Quote:
Originally Posted by Relentless
Watching people try to avoid providing poor people with at least as much as prisons provide inmates (basic food, shelter, clothing, health care) is like watching the NFL have a labor dispute with referees over what reportedly amounted to $60,000 per team.  |
I can tell you what I've seen.
In the 1980's I lived in Ft. Lauderdale on the strip. Bums EVERYWHERE. Excuse me...I was politically incorrect..I meant homeless people.
There was work everywhere on the strip. I'm not kidding about that. In 1984 you had to actively avoid work not to get a job. Money was everywhere in Ft. Lauderdale then.
And yet...you couldn't walk down the street without being harassed by guys who were young enough and healthy enough to WORK. But they didn't. All they cared about was getting a few bucks and getting a beer.
I know, I know...you're going to say that's just a small percentage of people. Maybe.
Then I lived in South Carolina from 1992 to 2008. And I saw some of the WORST shit. People living off the govt. out in the bars every weekend spending money on drinks and pot and meth. I saw them because they were in the audiences at all the clubs I played in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee
A LOT of them.
Now I live n Vegas. The streets here are just like the ones in Ft. Lauderdale in the 1980's. FULL of bums...er, I mean homeless people.
A good percentage of them are just insane. They need to be in mental institutions.
And then there's the majority of them...Perfectly healthy men standing at every intersection scamming...er, I mean asking for money.
And then I go to Star Nursery and I see packs of Mexican men across the street holding up signs to WORK. They know that people go there to buy trees and shrubs for their yard. So these MEN show up there and look for WORK.
They don't beg. They don't whine. They take the bull by the horns and they get out there to work and make money.
I've heard the argument you are making a million times over my life. And I've seen with my own two eyes the nature of some of the "poor" people you feel sorry for.
And I'm not talking about the folks who just need a hand to get back on their feet. Or the elderly who have no family or way to help themselves.
I'm not ignoring them...but you and others in this thread ARE ignoring the millions of sorry, good for nothing BUMS who are simply lazy pieces of shit.
Just wanted to make sure they got their recognition in this discussion. There are LOTS of them out there.