Utopia Talk / Politics / Americans wants to be poor?

Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 10:48:47 I guess dumb Americans wants to be poor, which is why they voted for Trump: Trump's 'cruel' measures pushing US inequality to dangerous level, UN warns Scorching report on poverty finds ‘systematic attack on welfare program’ will leave millions deprived of food and healthcare Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned. A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America Read more Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities. “This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian. http://www...donald-trump-cruel-measures-un
Rugian Member	Sat Jun 02 11:02:16 "the United Nations" Irrelevant and ignored.
Rugian Member	Sat Jun 02 11:03:57 Good of the UN to be issuing opinions on how we should be running our own domestic policies though. We need to kick these guys out of New York already.
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 11:15:45 "We need to kick these guys out of New York already." That would be the best thing ever. Tell Trump to do it :) "issuing opinions on how we should be running our own domestic policies" Not what he is doing. He is not telling you what to do. He is simply just reporting on what the hell is going on. But okay, I admit that I have not read everything, or even his report, but I doubt he is telling you how you should run your domestic policies.
Rugian Member	Sat Jun 02 11:25:36 Paramount, From the UN doc itself: "VII. Conclusions and recommendations 70. The following analysis focuses primarily on the federal level. It is nonetheless ironic that those who fight hardest to uphold state rights also fight hard to deny city and county rights. If the rhetoric about encouraging laboratories of innovation is to be meaningful, the freedom to innovate cannot be restricted to state politicians alone. 1. Decriminalize being poor 71. Punishing and imprisoning the poor is the distinctively American response to poverty in the twenty-first century. Workers who cannot pay their debts, those who cannot afford private probation services, minorities targeted for traffic infractions, the homeless, the mentally ill, fathers who cannot pay child support and many others are all locked up. Mass incarceration is used to make social problems temporarily invisible and to create the mirage of something having been done. 72. It is difficult to imagine a more self-defeating strategy. Federal, state, county and city governments incur vast costs in running jails and prisons. Sometimes these costs are “recovered” from the prisoners, thus fuelling the latter’s cycle of poverty and desperation. The criminal records attached to the poor through imprisonment make it even harder for them to find jobs, housing, stability and self-sufficiency. Families are destroyed, children are left parentless and the burden on governments mounts. But because little is done to address the underlying causes of the original problem, it continues to fester. Even when imprisonment is not the preferred option, the standard response to those facing economic hardship is to adopt policies explicitly designed to make access to health care, sick leave and welfare and child benefits more difficult to access and the receipt of benefits more stigmatizing. 73. A cheaper and more humane option is to provide proper social protection and facilitate the return to the workforce of those who are able. In the United States, it is poverty that needs to be arrested, not the poor simply for being poor. 2. Acknowledge the plight of the middle class 74. Only 36 per cent of Republican voters consider that the federal Government should do more to help poor people, and 33 per cent believe that it already does too much. The paradox is that the proposed slashing of social protection benefits will affect the middle classes every bit as much as the poor. Almost a quarter of full-time workers, and three quarters of part-time workers, receive no paid sick leave. Absence from work due to illness thus poses a risk of economic disaster. About 44 per cent of adults either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400 or would need to sell something or borrow money to do it. Over a quarter of all adults are classified as having no access or inadequate access to banking facilities. The impacts of automation, artificial intelligence and the increasing fluidity of work arrangements mean that employer-provided social protection will likely disappear for the middle classes in the years ahead. If this coincides with dramatic cutbacks in government benefits, the middle classes will suffer an ever more precarious economic existence, with major negative implications for the economy as a whole, for levels of popular discontent and for political stability. 3. Acknowledge the damaging consequences of extreme inequality 75. The United States already leads the developed world in income and wealth inequality, and it is now moving full steam ahead to make itself even more unequal. But this is a race that no one else would want to win, since almost all other nations, and all the major international institutions, such as OECD, the World Bank and IMF, have recognized that extreme inequalities are economically inefficient and socially damaging. The trajectory of the United States since 1980 is shocking. In both Europe and the United States, the richest 1 per cent earned around 10 per cent of national income in 1980. By 2017 that had risen slightly in Europe to 12 per cent, but massively in the United States, to 20 per cent. Since 1980 annual income earnings for the top 1 per cent in the United States have risen 205 per cent, while for the top 0.001 per cent the figure is 636 per cent. By comparison, the average annual wage of the bottom 50 per cent has stagnated since 1980. 76. The problem is that “inequality” lacks salience with the general public, who have long been encouraged to admire the conspicuous, and often obscene, consumption of billionaires and celebrities. What extreme inequality actually signifies is the transfer of economic and political power to a handful of elites who inevitably use it to further their own self-interest, as demonstrated by the situation in various countries around the world. While the poor suffer, so too do the middle class, and so does the economy as a whole. High inequality undermines sustained economic growth. It manifests itself in poor education levels, inadequate health care and the absence of social protection for the middle class and the poor, which in turn limits their economic opportunities and inhibits overall growth. 77. Extreme inequality often leads to the capture of the powers of the State by a small group of economic elites. The combined wealth of the United States Cabinet is around $4.3 billion. As noted by Forbes: “America’s first billionaire president has remained devoted to the goal of placing his wealthy friends in his Cabinet, a top campaign promise.” And many regulatory agencies are now staffed by “political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts”. Extreme inequality thus poses a threat not just to economic efficiency but to the well-being of American democracy. 4. Recognize a right to health care 78. Health care is, in fact, a human right. The civil and political rights of the middle class and the poor are fundamentally undermined if they are unable to function effectively, which includes working, because of a lack of the access to health care that every human being needs. The Affordable Care Act was a good start, although it was limited and flawed from the outset. Undermining it by stealth is not just inhumane and a violation of human rights, but an economically and socially destructive policy aimed at the poor and the middle class. 5. Get real about taxes 79. At the state level, the demonizing of taxation means that legislatures effectively refuse to levy taxes even when there is a desperate need. Instead they impose fees and fines through the back door, some of which fund the justice system and others of which go to fund the pet projects of legislators. This sleight-of-hand technique is a winner, in the sense that the politically powerful rich get to pay low taxes, while the politically marginalized poor bear the burden but can do nothing about it. There is a real need for the realization to sink in among the majority of the American population that taxes are not only in their interest, but also perfectly reconcilable with a growth agenda. A much-cited IMF paper concluded that redistribution could be good for growth, stating: “The combined direct and indirect effects of redistribution — including the growth effects of the resulting lower inequality — are on average pro-growth.” http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1 Defund the UN.
