2006-7 U.S. Household Income

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

these numbers have declined because of the recession, but it is the latest data we have:

from Wiki...

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The last fact really jumped out at me:  20% of households made less than $20k, but the majority of that 20% had ZERO JOB!!!

I would love to know how many of the majority of that 20% were able-bodied.  Because if we could cut-off those able-bodied people off from the public purse and make them go get a job or otherwise starve, we probably wouldn't need to import so many Mexicans.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

First, it is already the case and has been since the 1996 welfare reform bill that you can't stay indefinitely on welfare without looking for work.

Second, according to the census page linked to from your wikipedia article, 37.1% of those in this quintile are aged 65 or over, while 58.7% of such households have no earner. If we assume that seniors are not working and should not be required to, and that they live in their own households (which are of course simplifications which have exceptions), then this means that in fact a majority of households with someone 15-64 in this quintile do have an earner. This even includes those households where people are disabled, single mothers at home with newborns, etc.

thanks...I didn't think about the elderly, that makes sense now.

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Fourth, do you not believe that we enjoined thus?

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Seriously, bro, if you want to ask me that question, then you better be prepared to compare your giving to my giving, whether it be by total amount and/or percentage.  And that commmand to give is at the personal level, not giving (or forgiving debt) by proxy at the governmental level.

Also, the scripture does NOT tell us to blindly give without checking out the circumstance, otherwise we couldn't withhold help from those who refuse to help themselves:

"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'" (2Thes 3:10)

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

So, you see a statistic that there are people trying to live on a mere $20,000 per year, and your first thought is, 'wow, they must be lazy'.

You realize your bigotry and resentment isn't really the same thing as economic theory, jmfcst.

stop spinning my words, rather I saw a large group making LESS than $20k and not working, and I wondered how many of those were capable of working....but as I have already posted, I forgot about those that are retired.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

So, you see a statistic that there are people trying to live on a mere $20,000 per year, and your first thought is, 'wow, they must be lazy'.

You realize your bigotry and resentment isn't really the same thing as economic theory, jmfcst.

clap clap..

idiot idiot..

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

OK, fair enough.

Look, even though I'm not a Christian I meant those quotations in good faith; I wasn't trying to "call you out" in any way or accuse you of not personally giving, nor do I think that the scripture requires some social democracy. I just found it genuinely difficult to reconcile the numerous Biblical calls for charity with your support of letting some people starve. But if that's what it says in Thessalonians, so much the worse for my hermeneutics (not that I let this affect my own morality).

we're cool. 

when the bible says to take care of the needy, it is not commanding you to provide handouts to every lacking person without regard to their ability to provide for themselves.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

And you bitch because they don't get jobs. Nobody wants them, because they are too risky of an investment. So basically you are calling for genocide.

I wasn't referring to people unemployed in this recession, rather I was referring to those out of work during 2006-7....heck even in the boom of the 90's we still had ~4% unemployment when all you had to have was a pulse to get a job.  There is a segment of the population that will never be employed regardless of economic conditions.  And for those people maybe a little bit of starvation would motivate them to work when work is available.

As we move more and more into a technology based economy, you’re going to have a larger percent of this nation permanently unemployed simply because of the lack of discipline within this society that fails to set high scholastic expectations for its youth.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Finally are you not familiar with the "natural rate of Unemployement". Thats the lowest Unemployement can reasonably go and stay there. Its usually around 4.9%-5.6%. Jobs are created and eliminated in all environments and that 4% also contains those that are in transition. The onyl exception was when the Unemployement rate went to 1% and that was during World War two. Everyone was in the army or working the assembly lines to produce the weapons.

actually, that isn't true at all, for the unemployment rate among the college educated was <1% during the boom of the 90's, and as of Nov 2009 it is still only 4.9% compared with 10% overall:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

...unemployment doesn't get much below 4% because you have a sizable segment of the population lacking education and marketable skills.  So that during times of peak employment, there is really <1% unemployment among the educated population and probably half of that 1% got fired for not doing their job and the other half of the 1% represents the normal churn of the economy as businesses are created and destroyed.

So, I say again, this country's low scholastic expectations on it's youth has produced a sizable portion of the population that is simply unemployable unless they're going to used to dig ditches, for which we bring in the Mexicans.  The problem is summed up in the movie, "Stand and Deliver"

And I don't understand how you see me acting as an elite, for my mother raised four boys by herself, and we were well below the poverty line yet refused any government assistance because she understood how easy it was to become dependent upon the government.  The neighborhood I grew up in was about 98% black and we lived on Forrestal road in Houston, zip code 77033, you can use google maps to walk through my old hood if you'd like.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

This is all 5ucking bullsh**t that rich elites keep pushing.    There's a reason why our country is on the economic decline and it's not the fault of these low educated/ lazy workers.   I now assume by "low educated" you mean people with high school diplomas, and not a suit case full of degrees?? When you make it so that corporations  can move their businesses overseas for cheaper labor ( which wouldn't be allowed here by law  unless you get a illegal) you get the situation many households find themselves in.   "high scholastic expectations " mean nothing if there isn't any jobs or a lack of them to start with.


 I agree most affected by this economic downturn is the low educated ( other than minorities) , but you had no problem bailing out the fat cats on wall street. Why not bailout these unemployed, lazy, low educated Americans by giving them a better education without them having to pay back anything?      Or would that be too risky of an investment ?

I would love to give kids a better education, but it would mean gutting their schools and taking most of them away from their parents and giving them to teachers and parents that are willing to turn the TV and XBox off and get involved in their kid's education and checking their homework each night.

But when you have adults (teachers and parents) unwilling to set hold kids to high standards, then you end up with a bunch of kids who are only good at playing video games.  Most inner schools can not even assign homework because the parents of so unengaged with their child's development.

As for bailing out the fat cats on wall street...the intent was to save the banking system, unfortunately doing so meant retaining most of their staff.  If we hadn't saved the banking system, most of the population would have fallen below the poverty line.  But the banks didn't get into this mess themselves, rather it was Congress attempt to "give the poor full access to all services including banking" who passed laws making it possible for those with bad credit and little to no income to attain loans that they could never afford.

The failure was due a combination of bad law that enabled people to get loans they couldn't afford, and too little regulation of the selling of CDS's which allowed the banks to become over leveraged.

And how exactly am I elite?  I was raised poor and I live in a house that cost $120k to build in 1996 and I drive a 97 Corolla with 215k miles.  My wife and I made a decision early on not to get over our heads and spent a total of $3000 on our rings/rehearsal/wedding/reception/honeymoon (that's right the whole ball of wax for $3k) in 1994.  And once she became pregnant four months into our marriage, we made the decision to live off of one income so that our kids could get the proper care, and except for the first couple of months of our marriage, we’ve never carried a balance on a credit card that incurred interest.  In fact, we’ve made money thousands and thousands of dollars off of our credit cards (we get about $50-$100 back per month).  With a little luck, we’ve made the system work for us by making the right choices.

So, my advice is to live frugal and work your butt off to get a good education and continue to educate yourself through self study throughout your working years, not judging yourself by the low expectations of the fat and lazy attitude that is pushed everyday on TV.  

Proverbs 10:4 "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth."