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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (4026)	1/30/2001 1:57:14 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

You asked Steven Rogers if he thought a certain amount of poverty was built in structurally. I passed on that one the first time around but I'll throw my two cents in now. I think that a certain amount of poverty is absolutely essential in a capitalist system. There needs to be a risk to not applying oneself constructively. The poverty should never be so bad that people can't eat something. And it should not be permanent, that is, people should cycle through it rather than having a permanent underclass. All children deserve a good education and people need to know that if they apply themselves they can get out of poverty. But society needs some people to be poor some of the time. Karen

To: TimF who wrote (4026)	1/30/2001 10:12:01 PM
From: E	Respond to of 82486

Hi again, Tim. I'm SO behind on this thread now. Of course poverty is relative. Take, even, hunger, which we have in this country. Remember when somebody a few years back got the idea to check out how much dog food was sold near some big housing project for the poor? It seemed a whole lot was, which was odd, because... no dogs were allowed in that housing project! Turned out old people were eating it. That makes Americans' skins crawl, but there's somebody lying in the gutter in Calcutta right now who'd trade a finger for a can of dogfood because he knows he'll be dead by tomorrow if he doesn't get something to eat. A lot of things enter into the picture. I'm sure books have been written on this philosophical/sociological/economic question. Statistics of various sorts, indices, ratios, percentages... and there's the consideration that might be called by some "spiritual." What feels right to the citizens? What feels just? That might be called the visceral index. Many things would go into forming what people feel, viscerally, is right about this. I'll say one thing I think is going into this national mindset currently. But I'll say it in the next post or this will be too long....

To: TimF who wrote (4026)	1/30/2001 10:12:23 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I believe that the way one analyzes most social problems and resolves to address them is less intellectual than it is emotional. One is willing to share with those for whom one feels sympathy; a kinship. And I believe that emotions are simply not very sympathetic to the economic underclass right now. Much of that underclass is black, and in its media-highlighted aspects, "black culture" has not been so attractive recently to middle class America, white or black. IMO, the widespread rejoicing in the black community at the acquittal of the murderer OJ was a very bad thing for this country. Gangsta rap culture is repellent to many middle class whites. Marion Barry's reelection did not win allies for blacks among other races, and neither did the role of Al Sharpton et al in the Tawana Brawley hoax. Overrepresentation of blacks in the prisons, shrill "entitled" welfare mothers (black and white) making "demands" on TV, the books-are-for-whites attitude, the furor around Ebonics, demands for reparations by those who have never been slaves of those who have never owned slaves... and lately, The Reverend Jackson's illegitimate child and the money he'd thrown at the situation, followed by his weekend of remorse and ... all occurring in the context of the imminent demographic decline of the white population into minority status... What I guess I'm getting at is that I think many people are furious, and alarmed, and that rational, constructive ways of addressing inequity and injustice and suffering are inaccessible to furious people. I don't know what to do. I do know that cause and effect isn't so clear, here, and something had better be done to increase the percentage of the population that feels it has a stake in the proceedings.