No, I don't want poor people to work their asses off all day and expect to live their whole lives that way. I expect them to work their asses off and eventually figure out how to work their asses off towards more comfortable retirements. Yes, some will work their asses off their entire lives and still continue to blame others for their failure. That's life.

Lets create a simple example. Lets take a fictional person who had the bad luck of being born in a ghetto, to a single African American mom who thought Latisha is a good name. Latisha works hard, but by the virtue of being born into a specific family, she is severely disadvantaged already. First, she is African American and in the United States that hurts her economic chances. Second, she is a female, which again, limits her chances. She is called Latisha, which statistically means she is likely to got a below average IQ causing her to under perform at school. She is born in a bad part of town, which further hurts her intellectual development as thanks to something like NCLB her schools funding got cut because students score below average. Now tell me, how would it be this persons fault if she never got beyond working two service industry jobs, basically because she was unlucky enough to be born in the wrong family? Working hard is nice, but you are born with your IQ and no matter how hard you work, your IQ is pretty much fixed. Structural racism against both females and non whites results in fewer job opportunities and even fewer chances on promotion. And being born in the wrong part of town certainly doesn't help your chances either.

Of course, there are some ways out of poverty that do not require a good education. To bad that those ways are either extremely denigrating, dangerous, illegal or all of the above.

As for not being able to afford an education, that's only possible if the person doesn't want to do what it takes. There are countless ways to get an education here in the U.S. Our government just seized control of school loans and took away from those with school loans the ability to write them off after a bankruptcy. If anything, government got involved, made school loans more expensive and tacked them on to you for the rest of you life. Do we have examples of students racking up 10's of thousands of dollars of school loans, graduating, and then not being able to find a job? Absolutely. Why did they spend $100,000 on a degree in basket weaving and then act surprised when basket-weaving jobs are few and far between, and pay minimum wage? Why is that MY FAULT? It isn't! It's theirs!

Ah yes, another common argument 'all those students that are saddled with debt and can't find a job shouldn't have gotten such a useless degree'. Its a flawed argument for several reasons. First, the quality of most US universities does not justify the price tag. Second, its in the best interest of the state and the nation to get as many people to college. Investing in education is investing in the future, its that simple. Third, while its all nice that people should just follow a study that ends up with a nice job, it apparantly does not occur to a lot of people that many people are simply incapable of doing such a study. I study political sciences, which does not give me the best job perspectives. If I had studied engineering I would have gotten a very well paying job without having to go around and ask for one, thats how hard we need engineers right now in the Netherlands. But I would have never been able to do such a technical study because A) I hate math and I suck at it and B) I'm not interested in engineering, at least not as a profession and certainly not as something I would have liked to do for the rest of my life.

The problem with this argument is that it reasons from the economical perspective, rather than the human perspective. It essentially states that humans are just resources required to keep the economy running, and if humans choose to become an economical resource the economy does not require at that moment, they are losers and its their own damn fault. Yeah, the economy might not have much use for the humanities right now, but society on a much deeper level than mere profit does. Philosophers have never contributed much to a nations GDP, but their works have lifted societies to new levels that the titans of industry never could.

Capitalism here in the U.S. has been responsible for the most upward mobility in the history of the world.

And that is just a myth capitalists like you to believe. In reality, it was a strongly mixed model between capitalism and socialism that produced the most upward mobility. However, real upward mobility ended with Reaganomics. Since then the gap between rich and poor has widened, the middle class has been hollowed out and quite frankly, the current state of the United States is cause for concern. Watch this

If that gap does not get reduced soon, it will result in some serious civil unrest.

We have so many laws/rules/regulations that no one knows them all. The U.S. government is more responsible for keeping large corporations in business than greedy board of directors. Large corporations are able hire teams of lawyers to keep up with all the laws/rules/regulations and prevent upward mobility by smaller business. Big corporations love all the regulations. Whenever a new law is put into effect, the large corporation charges another dime for its product and hires another lawyer. Small business can't compete, thus reducing upward mobility.

