An explosive U.N. report shows American safety net was failing before Trump election

Still waiting for you to explain how someone getting wealthier deprives another person of money. The economy is not a zero sum system. There is not a fixed amount of wealth that everyone shares.

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The UN? Give me a,break

 

We need to stop funding the UN and take care of our own poor!

 

trump has stopped funding both pakistan and the plo

 

The GOP did the right thing in both of those instances. The Pakistanis around here are supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood front the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Ted Cruz has again spoken up that the Muslim Brotherhood must be listed as a terrorist organization.

 

I see you read the article, but did you read the report?

Poverty in the US is caused by lack of opportunity to earn more (upward mobility) for those born or thrust by circumstance into poverty. The report advises a solution of more progressive taxation to redistribute wealth and pay for more free health care for the unemployed and children. Do you agree with the UN that this will solve the problem of poverty in America?

I too am concerned about all of the same things that the UN is concerned about, but I see their solution as something that will increase deficits and treat a symptom while ignoring the real problem. The first REAL PROBLEM is spiraling health care costs. My insurance premiums increase by greater than 30% per year and have for a decade. It is now nearly half of my total salary and benefits and larger than I pay in all Federal Taxes and Social Security. In an economy with a 2% to 4% inflation rate, a 30% rate of increase in Health Care costs is unsustainable. Shifting the burden of paying unsustainable costs from individuals to the Federal Government will simply benefit Health care Billionaires and bankrupt the Government instead of individuals. The UN plan will do NOTHING to treat the real problem. Nationalized Health Care rationing is already being seen in other nations with socialized health care suffering from the same issue. Solve the problem of affordability, not shifting who can't afford to pay.

The second great issue is the lack of opportunity and upward mobility. On the one hand, the answer is frighteningly simple ... if one graduates high school, does not have children out of wedlock, and works at a job, one is virtually certain to rise out of poverty and into the middle class. So we need to work on stopping children from dropping out and finishing High school instead. We need to encourage the old fashioned two parent family. We need to encourage the value of working a job and sticking with it. The UN plan to tax and dole seems to address none of these issues. Welfare rewards unwed mothers for having as many children as possible. It also penalizes the poor for working by cutting benefits and disqualifying the poor from most assistance. For a young man, the streets offer the lie of easy money through drugs and the 'system' offers only two types of jobs ... part time leading nowhere jobs at McDonalds and unobtainable jobs that require college that they can't afford. The UN plan will do nothing to change that, either.

A generation ago, young men had the option to get a job working with their hands and making something. They could rise uo in the company as they gained skills and they could see a path to the future. A man could work, accomplish something, and support a wife and family. Under the new globalized world order, those tasks are now done in third world countries for third world wages. The people who benefited are the ones in management and sales who still generated the same revenue, but lowered costs and got to keep the higher profits. The US agreed to all of this to "help" countries in Asia ... and it did. However it seems disingenuous for the UN to now complain that the workers who lost their job opportunities to the Third World are now living in Third World Poverty. There is a cure for that, it is called "protectionism" and EVERYONE has been practicing it EXCEPT the US. China deliberately controls its currency to manipulate international trade, steals intellectual property and sells counterfeits that would be illegal in any other country in the First World. The EU just got convicted because the Governments absorbed all of the development costs of the newest Airbus plane allowing the EU company to compete against US Boeing at an unfair advantage. Germany protects its machinists to keep its industry on top and at a trade advantage. Free Trade really means that everyone trades with the US at an advantage because we buy the "global economy" argument and refuse to defend ourselves. So the poorest of the poor slip into third world poverty and the Third World wants the US to pay them to be idle government serfs so foreign countries can continue to trade with us at a disadvantage.

No the cure is to target education for the real world of today, and to create an economic atmosphere of work and hope where a poor worker in the US does not need to compete with a Chinese convict on an equal pay footing. The UN is offering a solution in THEIR best interest, not ours.

Talk to me about the actual report if you want to disagree.

