Then leave.. That's the same typical BS you get from people in inner cities. If you can not improve your situation where you are, then you leave and go else where to find a better situation. Again there comes time when you have to accept that it's only yourself that can improve your situation. If there are no jobs, then you go where the jobs are.

This is something people have done since the beginning of this country they have gone where they could prosper. You can't just sit around expecting prosperity to fall in your lap, you have to go out and find it. No one is going to do it for you unless you are of the lucky few whom were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Everyone else has to find it their selfs and work hard to keep it.

They can either do that or they can complain their entire lives that they didn't get a fair shake.. Not everyone will get rich, but just about everyone whom wants to can improve their situation if they put effort into doing so.

But that's misleading. She's not rich because she's famous, but famous because she's rich - her father created a fortune with the Hilton Hotel chain (and others).

I agree with you. In this case it wasn't because the "white man is holding them down", it's because their Indian reservation is far from modern society. When I say "far from modern society" I mean drove three hundred miles and only drove through three towns, all of which had a population of less than five thousand if that. Those towns weren't much better off either.

What's even worse with the indians and their reservations is the casinos. We have a local tribe in my hometown who own a huge amount of land. They built what I believe is the largest casino in Northern California. Each one of the indians made bank off of this - they get a yearly salary just because they are a member of the tribe. But it hasn't changed much. There was a series of news stories written about it a few years ago - The end result is they have nicer cars, still live in crappy mobile homes, and the drinking problem has now become a much larger drug problem.

You are sounding a lot like...........
;



;



;



;


;



;
me. :winkwink:

That's why some people would call you a successful idiot. Bro.

Alaska natives aren't on reservations. They have every advantage in the world, including piles of money handed to them for free, free homes (from Clinton era HUD programs) free medical care, free education, endless loan advantages etc. Outside of developed cities, they are largely all still broke, alcoholic idiots living like hillbillies in a shack in Kentucky.... from Barrow to Dutch Harbor. Their cities have some of the highest crime per capita in the nation (Bethel in particular), they have to ban alcohol from cities and boroughs to keep them from raping, robbing and killing each other while drunk. Incest and child sexual abuse is the norm.

So... so much for your theory.

Anyone can live anywhere and do and be anything they want to, within the law. Many choose not to.

It's not really a loaded question. I'm not asking for a statistical analysis.
What does your gut tell you? 1% of them? 5%, 15%, 50%, 100%? If you want to win the war on poverty you have to believe poor people are capable of more than being poor. The ones who are poor due to laziness can't be helped.

My view is that a very high percentage of poor people have lazy parents and become lazier as they get older and remain poor to complete the cycle from one generation to the next, but only a tiny fraction (less than 5%) of people who are poor start out poor primarily due to their own laziness. That is the crux of the problem with fixing the war on poverty....

Things that break the cycle of poverty matter most. It is unlikely we would ever be able to help poor people over the age of 30 or 40 in any way beyond social safetynet programs. You can give them fish but only a tiny fraction can be taught to fish at that point.

What would we do if we wanted to teach younger poor people to fish? Apprenticeship programs, civics courses, public preschool, tradeschools, reconfigure education costs and student debts, enact the 30 day draft rule, provide single payer basic health care, end the drug war, provide serious tax benefits to people who put in time as qualified mentors, massive prison system reform and so on... all the things that allow someone with lazy parents to choose a different path and safeguards to prevent them from being derailed (by unnecessary wars or selective enforcement) if they are otherwise headed in the right direction.

If you think they are genetically lazy nothing will help. I think it's a learned behavior and you can intercede as a society if you want the next generation to be better than the prior generation. Over 10 years the results will be minimal, over 3 generations they would be enormous. :2 cents:

Also as I have mentioned in many of our previous discussions... the world does not need a huge percentage of the population to do any work at all and that number will continue to grow. As more gets automated and the globe gets smaller the number of people with no work to do will grow much larger internationally.

Do we kill them? Colonize another planet? or Take care of them?

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

I was thinking about this while I was getting ready this morning.... You can feed someone a fish and they'll eat a good meal, or you can teach someone to fish and they can feed themselves for the rest of their lives. The problem is some people just don't want to fish.

