A co-worker at Target told me he would put a gun in someones face

A co-worker (one of the regular employees making less than $10/hour part time) back when I worked at Target earlier this year told me he would be fully willing to put a gun in someones face if he lost the ability to have food/shelter. He was about 25 years old. He was not kidding, and this guy I personally considered scum and believe he would do so.

He was on state assistance and survived also by living off of family and "friends".

A lot of people don't realize this, but working retail (with the working poor) you realize a LOT of young people who are barely making it would do the same thing this guy talked about. I noticed a lot of young people who were trying to "make it" on retail wages - people with no intention of going to college and had no hope for middle class wages - would likely do the same. They would quickly go to crime and violence if they couldn't find a way to eat. I know this just a minor example, but in the last year before I quit we had a massive increase in the number of employees stealing money from the registers. I remember one case that happened earlier this year involved a 26 year old single parent that worked Food Avenue who just days before had been telling people she couldn't even afford rent anymore. Too many people are getting desperate and not making wages that can pay the bills.

This is one of the things that scares me about the fact retail is in a death spiral. A LOT of down sizing and store closures are going to occur in the coming years. The consumer is tapped out, and that means down sizing. People living off retail wages are the ones just barely being able to survive. When it is no longer easy for them to get a retail job they won't have many other alternatives, especially with many of the middle class out of work competing with them for said jobs.

When you factor in states like California slashing assistance programs on top of that you have a recipe for disaster. Gerald Celente (a trends researcher) sees a coming trend of people becoming desperate and civil unrest occurring. When people who are barely making it as it is can no longer get food and shelter things historically have gotten ugly quickly.

How far we have stumbled into rightwing world here.

Contrary to what you've been led to believe, young working people don't have tons of extra money lying around to be used toward premiums for private health insurance. These are exactly the people that mandate fans want to be forced to buy insurance.

Or perhaps you are against universal health care?

not "universal health care". I'm not sure most people would agree with you that Mitt Romney's idea of "solving" the health care crisis simply by mandating that everyone buy insurance is a viable solution.

it has to be funded. It has to be 'all in'. Everyone who can pay has to pay otherwise those who can't pay don't get care.

We can quibble about how to arrive at universal health care, but what is fundamental is that everyone is in the system. In the system means you get care if you need it and you pay what you can afford.

So when I see what I consider rightwing idiocy like the post I responded to I want to know if a) the poster supports universal health care, and b) how they think such a system is funded.

Under the mandate systems, not my favorite choice, we all have to have coverage and that coverage is subsidized if we cannot afford it outright.

'Forced to pay' is just thinly disguised anti-tax rightwing libertarian idiocy.

Everyone should do their part to support the struggling health insurance industry that after all, only has our best interests at heart. The day the insurance industry was able to convince otherwise reasonable people like yourself that the problem with our healthcare system was that not enough people were buying their product was a helluva day for them. You know my plan to help the struggling automobile industry was to mandate that everyone in America buy a Hummer, but sadly it never caught on.

Not to mention delusional wishful thinking. You honestly believe that the reason health insurance is so expensive is because everyone isn't forced to buy it? Really? The most generous estimate is that the uninsured add 8% to the typical premium. 8% is not insignificant but what about the other 92%?

And I fear that no matter how shitty this "reform" is - no matter how little it regulates the industry, no matter how much it costs taxpayers, no matter how much people are still paying out of pocket, no matter how little it covers, people like you will support it as long as it has your precious magical mandate. By god, those selfish no-good free riding insurance scofflaws are going to get it stuck to them and that's all that matters.

No that is not what I said. I said that any system that provides healthcare for all has to have everyone paying in to fund the system who can afford to do so. It really cannot be voluntary. It has to be mandatory. If it is a tax based mandate or a purchase based mandate, that matters little. It is that old rightwing screed: "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

What I won't support is attacks on reform legislation such as the one you made, accusations that somehow requiring people to participate is wrong. It ain't wrong, it is the only way to universal health care in all of the systems around the world that actually work. The OH NOES A MANDATE is rightwing crap. Plus, there are mandate system that work and work well.

