These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read:

• Manhattan Buckeye

  "FDR programs saved this country. "
  
  I'll use the verb tolled. The people that will save this country are the ones that will pay the bill promised years ago. And it won't be government that leads the effort. How anyone can possibly believe in a government controlled economy is beyond me. A bunch of clowns, backbiters and charlatans.
  
  "That those without jobs are on their own, to feed and house their families."
  
  I'm guessing most of those folks don't want government help, they want jobs. Which this administration's policies have killed. Where are the jobs!
• isadore

  Writerbuckeye;402159 wrote:None of which comes close to refuting what I wrote.

  because you never made any..
• isadore

  Manhattan Buckeye;402166 wrote:"FDR programs saved this country. "
  
  I'll use the verb tolled. The people that will save this country are the ones that will pay the bill promised years ago. And it won't be government that leads the effort. How anyone can possibly believe in a government controlled economy is beyond me. A bunch of clowns, backbiters and charlatans.
  
  "That those without jobs are on their own, to feed and house their families."
  
  I'm guessing most of those folks don't want government help, they want jobs. Which this administration's policies have killed. Where are the jobs!

  Manhattan Buckeye wrote: A bunch of clowns, backbiters and charlatans.

  Enron, Bear sterns, lehman brothers, Bernie Madoff, only a small part of a very long list. All of which could have been prevented by greater government activity in the economy.
  The government efforts are to pull us out of a failure of the private sector does not happen overnight.
  But until its efforts to turn the economy are successful, the government must continue to provide funds to the unemployed no matter how that is resented by those who wish to ‘decrease the excess population.”
• CenterBHSFan

  

  Isi,
  
  Are you telling me that it is totally impossible to find a job/jobS to equal a particular standard of living, for the average person?
  
  Are you telling me that if Joe Schmoe made $20/hour last year and got laid off, that he couldn't find another job/jobS to equal that amount so that he can keep his standard of living?
  Let's say something like... 1 full time job and 1 part time job? (that way it's not all work and no play)
  
  Is it something that everybody should jump for joy? No
  Will it get you by until things pick back up? YES!!!!
  
  
  Agree or disagree?
• Writerbuckeye

  

  isadore;402178 wrote:because you never made any..

  
  Okay, you don't want to debate honestly. That's cool. Why didn't you just say that in the first place?
• isadore

  Writerbuckeye;402290 wrote:Okay, you don't want to debate honestly. That's cool. Why didn't you just say that in the first place?

  
  lol,wow, what a tough guy. My original statement applied very well to whatever point you had tried to make. I am sure you thought your original statement was brilliant and incisive. I didn't and dont. My answer to it put the debt question in a little perspective.
• isadore

  CenterBHSFan;402277 wrote:Isi,
  
  Are you telling me that it is totally impossible to find a job/jobS to equal a particular standard of living, for the average person?
  
  Are you telling me that if Joe Schmoe made $20/hour last year and got laid off, that he couldn't find another job/jobS to equal that amount so that he can keep his standard of living?
  Let's say something like... 1 full time job and 1 part time job? (that way it's not all work and no play)
  
  Is it something that everybody should jump for joy? No
  Will it get you by until things pick back up? YES!!!!
  
  
  Agree or disagree?

  The real jobless rate is 16.6%
  http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/The-real-unemployment-rate.aspx
  It is very easy for us with security to tell those in need, to buckle up, to lift themselves up, too tough it out and lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. Well the situation for many of them is worse than we realize and I am not about to condemn them to an even greater level of suffering. This next statement is not about you bs, but so many on this site are filled with a smug satisfaction that they have theirs and everybody else should practice “rugged individualism,” as is reflected in the comments that began this thread.
  But as to your agree or disagree question. Disagree.
• believer

  

  isadore;402359 wrote:The real jobless rate is 16.6%
  http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/The-real-unemployment-rate.aspx
  It is very easy for us with security to tell those in need, to buckle up, to lift themselves up, too tough it out and lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. Well the situation for many of them is worse than we realize and I am not about to condemn them to an even greater level of suffering. This next statement is not about you bs, but so many on this site are filled with a smug satisfaction that they have theirs and everybody else should practice “rugged individualism,” as is reflected in the comments that began this thread.
  But as to your agree or disagree question. Disagree.

