Welfare Cuts in USA

[Daz_Hockey]

hehe...see that's the thing, my trek guide (from LA) had to travel from the west coast to New York and he managed it in 3 days with very little rest, and that kinda shows you what I mean, you could travel from the west coast of england to the east in about 8 hours.

Sorry though, that was a bit of a personal joke about how fast I noticed you canadians walk, I mean, the Aussies can walk for miles and miles (all around central park), and you'd have no trouble with walking to the new forest from here, but people in England are usually so closely packed they usually see no point in taking that journey..


Although I would like to do the "John O'Groats to Land's End" trek, would be fun.

 

[Toro]

My God Toro,

You tell me that I made a gross exageration, and then you agree that there is a growing disparity between the high and low wages. You further state that wages are stagnant while inflation has been understated. You go on say that household debt as a percentage of income is rising. You further say that the middle class is being squeezed.
"We seem to be obliterating the middle class sounds quite reasonable".

Yes, you are grossly exaggerating when you use the word "obliterate"

Obliterate \Ob*lit"er*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Obliterated; p. pr. & vb. n. Obliterating.]

[L. obliteratus, p. p. of obliterare to obliterate; ob (see Ob-) + litera, littera, letter. See Letter.]

1. To erase or blot out; to efface; to render undecipherable, as a writing.

2. To wear out; to remove or destroy utterly by any means; to render imperceptible; as. to obliterate ideas; to obliterate the monuments of antiquity.

The harsh and bitter feelings of this or that experience are slowly obliterated. --W. Black.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

http://www.dictionary.net/obliterate

The middle class is not being removed or utterly destroyed. Its relative standing to the wealthy is declining somewhat. (Or at least it is in the US. I don't know about Canada.) That is much different from disappearing.

 

[#juan]

Toro, please don't quote your dictionary to me.

I have at least as much education as you do. I was firmly in the middle class and so are my children but a lot of people starting out after college today will have a hard time making a $3000.00 mortgage payment plus taxes. What I'm saying is that the middle class is shrinking, and it will keep on shrinking until a balance is reached or something happens to stop it.
I originally made a joke that corporate profits were up, but it turns out they are up, very much up.

 

[#juan]

Re: RE: Welfare Cuts in USA

hehe...see that's the thing, my trek guide (from LA) had to travel from the west coast to New York and he managed it in 3 days with very little rest, and that kinda shows you what I mean, you could travel from the west coast of england to the east in about 8 hours.

Sorry though, that was a bit of a personal joke about how fast I noticed you canadians walk, I mean, the Aussies can walk for miles and miles (all around central park), and you'd have no trouble with walking to the new forest from here, but people in England are usually so closely packed they usually see no point in taking that journey..


Although I would like to do the "John O'Groats to Land's End" trek, would be fun.

Daz

I'm talking about driving. On my best day, which was some time ago, I could walk at a steady 5-6 miles an hour. If I walked twelve hours a day it would take at least 15 hours. I don't think I was ever up for that. My sit down and stop beats most people's get up and go...

 

[Toro]

Juan

You used the word "obliterate", not me. If you want to retract that, or if you didn't mean it in a literal manner, fine. But its not being obliterated. You don't need a lot of education to know "obliterated" means.

I said that the middle class is being squeezed. I can post graph after graph showing that wages have stagnated over the past several years. But the proportion of those considered middle class in the United States has fallen something like 2-3% over the past decade, and the vast majority of Americans are still considered middle class. So lets not be hyperbolic.

As for starting out, that's an interesting problem, but it doesn't apply to the vast middle class since a large majority of the middle class owns their own home. So, those rising home values which are squeezing out first time buyers are helping the middle class in aggregate. Its not helping the poor, but it is helping the middle class. Plus, these things are cyclical. Real housing prices are starting to fall in the United States, and will continue to do so for awhile.

 

[Daz_Hockey]

I realise you were talking about driving Juan, I'm not crazy enough to suggest anyone could walk the length of the country in that time....really, I knew you meant driving.

 

[Karlin]

"I think not"]Here you go Daz, a pretty little graph.

Social Security, Income Security, Medicare and Health account for 57% of our budget.

And the working stiffs who get taxed to death are glad to have this safety net - any one of THEM could be in need of it. In my family, three siblings had sucessfull careers and one did not and is on welfare -disability.

'If your health whacks you hard and you cannot get up, do you want to be a burden to your family, or get back what you paid, and your siblings paid, into taxes for?

It all evens out more with social programs. The security of it might even help create a better workforce. Watch America and we will soon see if bad things come from these cuts to these social safety nets. more homelsss doing more crime perhaps? More drug addictions thru hopelessness/suicidal ideations, and more family breakdowns as disabled breadwinners get shuffled away and die off.