But the one percent are happy, right?

As long as they are happy and rich, that is all that matters.










Will the day ever come that the 99% wake up?

So it is no surprise that even with 8 years of Clinton and 6 of Obama, reversing the horrific damage created by and put into law by Reagan is near impossible.

It is also going to lead to very bad societal consequences.

situation ever.

Societal breakdowns lead to more kids being born into poverty.

Which will lead to these kids born into poverty being caught in society's breakdown.

Drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy.

It's no surprise people who have the means, take their kids elsewhere.

It's okay. We've got more weapons than anyone, our big corporations are making out like bandits, and Mitt Romney still has a shitload of houses, so all is well!

In child poverty..........yay?

Evil fucking corporations that won't pay a living wage.

Evil fucking politicians that intentionally allowed this to happen.

And Jamie Dimon was whining about how rough he has it.

Hillary Clinton whining about being broke.

Rich assholes complaining about paying taxes.

What a sick fucking country !!!!!!!!!!

Two things:

1) Having children is incredibly expensive. Don't have them unless you are financially stable.

2) Not only are the people at the bottom increasing, but the well off are pulling their kids from public schools further inflating the %.

Can the right-wing talking points, please. Besides, what about couples who were "financially stable" until 2008?

As the article states, the people are the bottom are the ones having the most children.

Not a good combination.

the best way to combat overpopulation is to increase incomes for those at the bottom.

Looks like we're headed in the opposite direction, though.

Alas, I agree with you....we're heading in the opposite direction.

you want to fix overpopulation? Educate women and give them free birth control.....

Either because of unemployment, disability, you name it.

But if you look at demographics, if you're low income at age 8, 10, 12, 14 then you're much more likely to have more kids than those not low income.

Those who were middle, upper middle, and upper who fell down 40 percentiles are still likely to be better off because they have fewer kids.

(In fact, there's a confound: You have 6 kids and make $40k/yr, you're in poverty. You have 1 kid and you're rather far from poverty. In other words, not only do you have more kids if you grow up poor, you every additional kid makes it more likely you're officially in poverty.)

In other words, there will be some in the category you describe. But it's not going to be a large number, and we shouldn't let small percentages substitute for trends and generalizations.

Good idea!

taking the kids.

Oh I get it. So now only the rich deserve to have children?

Damn this country is goin to hell in a handbasket!

All you millions of fast food workers and walmart employees..sterilize yourselves!

I was a young, financially, emotionally, mentally, physically - completely unprepared Father at the age of 18. Having children IS expensive - and in a rational world of well educated, well prepared people, we would all be ready to take care of our children before they were born. Sadly, however (as evidenced by the OP) we do not live in such a world.

I was a high school drop out at an age when that wasn't even legal yet, earned a GED at 17, took on a telemarketing job, somehow found a girlfriend... and thought I could take on the world. I didn't care what older people thought I should do. I was smarter than them, you know? (Yeah, that was sarcasm - but I sure thought so at the time)

I've taken some hard hits in my life - and learned some tough lessons. One of the most important though, is that people are going to do things that are not rational. People are going to do things that could be considered foolish, ignorant, stupid, moronic. Now we can leave them to their own fate, as the conservatives and tea baggers would have us do... OR, we can, as a society... do what we can to help them out. To maybe slow their fall when they slip through the cracks. As a human being who's made some breathtakingly stupid mistakes, I'm in favor of the latter.

The question for me is how best to do it. I believe it lies in education - in education and in opportunity. We need a school system in which children don't feel like they're in prison. In which kids aren't frequently bullied to the point of dropping out, or worse, committing suicide or going on a shooting spree. We need teachers who can teach to inspire, who, rather than teaching to a test, can lead by inspiring critical thought, creative thinking, who can trouble shoot - take children on adventures. Also, we need to pay them much better.

We have a public education system that should be a whole hell of a lot better than it is - and would be, if we properly funded it. If we didn't have complete morons in charge of the system. Education should be run by educators, not political appointees, CEOs, or whom ever kissed enough rich ass.

If our public schools can be improved significantly (and I believe they can be) then fewer of the rich will be removing their children from them.

Anyhow... just the opinion of a guy who wasn't financially stable when he had a kid. I really hope that, some day, my son will be able to have a better job and life than I do. Working for 8.50 an hour at thirty years of age is kind of... depressing.

Be grateful kids!