  You seem very willing to confiscate other people's labor and redistribute it to the "starving masses." Might I suggest you give up your "security" and give it to the downtrodden? After all, you can always count on the rest of us to hand you a welfare check, food stamps, and a medical card so you can "starve" in Amerika's streets...right?
• isadore

  believer;402384 wrote:You seem very willing to confiscate other people's labor and redistribute it to the "starving masses." Might I suggest you give up your "security" and give it to the downtrodden? After all, you can always count on the rest of us to hand you a welfare check, food stamps, and a medical card so you can "starve" in Amerika's streets...right?

  
  Mr. or Ms Believer, I don’t want to embarrass you but there is no k in America.
  Gosh we sure wouldn’t want to provide aid to “the starving masses.” What could be worse than our tax money being used to help feed and house hungry Americans. Remember as you worry so much about your wealth. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) ...
  That is a sentence better than the 5 sentences were labelled as the best.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  isadore;402326 wrote:lol,wow, what a tough guy. My original statement applied very well to whatever point you had tried to make. I am sure you thought your original statement was brilliant and incisive. I didn't and dont. My answer to it put the debt question in a little perspective.

  
  I said government cannot CREATE wealth -- which was your contention. You didn't respond to that...only gave me more examples of government CONFISCATING other people's goods and services and distributing them. And your "point" that this isn't the worst debt ratio we've ever had ignores the point that government does NOT pay its bills, but simply creates more debt.
  
  You are 0 for two. Care to try again?
• Jason Bourne

  

  Create.
• Footwedge

  CenterBHSFan;402277 wrote:Isi,
  
  Are you telling me that it is totally impossible to find a job/jobS to equal a particular standard of living, for the average person?
  
  Are you telling me that if Joe Schmoe made $20/hour last year and got laid off, that he couldn't find another job/jobS to equal that amount so that he can keep his standard of living?
  Let's say something like... 1 full time job and 1 part time job? (that way it's not all work and no play)
  
  Is it something that everybody should jump for joy? No
  Will it get you by until things pick back up? YES!!!!
  
  
  Agree or disagree?

  There are certainly a number of people that abuse the unemployment comp organization. A fund that people indirectly fund I might add. As a fiscal hawk, I see this as another brick in the wall in the never ending national debt problem. With that said, let me just add a few thoughts.
  
  I have read in a few places that generically speaking, there are 6 qualified people for every job available. Can you imagine interviewing 3, 4, 5 times a month, knowing that you are qualified, only to be told no? And if you are college educated and in your fifties, you have about a 3 to 5 percent chance of actually getting hired in any white collar position at all.
  
  The actual unemployment rate today as Isi pointed out is now 17%. Unemployed does not equate to being lazy....far from it. 17% means that one out of every 6 able bodied Americans, who have previously contributed to society as productive members of working America, cannot find work.
  
  Now for the vast majority of Americans that are still gainfully employed (83%), it is easy and rather convenient to say "isn't 99 weeks enough?"
  
  This issue....and many others that plague our present day society can only be rectified with policy that includes the re-inventingof American private sector industry growth. Until numbskulls understand this basic premise, we will continue to have discussions like these....whereby those that are working should not have to pay for those that aren't.
• isadore

  Writerbuckeye;402402 wrote:I said government cannot CREATE wealth -- which was your contention. You didn't respond to that...only gave me more examples of government CONFISCATING other people's goods and services and distributing them. And your "point" that this isn't the worst debt ratio we've ever had ignores the point that government does NOT pay its bills, but simply creates more debt.
  
  You are 0 for two. Care to try again?

  O
  Too repeat myself in a little more detail. The government creates wealth by improving land as it has done with the park system that then the private sector has taken advantage in travel and leisure industries. It has developed new technologies that have served to create wealth through the space program for example. It has created wealth by services it provides in form of security and justice. Obviously it pays its debts or people would not by up that debt. They know they will be repaid.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  isadore;402440 wrote:O
  Too repeat myself in a little more detail. The government creates wealth by improving land as it has done with the park system that then the private sector has taken advantage in travel and leisure industries. It has developed new technologies that have served to create wealth through the space program for example. It has created wealth by services it provides in form of security and justice. Obviously it pays its debts or people would not by up that debt. They know they will be repaid.

  The government didn't create anything. It may have confiscated and even improved the land, but WEALTH is created when the land produces something that provides jobs, which provides wages, allows employees to buy things from other vendors and so on. No where in your scenario did the government CREATE anything. You even said (as a good socialist would ) that the private sector took advantage of what the government did.
  