Aeros Member	Sat Jun 02 11:38:57 Who actually wrote this thing? The UN didn't write it, people who work for the UN wrote it. Wonder who they are.
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 11:44:23 Do you have a tldr version of that wall of text?
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 11:47:37 Nevertheless, I don't see problem if people or organizations tells the US what they should do or not do. They are not threatening to bomb you, or to impose sanctions on you, if you don't comply.
Aeros Member	Sat Jun 02 11:48:23 tl;dr some commies and covetus Europeans wanting to feel superior wrote a paper with UN money.
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 11:48:53 Besides, if you don't like the UN you could always leave it.
Aeros Member	Sat Jun 02 11:49:33 Nah, gotta be like Russia and have our victory veto.
Rugian Member	Sat Jun 02 11:52:51 Paramount, If nine paragraphs is considered a wall of text for you, I worry about what the internet has done to your attention span. Nevertheless, tl;dr America should turn itself into Sweden.
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 12:00:15 Anything beyond 140 character or so is like a wall of text. I think it would be good if America was more like Sweden. Sweden is not all that good itself of course but I think we are slightly better at taking care of our citizens. But if you rather enjoy watching Americans live in extreme poverty while only a few eats lobsters on their yachts, then go ahead. Buy more guns and carry on.
Dukhat Member	Sat Jun 02 12:43:59 You have to understand that Trump supporters are idiots that have never left high school. What do high schoolers worry about? Being popular and being sure to be part of the most powerful clique. Trump is like the class bully that's captain of the football team that everyone supports even though they know he's wrong about everything. People that consider Trump the leader of their in-group will look towards intentions and not to facts like the rest of us. Even if his policies are failures and make them poorer; they think, "well his heart was in the right place" or "the deep-state got to him." It's really fucking sad and pathetic that grown adults think like little teenage kids; but as Rugian and Obaminated and Forwyn shows: tribalism is king. What's sadder is Forwyn has a college education. Too bad it didn't stick.
Dukhat Member	Sat Jun 02 12:47:57 Did you know that Americans were not so crazy about guns? Around 1980, if you polled Americans, 70% thought that we didn't need guns. 2nd Amendment issues that went to the Supreme Court were generally focused on the "militias" part of the law which generally meant a curtailing of gun rights in general which noone at the time minded. But with Reagan and the conservative movement onward; inequality began to spiral out of control. To gaslight their own followers (who were getting poorer) into supporting them, they began to make the 2nd amendment a big deal and about unrestrained access to guns for white Americans. And here we are today: with retards like Rugian who haven't had their economic prospects increase in years and yet vote Republicans cause guns make him feel powerful in an Republican-made economy that has made him powerless. It's so fucking sad.
Forwyn Member	Sat Jun 02 12:57:13 I always love checking threads I haven't been in and getting free mentions from Cuckhat.
obaminated Member	Sat Jun 02 12:57:55 "Anything beyond 140 character or so is like a wall of text." yikes.
Paramount Member	Sat Jun 02 14:01:20 I was not being serious, obviously. It's just that sometimes I don't feel like reading more than perhaps a paragraph or three.
Dukhat Member	Sat Jun 02 14:54:37 I don't read anything the cuckservatives post at length since it's usually some breitbart-derived bullshit.
kargen Member	Sat Jun 02 16:43:35 Just a bunch of socialists wanting the USA to become a socialist nation. We do need to turn out welfare system back into a safety net and not a way of life. A safety net is a temporary thing that catches you and allows you to get back up and going again. Something to get you through a few hard months if needed. Our welfare program has instead become a way to live off the government with no end giving little incentive for some to ever try for anything better.
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