feel obliged to "loan" change to the poor on the streets, because in a sense, they already have.

Exactly. I don't pay Brad's 6-figures in taxes, but I do pay between $30,000 and $40,000, which is not a small piece of change. I also donate to a few charities like Habitat for Humanity (essentially charities that help people help themselves, and not just offering handouts). I also try to volunteer for HfH; helping build homes for people in need.

I've been homeless, and I've been poor, and I've been hungry. And I worked my a$$ off to make sure I would not be any of those again.

In those years when I was building the man I am today (and I say building because it was a deliberate process) I encountered many people who were willing to lend a hand. I still see many people with that sense of charity. I do not believe that Americans have lost their soul in regards to helping others, I just think they have become more jaded about certain methods of doing so.

As Americans, we’ve given up on church, the pledge of allegiance, national pride.

I've given up on church. I've never given up on the pledge of allegiance nor national pride. But I don't see these things as inseparable.

We stip everything down and look at it through the microscope of time and science, and we find all our good things to be wanting. They aren’t perfect. How can I support something, believe in something, if it isn’t one hundred percent perfect? It’s unthinkable.

You seem to be saying that science requires perfection in order to earn support. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the wonders of science is that it allows for mistakes. A theory is postulated, and is tested. Science puts that theory out into the public for any and all to test, prod, dissect, and criticize. The longer the theory survives the more support it earns. IF a theory does not survive it is discarded, and one more way that something does not work is added to our collective knowledge. Science definitely does not require perfection.

Scepticism is applauded as free thinking and wisdom. But that’s not the root of the problem.

I do not see the problem with applauding skeptical thought. To question is to seek knowledge. And to question the use of that knowledge is to seek wisdom. Skepticism is free thinking. It doesn't limit a person to one set of dogma, but rather frees one to explore any idea. The individual must judge whether a given idea is worth further discovery. What is more free than that?

I don't mean to be saying that science requires perfection. Science is a wonderful and helpful thing.

We stip everything down and look at it through the microscope of time and science, and we find all our good things to be wanting. They aren’t perfect. How can I support something, believe in something, if it isn’t one hundred percent perfect? It’s unthinkable.

What I'm talking about when I say the microscope of time and science is that as America and the world has progressed as a whole, people rely more on science than on blind faith. Each is as life changing and as powerful as the other, but science is something that people these days seem to connect to more. As for the time thing, as time passes, we understand more about what we see, and find what we once had to be imperfect. For example: The Greek and Roman geocentric universe model. For its time, the geocentric model was good because it described acurately what we saw in the night sky. As time went on and science progressed, we realized that the Earth wasn't the center of the solar system or the universe.

Next time I'll try to make myself a little clearer. Sorry.

To question is to seek knowledge. And to question the use of that knowledge is to seek wisdom.

That is true. However, you have to look at the flipside of the coin. Blind skepticism without regard for truth or wisdom is dangerous. My idea was that skepticism is being considered wisdom, not a route to it. I totally agree, but again, I must not have been expressing my opinion clearly enough.

Why did you give up on church? I think that is a story that I might be interested in hearing, as long as you wish to tell it.


Peace,

Beebes

I'm glad you clarified those points.

Why did you give up on church? I think that is a story that I might be interested in hearing, as long as you wish to tell it.

I'm not sure if it is something I am ready to discuss. It wasn't a conclusion I came to easily, nor quickly. I tend to avoid discussing religion (or lack of) because of the reactions I have received in the past. A person's belief system is something I consider to be a private matter, and since I don't like people trying to impose theirs on me I try not to impose mine on others. If I change my mind on that matter I will write about it. But not now.