"people like you will support it as long as it has your precious magical mandate" - again I view individual mandate systems as a rather poor compromise. I don't like Romney Care. I would prefer a payroll tax based single payer system. However I will indeed support a mandate system, hopefully one that incorporates a 'robust public option' that is affordable and available and that acts as a deterrent to continued pillage by the private insurers, over nothing at all. As I said elsewhere, I'll even support a system that does nothing more than seriously regulate the private insurers with no mandate and no attempt at universality. That would be worse, in my opinion, than a mandate system, but again it would be better than nothing.

A mandate is a form of capitation. Income taxes are fairer, and preferable. I don't mind paying taxes, but I do not want to be compelled to enter into a contractual arrangement just by virtue of existing. It won't survive legal challenge, and with good reason.

"Yet another argument anti-income tax forces make is that the income tax violates the Constitution by the fact that it’s neither a uniform nor an apportioned tax (A quick legal lesson: uniform, as the name implies, means that the tax is applied the same throughout the country. Apportioned tax refers to clauses in the Constitution that required taxes to be apportioned among the states based on population -- the more people, the greater the tax burden.)" (Cheerfully stolen from http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/tax/basics/6195.asp)

As a mandate would be a per-person tax, and the tax penalty for not as well would be a per-person tax, it would be apportioned among the states based on population by its very design. The penalty is uniform -- two people making the same amount in different states would pay the same penalty.

I know Obama promised no mandate in the primaries. I voted for Hillary in the primary, so perhaps I'm a bit more accepting of the necessity of a mandate -- even without the public option, hospitals that receive Medicare funding bear the bulk of the cost for emergency treatment of the uninsured. The law requires those hospitals to provide triage, stabilizing care, and appropriate transfer without regard to ability to pay. Remember that Medicare pays for our residency system for doctors -- we pay them to work while they learn. Public teaching hospitals are the only safety-net we have right now, and without a public option that 2.5% penalty will be going into that system. If we do get a public option, that 2.5% will be going into it.

Just as vehicle insurance is mandated and legal, so would health insurance in the current bill. A mandate still gives you a choice. You can choose not to drive and deal with the inconvenience, or you can insure your car. You can choose not to get health insurance and deal with the inconvenience of an extra income tax so that if you need emergency care there is an ER and a doctor-in-training there who will treat you, or you can buy health insurance. Because yes, Virginia, Medicare is going broke, and if we don't do something that doctor may not be there. (My mom's name is Virginia, she was quite fond of that saying :) ) There of course is also the choice of driving without insurance, just as there is the choice of not paying your taxes. Both have penalties that exceed the benefit of either when you get caught -- including criminal penalties as a result of doing either very long with disregard to the consequences. (And don't forget the mandate for vehicle insurance is almost entirely due to the high cost of medical care from accidents -- I worked for an insurance company, the property damage claims were always much, much lower than bodily injury claims.)

I would prefer single payer. We aren't going to get it this year. Sorry. But we have to do something.

funds their healthcare programs with taxes.

The Insurance Industry tries to scare away by claiming that citizens of those countries are paying enourmous amounts of taxes.

The truth is, we are paying probably more, (and getting less) when you factor in the premiums most people are paying, and most businesses.

A Single Payer system would eliminate those premiums, both for workers and employees. That would save individuals approx $5,000.00 a year. Even if their taxes were raised it would still cost them less to get more care. And I can't even calculate how much it would save businesses, big and small.


Medicare's overhead eg, is 3% the rest goes to actual care. Private Insurance overhead is 30%.


And that is what the fight is about. It is about preserving and increasing if possible, the 30% profit of every dollar they receive. It is not about Health care, it is about Health Insurance.

I wonder how many people realize how much of the premiums they pay goes to pay big salaries to people who do nothing for them and whose job is to provide as little care as they can get away with. The less care, the more profit for them. That's why we have people being turned down for procedures recommended by their doctors.

