Poverty In America: As Make-Believe As Elves, Gremlins, and Eskimos

First off, I'm sorry for the tables being all weird, when I transferred the site to BlogSpot, it went all crazy on me and I can't seem to fix it.

I'm tired of being told that poor people are becoming more and more destitute as rich people buy themselves a lot full of Aston-Martins. By no means do I condone rich people and their frivolous ways, I am as sickened if not more so by malevolent rich people as the next guy, however, I also am also repulsed by these bleeding heart liberal types trying to convince me that we need more welfare in this country. So I write today to try and dispel some major myths about American poverty.

Myth #1: Poor people in America are living in the projects, where the apartments are so small, kids have to sleep on the fire escape.

Bullshit. According to a report I read, in 1995, 41% of all households technically classified as poor owned the place they lived in. The same report, an updated version published in January 2004, shows that when it was published, 46% of technically poor households owned the place they lived in. To me, this casts some doubt on the assertion many liberals make when they say "the poor are getting poorer." If that is true, then why are there more and more homeowners classified as "poor?"

In that same report, there is a table on page 14 which references the condition of the American poor to the average citizen in many international cities. I've taken the liberty of copying some of the statistics and putting them into a smaller table for your convenience.

Group	Average square feet per person
American poor people	440.00
American poor people who live in apartments	320.00

City	Average square feet per person
Stockholm	430.56
Vienna	333.68
Tel Aviv	266.95
Amsterdam	256.18
Tokyo	169.96

The point is that the average poor person in America has a bigger place to live than the average person in many of the larger cities of the world. Again, the common conception of poor people living on top of each other in shitty apartment buildings, although in some cases true, is grossly exaggerated.

Myth #2: Poor people are just getting by on welfare, we need to work harder to give these people a hand

Bullshit. Yes, there are some destitute people out there who need help. I'm not disputing that. But anyone under the current poverty line ($18,850 for a family of four) is eligible for federal funding. And of course, who would refuse federal money being offered to them? So let's assume that everyone who is eligible, or nearly everyone, is accepting money from the government. The government's purpose in giving out welfare is simple: to give people who can't provide for themselves and their families enough money to get through tough times and get back on their feet financially. I don't think many people would dispute that as being the purpose of welfare.

But that's not what is happening in America. I direct your attention to a report released by the Department of Energy. If you look closely at the tables, you should be startled. America's poor are not really that poor, especially in light of the conditions in other parts of the world. Examples abound. For one, 64% of America's poor have air conditioning. Just 30 years ago, only 36% of Americans had air conditioning (ref: the report mentioned in the previous section). Not only that, but according to another Department of Energy report 30% of all poor Americans have central air conditioning. Central air is too expensive for my family to install, and I'm pretty far from the poverty line! Furthermore, fully 97% (!) of America's poor have a color TV set, and 63% of poor people (not 63% of those with TVs, 63% of all poor people) have cable television or dish service.

My question to people who want to enlarge welfare is why? So people can buy a big screen to watch ESPN-8 on? So poor people can have a carp pond installed in back of their house? So they can have neon tubing installed in their cars? I don't understand this... we all want to help the less fortunate get back on their feet, but buying a TV or Central Air in no way helps you get back on your feet. I could understand if this money was being spent on an Armani suit to go to your next job interview in, or on a second car so your spouse could get a part time job, but there are no reinvestable dividends coming out of a television! It blows my mind to hear people say we should increase welfare spending so long as the welfare checks are being spend on frivolity.

Myth #3: Poor people are minorities. The white man is keeping poor people down.

Bullshit. I reference again, the Department of Energy, but a different report, which gives the racial backgrounds of people below the poverty line. Of the 15 million technically poor Americans, 7.7 million are white, 3.3 million are black, and 2.8 million are Hispanic (the rest are "other"). As you can see, there are more poor white people than there are poor blacks and hispanics combined. Cutting welfare payments would hurt just as many white people as it would minorities - so next time you think cutting welfare would be another step in the systematic disenfranchisement of minorities, kill yourself.

Myth #4: Everyone deserves to eat. In a country where rich people can blow thousands of dollars on things like big-screen TVs, we have people who are too poor to eat.