I would be curious to get some official statistics on that, but I would wager to guess that the majority of the children of those in Congress go to private schools.

Unemployment statistics be damned.

The Wall Street economy has recovered magnificently.

The Main Street economy has not.

Anyone that doesn't make this distinction is either attempting to pull the wool over peoples' eyes or is ignorant of the economic realities that most Americans face.

We are still facing huge and troubling economic problems for many, many Americans.

So everybody be happy !!!!!!!!!!

like a month or two worth of paychecks.


Makes me feel so much better about the situation.

As I said... that's a very mainstream income level in parts of the South. I'd bet there are plenty of DUers that get by on less than that without feeling like they're in "poverty".

And that's before we get to the fact that there is little to no accoutability within the school lunch program. Lots of schools pad those numbers to bring in extra cash.

paycheck to paycheck and that is frightening. If you have no benefits, you can't take the day off when your sick or a mandatory holiday with no check means tightening your belt next week again. If you have no health or dental or eye insurance a minor event could throw you back a month or two or three. If you have no retirement, your prospects of the future become bleak. $44,000 a year for a family of 3 or 4 is definitely not a living wage, scrapping it by is more like it.

but my dh is a manager, and is paid fairly well.

When we moved here, one of the kids' teachers told us we should apply for the free and reduced lunch program because some funding that is based on number of applications, and not necessarily on te number of people who qualify, which makes me skeptical about this kind of statistic.

BTW, we didn't apply. Our income was nobody's business.

Or at least the voting booth?

A dozen people get killed in France and 3 million of its citizens take to the streets.

Poverty kills a lot more than that here in the US, but no protests over that. Nope, just anonymous posters on discussion boards complaining about our President as if he has the power of the purse.

Granted we make voting as hard as possible in this country, but not impossible. There is just no excuse that the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Republicans of the House got 5.1 million more votes than Democratic candidates out of 75 million votes cast. The GOP now has the power of the purse, and all they want to do is repeal the ACA, Social Security and Medicare. Yet they're the ones who got the most votes.

have never gone far enough. We legislate programs that are supposed to stop it but we do not recognize that some of the people these programs serve are going to need lifetime assistance. And often the actual assistance given in those cases is not enough for their needs. We need to turn this idea around for this group so that ending poverty means that they have what they actually need to live like the rest of us. I am thinking here of the disabled and elderly. Once they have what they need they should no longer be listed as in poverty. If the economy is bad and there are no jobs the chronically unemployed belong in this group also. If the government want them to work then they should create jobs.

Then we need to see that programs that are supposed to give a hand up are fully funded. Here I am thinking of students and those in job training, etc. Headstart should be fully funded. Lunches in schools should also be fully funded for all students because if over 50% of the children are getting free lunches then more than likely many of the other students are just above that cutoff level. The idea of free college like they have in Eu would go a long way. Our public schools should be given more money instead of cuts.

Universal health care would be a big help if it were universal.

What I am trying to say is that funding the poor in a way that does not actually meet their needs is never going to get them out of poverty. If you are struggling to make ends meet then you do not have time to climb the ladder.

If that were done, we would have the best public schools in the world, in no time!

K&R

We all know that's the way to fix everything.

... so the rich take their kids there, leaving the rest of us to fight for the scraps.

If we eliminate private schools, there will be lots of benefits:

1. The good teachers whom the private schools whisk away with rich people's money will be forced to teach everyone's kids, not just the one percenters.

2. If the one percenter's kids were forced to go to public school, the parents would make sure the school had adequate facilities, books, science labs, etc.

3. In the case of religious schools, we would help prevent the indoctrination of children into religion and prevent the spread of religious psychobabble and nonsense (creationism, subjugation of women, etc.).

4. It would prevent the one percenters from having an unfair advantage when it comes to educating children. Today, the children of the poor have very little chance to enter a professional field. Today's inner city children have little chance to become doctors, scientists and the like. It does happen, of course, but the chances of it happening are much, much smaller than for the children of the one percenters.

The solution: SHUT DOWN THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS. PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY!!

Isn't it just adorable?

You're sooooo cute.

They also have more job security and a guaranteed pension.

I think we can make public schools better without banning private schools.

and that's a good thing.

your ridiculous post, is that #4 is why we should support school vouchers. Vouchers get poor kids out of failing schools, and give them the opportunities to succeed in life.

If you want to send your kid to private school, go ahead. That school should ride on your dime though.