What does an Insurance Co. do? All it does is take your money and then decide when and what care you are entitled to. That is where the real 'death panels' are. So, why do we need them?

Eliminate the middle-man. Single Payer is the only way to provide for everyone. Healthcare, as Ted Kennedy and most other civilized people have said, is a right. It is NOT a commodity.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the solution to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth

When it's a mandated purchase of private insurance, those too poor to buy the product go without care.

Food or medical care is a choice a lot of Americans are forced into now, mandating private insurance will only make the choice more difficult and costly.

makes sense, right? fine those who can least affoird it?? :eyes:

That describes our current system. That does not describe a mandate system, which system comes with subsidies for those too poor to pay the full cost.

I don't believe adequate subsidies will be offered, mandate I believe is going to happen, subsidies are going to be much tougher to get.

Far easier to establish a punitive system, the wingnuts and blue dogs will suck that up like manna from heaven.

As soon as the Republicans get back in power, they will cut back the subsidies AND peel back regulations on insurance cos. But the mandates will stay.

Who decides what you can afford? People like some of the ones I've talked to right here on DU who think young people go without insurance because they spend all their money on gadgets and bling? The uninsured have been turned into Welfare Queens.

Who do you think decides? How is this any different than single payer, which it seems would also arbitrarily decide what poor is and how much you can afford. How is your attack any different than the standard rightwing attack on all taxes?

Not gonna happen. I have no problem with being taxed to pay for necessary programs. But I want that money to be administered by the government elected by we the people, not some private corporation whose leadership and running I have no say in.

Because that's what mandatory private insurance will be to young people who are struggling as it is

You pay higher income taxes. If you're unemployed, well then it's effectively free. this is by far the most efficient solution, compared to subsidies and means tests. Mandates and universal health care are not synonymous.

Plenty of drivers don't get it despite it being required by law.

were synonymous. I said that everyone has to be in, either through a tax mandate or an insurance purchase mandate. I favor single payer payroll tax based systems. I can live with something else.

There are good functioning universal systems that have insurance purchase mandates. Japan for example. I simply object to the framing of purchase mandate systems as evil, which is what the poster I responded to did. If we look at the Romney Care example, the low wage workers that poster was supposedly defending would most likely qualify for a fully or partially subsidized plan, depending on how low that low wage was (up to 150% fpl full, 300% fpl caps the partial subsidy.) If a mandate plan results in low wage workers who previously had no health insurance getting a fully subsidized no deductible plan, as they do in Massachusetts, how would that be wrong? Isn't the goal here to provide healthcare for everyone? Romney Care, for all its faults has dropped the percentage of uninsured in Massachusetts from 6.4%-10.4% (depending on how the number is calculated) in 2006 to 2.6%. Low wage workers are not being victimized. It is not my ideal plan, but it is better than what was there before.

:puke:

Because forcing working people to pay blood money to corporate insurance leeches is so progressive.

I take it you are for mandates too, right?

I can't afford it, even with subsidies, and neither can most of the uninsured. It will drive people away from the Democratic Party in droves. It will be deeply resented.

Ignore this warning at your peril.

:dem:

-Laelth

They have the highest number of uninsured among them and they are uninsured because, like you, they can't afford it. As the OP makes clear, millions of young people in this country are barely getting by. This is no time to stick them with an extra monthly bill to the bloodsucking private insurers or a fine.

would be means tested in the public option.

I don't like mandate systems either, and in particular I don't like a private only mandate system, but not because of this 'forced to pay' nonsense, but because of the baked in profits for the private insurers. The forced to pay rightwing screed can also be applied to a single payer system in which payroll taxes are used to fund the system. The same posters most likely think they support single payer. Do they imagine that low wage workers would be exempt from the increased payroll taxes used to fund such a system? How would that not be 'forced to pay' or 'blood from a turnip'?

and they cost $8 for a month supply. That's much better than the $75 per month I used to pay.
If the additional taxes come out to be substantially lower than premiums they used to pay, I think people would find that acceptable. There is also the security in knowing that you won't be cast aside and driven into bankruptcy if you get cancer or some other serious disease.

