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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (10040)	10/2/2009 7:18:31 AM
From: Lane3	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Maybe they go to the movies once a month instead of once a week. You illustrate how non-deprived people are. Anyone who can afford to go to the movies once a month is obviously not homeless or starving or poverty stricken. That Buffet can afford to have a movie theater in his home and fly the stars in for dinner and a screening is irrelevant. which was 4% below its 2000 level and continued a downward trend that had been accelerating for some time. Sorry if it looked like I was playing fast and loose with the quote. I wasn't. I referenced the "some time" with my level metaphor. Even if "some time" is a decade as you infer, the overall trend line is still up long term. The poor in this country are dramatically better off than the historical lot of the poor. Perhaps you and I are just assuming different timelines. Also, perhaps you are working off an escalating standard of poverty where I am using a constant one.

To: Road Walker who wrote (10040)	10/2/2009 9:34:46 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

As to the standard of living argument it's really fuzzy. Yes a family could buy a 38" flat screen TV for MUCH less in 2008 And this is a major element of the standard of living. When you can buy a DVD player for $38 at Walmart, even the poor can afford one. The very FACT that the poor can now afford cable says a lot. If you look back to the 70s, before Reaganomics, the poor couldn't have afforded that $15/month. The poor didn't live in air-conditioned homes, didn't have dishwashers and had to go to the laundromat to wash their clothes. There is really nothing fuzzy about it.