I was in line at the Hard Rock Hotel last night checking in and it was a long line. I noticed there was another line for "key pickup". Everyone was tipping this girl - I am guessing $5 a pop (because no one tips someone a buck do they?) This chick must have made $30 while I was standing in line for twenty minutes and all her job fucking requires is a high school education. If you aren't above the poverty level you just aren't trying hard enough.

poor breeds mostly poor and it has poor habits to pass on and has more children...middle class and rich people reproduce less...

it is impossible to win the war on poverty without putting limits on reproduction and entitlement...

What is my theory? that natives live like they do because the reservation system in broken? while i do think it is corrupt, broken and only keeps them down they do not have a culture that values money or jobs. alcoholism is rampant, natives can't handle alcohol.

think about it though, while people from europe were discovering the world and creating cities and new ways of living the natives just lived in the same way they always have. in canada eventually people thought it would be a good idea to take away their children and raise them "right" in christian schools where abuse was the norm, carried out by the good white people. this did not help them.

First and foremost, no one is required to live on a reservation. There is nothing "broken" and nothing to "fix". I don't even know what you are talking about when you say "system".

Why is it that people also can't be held accountable for their decisions? For their crime? For their addictions? Why is the only answer "they are in no way to blame for anything they do and any decision they make"?

That means people should be wealthier now than people from 1980.

This is just an exception, jobs where you get paid 90$/hour with only high school education are not available to 99%+++ people.
I mean maybe she tried hard to get it, but even if everybody tried they would not get anything, simply because there won't be jobs like that for 99% of those trying hard.

In my view the lazy group has grown after every boom. 30 years ago a person would be embarrassed to receive anything free from the government. I don't think under achievers in society is anything new. There just is too much help and too large of a safety net given now. Remember when it was said..failure is not an option.

Today ,failure is an option and for way too many people.

State of mind is a big one. I grew up in a small town that was mostly a lumber mill town. Most of the people worked in the mills or logging industry or in the local stores/businesses. If you were a foreman at the mill or had your own logging truck you could make a pretty good living, but many people barely scraped by. There were a lot of poor people and many of them had the attitude that they could never make it out of poverty. It was like, "I grew up poor, I'm going to be poor."

I bash our education system (for good reason), but one thing it does provide is upward mobility. Even if a person went to a shitty high school and has a terrible education they can go to a community college and improve themselves then learn how to do a job or work on getting a degree that could lead them to a better job.

Most people aren't built to run their own business and/or be self employed, but anyone, if they have the desire and drive, can improve their life. Sadly, many people don't think it is possible and don't even try.

Things have changed quite a bit as well. Schools for instance 50 years ago high school students could go to trade school for part of their schooling. This meant when they left high school they had a skill in which they could get a job. Today, schools treat everyone as if they should go to college. When kids get out of school today,very few of them have any sort of skill to go to work with.

Kids used to leave high school and be employable at machine shops, or construction and so forth, meaning even with out a college education they could get decent jobs. Today, they get a job flopping burgers..

I don't know if the still have it or not, but when I was in high school in the 80's they had a thing called work experience where seniors could basically take 1-2 fewer classes each semester if they had a job and the job counted as elective credits. They also offered wood shop, metals shop, auto mechanics and other trade skill classes so, in theory, when you graduated you could have some kind of skill and potentially some actual work experience to help you get a job.

If by boom you mean population boom or technology boom I fully agree. We do not have jobs suitable to everyone. There will always be jobs for very bright self-motivated well educated people who are creative and trustworthy. There will also be jobs for anyone 7' tall who can dunk. Many people don't fit into either of those groups. The guy who would have been capable of working in the mail room before email existed is not capable of working in the board room just because he is no longer needed. That's not a matter of laziness or retraining. It's a matter of globalization, automation and population. The labor intensive 9-5 40 hour a week retire with a pension and a gold watch after 30 years jobs are gone for many people.

When self-driving vehicles replace every bus driver, limo driver, taxi driver and teamster in the country, watch how many more 'lazy' people suddenly become poor. Blaming them for that is as misguided as blaming them for being unable to dunk.

Do we kill them or care for them? Is there another option?

There is little doubt that the days of getting out of high school, getting a job and working your way up the ladder are gone for many people. Many of those kinds of jobs have moved overseas and those that still exist don't offer much of a future. A person can still do that, but it is a lot harder than it once was. One of the potential factors is that many people are working much later into their lives than they used to. The prospect of being able to retire at a reasonable age has all but dried up for many so now they work well into their 60's. The longer those people decide to continue working that is one fewer job available for an 18-year-old that is fresh out of high school.