  Again...government might develop technologies that are useful in the private sector -- but it IS the private sector that takes the ideas and creates wealth (see my example above with the park).
  
  NASA may have developed Tang for astronauts to use, but it was the private sector that took the idea, refined it, marketed and advertised it, and made a whole generation of kids want to drink it simply because the astronauts did. In the meantime, thousands of jobs were created all along the way and, with those jobs, WEALTH.
  
  As for your final statement: "Obviously, it pays its debts or people would not by (sic) up that debt. History says you're wrong; they don't ALWAYS pay it back. And if we keep adding to this already massive deficit, we won't be able to, either. I know you don't believe that, because you think the money will always be there and the government will work better than the private sector at taking care of people.
  
  The folks in the former Soviet Union felt the same way -- until the money went away and so did everything else.
• isadore

  your two statements about wealth contradict each other.
  land does not produce anything, it is used to produce. The government purchases land and develops it and creates jobs. The United States government won land from Great Britain. It bought land from France and Mexico. It managed that land and created wealth from it. So when the government created a national park that park gained worth. Wealth was created.
  And with the technologies the government created something of value, that is the basis for wealth.
  United States history on debt is on my side. Our government has paid its debts. And for the last 77 years has been there when the private sector has failed to provide for people. Its efforts haveprevented untold suffering by the needy in our nation.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  Footwedge;402431 wrote:There are certainly a number of people that abuse the unemployment comp organization. A fund that people indirectly fund I might add. As a fiscal hawk, I see this as another brick in the wall in the never ending national debt problem. With that said, let me just add a few thoughts.
  
  I have read in a few places that generically speaking, there are 6 qualified people for every job available. Can you imagine interviewing 3, 4, 5 times a month, knowing that you are qualified, only to be told no? And if you are college educated and in your fifties, you have about a 3 to 5 percent chance of actually getting hired in any white collar position at all.
  
  The actual unemployment rate today as Isi pointed out is now 17%. Unemployed does not equate to being lazy....far from it. 17% means that one out of every 6 able bodied Americans, who have previously contributed to society as productive members of working America, cannot find work.
  
  Now for the vast majority of Americans that are still gainfully employed (83%), it is easy and rather convenient to say "isn't 99 weeks enough?"
  
  This issue....and many others that plague our present day society can only be rectified with policy that includes the re-inventingof American private sector industry growth. Until numbskulls understand this basic premise, we will continue to have discussions like these....whereby those that are working should not have to pay for those that aren't.

  
  Footie,
  
  Don't misunderstand me, I've been in some of those situations you listed above. I've had to work 2 jobs before. Probably could have gotten by on one, if I just wanted to barely scrape by. But, I didn't like to live like that, so I picked up another job, which was part time, just like I described in one of the scenarios I listed.
  I have had jobs that were hard, dirty sweaty work also. I would come home with my clothes so wet from sweat I had to practically peal them off to get in the shower. Didn't even make good money and I hated it with a passion, but it paid the bills. I only quit it when I had another job lined up which took me 2 years. I've had a damn good job that was pretty much gone overnight. I've had a union job went to work on a Friday and Friday night it was closed forever. Oh and by the way, the only time in my life I ever got UE was being laid off for the union job for 3 weeks which happened about once a year - imagine that! I was in high school and worked part time at a restaurant and another side job that paid cash, working 5 nights a week and Sunday mornings.
  Trust me, I'm not popping off over something I know nothing about.
  
  I'm educated with experience in certain markets, doesn't mean I'm going to sit around waiting on one of those jobs to magically open up because it just won't happen. At least, not in the next year or 4 or 10. So instead, I do something else, which is fine by me because the time I put in is flexible and I can do it from my home. So, my education, training and experience are not in the equation right now, just like many other folks. So I'll continue doing what I do until the market I am educated, trained and experienced in opens up.
  
  What I had to do was look outside the box and figure out what I could do vs. my little niche.
  
  It can be done and it doesn't take 99 weeks to get a job in this world. That is, if you're willing to do the work that is outside of your box. Even if a job is considered beneath you.
  
  I'm not trying to be self-righteous, I'm just trying to explain that I'm talking from experience. I couldn't imagine taking 99 weeks to find a job/S. I have never let myself fall into the "Allentown" state of mind. I've never been a handwringer, I was always too busy taking whatever job/S I could get.
• believer

  

  isadore;402400 wrote:Mr. or Ms Believer, I don’t want to embarrass you but there is no k in America.

