talkpolitics | Entries tagged with poverty

Musk would liquidate Tesla shares to 'solve world hunger' if UN can explain how money would be spent
Musk's tweet comes at a time some politicians call on billionaires to start to pay more in taxes

Well the title is a bit misleading. If you read the article he dedicated 6 billion, not all of his Tesla stock. But yeah. At least he's making a point.

So those evil rich people (namely Musk) are putting the elite governments to the test. If they can explain how 6 billion will end (or at least help ease) world hunger and promote all that is holy and good, and if they're prepared to open the books he will cut the check with no issue at all.

It’s a good position for Musk. He’s willing to do it but also called out the hypocrisy being they have had the money before and wants the books to be opened up if he does it. So in a way he’s calling for total transparency with the funds. I kind of like his way of calling their bluff. This also shows the rich are not necessarily THE problem. He’s inspirational in so many ways. Good on him.

He definitely isn't your "average" CEO. I wouldn't call him a "True Progressive" either, mind you, not in the modern day progressive sense of the word. Maybe a Clinton democrat but not an AOC democrat. He is not on board with the democrat taxing policies and has warned cities to not become liberal. Just as an example.

Anyway. 6 billion dollars wouldn't even solve world hunger for a single month... But yeah.

kiaa

Two years ago the city of Stockton, one of California's most downtrodden communities, picked 125 people living below the poverty line at random and started giving them debit cards filled with $500/month. Cash. No strings. And they watched their purchases and other actions.

Did they spend the money on addictions? Apparently not: less than 1% of the money was spent on cigarettes and alcohol.

Did they just sit on their lazy asses and give up looking for work? No, 29% of recipients were employed when the program started; 40% are employed today. The money apparently removed barriers to seeking employment. They were twice as likely to find employment as those in a control group that was also studied.

The problem for many of these people was income insecurity: they just didn't know how much money they would have from month to month. Providing them with a stable source of income, even as little as $500/month, allowed them to invest in themselves and those around them:

"The participating treatment group spread that money around their family and social networks to stabilize food security in more than one household at a time".

https://eu.recordnet.com/story/news/local/2021/03/03/stockton-economic-empowerment-demonstration-seed-program-guaranteed-income-california/6907700002/

Poverty is a trap not created by bad character but by insecurity. The current system is set up to punish those without, with pay day loans and other economic systems that take away even more. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is a well-known cliche - and it's true. But we can change that.

nairiporter

Poverty is a state where people are deprived of the ability to meet their basic needs due to lack of money. It has been observed in all societies since the dawn of human civilisation, and the fight against poverty is just as old. Historic sources tell us that the most famed rulers of antiquity, including Caesar and Octavian August invested much of their time and effort to develop large-scale projects aiming to address the problems caused by extreme poverty.

It is no surprise that the rulers have always tried to find ways to combat poverty, since that kind of approach tends to win over the masses, while failure or refusal to address the problem would often lead to mass riots and uprisings. The successful rule of one despot or another was often directly related on their efforts to eradicate poverty, a problem that has always been chronic for all societies. There have been various ways and forms of combating poverty through the ages, varying in intensity and depending on the cultural and religious particularities of the various societies - at times they were more successful than in other occasions, but they were never able to completely eradicate poverty.

( Read more... )

tcpip

Born of the European mid-winter festivals, the countries of historic Christendom and those they colonised, will celebrate the very nominal birth of their founder today. A large portion of those will engage in truly gluttonous levels of feasting and inebriation, and engage in the ritualised and comercialised exchange of mass produced gifts that carry a hefty price-tag, working on the selfish principle that charity begins at home. A few perhaps, in more private moments, may have thoughts of gratitude at their good fortune in life. But gratitude by itself is not enough; recognition of one's own beneficial circumstances is merely a metaphysical prayer unless combined with an altruistic resolve for transformative justice; the peace, security, and wealth of the few must become the same for the many. With such thoughts in mind, a survey of the sufferings of 2017 and their trajectory is an apt reminder.

( Read more... )

Crossposted from my usual source.

brother-dour.livejournal.com

First, let's start with the video:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/07/06/what-is-privilege_n_7737466.html

Then, let's look at the questions.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dayshavedewi/what-is-privilege#.ih3DbEB0j

Feel free to take the quiz yourself if you dare. Myself, I scored a +9. I never had to take a step back, but I did miss a few steps forward (I am a straight, white, male of mostly Anglo-European descent, but I did grow up pretty darn poor by North American standards to parents who did not have HS diplomas).

I do want to point out one thing, though: the point of this is not to shame anyone, nor does it suggest that everything should be equal. It will never be equal, and obviously the inner-city black kid and the upper-middle class white suburban kid alike had zero control over what family they were born into.

The point is to show people who don't think privilege is a big deal are wrong, that "if you work hard enough, you can succeed" is not exactly true. If you are far enough behind, you will *never* catch up if the system is against you- and denying one's own privilege is not helping others to catch up in any manner.

nairiporter.livejournal.com

Obama Asks for $3.7 Billion to Aid Border...

Behind the thousands of brown people flocking to the southern US border there are thousands of stories - many of them about people living on a couple of dollars per week in countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. People with no prospects of a future, people barely making ends meet, and dreaming the American dream. Some rely on growing corn and coffee, many are permanently jobless, and the younger among them have left north a long time ago. There is no future for their children. So they venture into the drastic step of taking all the risks that come with a trip to the US border.