Look to MA to see how the mandated private insurance is working out. There are a lot of people there who really can't afford private insurance but make "too much" for subsidies or Medicaid.

You say you don't like private-only mandates but I'm sure you will support them if that's what we are left with in the reform bill.

The payroll tax is a flat tax and is regressive. Try again.

And again, I don't like 'romney care'. But Massachusetts has managed to insure an additional 500,000 or so people and has implemented a mandate system with means based subsidies for those who are not covered at work and are required to purchase individual insurance. It is not a great system, but it is a functional system. It wouldn't be my first choice of programs, or even my second, but it is better than what was there before, which was nothing.

I will support any reform that actually changes the current system for the better, even if it is limited to imposing major restrictions on private insurers.

For example, a reform that did the following:

1) abolished preexisting condition exclusions
2) abolished condition based rates
3) severely restricted recissions
4) implemented some form of affordable individual purchases

would be a good thing. It would be an improvement and I would support it even if it would be far less than what I think we should do.

Payroll tax, yes, but a progressive one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_676

Establishes the USNHC Trust Fund to finance the Program with amounts deposited: (1) from existing sources of government revenues for health care; (2) by increasing personal income taxes on the top 5% of income earners; (3) by instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income; and (4) by instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions. Transfers and appropriates amounts that would have been appropriated for federal public health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. These taxes would be paid instead of insurance premiums, as the government (instead of private insurance companies) would be paying for the care under this single-payer system.

I remember how frustrating it was trying to get by on low wages when I was much younger, but I always maintained an attitude that things would get better. I've always believed there were viable ways to get needs met without resorting to crime.

I'm 51, very pro-gun, own dozens of them, and the only reason I would ever use one against a person is to stop or prevent a violent attack.

"I've always believed there were viable ways to get needs met without resorting to crime."

Unfortunately I've noticed working with young people these days many of them no longer believe that. I am talking about the young people working retail who have no college, are already in their mid 20's, and don't have much hope when the classic blue collar middle class jobs of prior years (i.e. manufacturing) have all left the country. When they see themselves working retail forever (and then even THOSE jobs start to disappear) that belief of not resorting to crime goes away pretty quickly.

but the jobs they trained for were all gone. Then retailers started cutting back, often hiring lots of part time help and eliminating as many full time positions as possible so they didn't have to pay benefits and overtime. Employees were expected to work harder for less with the possibility of layoffs always hanging over their heads.

It wasn't just young people either. Older people with more advanced training and skills often turned to retail as a last resort.

Clinical psychology. I tried doing it and discovered that I can't stand it.

I gained some understanding of human behavior in my eduction, but in the end I had to adapt by getting into the real world and figuring out what I liked doing and what I do best.

I hope you found what you loved. At least you didn't take business courses. I've known so many people with degrees in business, doing the exact same jobs as people who worked their way up. There are tons of them in the restaurant industry and their education is practically worthless in the real world.

I sought help from everyone I knew. At the time, I was still somewhat alienated from my parents.

My first real breaks came from a friendship with a man I knew from my participation in the San Diego County Orchid Society. A man whose children had long since grown up; a grandfather (who happened to be gay for what it's worth, which is not much but interesting anyway). He hooked me up with a technical writing position with the county Office of Education, then through his ex-wife I got connected with a contract technical writing job at a bank where she and her son-in-law worked. That evolved over the next few years from writing about computer systems to writing specifications for them, planning system conversions, and so on.

I have been a production Systems Administrator for more than 10 years now, deploying, running, and maintaining commercial Web sites.

I find it a lot better (for ME) than dealing with people who are in distress.

Most people when they graduate from high school don't really know what is the best path to take. It is a crap-shot and now a days, often a very expensive crap-shot if they go to college for four years or more.