While small business can't compete with big business, big business is simply the logical result of capitalism. All those big corporations started out small, became successful and where able to grow to the size they are today. And simplifying the rules will not make it any easier for small business to compete. It may reduce some costs for them, but in the end its simply the sheer size of a big business and its access to a much wider market that allows it to out compete all its small competitors.

When the large banks failed, the U.S. government bailed them out. The reason was that many people's retirement funds were at stake. Well what the "h" "e" double hockey sticks were all those people thinking trusting large corporations to take care of them, and when they failed, expecting the U.S. government to bail them out, and send the CEOs, board's of directors, CFOs and everybody else responsible for the failure of those banks home on retirement with a big fat retirement bonus? We should have LET THEM FAIL. That would have served two purposes: 1. Failure is not rewarded and B. people need to be responsible with their own money.

Yes, but letting them fall would have had as consequence that pretty much the entire world economy would have collapsed. Without saving those banks, all banks would have collapsed due to the domino effect and that would have meant that literally everyone who did not keep all their money in a sock under their bed would have gone bankrupt. Now imagine what it means if no one has any money anymore. It means that people can't buy food or clothes. It means that companies wouldn't be able to pay their employees paycheck. It would have meant that the economy would have come to a standstill.

And really, the one mistake people made here was to trust the government to keep them safe with efficient regulations preventing big banks from doing things that basically amount to insurance fraud. I mean, those financial companies can literally get an insurance against another company not paying its debt, then giving that company money on the condition that they don't pay their debt and collect the insurance payout. And that is perfectly legal.

Besides, its not exactly fair to screw people who worked hard their entire lives and just put some money into a retirement fund by letting the fund fail and then tell the people that they should have been more responsible with their money. Having a retirement fund invest your money and then hope that if they play it smart you earn a tidy profit on your investment is not being irresponsible with your money.

The failure of big corporations is to the benefit of smaller business. The smaller business learns what fails and doesn't do it again as they grow. As they grow, we have upward mobility.

It depends on the corporation. But look at it like this. If you have a large factory in a town which employs say 60% of the people in that region and that factory goes out of business or has to move to China in order to stay competitive, what do you think happens to town where suddenly 60% of the people are out of a job. Do you honestly believe that's to the benefit of the smaller businesses in that region? I think its pretty much a death sentence to those small businesses when all of a sudden 60% of their clients can no longer afford to buy from them.

I never said government was all bad. Government needs to step in occasionally to put a stop to certain things that can happen in capitalism. Monopolies for example. For example, in my field of expertise, AT&T was privatized in 1984. It sucked at first. But what was the long-term effect? Back then, it was $2 or $3 dollars a minute for a phone call to the U.K. Guess what that price is today? Was it appropriate for the federal government to step in and break up a company that had a national business running just fine? Absolutely.

I blame technology for the lower cost of telecomunications and the loss of Bell Labs really sucks.

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Es99, if all you're going to do is disagree with what I say and not make the case that teaching atheism is good for society, then we're done. Don't bother.

Wow that's really rude..and it proves you didn't even read my post because you would have got to the point where I said I'd run out of time and get to the rest later. Excuse me if I work for a living and had to walk out the door at that moment.

I've never even heard anyone demand that Atheism be taught in schools. It doesn't need to be because it is a natural outcome of logical and critical thinking. You don't need to indoctrinate people into Atheism the way you have to indoctrinate people into religion. I don't even understand what you are asking..should Atheism be indoctrinated into people in schools? No, if a subject needs to be indoctrinated into people then it doesn't belong in school. Should what Atheism is be taught in schools? Yes. We need to learn about the whole range of human thinking in schools.

Clarify your question and you might get clearer answers.

However, considering your rude response and the fact that this whole thread is a straw man argument then I guess we're through after all. Enjoy.

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Reality Internet Personality

This thread is taking a break.

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