  We are rapidly becoming the United Socialist States of Amerika. Just getting used to the new spelling.
  

  isadore;402400 wrote:Gosh we sure wouldn’t want to provide aid to “the starving masses.” What could be worse than our tax money being used to help feed and house hungry Americans. Remember as you worry so much about your wealth. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) ...
  That is a sentence better than the 5 sentences were labelled as the best.

  Nice attempt at appealing to my Christianity but swing and a miss. I pay aggregate taxes up to 30% yet God only asks me for 10%. If our churches got the full 40% there would be no "starving masses" anywhere on Earth. Just sayin'.
  
  You lefties remind me of the Pharisees. You are big on lecturing and schooling others on their sins while turning a blind eye to your own.
  
  "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." Matthew 23:27
• Captain Cavalier

  

  "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
  
  "Do nothing...expect nothing"
  
  Beatitudes: Matthew 5:3-12
  
  Charity works...forced "charity" does not
  
  Give a man a fish and he's happy today. Teach him to fish and he's happy for life.
• majorspark

  

  isadore;402400 wrote: Remember as you worry so much about your wealth. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) ...
  That is a sentence better than the 5 sentences were labelled as the best.

  Lets put a little context to this statement.
  
  First lets look at the definition of rich. Not America's definition, but in its proper context, that of the world. This places the typical American welfare recipient as one of the wealthiest individuals on earth. With your implied meaning of this verse you do realize Americas welfare recipients would be denied entry into the kingdom of God.
  
  http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/Story?id=8314465&page=1

  Make $50,000 a year, and you are the 59,029,289th richest person in the world. Not quite a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffet, but you are doing better than 99.02 percent of the world. But remember, there are more than 6.7 billion people living on this planet.

  The context of the verse is man's trust in material wealth as opposed to God. Naturally those that have large amounts of material possessions would have no need to trust in God on this earth. Indeed it is impossible. But Isadore failed to go a couple of verses down in verse 26 after the disciples ask "who then can be saved" then Jesus answers,"With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
• isadore

  believer;402695 wrote:We are rapidly becoming the United Socialist States of Amerika. Just getting used to the new spelling.
  
  
  
  Nice attempt at appealing to my Christianity but swing and a miss. I pay aggregate taxes up to 30% yet God only asks me for 10%. If our churches got the full 40% there would be no "starving masses" anywhere on Earth. Just sayin'.
  
  You lefties remind me of the Pharisees. You are big on lecturing and schooling others on their sins while turning a blind eye to your own.
  
  "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." Matthew 23:27

  Wow I thought it was just a spelling error, now I find that your use of Amerika for America is just based on a lack of respect for our nation. Your choice, it is a free country. I like America.
  When I used the quote from Matthew I wasn’t trying to appeal to your Christianity. I did not realize you considered yourself to be a Christian. Based on your earlier statements I took it for granted you worshipped Mammon.
• believer

  

  isadore;402929 wrote:Wow I thought it was just a spelling error, now I find that your use of Amerika for America is just based on a lack of respect for our nation. Your choice, it is a free country. I like America.

  Oh I LOVE America...just not fond of Socialist Amerika. Socialist Amerika is a growing national cancer that can only be cured by a good healthy dose of political chemotherapy known as the Constitution.
  

  isadore;402929 wrote:When I used the quote from Matthew I wasn’t trying to appeal to your Christianity. I did not realize you considered yourself to be a Christian. Based on your earlier statements I took it for granted you worshipped Mammon.

  Clever but no. I worship the Son of God and thank Him daily for allowing me to live in the greatest and richest country the world has ever known. As Majorspark aptly pointed out above, even Amerika's - OK America - "poor" are rich in comparison to 99% of the rest of the world's population. But if you see the American "poor" as "starving masses" then so be it....it's still a semi-free country.
• isadore

  majorspark;402789 wrote:Lets put a little context to this statement.
  