I don't have kids, but happily pay for our education system. Nobody should be able to duck out of that responsibility for any reason.

The vouchers are for poor kids to attend the schools that the children of the 1% attend. Shouldn't we be all for that?

I was educated in the public school system, and in fact, at one time I had a teacher certification. I believed that public education was a wonderful thing.

Then, I had kids of my own and we moved to a district that had crappy public schools. I mean, REALLY crappy. Fully half of the kids in my son's grade tested unsatisfactory on the MEAP standardized reading test, yet that was touted as a wonderful thing, as in "HALF of our students read at a satisfactory level!!!! Yay, us!!!!" There was a book in the school library entitled, "Someday Man May Walk on the Moon." This was in 1993. They bitched constantly about $$$, but you know how much it would have cost to pull that book off the shelf?? Nothing. Instead, it stayed as a monument to apathy.

I volunteered in their schools, I advocated for my kids, I did everything possible to make sure they got an adequate (although far from great) education. I bit my tongue LOTS of times, and there were many other times I probably should have bitten my tongue but didn't. They both graduated more than a decade ago, and in the time since the schools have gotten soooooo much worse. If I were parenting school-age kids now I would either homeschool or put them in private schools. No question.

You should have been special and have been able to remove your children from a bad system at the cost of the other children?

Sounds like you did everything you could, but I won't accept that somehow your children were any more important than everyone else at that school.

Vouchers predominately go to well off middle income families. They take money out of the public school system and let parents decide which private for profit school gets their taxes.

If parents have the right to get their tax dollars applied to the school of their choice shouldn't I have the same choice as a single with no children?

because they are mine. I am not willing to sacrifice my own children's well-being for someone else's, any more than anyone else would sacrifice their children's welfare for my kids. That's how all good parents think. If they want mediocrity for their own kids just to prove a point, then they aren't very good parents.

The biggest problem here was a lack of competition. The schools had a captive audience. The administrators could sit on their big fat asses and collect their pay without worrying about losing their students to another school or system.

Every parent who went to conferences walked out with a "My Child is an Honor Student" bumber sticker.

At the time, the big educational fad was "everyone is the same." They eliminated reading levels, mainstreamed all the intellectually challenged kids, went full-bore lazy and taught to the middle. Totally lost the kids on both ends of the spectrum, but didn't much care. Why should they? They all thought they were cutting edge.

Every parent who went to conferences walked out with a "My Child is an Honor Student" bumber sticker. Excellence was meaningless.

When my younger son was going into 5th grade, someone started a charter school near here. It was supposed to be K--4th grade, but they received many, many pleas from 5th grade parents, so they opened it to them.

You know what happened? It woke the administrators up! Minor miracle. They became much more responsive to parents' concerns. They started offering AP classes for the first time. Started intensively promoting academic competitions, like Science Olympiad. They hired some dynamic young teachers, who really went out of their way to inspire the kids to learn.

Even though the charter school ultimately failed, it was the best thing that could have happened here.

Competition is good. If you are going to FORCE people to do something--like attend school--the least you can do is offer them choices that will meet their needs.

than college. Some cost more than better than average private colleges.

No, this isn't about giving any poor people options of attending the schools of the 1% but rather to get coupons for the 1% and others of the more fortunate folks.

I don't think there is a fuck actually given if the human shield poor kids have any school to go to at all much less if it is up to snuff of the 1% the parents just want a break on high tuition and you folks don't care what it takes to get it because you feel directly entitled to the tax money paid in.

Can the phony virtue bit.

If you think I am part of the 1% you are mistaken. And while many of those private schools are very costly, many are not. The vouchers have income qualifications which would preclude giving them to families that could well afford the tuition.

I don't feel that I am entitled to my tax $$, but I do feel that I am entitled to receive value for the money I pay, in terms of having an educated populace. In today's public education none of us are getting what we pay for. We should all be demanding improvement, but instead some of us are willing to accept mediocrity for kids just because.

Higher test scores and privatizing all Public Schools
will end all poverty, once and for all.

most of the private schools (especially the religious schools) are much easier than the public schools (they used to be anyway). Most of their students were placed there by the parents who could afford it. Most of the children had learning difficulties, behavior problems, etc..
My nephew attended one of the "church schools" and got his diploma despite his poor academics.
This has been a few (12) years ago but I saw a definite difference between the educational levels. I taught at a public school for a while. The "church schools" were more babysitters than learning institutions. I was really surprised.