They spend it on drugs which don't contribute anything to the economy.
Poverty and Hunger
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Vicious and unthinking generalisation.
I've been homeless: I've never done drugs.
Drug money contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the American economy.
Drug dealers are also great consumers, as they also aren't prone to traditional investments.
To reiterate: get a clue.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I'm not sure about that. It's generally poor people who revolt against those they hold responsible for their poverty. Revolutions like ours, started by prosperous merchants and mini-despots who ran plantations with enslaved workers, are pretty rare.
Faulty analysis. Poor people spend a larger portion of their income on consumption than rich people, but the marginal consumption rate is positive all the way up to the highest levels. Compare any two people and the one with the greater income spends more money on both investment and consumption. A nation of three hundred million people with incomes at the poverty level ($17K per family) will not support as large an economy as the one we have, where those people only make up 20% of the population. There is no income level above which people spend less money than the people below them. It's a smaller percentage of their larger income, but it's still a bigger number of dollars.
That's only because the drugs you refer to are illegal. Caffeine, tobacco and alcohol are huge economic sectors. Of the popular illegal recreational drugs, only marijuana and methamphetamine support sizeable U.S. domestic industries because despite the persecution, they can be easily grown or synthesized here, respectively. The majority of the profits from cocaine and heroin flow offshore to the countries where the crops they are derived from can be grown in fields.
Yes, but unfortunately that is only a tiny fraction of the total drug economy. The world opium trade alone is an eighteen billion dollar business. We all know where the world's opium poppies are grown, and the majority of that money goes into the coffers of Al Qaeda, which functions as a de facto government in the rural areas of Afghanistan. If opiates were legal, a big chunk of that money would be going to American distributors and enriching the domestic economy. Instead, thanks to a government that claims to have launched a "War on Terrorism," the "War on Drugs" that it is fighting at the same time finances terrorism.
And that is a bit of a problem, precisely because drug dealers do indeed dissipate almost all of their surplus wealth instead of investing it and turning it into capital. A healthy economy depends on the people in the higher income brackets being enthusiastic capitalists, not dissolute consumers. During America's previous failed experiment with drug prohibition, the Mafia dons invested their booze money in legitimate enterprises like any other successful businessmen. The despotic regulation of today's financial institutions makes that difficult, so most of the profits either flow offshore to foreign investors who boost their own economies, or are simply dissipated into the most ephemeral consumer goods and services.
Yes yes, I did overstate that. But the analysis is not at heart flawed, simply, as I said, oversimplistic.
Obviously, there's even a golden middle, and various analysis of how money is invested vs how it is spent and how this affects the economy overall.
I'm not going to argue about legalization: all of those are valid points.
Which in turn leads to negative social consequences - the rise of the idea of easy money, a growing (justified) contempt for the police who can fuck your life up but never really improve it.
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the rich need the poor, the economy would not function without poor people. also with all the money the big world powers spend on military and corporate gains they could easily dispatch food and housing to all the homeless and poor.
but thats not the way our corporate economy works, the government need people wh suffer in poor conditions. just like they need people to smoke and drink themselves to death.
peace.
but thats not the way our corporate economy works, the government need people wh suffer in poor conditions. just like they need people to smoke and drink themselves to death.
peace.
I've been homeless also and I spent all the money on drugs. So I do have a clue as to what I'm saying. I never said every single homeless person does drugs did I? Well then my generalized statement was trying to point out something I knew allot about already. So sorry if I offend any homeless people that are reading this thread.
Xev.....I was only making a point that homeless people really don't contribute that much to the economics of America as who they are, NOT THE DRUG DEALERS. Why Xev brought them up I'll never understand, but hey that's your way of trying to show that you seem more in the know. Xev you really enjoy turning things around sdon't you, is that your way of always looking right?
You said that drugs contribute nothing to the economy and that poor people don't have money. I can directly quote you if you like.
This is why I pointed out that drug dealers are probably very good consumers - it's directly related to the former.
I think their motivation was expressed well in a song by the Rainmakers:
They'll turn us all into beggers 'cause they're easier to please.
The Rainmakers, Government Cheese
The Rainmakers, Government Cheese
Fraggle answered you pretty well. To put it simply, with the exception of the insane, we do not have any poor. Not by any reasonable standard.The US has no poor?
First, you can't simply take a number like $17,000 and suggest that these people are so much better off than people in other countries because they have so much less.
You must take into account the cost of food, shelter, transportation and many other things that make life in this unique culture possible.
Second, there are MANY people who make WELL below the poverty wage. Do you think there are not homeless people (who are not mentally ill)? Do you think children in this country don't go hungry on a daily basis? Do you think people don't de due to lack of medical care? Do you think there aren't people living in shacks and shanties? Do you think that there aren't people who simply can't afford to eat?
We do not have any poor? You need to get out of your houses more and open your eyes to the reality that some people face every day.
And children need to produce the product for pennies halfway around the world.
Capitalism does need consumers, but people with no expendable are very poor consumers (pun not intended).
Consumption comes from the lower middle class up.
As for the arguments about Communism, why is it that anytime someone mentions a flaw in Capitalism, somepne always jumps up to show how Communism has failed?
It's like those morons who, every time you complian about Bush, jump up and down screaming about Bill Clinton.
Yes, there are poor in "Communist" countries (yes, it is in quotes for a reason, if they were Communist in teh way that was intended by Marx and Engels - if that's possible - there would certainly be no such thing as poor, that was teh whole fucking point, if you missed it) where did I say there were no poor in China?