Okay, now I can't entirely say bullshit to this. I'm sure there are people too poor to feed themselves, but again, poor people in America are by no means malnourished. The following tables are from a USDA report detailing the intake of necessary vitamins in several income brackets. On the top row you will see several nutrients commonly considered most important to adequate nutrition. Down the side you will see the % of the poverty level of income (for example, 150% poverty would be the poverty line level of income plus half). In each cell is the percent of recommended daily value of each nutrient consumed by an average person of that income bracket.

	Food Energy	Protein	Vitamin A	Vitamin C	Vitamin E	Calcium
Under 131% Poverty	88	176	116	184	89	88
Over 350% Poverty	88	155	124	185	99	96
All Americans	88	161	121	179	94	93

Where are the huge swings between the different income brackets? Where is any indication that poor people are significantly worse off, nutritionally speaking, than the rich, or for that matter, the rest of America? As has been noted by many, America is the only country in the world with fat poor people. Our poor are not malnourished - and we're giving them money to buy food because we believe they can't afford it on their own. People on the welfare rolls today use their food stamps and then use the money they would have spent on food to pay their Dish Network bills. Absolutely astounding.

Conclusion...

I'm not saying poor people don't exist. I'm not saying that we should abolish all welfare. We are a compassionate nation, we don't like to see our citizens suffering needlessly when we can do something to lend a helping hand. Government should help out those who are truly needy. The problem is that we have some misguided notion of what need is. A person who can afford to pay a cable bill is not needy. A person who owns their own house is not needy. A person who has only one car when he wants two is not needy. Need is not want - just because you want a bigscreen and you don't have enough money to buy one does not make you needy. Need is not being able to feed yourself. Need is not being able to work because of a serious disability. Need is having exhausted all your resources looking for a job and not being able to find one. Welfare should be a last resort, not a crutch.

People don't realize that there are no hordes of starving homeless people roaming the Great Plains. I can't fully verify this statement, but one of my fellow students once wrote to me that in fact, only 3% of people under the poverty line remain there for more than 10 years. The cycle of poverty that people talk about seems not to exist. Another aspect of this issue worth exploring is this - who are these impoverished people? Think about it - after I graduate from college, it's very likely that I will have to rely on my savings for a while before I can get a job. There will be several million of my classmates in a similar situation. During this time, I will be poor, despite the fact that it won't be for very long, and I have savings. And I will be counted in the ranks of the impoverished while I am not making any money, despite the fact that I will inevitably have a good job eventually. Second of all, savings are not taken into account when calculating poverty. An old guy receiving a small pension may have millions in the bank, but because his only income is Social Security, he is technically impoverished, even if he patented the friggin' Easy Bake Oven and has millions stashed away. So my only request to my readers out there is that you think before you go crying wolf to your Congressperson. Watch the news and you'll realize that poor people in America don't have it all that bad.

Laziness is not a disability

Handicapped Parking Sign: What It Says Now

Handicapped Parking Sign: What It Should Be

I don't care who you are. Unless you meet the criteria, you have no right to park in a handicapped parking spot. Ever. If I see you park your car, without a sticker or handicapped plates, and I see you get out and walk perfectly fine, I will key your car. I don't care if there is a cop sitting right there, I will gladly take the heat... because you deserve it.

A member of my immediate family has multiple sclerosis which has attacked their nervous system to the point where the legs no longer respond normally to the impulses from the brain. This results in the inability to walk long distances and thus, the right to use handicapped parking. Handicapped parking places are for the disabled - laziness is not a disability, although in today's culture of vicitimization, some people seem to think so. By parking in a handicapped space if you are a healthy person, you completely destroy your worth as a human being.

The fact of the matter is, if you park in a handicapped spot, you are potentially forcing a disabled person to endure more pain so that you don't have to haul your worthless fat ass 40 more feet through the parking lot. You are saying to the world that your convenience is more important than easing the pain of a disabled person. And therefore, you forfeit any value you may have had as a human being. If you think it is worth taking that risk, however small, rather than walking a few extra feet, you are a worthless human being. Equally disgusting are people who will hold onto a relative's handicapped marker after they have died or moved away. You are an evil person and you'd better hope your deity is less vengeful than me.