As I could. I challenged myself.

I took higher levels of science and math classes than I was required to take. I chose computer science when I could have gotten by with a logic class.

Those were all good choices.

the process of learning is like exercise for the mind, keeping it fit and ready for other endeavors. Sounds like you used your education well.

J.D. and B.A. here.

Graduated from law school 25 years ago. My BA in biology has never gotten me a job.
My Juris Doctor has never gotten me a job. I looked for two years for a legal assistant job (former court reporter who has seen thousands of trials). I got ONE interview, and no job.

And I don't owe any student loan money either.

What did you end up doing?

has a one year old BA in history, but is working retail now. he has some pans in the fire though....last tuesday he had an interview with the IRS, but passed it by and decided to go to trade school to be a plumber. he's 32.

i'm upset about his decision - should i be?

They didn't live high on the hog, but survived well enough. He fished, hunted and ran liquor to help the four of them survive. It was a good job because when things go to hell everyone still needs plumbers.

New buildings get built, and older ones need repairs. There will ALWAYS be work for competent plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, etc.

and i have nothing against tradesmen. i have several in my immediate family. i just hate seeing his college education (which took 10 years to get) go to waste. his original plan was to teach, but that's down the tubes now...

What safety nets are left to the working-class now? We've stripped welfare and surrounded it with so much red tape that it's become all but useless...a shell of a program, more of a gesture than anything, and a stingy one at that. There's a five-year lifetime limit on Food Stamps and miles of red tape there as well, although not *quite* as much as with cash welfare. The factories are gone. The retail outlets are closing up. It becomes more and more expensive just to live a rudimentary life in America every day, thanks to endless bureaucratic fees, fines, and regressive sales taxes that eat up what little income we have left. Meanwhile, the wealthy drink the worksweat of the nation in the form of corporate subsidies and bailouts, and pay a pittance of their income in taxes thanks to their slick accountants, their tax lawyers, and their agents on Capitol Hill. Unions are disrespected and ignored. Workers are abused regularly, and they can either take it or live on the streets. The working class in America is in the midst of a downward spiral that WILL inevitably end in an ugly crash.

If I had no real alternatives, if I HAD to find a way to feed myself and my kid, I'd commit a crime without a second thought. What else do people expect us to do? Politely starve somewhere in a corner, where we won't accidentally bother anyone with our misery?

to the era of the Robber Barons. It took the great depression and the New Deal to reverse the damage caused by unbridled greed. This is the price we pay when we forget history.

your labor, for below poverty wages can do that to a person.

Working class all my life. What I went through as a young adult was a piece of cake compared to what young people are faced with today.
That was pre reagan and disaster capitalism. Working class kids today don't have chance.

if they DO manage to go to college and get a degree, they end up in tens of thousands of dollars in debt because most don't have a mom and dad who can afford to pay for it.

My kid is in junior college but I know she wants to transfer to a college that I can't afford to pay for. If she gets there, she's going to be in debt for a loooong time coming.

As most of the jobs those degrees were supposed to help people get end up outsourced or simply eliminated a lot of people are left holding the bag.

I started to realize college had turned in to nothing but a money making scam a few years ago when I found out corporate executives sitting on the boards of major corporations also held positions of administrative authority at major university's. How many people are aware of that? Not many, but it's true. I also knew something was up when some schools started calling students "customers" and staff "customer service reps". It is a business. A business that makes promises about getting good jobs that may not be there by the time you are finished. It is no longer about education. University = Expensive job training center. It is a business that can leave you in debt for decades.

Just like Fannie Mae went to hell I expect Sallie Mae to do the same. The only difference being Sallie Mae will be able to latch on and suck money out of people much easier like a giant parasite due to the fact student loans can not be discharged in bankruptcy. That is why student loan lenders are so willing to load up young people with tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of debt in just a few years time.

Student loans are perhaps the BEST money making scheme to be in if you're a loan shark. You get to lend obscene amounts of money to people who are very young (and thus you can feed off of for potentially decades) AND they can never escape you due to the fact they can't discharge student loans.