 

No one is assured that when they close their eyes at night, that they will open them in the morning. So “assurance” is not the issue. The median income in the US is about $53,000 at the moment. The typical HS graduate can get a job in a supermarket making somewhere around $8 to $10 per hour and become a Department Manager in that supermarket within 5 to 10 years and earn that $50,000 annual salary placing him in the middle class. That is HS graduate to Middle Class by age 28 with no special training or skills except those learned on the job. A one year trade school to learn to repair AC or be a Plumber would cause a faster rise to more money. Buying a truck and starting a small Plumbing business could place the HS graduate in the top 20%.

I have a friend who owns a Used Car lot. His greatest problem with getting and keeping employees is to find people who will show up for work every day and not arrive stoned. That is not something that any Government Income Transfer will fix.

 

Could you tell us what planet you are living on?
Or maybe the author of the alternative history novels you've been reading?

 

Actually, it just went over $61,000, the highest ever.

Middle-class income rose above $61,000 for the first time last year, U.S. Census Bureau says

Absolutely. My 18 year old just quit his job at the grocery store to go to college and there was a manager at his store that followed this exact career path. I think he's 32 or 33 years old now.

 

Add night classes at a community college to get an Associates in Business and the Department Manager can rise to Store Manager earning something in excess of $100,000.

 

I have a friend whose mother overdosed when he was 16 years old. He ran away from Foster Care and lived on the roof of his old apartment building in Philadelphia. He dropped out of school and hustled on a street corner selling sunglasses to survive. He moved from street corners to flea markets. By age 18 he purchased his first house. Today he works on Monday, still going to a flea market to see what new sun glasses people buy from his display. Then he orders cases of them from China to be delivered to his warehouse and sent to his displays in places like Eckerds and Walgreens.

He can’t understand why anyone would want a job when they could just start a business. Clearly opportunity is still out there.

 

No. Most are young people earning money on a first job while heading to some other career.
Many more are older people working part time.
Some, frankly, are ex-criminals and drug addicts who have no real interest in working at all, but who want to stay out of jail. (just like many employees at McDonalds).

So let us restrict our conversation to the full-time employees who actually WANT to make this a career. I worked in the Seafood department (part time) and the following people in my supermarket all earned more than the median annual income (making them not just middle class, but above average middle class):

1. Store Manager
2. Seafood Department Manager
3. Seafood Department Assistant Manager
4. All Full Time Seafood Employees
5. Deli Department Manager
6. Deli Department Assistant Manager
7. All Full Time Deli Employees
8. Meat Department Manager
9. Meat Department Assistant Manager
10. All Full Time Meat Employees
11. Produce Department Manager
12. Dairy Department Manager
13. Head Cashier

Can someone with a HS degree and responsible enough to take care of a family not prove himself more reliable than someone who doesn't want to be there and earn one of those many positions? Employers find reliable workers in far shorter supply than positions that require them.

 

I don't know what this has to do with your fantasy world of the middle class shrinking and many falling into poverty or high school graduates not assured of getting a middle class job.

But I do remember health care insurance running 15%, 20%, 25% increases in several of the past 10 years. I can also tell you that health care benefits have dwindled with more of the burden being put on policy holders, deductibles raised to ridiculous levels, both which might as well be an increase in costs.

 

Just to set the record straight, that is roughly the rate that costs rose for a decade when I checked the numbers. I am not certain that exact percentage applies to the last 10 years. The reason that you do not see the increase is that few people maintain an "apples to apples" benefit plan across a decade. Some of the cost increase is absorbed by your employer whose share of the premiums go up every year whether your share goes up or not. Sometimes the cost is reduced by increasing copays (which means that you do not have the same plan as last year, so how much more would your old copays have costed in insurance premiums?) Sometimes the formulary changes so fewer meds are covered by insurance or the meds move to higher copays (which again is not the same plan as last year, so how much more is the premium for the old plan?)

For the last decade, the inflation rate has been around 1-2% and the cost of healthcare has risen by a FAR greater percentage than that.

So I have only one question for you ... are you paying higher premiums than 10 years ago and do you have both higher copays and higher prescription costs for those premiums?