That aside, I direct your attention to the fines attached to handicapped parking violations. According to their website, the state of Connecticut charges a fine of $131.00 for parking in a handicapped spot. This is far too lenient. I was pumping gas the other day when a sticker on the pump alerted me that driving away without paying for your gas carries a $500 fine and the possibility of up to 3 months in prison. For stealing, what, a max of maybe $35 or $40 of gasoline? People who park in handicapped spots are the scum that epitomize the laziness emerging in American culture, and should be treated as more severe offenders. Their indifference to the disabled should be more appalling than a $131 fine.

Little kids of today: It's not their fault I hate them

The 80's may have been a giant economic clusterfuck spurred on by massive cocaine use, but I am proud to have been a child of the 80's. Why? Because little kids today are getting dumber by the day thanks to Pokemon and new-age parenting.

The idea for this article came on my trip home from school. First, I was waiting at the bus stop for the free airport bus. So I'm waiting there, and there is a couple of yuppies with a young child standing in front of me. It had been snowing, so there was salt strewn all over the sidewalk and edges of the road. The parents are standing around, looking perturbed that they have to take something as lowly as a bus, while the child frolicks at their feet. Only by frolicking, I mean he was picking up salt crystals off the road and eating them while his parents lazily watched, and WARNED HIM NOT TO GET TOO CLOSE TO THE ROAD! Jesus tap-dancing Christ, if I tried to eat rock salt (which may or may not contain snow-melting material less benign than salt), my parents would have smacked it out of my hand and said, "What are you, stupid?" I'm afraid that the next generation of kids will have destroyed all of their brain cells with rock salt before they hit puberty - and it's all thanks to these hippy parents who raise free-range kids without any discipline.

The second impetus for this was sitting in line to get on my plane (it's a $40 flight, so don't rip on me for being rich) back home. There's a kid screaming his fool head off while his dad is on the cell phone yakking about football. Okay, after the all important "garbage-in-garbage-can," it is helpful to remember that if a kid is crying, it's probably because they need your attention. But people are too busy these days, so they just let their kid scream. Even my parents, who are long since out of the business of "raising children" per se, wonder how parents today can simply ignore their kids when they're shredding the eardrums of those around them. Furthermore, I see kids who are 6 or 7 screaming - haven't parents (and society for that matter) made it clear that screaming in a public place is something of a "no-no?" Shut these kids up or at least slip them some Nyquil if they can't go outside the house without hitting 90 decibels.

Another reason it sucks to be a kid these days is that kids no longer learn anything from television. They watch Pokemon and see a bunch of seizure-inducing figments of some Japanese mental patient's imagination running around on-screen for a half hour a day. Or they watch Yu-Gi-Oh duel with malevolent geriatrics... that sounds pretty cool right? Wrong. They duel with trading cards ... Karl Marx must be convusing in his pressboard coffin. Don't even start with the "Dave, how do you know these details if you hate those shows so much." I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but I must rat out one of my college roommates who watches this show with alarming regularity. The minimal knowledge I have of this show comes from how he explained the show to someone else. Anyway, the point is that kids no longer learn anything on TV. Gone are the days of watching Sesame Street and learning such important concepts like numbers and letters, and how to deal with simple social situations, like with grouchy people (Oscar the Grouch), gay people (Bert & Ernie), slow people (Snuffaluppagus), manic-depressives (Elmo), and people addicted to crank (Grover).

Another reason we children of the 80's can say "sucks to be you" to the kids of today is that our parents weren't scared shitless by the news media. The other day, I was in a store and this father acted as if his 3-year-old gave him the finger or something when the kid wandered a foot away from his side. He scolded his son, saying "Don't you know how easy it would be for you to get abducted?!" Chances are... no, because the kid doesn't know what the fuck "abducted" even means! Do parents really want their kids to grow up that quickly, so quickly that they have to worry about getting abducted and molested every time they leave the house? Apparently so. They're doing it because what they see on TV every day makes them think that kids are getting picked off the street like half-smoked cigarettes on a DC sidewalk. This country is infatuated with the sensational, and thus, we are convincing ourselves that our kids aren't safe anywhere, anytime. And it's not the fault of the networks, either; it's our fault for turning off the TV when they show real news. We're perpetuating this by making networks go to the lowest-common-denominator when it comes to news: child abductions and murders of beautful/rich white women. Because no one will watch them if they talk about elections in a country the average idiot American can't pronounce.