Really it is to the point now that I would almost say if you have a choice of no college versus leaving college with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt you may end up better off by simply NOT going. The way this country is going I really don't see many skilled jobs staying here in the future. Think about it. NOTHING has been done by our nations leadership to keep jobs here. NOTHING has been done to create more jobs outside of the service sector. They simply don't care. That's the reality of the matter. How much cash has been given to major banks? How much has been given to create jobs? Not a damn penny that I am aware of.

I didn't realize they couldn't discharge their student loans in bankruptcy. That would explain why those loans are so readily available.

My son only took a few courses at a community college, which are very cheap in CA. He had to work full time and obviously he is better off because of it. Now he's training with the FAA to become an air traffic controller (paid training) and now that the union has undone the conditions that Bush imposed, he will be making more money than he'd ever dreamed of, doing something he really loves.

There is something really wrong with a society where students and patients become "customers".

on the head. Unfortunately for young people (or older people going back to school, for that matter), unless you don't mind working in the retail/service industry (nothing wrong with it), the only way to get a job that pays semi-decently is to have a degree. The employers won't even talk to you otherwise. The loan sharks, as you say, are having a field day!!!

It is a money making scam. What did the kids of the 60s and 70s do? Less people going to college as I imagine there were a few more manufacturing jobs. How about those who did go to college? How did they pay for it?

My kid is going to a culinary program at the junior college but I know there's no way for us to pay for her to go to the culinary institute that she wants to go to. Not to mention that she's choosing such a competitive industry. sigh.

and people could live off those wages. There were, however, fewer women in the work force back then. Most women only worked a few years until they started a family and divorce was much rarer. As a divorcee with a child in the 70s, I was a rare exception and employers made no concessions for the working mother.

in '69 and she always spoke of the discrimination and societal brandishing she experienced. A scandalous "divorcee", so to speak.
She couldn't even get a JC Penny credit card because of it. Seems so weird by todays standards but my hat goes off to you, her and other moms who had to fight your way through it.

I wih there were more options for kids today. Since manufacturing jobs are gone, it's retail/service or college/white collar job. The blue collar jobs are hard to come by.

and was barely surviving financially. Then they hired a young married guy from outside for the same position. He was paid more, even though he didn't have anymore experience. My boss's explanation? Well, he was married and had a wife to support!!! His wife worked and they had no children, whereas I had a child. I couldn't believe my boss actually thought that was a reasonable explanation for the disparity in salaries.

On the bright side, the guy turned out to be a disaster and ended up getting fired after a very short time on the job. I ended up leaving to have my second child and that same boss offered me the moon and the stars to come back to work, even promised me a promotion that he would have never given me before.

and you are a woman. Period. Blatant sexist discrimination.

I hope they gave you a raise when you went back?

It was people over him who fought for me and pressured him to lure me back.

They did offer me a raise, but I just couldn't go back to those hours and the pressure with a baby and a daughter in grade school. I teased Charlie and told him to make me an offer I couldn't refuse, but I knew there was no offer that could tempt me to go back. In the end, that company was very good to me. I received money and gifts of gratitude, plus a bonus that technically I wasn't entitled to. It was my immediate boss, Charlie, who kept trying to keep me down.

including books, though we complained about the prices then - recently a college kid told me 4 community college books cost him $500. i was shocked.

second, there was more student aid, including campus jobs.

third, though student loans existed when i was an undergrad, rates were below market. the last time i was in grad school, i was astonished to learn kids were paying essentially market rates.

third, most kids didn't have cars, & expected to "live like students" while in school.

i was surprised to see "everyone" had a car when i revisted my undergrad campus recently, & also how so many kids had, essentially, a second home on campus - nice furniture, media, etc.

maybe they all come from families who can afford it, i don't know. it seemed excessive in some cases. the last time i went to grad school, i moved with one hiking backpack.

fourth, we weren't given the impression taking out a loan was normal & expected.

fifth, our parents were making more money than this group of kids' parents - because inflation-adjusted wages in the us have essentially been flat for the last 30 years.

sixth, an undergrad degree was enough then. now it's just an entry-level qualification. my young cousins with fresh degrees are mostly working at jobs they could have gotten with no degree when i was their age.