  First lets look at the definition of rich. Not America's definition, but in its proper context, that of the world. This places the typical American welfare recipient as one of the wealthiest individuals on earth. With your implied meaning of this verse you do realize Americas welfare recipients would be denied entry into the kingdom of God.
  
  http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/Story?id=8314465&page=1
  
  
  The context of the verse is man's trust in material wealth as opposed to God. Naturally those that have large amounts of material possessions would have no need to trust in God on this earth. Indeed it is impossible. But Isadore failed to go a couple of verses down in verse 26 after the disciples ask "who then can be saved" then Jesus answers,"With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

  From your article sparky
  $50,000 income puts you barely in the top 1%. The poverty level in America is $10,830 that is not near to the top 1%.
  “Brown noted that in this global economy, residents of developed countries tend to have relatively high incomes. But she points out that while incomes might be low in many parts of the third world, so are prices for many goods.
  "People with very low income, in some countries, can live very well because their income goes further than ours," Brown said. Any comparison of world incomes, she said, should also factor in so-called purchasing parity.”
  As to expecting much help to the poor from private aid, pretty much a pipe dream.
  “ Brown noted that in this global economy, residents of developed countries tend to have relatively high incomes. But she points out that while incomes might be low in many parts of the third world, so are prices for many goods.
  "People with very low income, in some countries, can live very well because their income goes further than ours," Brown said. Any comparison of world incomes, she said, should also factor in so-called purchasing parity. “
  The fact is that poverty is not being able to meet what are the minimal requirements necessary to afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.
  I am sure you would prefer to solve our poverty problem by shipping our poor to Malawi, they are Americans and they deserve what is needed to survive in our society.
  http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml
• Writerbuckeye

  

  From your post above: The fact is that poverty is not being able to meet what are the minimal requirements necessary to afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.
  
  By this definition, what the US government defines as our nation's poor -- and liberals howl about -- is laughable. I would say 99 percent of the folks we classify as "living in poverty" in this country can already afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.
  
  That's why when I hear new figures from the MSM screaming how more people are living in "poverty" than before, I take it with a huge grain of salt. The standard of living (the REAL way to gauge poverty) among our country's poor is about where our "middle class" was 50 years ago. The fact of the matter is that as our nation has grown richer, the folks at the "bottom" have been taking a ride upward as well.
• believer

  

  Writerbuckeye;403200 wrote:That's why when I hear new figures from the MSM screaming how more people are living in "poverty" than before, I take it with a huge grain of salt. The standard of living (the REAL way to gauge poverty) among our country's poor is about where our "middle class" was 50 years ago. The fact of the matter is that as our nation has grown richer, the folks at the "bottom" have been taking a ride upward as well.

  Must be that giant sucking sound Ross Perot once talked about.
• isadore

  Writerbuckeye;403200 wrote:From your post above: The fact is that poverty is not being able to meet what are the minimal requirements necessary to afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.
  
  By this definition, what the US government defines as our nation's poor -- and liberals howl about -- is laughable. I would say 99 percent of the folks we classify as "living in poverty" in this country can already afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.
  
  That's why when I hear new figures from the MSM screaming how more people are living in "poverty" than before, I take it with a huge grain of salt. The standard of living (the REAL way to gauge poverty) among our country's poor is about where our "middle class" was 50 years ago. The fact of the matter is that as our nation has grown richer, the folks at the "bottom" have been taking a ride upward as well.

  So we have heard from the satisfied who attack the supposed idle poor. Who are they?All those people living in luxury of American poverty or should that be taken with a grain of salt.
  The number of people in the United States living in poverty increased last year to 39.8 million -- the highest percentage of the population in 11 years, the Census Bureau said Thursday.
  Be prepared for more Americans to join those in poverty as : The poverty levels increased as the country's median household income decreased for the first time in four years, from $52,163 in 2007 to $50,303 in 2008.
  
  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/10/census-40m-us-now-live-poverty/
  The poor do have what the middle class had 50 years ago, a life expectancy to 69 instead of 78 and a black and white tv.
  Children make up 39 percent of the poor and 26 percent of the total population.
  The poverty rate for children is higher than for any other age group.
  http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.asp
  
  What kind of people often don’t know where their next meal is coming from
  38% of their members are children under 18, compared to 36% in 2005; 8% of household members are elderly, down from 10% in 2005; about 40% are white; 34% black; 20% Hispanic; and the remainder from other racial groups; 36% of households include at least one employed adult, the same as in 2005; 71% of households have incomes below the federal poverty level during the month preceding the survey, up from 69% in 2005; median monthly household income decreased by 7% from $825 to $770 in 2009 dollars; and 10% are homeless, compared to 12% in 2005
  http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/020910Lendman.shtml