American attitudes towards the poor
Dec 4th 2012, 4:17 am
#16
WTF?
Joined: Aug 2003
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Re: American attitudes towards the poor
I actually find this hypocrisy to be jaw dropping.
Last edited by Leslie; Dec 4th 2012 at 4:19 am.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:21 am
#17
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Location: Purgatory (PU, USA)
Posts: 860
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
Perhaps the only real jobs she can get don't pay enough to live? Not every welfare recipient is abusing the system. As for your neighbour, you seem to have no problem with paying her to clean your home, even though she is also claiming benefit.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:22 am
#18
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Re: American attitudes towards the poor
Yes, very hypocritical, just like Walmart "encouraging" their employees to claim food stamps, etc so they can justify paying them crappy wages.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:26 am
#19
Joined: May 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 987
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
I find your assumptions to be equally jaw dropping. I pay the going rate. She is the best cleaner we have had, I have no intention of finding anyone else. It is not for me to police her. I'm not the IRS.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:27 am
#20
Mouthy Yank
Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 2,229
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
As a database analyst, I know full well that any system can be manipulated and exploited, and no two people are likely to interact with it in the same way. A welfare system is no exception. An immigration system is also no exception. Creative people will always find loopholes. The task of the system engineer is to make those loopholes rare, difficult to find, and unrewarding to exploit. Even then, systems are only as good as the people who design and use them. Fallibility of a system is no reason, by itself, to condemn the whole system as useless. In the case of welfare, the common good trumps the uncommon evil.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:29 am
#21
Joined: May 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 987
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
I didn't claim they were. Don't put words in my mouth.
She does an awesome job of the tiled floors, very thorough.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:42 am
#22
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Re: American attitudes towards the poor
Just pointing out the hypocrisy, which still stands.
Dec 4th 2012, 4:50 am
#23
Joined: May 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 987
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
But yet you turn a blind eye to the welfare fraud that you seem to be so vehemently against. No different from firms who knowingly employ illegal immigrants under the table. If you were true to your principles, you would not employ her cash in hand to clean your floors, but I am guessing that she is still cheaper than an actual cleaning firm would charge you.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy, which still stands.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy, which still stands.
The floors sparkle when she has been. She also folds the toilet paper, nice touch
Dec 4th 2012, 4:52 am
#24
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Re: American attitudes towards the poor
My understanding is that higher education (HE) here in the US, if you go 'in state' is in the $5-10k bracket for most states. In the UK, most universities are charging £9k, the max allowed, or around $15k. I am given to believe the quality of HE in the UK is, on average, higher, more useful, than in the US.
Our history is different - the US is perceived as having been built by people who pulled themselves up by their boot straps, penniless immigrants with a dream and a lot of grit, etc etc. the fact that they had to work together seems loston most. In the UK, once we got over our Civil War, and set about building an empire, it was farmers, then the industrial revolution etc - we didn't have to tame a huge land, and we had the organising and civilising input of the Romans, as did the rest of Europe... While the US was still figuring out how to be racist in a more industrially efficient way, and began to see the rise of the 'Robber Barons' we had schools emerging as we currently know them, public libraries, the beginnings of what we would know as the Factories Act (working conditions), the Enlightenment, then the Victorian era. The US has largely missed out on this, jumping from frontier land to world superpower in around a century.
I also note how the effects of directly experiencing WW2 permeates society - the US was effectively untouched by WW2 - no direct bombing of consequence, no blackout, limited rationing, etc etc. the peoples of Europe have a shared experience of being caught in the middle of a vicious war. I am half German, and have roots in Plymouth (the original one
) and Kiel (N Germany) - both centres 85% destroyed by bombing. When I tell people this they just can't comprehend beyond the facts, and why should they... My point is that the peoples of Europe have directly experienced things that make us less trusting of powerful individuals (we had robber barons too, but I refer more to Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini etc), and more likely to choose a solution based on interdependence rather than independence, hence more of a social democrat leaning.
I think we're still seeing growing pains in the US. It is a young country and frequently acts like it. As allegedly said by the Chinese Ambassador to France at the 200 year celebrations of the French Revolution, when asked what he thought about the revolution, replied that it was to early to tell... I think the same can be said for the US...
I said elsewhere that the US is an experiment, unique in the world. It is a work in progress. The first 250 years have been interesting, sometimes turbulent. The next 250 will also be...but I have hope...I just might not see too much change in my life time... Mind you, in 1988 I said the Soviet Union could not last more than another 70 yrs... 3 yrs later it was history, so what do I know?
Our history is different - the US is perceived as having been built by people who pulled themselves up by their boot straps, penniless immigrants with a dream and a lot of grit, etc etc. the fact that they had to work together seems loston most. In the UK, once we got over our Civil War, and set about building an empire, it was farmers, then the industrial revolution etc - we didn't have to tame a huge land, and we had the organising and civilising input of the Romans, as did the rest of Europe... While the US was still figuring out how to be racist in a more industrially efficient way, and began to see the rise of the 'Robber Barons' we had schools emerging as we currently know them, public libraries, the beginnings of what we would know as the Factories Act (working conditions), the Enlightenment, then the Victorian era. The US has largely missed out on this, jumping from frontier land to world superpower in around a century.