It seems like a bachelor's degree is equivalent to a high school diploma, except it's far costlier. When my daughter was in restaurant management, she was shocked by the new hires with college degrees, but no restaurant experience whatsoever. The more successful managers had little or no college. You can't teach restaurant management in a classroom.

He was right then and it's still true.

I remember when a person could always find some form of reasonable housing and basic necessities like food, utilities, and basic health care were affordable. One might not be able to afford a lot of extras, but at least they could survive.

Never moved back and until this current depression was able to support myself and survive the every seven year transfer of wealth to the top the middle class calls a recession by using savings.

This one tapped me out and just about destroyed my extremely small self supporting business. I face homelessness every month as a result of 30 years of neo liberal vulture capitalism.

But... as a young adult I was able to make it and afford 2 years of college. Never happen today.

Not long after I got the first of my own apartments and though I didn't live extravagantly, I was able to survive with dignity.

Or is there a difference whether it's some drug-addled crack head or a large corporation doing the thievery? But here in the land of redemptive violence, we're encouraged to settle our problems with violence rather than changing the system. Because that would be socialism. Or something.

He was talking about robbing an individual, which is a whole lot more violent than being out of work or homeless.

Even a good talk from an experienced person who has been through shit and survived it can be helpful to a young person who is "at sea".

An empty belly is a very persuasive motivator for all kinds of stupid behavior.

How many people do you think would willingly starve to death before they took something that didn't belong to them?

he has been trying to find a job since March. He's 20 y.o. and only has a high school diploma although he has a 187 IQ and loves physics, mathematics and music theory (he studies on his own "for fun"). Anyway, he lives with us and gave up his job last March because we moved to a different area and now cannot find a job. He went to his mom's in Hawaii (we live near San Francisco) to try and get a job there and has had no luck. Now he's suffering from depression, a feeling of worthlessness and told my daughter the other day that he doesn't want to live.

He needs counseling but has no way to get it although he refuses to go see one even if he had the resources. I'm really worried about him. He may be coming back to California to live with us but he's ashamed of himself. It's a baaaaad situation.

In your story, I hope that young man can keep his job and his sanity. It's definitely a scary time right now and I understand what he's saying but it won't help him or others in the long run if they end up behind bars!

it makes it 10 times harder to find work if you are depressed and down on yourself. I wish him and your family the best.

I do appreciate the kind words. It has been very trying on him (obviously) but also myself and especially my daughter, who is smitten with him.

And I'll never forget a television interview I watched that featured a Republican small business owner talking about how the minimum wage wasn't important, because minimum wage was only meant to pay teenagers. In her world, no one else, no one, worked for minimum wage except teenagers. She stood there looking at the interviewer with a Cruella grin and would not acknowledge that anyone other than a teenager was working for minimum wage.

human nature. You would be surprised if you were in that situation. Did you every see the movie Lord of the Flies? That kind of shows how things can get out of hand. Anyone can do anything if pushed. I had a friend who told me a story about her grandmother during WWII. Her grandmother was a saintly woman with her 3 children at home while her country was being bombed by the allied forces. She needed to put food on her table and she went every where to tire to get help and none was around so she sold her herself to get money to feed her kids. So you see one a person is put in a position you don't know what you are going to do. I might steel the food but I wouldn't use any weapons. So the guy was just being honest and I pray he never is put into that position.

I don't know if I would - I'm honest enough to admit I'm not as vertebrate about such stuff as I might need to be - but I imagine quite a few people would start doing some pretty drastic things if they were unable to legitimately get food and shelter.

