# The role of the working poor in our society **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 31, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904 "2009-07-31T19:26:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 308
**Author:** ![bri1600bv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9fc29f/32.png) [@bri1600bv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bri1600bv)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2009, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/308 "2009-08-07T01:39:19Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Ahh you’re some rich snob who’s never worked a working poor job then I see. I know from experience, just because it’s low pay doesn’t mean it’s easy. Ever worked a factory job? Been a janitor? Nurses aids used to minimum wage around here, that’s hard work litterly cleaning up people’s crap. > > Nor do people take jobs just because it’s the best economic job they can get. Some people take jobs because they, and it’s a strange concept to you, I know, value the goodworks the job does over their own wealth. > > Explain this further. Why is protection from dieing from ill health different then protection from dieing from a murderer? > > I wonder why that would be. It’s almost like we have more desperate people at the end of their rope or something. It couldn’t have anything to do with a lack of social safety net could it? At anyrate do you have a cite indicating crime is why the cost of health care is 2x per capita in the US, and why Americans have worse lifetimes? > > Same place the Constitution talks about the federal highway system, the Internet and the goes into great detail about importance of IPv6. In other words the Constitution doesn’t document every little thing. It assigns powers and restrictions to the government, and to the people that. It’s also an evolving document. > > Would you be so kind as to point out where it says the government can’t provide healthcare? Is it near the section that originally restricted voting to 21+ year old white male property owners? > > What happens if you change jobs and have a health problem? Oops uncovered pre-existing condition. Also weren’t you ralying on entrepreneurship earlier? How do small business owners get health care through their employer? What happens if you and your health condition fall into an expensive “class of policies”? > > Also you’ve apparently never heard of Rescission, where health insurance companies try to weasel out of providing healthcare for people who develop expensive conditions by looking for technicalities to cancel the contract. > > See right here. It’s black and white with you. Your world view is so amazingly limited you can’t see anything else. Someone is either a welfare radio thief or a hardworking business owner. The hardworking near minimum wage janitor who keep’s the plumbing business clean and inviting to customers doesn’t count for anything to you. He’s invisible. > > You ever had kids? You ever tried to work a working poor job with kids? You’re saying that women has it easy? I am the child of such of woman and you are full of shit. > > So assembly line workers, janitors, food service, agricultural, and pretty much anyone who does the millions of hardworking but low paying jobs vital to keep you from starving death in a smelly filthy wasteland doesn’t count as work? > > Ahh but it’s more than that. You want to tell people “sorry not rich die of cancer”. You want to tell 10% unemployed desperatly trying to keep their head above water “sorry AIG lied about credit ratings. no food for you”. As well as “although you you’re hardworking we’re shipping your job to china. no food for you.” > > In short you’re policies only make sense from the dysfunctional and incomplete view that the poor are “lazy”. When there’s other causes of poor. > > Ironic, cause: > > [http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-02-obesity-affluent\_x.htm](http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-02-obesity-affluent_x.htm) > > Now if the poor have obesity problems because they’re lazy then their should be some socio-economic studies to back it up. From link: > > So the rich are about as fat as the poor, and they have less physically demanding jobs. How could some do a physically active job and be lazy? The principle is DELAYED GRATIFICATION. Yes, the woman who kept her legs closed (or was smart enough to use contraception) is smarter than the woman who got pregnant in high school. Survival of the fittest. If you start making the life of poor slobs, unemployed people, high school dropouts, and welfare mothers easier, guess what? You’ll get MORE OF THEM. Maybe the single mother’s job is ‘hard’ as in menial, unrewarding but she chose that. Make the penalty harsh and the behavior will change. Eliminate the penalty and the behavior will increase. Society wants to reward teenage girls for getting pregnant? Bribe them with a free aptartment? Pay them above market wages to change their own kid’s diapers? They SHOULD be hungry and miserable, they deserve it. The gov’t should provide health care! OK, what should it NOT provide? You can’t do much in this country without a car, so free cars? How about free food (have that already and the poor are gorging themselves on sugar soda creating a diabetes crisis), free clothes, free housing? At this point the poor are nothing more than animals…they can’t care for themselves Why would anyone work at all with all this free stuff? Work is for suckers. The true “working poor” rapidly advance and are in the middle class. It’s the “intermittently working” poor who are poor for a reason. They’d rather drink the week’s wages away (see the book Angela’s Ashes) than wake up regularly (not hungover preferably) and show up and do a job. It’s about delayed gratification. Why should the people who work hard suffer for the partiers and slackers? Screw them. And no, they don’t get free healthcare. Die in the street for all I care. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904)._