I also note how the effects of directly experiencing WW2 permeates society - the US was effectively untouched by WW2 - no direct bombing of consequence, no blackout, limited rationing, etc etc. the peoples of Europe have a shared experience of being caught in the middle of a vicious war. I am half German, and have roots in Plymouth (the original one
) and Kiel (N Germany) - both centres 85% destroyed by bombing. When I tell people this they just can't comprehend beyond the facts, and why should they... My point is that the peoples of Europe have directly experienced things that make us less trusting of powerful individuals (we had robber barons too, but I refer more to Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini etc), and more likely to choose a solution based on interdependence rather than independence, hence more of a social democrat leaning.I think we're still seeing growing pains in the US. It is a young country and frequently acts like it. As allegedly said by the Chinese Ambassador to France at the 200 year celebrations of the French Revolution, when asked what he thought about the revolution, replied that it was to early to tell... I think the same can be said for the US...
I said elsewhere that the US is an experiment, unique in the world. It is a work in progress. The first 250 years have been interesting, sometimes turbulent. The next 250 will also be...but I have hope...I just might not see too much change in my life time... Mind you, in 1988 I said the Soviet Union could not last more than another 70 yrs... 3 yrs later it was history, so what do I know?
As for bettering yourself, I somewhat disagree with you, but I can only go on my UK experience from 2003 and prior. Take my profession for example: accounting. If I wanted to become an accountant in the UK, I could pursue AAT, ACCA or CIMA without having to go to an actual university. Many companies even pay for this. There are few non-core subjects, except for perhaps a basic level of IT in the syllabus and health & safety at work...and all at a fraction of the cost of an average 4 year degree at a university. I don't know if this is still the same case now, or if things have changed since I left.
Off back to work...
Dec 4th 2012, 4:57 am
#25
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Posts: 18,949
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
It seems to be universal that people extrapolate their disdain for the lumpen within their society to all the poor around them. Look at how chav is used dismissively by many in the UK. To some chav is synoptic with lumpen, but many will use it to talk dismissively of any one working class.
It is impossible to look at class and race in America in isolation of each other, the issue at hand seems to keep changing, to avoid actually having to address anything. People will talk about 'race' when it is class, and the 'poor' when it is race. But in America, largely due to its history, they are so often one and the same.
It is impossible to look at class and race in America in isolation of each other, the issue at hand seems to keep changing, to avoid actually having to address anything. People will talk about 'race' when it is class, and the 'poor' when it is race. But in America, largely due to its history, they are so often one and the same.
Dec 4th 2012, 5:03 am
#26
Lost in BE Cyberspace
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Posts: 6,498
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
As for bettering yourself, I somewhat disagree with you, but I can only go on my UK experience from 2003 and prior. Take my profession for example: accounting. If I wanted to become an accountant in the UK, I could pursue AAT, ACCA or CIMA without having to go to an actual university. Many companies even pay for this. There are few non-core subjects, except for perhaps a basic level of IT in the syllabus and health & safety at work...and all at a fraction of the cost of an average 4 year degree at a university. I don't know if this is still the same case now, or if things have changed since I left.
Off back to work...
Off back to work...
Sorry for taking the thread off topic..
Dec 4th 2012, 5:10 am
#27
Mouthy Yank
Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 2,229
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
On a slightly different tack, I was brought up thinking that a "servant" was a fellow human being, just as good as anyone else, who happened to be paid to do various household and service duties. My parents made me be civil to and thank wait staff and reward them with the appropriate tip for adequate or better service, to pick up after myself so as to not make the maid's job harder, to appreciate the tasks these people do for me that I can't or prefer not to do for myself.
However, in a US-based forum a couple years ago, I referred to wait staff in a restaurant as "temporary servants" and promptly got my rear end handed to me in a paper bag. No, they are not "servants", I was told with outright rage, as if I was saying the word somehow meant I thought people with those positions were inherently inferior. It was as though they thought that I didn't know that I was just as much a "servant" when I had a job cooking and waiting tables. I was singularly incompetent at the waiting tables part, moreover, and I have tremendous respect for people who are efficient and cheerful at it while doing a good job.
Honestly, this is the USA and we are all equal here, and everyone is just as good as anyone else, and we are supposed to live in a classless society. Right? Right?
However, in a US-based forum a couple years ago, I referred to wait staff in a restaurant as "temporary servants" and promptly got my rear end handed to me in a paper bag. No, they are not "servants", I was told with outright rage, as if I was saying the word somehow meant I thought people with those positions were inherently inferior. It was as though they thought that I didn't know that I was just as much a "servant" when I had a job cooking and waiting tables. I was singularly incompetent at the waiting tables part, moreover, and I have tremendous respect for people who are efficient and cheerful at it while doing a good job.
Honestly, this is the USA and we are all equal here, and everyone is just as good as anyone else, and we are supposed to live in a classless society. Right? Right?
Dec 4th 2012, 5:35 am
#30
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jan 2006
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 12,884
Re: American attitudes towards the poor
Bottom line is that I will accept that some people will abuse the system, because the help it brings to others way outweighs that.