The guy might be scum for other reasons, of course, but I'm not so sure I'd consider "would be willing to commit desperate acts in desperate circumstances" to be something that lands one in that camp. If things got to that point with a lot of people there'd be a lot more of it than one might expect..

if they couldn't get a cig? Not surprised if violence goes off the charts.

... perhaps that's what it will take to get real change in this Country.

:shrug:

:dem:

-Laelth

I hate to say it but apparently it needs to get Grapes of Wrath bad here before people wake up.

who steal more per year, a quarter billion, than the combined total, approx. 70 million, of all bank robbers domestically in a year.

Or of course not anywhere near our free captains of industry and their political whores who manage to bilk us all out of trillions while murdering countless humans.


The problem is there are plenty of privatized jail cells waiting for the unwashed underclasses and very few for those who wreak the most havoc at the top.

but that was before "big-box" stores & the corporate cannibalism of the 80's.

The two main supermarket chains in AZ are union and pay really good wages. Which is pretty remarkable since it's a Right to Work state. Of course, Wally World and other low wage big box outlets have also moved in. People have got to start making the connection that they are actually paying a steep premium for those "low low prices".

Safeway and Frys are union and do the best business.

that breaks after one day of use, so it was worth it.

They've somehow convinced themselves that having more cheap crap in the stores is a substitute for wages and wealth.

"If I lose food and shelter, I'll just take it from you." No matter how bad the economy, I have no sympathy for this sort of scum. The choice is to either support the scum or have guns in our faces? Yep, no sympathy.

"told me he would be fully willing to put a gun in someones face if he lost the ability to have food/shelter"

We did not survive as a species by simply curling up and dying.

In times of shortage people try to see that it is other people who do the dying.

As Patton put it "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

In the richest (large) nation in the world, there is enough to go around without anyone stealing from someone else. If only the Capitalists could realize that truth as well.

cost of living!! I got so more good news for you. In case you haven't noticed, it's not just "young" people robbing banks as well as cash registers! It's people of all ages across color lines.

People were literally starving to death during the Great Depression. It's pretty much glossed over in today's corporate-controlled text books, but people in those days were a lot more open to alternatives to stop the pain. The Socialist Party in those days was the big left wing party outside the Democratic Party, and they were chomping at the bit with ideas like the minimum wage, workplace safety standards, social security, the right to form unions, etc. A lot of people hated the rich, especially the bankers, probably because they felt the bankers screwed them over out of job and eventually home.

The former are vastly outnumbered by the latter.

before the middle class ever notices something might be wrong. Our police state exists so none of that human mess the rich create comes too close to the comfortable middle class.

It would have to be really desperate times but not THAT desperate. I think society could descend into anarchy pretty quickly if things really got bad. The Depression of the 1930's was experienced in a different time period...I think some people today would react much worse.

Senators, Representatives, judges & everyone in D.C. are playing with fire.

it makes me think of a bow and arrow, but maybe some people... food for thought!

It does seem like a highly tempting destination for someone who just needs to blow something away.

we had a person walk in the front door, looked at one of our team members and asked "Should I shoot this place up?", paused, and then said "No I guess I won't" and left.

Was he actually going to do what he was thinking of doing? I have no idea we never found out.... but we had plenty of nut jobs come in from time to time. I am surprised it hasn't happened yet.

So many of our decent manufacturing jobs were sent overseas so people that had been hoodwinked by materialism could satisfy their insatiable demand for cheap plastic crap made overseas by people working in sweatshops for a dollar a week. Nowadays, the only jobs for people in situations such as that is retail, selling said low-quality goods for little more than minimum wage in an environment where job security simply does not exist.

The reason all our decent manufacturing jobs went overseas is corporate greed and the simple fact that Americans loved quantity, not quality. It's simple economics...you can make decent stuff in America, Canada, western Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea and have to pay the workers high wages, or make cheap plastic stuff in poor countries for low wages.

Materialism and consumerism is basically the reason why the United States (and the other major industrialized countries such as Canada, Britain, Australia, Japan, etc.) no longer have any decent-paying manufacturing labor with benefits.