Why you should live for yourself. (Think about this)

[KennyR]

T_Bone wrote:
"Poverty" nowdays is synonymous with depression.

A very conservative - and very wrong - assumption.

All the old bedfellows of poverty are still there. Poor housing, poor health, high crime, high addiction or alcholic rates, high infant mortality, no career prospects, hopelessness, despair, the lot. Just because poor people don't die of hunger or thirst doesn't mean that they're not deprived. Poverty is like air pressure - you only feel it when there's a difference between high and low.

[KennyR]

T_Bone wrote:
Sounds like depression to me.

You've never actually been poor, have you?

(Silly question, of course not, you vote Republican!)

[KennyR]

Well trust me, it's not depression. Poverty causes depression, not vice versa. What does make one depressed is living in a rotting urban ex-industrial wilderness with high unemployment and crime and high juvenile delinquency, where your post code/zipcode on its own is enough to disqualify you from a lot of jobs, and your schooling suffered because the school you went to couldn't afford teachers and so you had crappy substitute teachers and so didn't pass any exams, where the hospitals are understaffed and car insurance because of the crime rate makes it too expensive...etc etc.

You conservatives always say that socialists hold people back in society to get everyone to be poor, when it's you letting people get held back by circumstances they can't prevent and then blaming it on them for being depressed.

[KennyR]

Why can't it happen vice versa?

Because you get rich depressed people too. They usually end up as drug addicts, but rich drug addicts.

Move. Many have.

Get real, T_Bone. How do you move out of slumsville into cleanly lit, well policed suburbia if the morgages there can't be afforded by people doing blue collar jobs? If it was really so easy to get away, don't you think people would move in droves? Why do you think people still live in places like that?

The inner city schools are some of the highest funded schools in existance.

And that's because they have to put up with people raised in a system they have no faith in, that will never really allow them to escape their situation even if they want to. If throwing money at the school didn't help, perhaps educational reforms are needed. Hell, you have one side wanting to take the school system apart and one thinking that Money Heals All.

Let's add to that that the Republicans totally understand that these schools suck goat balls, and they fully support letting these inner city children take the money that has been alloted to these children and use it to pay for private education instead.

Private education is an abomination that allows people with more money to get more education. That can only make the situation worse in the long run and create a huge division between the educated elite and the peasants.

You conservatives always say that socialists hold people back in society to get everyone to be poor,

They do. Absolutely.

They didn't hold me back. My father wasn't even allowed into a good school because he couldn't afford a uniform. Socialism changed all that by my generation. The state funded my education, something I never could do myself. If anything, socialism in Europe has created a large population of very educated people - something the USA still lacks. And no, that's NOT a "stupid Americans" statement. Just compare the number of graduates on AO alone. Most are European. That doesn't make them any smarter, but the social benefits are wide-ranging.

Please explain how the republicans are "letting people get held back" when so far the republicans have been the only ones to actively push for the only solution to their education problems.

You have this obvious attitude: if there's a problem, then the problem must be because people aren't really doing enough for themselves. I can see how that can be true in some cases, but it blinds you to occassions when people just can't escape social boundaries. These can be VERY strong. Sometimes the answer just isn't in shouting "Get off your ass or starve!" in a very loud voice.