So in the end, sorry kids of today, but you're all screwed because of your hippie parents and Japanese cartoons.

Napoleon Dynamite took away two hours of my life and I want them back

Yet again, I am perplexed by people at my school. I'm sure most of the people reading this have heard of TheFacebook.com, but for those who haven't, I will explain briefly. It's an online stalker-facilitation service. You put your picture up, some information about yourself, etc., and anyone at your university can read your profile and get your contact info. Also, people can prove to everyone out there that they have friends by listing others in their "friends" box, provided the other person decides they want people to know they are friends with this person. I guess people get some kind of satisfaction from having 100+ people listed as friends on their profile. I don't know. It's hard enough to get together with the 35 or so people I have listed as friends in my profile, these socialites with 100+ must whore themselves out 24 hours a day. I mean, one would assume... right? Either that or having only 35 friends makes me a shut-in.

Anyhow, one of the categories offered on Facebook is "Favorite Movie." Some people will list literally dozens of movies here (little do they realize that listing so many movies results in no one bothering to read any of it). However, in my hours of boredom, sometimes I will partake in Facebook stalking, as stupid as it may be. I am now astounded at the number of people who list Napoleon Dynamite as one of their favorite movies. Granted I don't see many movies, but this takes the cake as the worst movie I have seen since I can remember starting to like or dislike movies.

I'm pretty sure I would dislike Bowling for Columbine more, but since seeing a snippet of it in one of my classes, I have decided that it would probably give me an aneurysm to watch. Furthermore, to do so would be to say that I think Michael Moore's lunacy deserves my attention and consideration, which it clearly does not. Michael Moore is a socialist weasel (a quote from a movie that deserves watching, unlike Napoleon Dynamite). But I digress...

I watched this movie with a group of probably 6 or 7. At the end, everyone looked at each other, waiting to see if it was really as bad as they thought it was. Once someone said, wow, that sucked, everyone else chimed in, asserting the shittiness of this movie. Most prominent in that post-movie discussion was "I feel like I should like it... because so many people loved it... but that was a really dumb movie." Another favorite was "That's it? I'm confused, nothing happened. Isn't something supposed to happen?"

Napoleon Dynamite is a waste of two hours. You might as well watch Dawn of the Dead (the recent one). I mean, that movie may be one giant plot hole and it may be devoid of any intellectual matter whatsoever, but at least it has guns and explosions and faces getting blown off. Okay, okay, the part in Napoleon Dynamite where the farmer pops the cow with a shotgun right next to the bus full of grade-schoolers was pretty fucking awesome, but I mean, jeez, that's the only part of the movie that made me laugh, or, for that matter, react positively in any way. The point is, NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE. I maintain that the plot of Napoleon Dynamite could be over and done with in 15 minutes in a normal movie. This doesn't make it unique, or funny, or refreshingly off-the-beaten-path - quite the opposite - it makes the audience wish they were doing something more productive, like slamming their skulls in their car doors.

This movie is nothing more than an amalgam of tired and hackneyed plot lines. Kid gets bullied in school until he shows his classmates that he has some amazing talent. How many dozens of shows like this are played every day on ABC Family, Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, etc.? Secondly, crotchety skinny white guy hooks up with a voluptuous black woman. Hasn't there already been a movie or two about that? I don't see any of those movies listed as anyone's favorite movie. Right, because we all agree they're stupid. Thirdly, nerdy guy gets spurned by popular people only to end up with a chick who is beautiful "on the inside." Come on, people, have we not seen this hundreds of times growing up? Shit, the abovementioned networks been spoon-feeding us these stories of how ugly/nerdy/disabled/enfeebled/asexual/short/Mexican people can be happy since we were, what, five or six? People love this stupidass movie, but I don't know anyone who still watches ABC Family Specials or Nickelodeon. So what's the deal?