$15 an hour to flip burgers is the problem.

This is the 'reality' of many who are in the workforce today, they feel they should be able to get paid whatever they want, for doing as little as possible.

There was a study a year or two back that concluded most college kids thought they were going to end up in high paying jobs, even though their actual skillsets didn't lend themselves to menial jobs such as garbage collectors and janitors.

The problem is, when everyone thinks they are doing better than they actually are or, people are raised in a manner consistent with under-privilege, they harm themselves, because they don't see a need to better themselves or, think they can do anything to actually better themselves.

Much like how African-Americans perpetuate the perceived racism in society amongst their young, by telling their children they will be abused, mistreated and not able to get high paying jobs, African American youths will not aspire to do better because they are already raised to believe all they can do is flip burgers, sweep the streets and get low paying jobs.

You tell a child a lie for long enough, no matter what that lie may be and they will start to believe it is a truth.

Just because he grew up in a poor household, that is no reason why he cant aspire to do better than his parents and, his parents should be inspiring him to do better, not telling him he'll never amount to anything thanks to the 'white man holding black man down' or vice-versa as seems to be mentioned more prominently as of late among the white youth.

Bottom line is this, if you are raised as a lazy, government sponging scumbag with no aspirations of greatness, that is all you will ever end up being.

Interesting reading. Shows how people believe things told to them in spite of the facts which are freely available.

There is very little social mobility. The rich stay rich. The poor have everything stacked against them, family, diet, housing, schooling.

In a society which does not mind a child inheriting billions, or a man who writes a computer program earning again billions. Why should that society not keep people in food and housing?

The guy who invents "facebook" billions, the guy who does medical research - a normal wage.

If the problem is that 20% of the population is lazy, how do you explain periods of full employment. like during and after WW2 ? Did the lazy forget to be lazy?

In the Rhonda Valley in Wales is it an outbreak of laziness that caused the high unemployment? or the fact that they shut down the coal mines?

It is not "lazy" or a "problem". Many humans are not meant to live the way we do now. I think the natives may have had it right beforehand and are now broken beyond repair.

How much you earn is relative to a few things: what it is worth and if you own it. Sure, it seems a little crazy that a guy who can shoot a basket or is good at tackling a guy carrying a ball makes millions while an engineer might make a good wage, but it is only a small percentage of what the athlete makes, you have to take those two factors into consideration. First, the engineer likely doesn't own the stuff he is working on or creating. If he wanted to take the risk to start a business and develop it himself he could reap a larger reward. Also, thousands of people don't pay to sit and watch him do his job and millions don't watch him on TV from their homes. I have never wanted to buy a replica engineers anti-static smock (although I have a USB drive signed by Dov Moran), but I have bought team shirts before.

So should the creator of Facebook make millions, if not billions? Why not? He owns it and millions of people are using it. Why shouldn't he benefit from it?

Sure, upward mobility is limited to a point. Capitalism is a pyramid. The higher up you go the fewer opportunities there are for you to climb higher yet. That said, there is a huge difference between learning a trade/skill and/or going to college to get an education and using those things to land a job that may end up paying you a nice wage and starting business and growing it.

It takes a certain type of person to be self-employed. Most people don't have that in them for whatever reason. So for them upward mobility is limited. They will be limited to the best job they can get and the best wage that this job can pay. The person willing to strike out on their own, create something and start a business have a larger potential scale when it comes to their upward mobility.

Lazy also doesn't mean unemployed. There are plenty of lazy people with jobs that do just enough to not get fired, but have no ambition to improve their position.

Please expound on this.

In what way are we living in a way that we were not meant to?

I was referencing economic booms. Right now is a good example. We are still lingering in a recession, yet people that probably can't afford tats and iphones have them. Priorities shifted after every boom ended. Poor people today can get tats and iphones because the government continues to supply those folks more of the essentials.

What will happen when the amount of jobs decrease to that point? I honestly don't care. It won't happen in my lifetime. What happens 50 years from now is for those alive to debate. All we can do now is speculate.

Because if you pay billions to reward an idea of little value other things don't get done. No cure for cancer, malaria, or the basics that people don't have fresh water, homes, food.

It is a matter of proportion. The guy made a neat program not e=mc2.

The reward was totally out of proportion to the value.

A society that wanted to give all its children an equal chance could do so in a heart beat.

Send the poorest 7% of children to the private schools and the children of the rich to the poorest state schools.

