Well, I guess you forget the fact that many, many poor people actually do work (in fact, as we speak, there are married Servicemembers whose income falls below the poverty line). Until we get past bigots like you, and idiots who think that throwing money at the problem will magically fix it, we will continue to have poverty in the richest nation in the world.

Like everything else, the key to fighting povery is education. Not just job training (although that is important), but education in handling money, handling relationships, maintaining health and yes even teaching a good work ethic.

The other thing we have to accept is there will ALWAYS be poverty in any society. Mostly because too many people think that poverty is all about money or if people would just get off their butts and work, they wouldn't be poor.

precisely i am talking about those that don't actually do anything.

Ah, so your talking about that 5%. Now, we break down the 5% (Current unemployment rate for July 2005 as reported by the US DOL) What persentage of them are lazy?

The umeployment rate is fugured by takeing the current workforce (those age 16 and up). I have problems with that part actually, counting teens in the lazy catigory, especially from 16 - 18 when they are still in highschool, they don't need to have a job on top of school, though some do. The US DOL reports that the current unemployment rate for youth (16 - 24) is at 11% Link


The figure of the Current workforce collecting unemployment benefits is 2% as of last Wed. Link

or a nice some nice breakdowns... Uneployment by age Link
and here is one by duration of unemployment Link

And finally one on the reasons for unemployment
Link

Many of these Lazy people you are so quick to judge as our problem, are homemakers, still in highschool/college, or in some cases, hard working persons that work for money "under the table" to avoid paying taxes/childsupport/spouseal support or other debts that may be wage garnished, or just hiding the income from the courts to keep their money their own, and not marital property (in case of divorces and such). Some are not employed because their spouse makes enough for both of them, or feel that their spouse should not work outside of the home dispite the lack of children.

I have also not found reports on the problems confrunting persons looking for employment. Yea sure, there are the factory jobs for unskilled laborers, but many of those jobs will not hire someone with skills in other areas, or minor disabilites that are not considered bad enough to be disabled, but still affect the ability to do some jobs (lifting more than 25 lbs, standing in strange positions for hours on end, painfull walking, or pregnancy).

There is a multitude of reasons for a person being unemployed, and/or poverty stricken.

There needs to be persons in the poverty section anyway. Without these persons, there would be noone working the lower paying factory jobs, fast food jobs, gas station attendents, hotel room cleaners, dry cleaners, and many retail jobs, auto detailers, janitors, groundskeepers, the list goes on.

And if these jobs paid enough to get their employees out of poverty, the general cost of living would increase, and they would be the poverty class again, struggling to get by on whatever money they had.

Here is an example of that. A fast food restaurant starts paying its employees $14 an hour (good living wage for the current times I think). Said fast food restraunt would increase the cost of their menu items to make up for the financial lose, plus to counter act the cost of raising utilities and such (since they would be getting more money to pay their employees). Your $1.00 cheeseburger suddenly becomes a $5.00 cheeseburger.

There are examples of this all over the place. Go to a place where the employees are paid well, and expect to pay more for their product, simple as that.

The umeployment rate is fugured by takeing the current workforce (those age 16 and up). I have problems with that part actually, counting teens in the lazy catigory, especially from 16 - 18 when they are still in highschool, they don't need to have a job on top of school, though some do

I had no idea they included underage students. Dang. What on earth for?

wow wow..i'm just giving an example of the minority who actually dont bother to do anything and people start pulling figures and dragging in the majority?

" let's face it people, its human nature to not want to do anything."

I differ with that. People are very industrious, but they don't naturally want to do mindles, repetitive work. We spring from hunter gatherers. We want to go out there and find what we need, or hunt it down and eat it. We aren't naturally predisposed to work on an assembly line, that is true. That doesn't mean we don't want to make a living.

"same thing with some immigrants. sure, they suffered poverty back home and come in search for a better life. but someone forgot to tell them a better life doesn't fall from the bloody sky!"

As has been said, immigrants have been the hardest workers we have. We wouldn't have had, say, the transconental railroad without armies of immigrants willing to work harder than we do. Hell, you probably would be paying three times as much for fruits and vegetables now. Try getting a roof put on your house in most of the US without it being done by hard working immigrants or their descendants.

As for "minorities", that's a byproduct of our system. There is a class of some minorities that have been led to believe for 60 years that they are incompatable to our system, and that they deserve entitlements because of it. Some parties *cough* like to give them the idea that they are handicapped because it makes them looks compassionate and gives them a pool of serf voters to exploit.

wow wow..i'm just giving an example of the minority who actually dont bother to do anything and people start pulling figures and dragging in the majority?

You should have said one of the problems, or a small persentage of the unemployed or such. When you make generalized statements about the unemployed, calleing them lazy, and generalized statements about minorities, your making it sound like ALL unemployed and immigrants are lazy.

Little more spacifice next time, K?

Isn't meecrob like the dirtiest word in the dictionary?

let's face it people, its human nature to not want to do anything

Sorry but this is pure baloney! If it were true (thankfully it's not) we'd still be living in the stone age gathering our food. Because by your logic the "industrial" revolution would not have happened.

Like everything else, the key to fighting povery is education.

Exactly! But, the problem with education is it costs money. Seems quite a few people don't want to actually fund education, although they do not want to leave any children behind. Quite the dilemma, don't you think?

can you deny that it isn't human nature to laze around? there are people still living in primative conditions today ya know and it so happens that billions still live in poverty because they refuse to change. and yes...stop dragging the majority in argghh..how many times must i stress its the MINORITY, those who leech off social welfare.

can you deny that it isn't human nature to laze around?

I think this line says more about you than any opinion piece you could write.

If you think it would be so great to not work.... try it. I've gone 3 years now, unable to work... let me tell you, it just plain SUCKS!

"Exactly! But, the problem with education is it costs money. Seems quite a few people don't want to actually fund education, although they do not want to leave any children behind. Quite the dilemma, don't you think?"

Bull. Education is funded, schools are open, we have teachers and books. I don't know of anywhwere in the US you can't go to school because there is no funding. The problem is the "quality" of the education. For some throwing money at it is the fix, for others it is simply verifying if the teachers are really holding kids to a standard.

When kids graduate High School without being able to read or get by intellectually in society, don't blame funding. Someone passed them when they shouldn't have been passed. Schools hundreds of years ago turned out kids better educated than we do, most of which could read and write in multiple languages when they left.

Require a kid to learn greek or latin now and they'll probably get their daddy to sue you. We just don't hold them to any standards.

For the dense, I was referring to dubya's NCLB, a recognition that schools are in trouble, but yet another unfunded program of this administration, that is nothing but empty rhetoric.

Dabe, you'll get no argument from me about how big a waste NCLB (or any fed program).
However, when I see school systems spending $8-10k per student, failing miseraby at educating them and whining "if we only had more money"... I just have to laugh in their face and wonder what they are doing with the money they have.