come on madison, who exactly are these "poor" that people keep talking about? labels like "rich" and "poor" are thrown around like there's a permanent class of people who fall under each... labels like that totally ignore the demographics of the people being labeled "poor", or "middle class" at a particular point in time. in fact, it's labels like these that give ammunition to bureaucrats (usually lefties) to garner support for their latest projects..
Well, I seem to remember that all those folks moving from Hong Kong had to have $1MM, but I'll take your word for it. So $10,000 Canadian, that's like $500 US, right Maybe we should move there, nationalize all that BC dope and sell it in the US. We could bring it in through Glacier NP on mules! With all that money selling dope to the the prohibitionist Yankees, we wouldn't need any taxes!
in case you havent driven down "I-5" to san diego, we now have signs depicting "illegal" families running across the freeway. the laest is that "coyotes" run the broder crossing from mexico and enter the U.S. going the wrong way on the freeway (with their headlights OFF, of course). the vans are packed with illegals, and the most recent accident was quite serious. they rammed into oncoming traffic! if the people make it here w/o killing themselves or someone else and have a kid, they're on easy street. what other country, company or organization allows you to join them w/o permission? we should be stripping the rest of the world of their most brilliant, most talented people; instead, we get whomever chooses to jump through a hole in the fence on any given night! im moving to nevada when when my children are in college. 4 to 6 years! california is screwed. so totally screwed. now renters are demonstrating against rent increases. i have a better idea: GO HOME!
not sure exactly what you mean... there are groups of poor and rich - and wealth distribution over the entire population changes slowly - i.e., over the whole population, some percentage is made up of "poor" or "middle" etc., and those percentages are relatively constant in the shorter/intermediate term. The number of hyper-rich is smaller than of middle-class, which in turn is larger than the number of the homeless and destitute. I don't know if it fits a normal distribution, but it seems intuitively that it might (wonder what the effect of government involvement in redistribution is on that statistical distribution?) of course, that doesn't mean that the individuals in the groups are forced to remain there, but that the replacement rate for each group, artificial or natural, maintains the overall distribution. there are permanent strata of wealth, each consuming or contributing to overall population wealth to different degrees.
apparently the morons in Brussels have gone all out to put the EU on the same track unfortunately the PC initiative has all but silenced debate on the issue in the US - to even question the policy is per se "racism" -- the recent elections that have gone to the right in the EU suggest that it may be a bit less stifled there, but I'm not sure...
just to say that there is a "replacement rate" is insufficient...the "poor" of today bear little resemblance to the "poor" of 20 years ago.. so to say that "wealth distribution over the entire population changes slowly, ie some percentage is made up of "poor" or "middle" etc", is really pretty meaningless, since the entire distribution is being shifted along the axis to "richer" furthermore, would a recent college grad, with a lot of schooling incurred debt, low savings, few assets necessarily consider himself poor? quite doubtful...yet the statistics will call him "poor"...and politicians will point at the numbers and claim an unequal distribution of wealth so, again, who are these "poor" that politicians love to speak of? beyond statistics (lies, damn lies & statistics) there really doesn't exist such a group....(apart from the truly destitute and homeless, who form a TINY, TINY fraction of the population)
again, not sure your point - do you mean that there are less "poor" per capita in the US than in the past, or that the government definition of "poor" is not really "poor" as compared to the poor of say India or Nicaragua? in either case, this is a subject I am no expert on - I can only argue from my own experience -- but I'd say if you don't think there are many poor Americans, take a trip to East New York, the South Bronx, Detroit, or Newark - it's hard to miss them there (how many, again, no expert, but it's a significant number). If you think those people are living in the same conditions as the debutantes on Park Avenue, well... my point originally was that there is a rough spectrum across the population, from wealth generators to wealth consumers. According to the DHHS, in 1997, at least $14 billion was spent on direct welfare, and who knows how much else in Medicare, Social Security, etc. (there may be better sources for data) That money comes from somewhere -- maybe the people getting it are not "poor" by some definition, but that is money not going to feed and better the lives of the people that earned it... Cash and Work-Based Assistance In FY 1997 states report $13.9 billion in spending on cash assistance and work-based assistance. $7.7 billion of the funds expended were Federal funds and $6.2 billion were state funds. The Federal funds expended in this way are 57% of the total $13.4 billion in Federal TANF funds awarded to the states last year. http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/news/welfare/congress/tanfp1.htm
the true cost would take a long time to compute. say i look at apartment units, the Section 8 rents are well above market rents. not only is the govt subsidizing rents, they are paying above-market rates! it should be noted, however, that the apartment parking lots have newer cars with chrome rims, boom boxes, etc ., and the living rooms (in many cases) look like a circuit city floor display. you start adding up the cost of these welfare programs; thats a ton of dough. why am i subsidizing the housing expense of perfectly healthy people who dont, or wont work? this last comment is aimed more toward people born here that have been raised in a society or culture that believes that the country owes them something. say someone cant afford medical care for the flu - they go to the emergency room - $400. it goes on and on - free breakfasts and lunches at school, previoulsy mentioned WIC program as well as any number of programs for illegal aliens. im not for children going hungry, i just think they should be fed in their own country, not here. also, if their religion dictates that they not prevent pregnancy, then they should support their children and beliefs, not me.
QQQball, it all comes down to accepting personal responsibility. Unfortunately, the media, hollywood, government itself (!!!!!) and common public perceptions foster the view that someone else is responsible. It totally sickens me to my stomach that NOT ONLY am i responsible for my own well-being and the people I CHOOSE to care for (namely family), but i am FORCED to be responsible for some drug fucked parasite on welfare who is leaching off the sweat of my brow. i don't so much have a problem with illegals entering the country (you can hardly blame them for wanting to), but it totally pisses me off that the ones illegally entering are absolute dregs that i am FORCED to look after . talk about social injustice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i dont think the illegals are dregs - just poor, ignorant, uneducated laborers. they are, for the most part, good people. its just that they came here illegally! the U.S. could allow the best brains in the world to come here to live, but instead, we have some of the poorest, most ignorant people with few marketable skills flooding into the southwestern part of the u.s.