<p>Yes. I’m saying that there are too many people on disability.</p>
<p>So is this guy, although I think his solutions are probably not the same as the ones I’d prefer.</p>
<p><a href=“The Growth in the Social Security Disability Rolls: A Fiscal Crisis Unfolding | NBER”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w12436</a></p>
<p>“Going off in this direction will probably get this shut down but many of the people that we know who are poor are mentally ill and/or drug addicts. This is why one of my goals for the rest of my life is to focus attention on the poor mental health system along with addiction issues that plague us”</p>
<p>Good for you, DocT. Our mental health system is atrocious. They don’t seem to know what to do with people, and they end up out on the street. Spending money on solving the mental health problems we have would be a worthy endeavor.</p>
<p>As far as “truly poor”, cosmicfish, I would say if you can fit all of your belongings in a grocery cart, and you sleep on the sidewalk or under a bridge, that would fit my definition of “truly poor.” I suppose I would presume many of the people I have seen in that situation are drug/alcohol abusers or mentally ill, because they appear stoned/drunk, have a bottle of something, or are talking to an invisible person.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s a rather extreme definition! So someone who can barely pay the rent and acquire food but is one little expense away from having his/her possessions out on the sidewalk is not “truly poor”?</p>
<p>Either of these posts are irrelevant to my point:</p>
<p>" Most poor people in the U.S. are women, children and the elderly. Most drug users in this country are in none of those categories" and</p>
<p>“When people tend to start mentioning things like drug use (which is less common among the poor than the middle class), it is often to explain away poverty - the old “blaming the victim” thing instead of looking at is as a problem OF society. We can then look at those shameful drug users and focus on THEM instead of those very hardworking lower-tier job holders who can’t afford to visit a doctor or eat three meals a day. In reality, the lower income class is made up of more working poor than it is of homeless people and drug users”</p>
<p>KKmama, you can’t even answer a direct question.</p>
<p>For both kkmama and oldmom, at no point did I ever say that most poor people are drug users. My point was that addiction will not enhance your financial circumstances.</p>
<p>Drug addiction was actually tangential to what I originally said. I was just bringing up things that were obvious that that one should avoid, to enhance their chances of staying out of poverty. I can’t even believe that anyone would argue against that, but then again, some are not interested in what a person is actually saying, they are arguing against what they heard someone else say.</p>
<p>Dadx, how do you know there are too many?</p>
<p>"Wow, that’s a rather extreme definition! So someone who can barely pay the rent and acquire food but is one little expense away from having his/her possessions out on the sidewalk is not “truly poor”? "</p>
<p>Sure, I’d call them truly poor. If you’re on the way to becoming destitute, seems like truly poor to me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The rich wait till after 30 to procreate. The teens in expensive prep schools do not have children; that would interfere w going to Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Where my wife is an elementary school principal, 97% are on both free breakfast and lunch. Besides all the dcf cases involving child abuse, rape of young children by fathers, a large percentage of the mothers do not work and are drug addicts including being arrested for dealing.</p>
<p>DocT, I don’t think this is typical. My daughter went to a school where almost 90 percent of the kids were eligible for free meals and there were virtually none of these problems. That might not be typical either but I don’t think your wife’s students represent kids in poor families.</p>
<p>Busdriver11, you are using the definition of destitute for your definition of the poor.
The same way you are using teenage mothers as a symbol of the poor. </p>
<p>Although, some teenage mothers arent rolling their entire wealth down the street in a shopping cart. </p>
<p>Those teenage mothers that have more belongings than can fit in a shopping cart must be middle class. ;)</p>
<p>“The teens in expensive prep schools do not have children; that would interfere w going to Dartmouth.”</p>
<p>Of course they don’t have children. They have abortions. </p>
<p>@emilybee, I deliberately did not say they don’t get pregnant</p>
<p>At the neighborhood upper middle class high school, a vast majority of the students drink, take drugs or both. Many kids are having sex and I dont blame them. The kids are very good looking. The girls wear very little and the guys are buffed. I dont know how they concentrate on school work in class. </p>
<p>I remember when I took a trigonometry class . Well… There was this girl. Let me just say I remember taking the class. I dont know what was taught in that class. Something about sin, cos, tan. That is all I know.</p>
<p>While the kids are in school they drive their parents’ BMWs, or their own cars which are nicer than their teacher 's cars.
Anyway, most of the high school kids do well. Go to great colleges. Where they party some more. Soon, they will rule the world. Or at least they will rule their own place. </p>
<p>And in a few years, the kids will be arguing the same crap that we argue. 
The kids can do that because they were never hungry and most of their parents have their back.</p>
<p>^^^…and because the parents have the salary and assets to back up their children’s backs.</p>
<p>And they didn’t have a baby at age 17</p>
<p>“Busdriver11, you are using the definition of destitute for your definition of the poor.
The same way you are using teenage mothers as a symbol of the poor”</p>
<p>Ah now, dstark, don’t you nitnoid me too. I was just answering what I thought “truly poor” meant. Kind of sounds the same as destitute to me, though the differentiation isn’t something I’m going to spend a lot of time arguing about.</p>
<p>I am not using teenage mothers as a symbol of the poor, either. I am using their situation as something that we, as a society, can help prevent…as one of the surest ways into poverty. Teenage parenting is something worth discouraging. I am for free and accessible birth control to all. I am also pro choice. People falling into poverty later on in life is a completely different situation. I spend a lot of time in the Mid South, and I can’t stand to see these girls make their life so complicated, with little support, and rarely a guy who sticks around. Their life doesn’t have to be so difficult.</p>
<p>“I deliberately did not say they don’t get pregnant .”</p>
<p>Yes, I know. </p>
<p>Because their parents made sure they had birth control. I think another poster said that already.</p>
<p>Ok… Emilybee said abortions. I would not be surprised if a few kids have had abortions. </p>
<p>“And they didn’t have a baby at age 17”</p>
<p>Or 16. Or 15. Or 14.</p>
<p>“DocT, I don’t think this is typical. My daughter went to a school where almost 90 percent of the kids were eligible for free meals and there were virtually none of these problems. That might not be typical either but I don’t think your wife’s students represent kids in poor families.”</p>
<p>What makes you think that you or your daughter would even know of these problems?? You wouldn’t. Here in CT, this is confidential information. The other students don’t know and neither do the teachers. The information is shared only between dcf and the administrators who in my wife’s case ended up testifying in court.</p>