In the future humans will not believe that we sent the most privalaged children to the best schools and then blamed the poor for failure.

You do not even understand the most basic fundamentals of macroeconomics. I suppose the makes sense as the idiocy of your arguments rely heavily on that basic fact.

Mark Zuckerburg makes... say 4 Billion dollars.

Where do you think that money is? Under his mattress? In his wallet? Buried in his backyard?

What is that money doing right now?

Do you have any idea at all?

Maybe not at $90 an hour, but I was a high school drop out and at one point I was working three or four crappy jobs at the same time just to make ends mean, and I surely wasn't living like a king - Shared apartment, crappy used car with a car payment, etc... After a year or two of this I was exhausted and knew I had to do something different.

I ended up working for the phone company. This was back in 1991 or 1992; Starting pay for an entry level position was $14/hour. Then factor in split differentials (working four hours, having four hours off, then working four more hours), more money for working past 6pm, overtime, and then later on the supervisor bonus..... I was making about $25/hour. That's not bad money for a high school drop out.

These jobs are out there.

The problem is some people will just never rise up to the challenge and move to get ahead.

by system i mean the way the funding is doled out to the bands, for example one band in canada got a lot of heat last year for getting millions in funding that could never be accounted for while their people live in trailers with no heat or running water. there needs to be more accountability for how the money is spent ensuring that if they are going to get it, it's spent properly.

but i know how you think. fuck everyone, no one deserves help or any handouts, you just expect people to suck it up. well guess what, that is no going to work no matter how high you hold your nose in the air at these people. its a cultural problem that needs help and understanding to change. not ignorance and apathy.

I don't think that way at all. It's just what you tell yourself to help convince yourself of the moral superiority of your own one-sided views and so that you can easily dismiss any arguments or facts which might inconveniently challenge them.

I don't know anything about Canadian natives and how or why the government is supporting them. I do know plenty about Alaska natives. I also know this is the year 2014. Not 1700. They aren't trying to live in the forest and subsist on seal meat. They have jobs, homes, cars and flat screen tv's. Though they have that option to live in the forest and follow tradition, they elect not to... and that fact seems to be universal. And though they have every opportunity in the world to take advantage of all the assistance available to them.. it doesn't seem to improve the circumstances of those it's meant to improve.

You rationalize me asking the simple question... which you apparently have no answer for.... "at what point is the individual responsible for their own circumstances" by telling me that my attitude is "Fuck everyone" and stating that i "look down my noses at them".

Makes sense.
:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

you often come across like you are better than others, i know you've stated this isn't you at all but its totally how you come off. i don't have all or really any answers. i just know there are a lot of problems and relying on the idea that everyone should be responsible for themselves, which ideally they should, just isn't going to work. i think everyone is always responsible for their own circumstances to a degree. your parents circumstances will also help determine your own. sure you can 'just move' but its easier said than done for a lot of people. fact is a lot of people are fucked up and hopeless and unless someone gives a shit they're just going to continue to be fucked up and hopeless. its not your fault or my fault but its happening and telling people they should be responsible for themselves isn't going to change anything.

The problem is wages are flat. You spoke about paying your starting or the avg wage I dont remember which was $11 an hour. My starting wage at gm in 1984. Wages are flat but everything got much more expensive. To call them lazy is easy.
also as far as gov handouts, I assume after you were in the service your college was paid for with the GI bill. You said no to child tax credit for your kids?

That is where we differ the most. It is already happening. It won't be a sudden binary change in the future, it will continue to be a gradual deterioration and it is happening right now in our lifetimes. It will also affect people I care about, long after I am gone. Waiting for a 'tipping point' is missing the point completely.

Governmental changes take decades to filter out, revise and enhance policy. Even if we all agreed on the specifics of a better health care system it would still be 10+ years before we got it right in practice. Sorting out Immigration reform isn't going to take a few weeks or months. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, it means if we want it done we had best get the development cycle started on the things that will impact everyone.

I dont think i am better than anyone. I think i am a cog in a massive machine and completely irrelevant.

What I object to is the lack of balance in the conversation of helping others. "we need to help" is never balanced with "this is what we expect of you" and "we believe you can do it"

Humans were found all over the world. They were all different and had their own ideas of how to live life. They were conquered and now forced to live a life that is not natural to them. It is like taking a lion and saying why is not acting like a house cat. You can try second and third generation baby lion to become a house cat but you see the results...