Not to mention that pretty much the whole world is currenty Capitalist in the global economy we are building - certainly anyone who is participating in the global economy.
Yes, Capitalism most certainly requires the poor - regardless of what you think of Communism and China.
Who cleans the toilets?
Who climbs down the mineshafts?
Who busses the tables?
Who does all the shit jobs if you have no poor?
Consumption comes from the lower middle class up.
As for the arguments about Communism, why is it that anytime someone mentions a flaw in Capitalism, somepne always jumps up to show how Communism has failed?
It's like those morons who, every time you complian about Bush, jump up and down screaming about Bill Clinton.
Yes, there are poor in "Communist" countries (yes, it is in quotes for a reason, if they were Communist in teh way that was intended by Marx and Engels - if that's possible - there would certainly be no such thing as poor, that was teh whole fucking point, if you missed it) where did I say there were no poor in China?
Not to mention that pretty much the whole world is currenty Capitalist in the global economy we are building - certainly anyone who is participating in the global economy.
Yes, Capitalism most certainly requires the poor - regardless of what you think of Communism and China.
Who cleans the toilets?
Who climbs down the mineshafts?
Who busses the tables?
Who does all the shit jobs if you have no poor?
Do you ever see those ads with the starving kids with the giant bellies? That's poor. As Fraggle noted, the main problem the poor have related to food in the US is obesity!
As far as opening my eyes to the poor, I've been poor (by US standards). I worked my way thru school working multiple jobs (including 7-11) all the time supporting a wife and child.
My first apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and no air conditioning. My kitchen was too small to fit a fridge, so I had to put it in the living room. The apartment building was infested with giant flying roaches the size of your hand! I later saw one at the zoo!
Most of the "poor" in the US live in conditions better than that. About half own their own home, over 80% have air conditioning, most have multiple TV's, VCR's, DVDs, Microwaves, cable TV, etc.
Some have less than others, but no one is starving. That's the kind of "poverty" you get in a free country. You draw some arbitrary line and say anyone below this is "poor". In countries without freedom, you get mass starvation.
one_raven is right.
Food insecurity is a growing and serious problem in the US.
Numbers
http://www.secondharvest.org/export...about_hunger/hunger_almanac_2007/section3.pdf
-According to the Bread for the World Institute
(http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/domestic.html)
-3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes.
-America's Second Harvest (http://www.secondharvest.org/), the nation's largest network of food banks, reports that 23.3 million people turned to the agencies they serve in 2001, an increase of over 2 million since 1997. Forty percent were from working families.
33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, March 2002, "Household Food Security in the United States, 2000"
Wasted food in America
-According to America’s Second Harvest, over 41 billion pounds of food have been wasted this year (www.secondharvest.org).
-According to a 2004 study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson (http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376), on average, American households waste 14 percent of their food purchases.
Fifteen percent of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology who led the study, estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.
Nationwide, Jones says, household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious economic problem.
- Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds - including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products - are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.
-“U.S.-Massive Food Waste & Hunger Side by Side” by Haider Rizvi (http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/hunger090604.cfm)
According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion But the real story is that roughly 49 million people could have been fed by those lost resources.
http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.asp
Food insecurity is a growing and serious problem in the US.
Numbers
http://www.secondharvest.org/export...about_hunger/hunger_almanac_2007/section3.pdf
-According to the Bread for the World Institute
(http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/domestic.html)
-3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes.
-America's Second Harvest (http://www.secondharvest.org/), the nation's largest network of food banks, reports that 23.3 million people turned to the agencies they serve in 2001, an increase of over 2 million since 1997. Forty percent were from working families.
33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, March 2002, "Household Food Security in the United States, 2000"
Wasted food in America
-According to America’s Second Harvest, over 41 billion pounds of food have been wasted this year (www.secondharvest.org).
-According to a 2004 study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson (http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376), on average, American households waste 14 percent of their food purchases.
Fifteen percent of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology who led the study, estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.
Nationwide, Jones says, household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious economic problem.
- Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds - including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products - are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.
-“U.S.-Massive Food Waste & Hunger Side by Side” by Haider Rizvi (http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/hunger090604.cfm)
According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion But the real story is that roughly 49 million people could have been fed by those lost resources.
http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.asp
Some more points of interest:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Hunger-and-Poverty-in-America:-The-Myth-Of-Meritocracy&id=254724
Is this true?
http://ezinearticles.com/?Hunger-and-Poverty-in-America:-The-Myth-Of-Meritocracy&id=254724
Is this true?
Sam, do you ever sleep? It seems every time I log in, you're online posting.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion But the real story is that roughly 49 million people could have been fed by those lost resources.
Those numbers are staggering. 20% of all the food in America being wasted every year is simply ridiculous.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion But the real story is that roughly 49 million people could have been fed by those lost resources.
Those numbers are staggering. 20% of all the food in America being wasted every year is simply ridiculous.
I think all people waste food to some degree. I've never met anyone who could go without wasting any food at all.
Anyway, I was more concerned about the world in general rather than any specific place in particular. It seems really sad that there is more than enough food to waste, and yet people die of starvation every day.
Anyway, I was more concerned about the world in general rather than any specific place in particular. It seems really sad that there is more than enough food to waste, and yet people die of starvation every day.
No he's not. We have welfare, food stamps, not to mention all the various agencies you cited in your post. Most "poor" people are overweight!
Can you cite a single case of someone (who's not insane) starving in the US?
Regardless, capitalism and freedom are the cure for poverty. Socialism, communism, and every other form of statism is the cause.