...Only to be yelled and spat at by angry locals, in turn heirs to immigrants to the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, who had arrived there decades and maybe centuries ago. If those immigrants of old ever saw how their successors are "welcoming" the new newcomers, they would probably turn in their graves, throw their hands in the air, yell "bah humbug" and sail back home.

A recent piece at The Daily Show concluded that America is a place where older immigrants can hate on newer immigrants. Jon Stewart also compared the Statue of Liberty to a bouncer. Food for thought indeed.

( Read more... )

luzribeiro.livejournal.com

Much in line with the monthly topic, comes this:

Giving apartments to the chronically homeless can save taxpayer dollars, advocates say

Sometimes you have to spend money in order to save money and get the job done, as any progressive would tell you...

"Giving apartments to homeless people who've been on the streets for years before they've received treatment for drug or alcohol problems or mental illness may not sound like a wise idea. But that's what's being done in cities across America in an approach that targets those who've been homeless the longest and are believed to be at greatest risk of dying. They're people who once might have been viewed as unreachable. But cities and counties affiliated with a movement known as the 100,000 Homes Campaign announced this past week that they had gotten more than 100,000 of these people off the streets and into permanent housing. We first told you about this initiative earlier this year. Local governments and non-profit groups do most of the work. The money comes mostly from existing federal programs and private donations, and there's evidence that this approach saves taxpayers' money."

At least from a first reading, this sounds like a nice response to a serious problem that affects millions of people in America, particularly veterans, pensioners and handicapped. In fact this has already been done by Utah, and has shown some promising results while saving a lot of money:

Utah Solves Homelessness by Giving Away Homes

Utah Is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea

"The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000. Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment".

( Of course, there are caveats )

nairiporter.livejournal.com

At least in theory, the industrial revolution was meant to put an end to the inequal distribution of goods in society, thus ultimately tackling poverty. Indeed, industrial production of foods tends to curb poverty somewhat, but it in no way removes it altogether.

In the last two centuries, the Western societies have created a new instrument against poverty, the social state. Poverty was perceived as a structural problem, caused by the very essence of the economic framework, and triggered by the twists and turns of life. The one who lacked income, who was old or ill, would receive support through social insurance, so they could at least rely on some basic social net. They would no longer be fully dependent on help from the family, or the mercy of their peers, or alms from charities. At least that is how it was supposed to be on paper.

( Read more... )

enders-shadow.livejournal.com

Here's a radical idea, and I'm sad to say, I suspect I know how you (collectively and individually) will come down on this idea. But let's put it out there:

The govt (of wherever you live, in the US or...uh...what's the rest of the planet called again? Oh yeah, not America) should provide a means of COMPLETELY FREE FOOD to any human being who wants it.

That's right. Basic food items should be accessible, 100% free, to ALL PEOPLE. Yup. Every single human being should have access to food. Not fancy, foie gras for all, but basic sustainable, HEALTHY food should be something no human being EVER has to worry about.

How will this be paid for, you ask? TAX THE FUCKING RICHEST PEOPLE IN YOUR COUNTRY. Whoever you are, wherever you are, someone in your country most likely has more than you. Those people, out of moral necessity, need to give up some of what they have, so that NOBODY EVER goes hungry. It's un-fucking-fathomable how people can be opposed to something like this, but, oh, I suspect some of you will be.

I don't even think this free food should be means tested. If richie rich wants his free food, he should get it too, same as Poory McPoorson. I do not know how much such a program would cost, but it couldn't be more than a couple of unwanted and unused F-22 fighter jets, or tanks that the military doesn't need more of....and SHIT, even if it did cost a metric fuckton of money (a measurement only our abroad friends will understand, since metric gives us Americans the confusion face) it would be worth it on moral grounds.

The purpose of having money is not to make more money, it's to do something with it. There is very little in this world more basic than food.

I suspect someone will be opposed to this idea. Please, explain to me WHY this would be a bad idea. And if you even begin to go into the economics of it, explain why the war machine is more deserving of funding than a program to ensure hunger is eradicated.

paft.livejournal.com

From Women on the Move: Charlene was unable to get Obamacare because she made too little to get the subsidies to purchase health insurance. She had no dental insurance. Her teeth hurt her at night and had so many cavities but could not find anyway to get the decay in her teeth fixed. She was denied medicaid and when she went to get obamcare she was told she could not get subsidies.

So she went to the emergency room 2012 she had heart issues and was told to get on medicine and be monitored. No health insurance to do so. 2012 Obama won and we all were so sure… NOW Charlene would have health insurance. But the republican party of Florida and Rick Scott turned down medicaid expansion. In December Charlene went to the emergency room with abcesses in her legs. Her teeth hurt her constantly. Charlene never complained. She took her two older kids to school each day and reported for work at her various jobs. Recently she began selling vaccuum cleaners in addition to the babysitting and house cleaning. She took anti biotics. She got her healthcare at Florida hospitals emergency room

On March 21, 2014, a Florida woman with chronic heart problems died on the floor of a stranger's house. She was trying to sell a vacuum cleaner -- one of the ways she struggled to support herself and her three kids, along with house-cleaning and baby-sitting. Charlene Dill was 32 years old. She died of a chronic heart condition that, with medication and monitoring, needn't have killed her.

Oh, sure, she had the emergency room, that option so frequently cited by Republicans when they insist that here in the good ol' USA "everyone gets medical care." But the emergency room couldn't provide what was required to keep her healthy. And Governor Rick Scott decided to score political points and refuse the expansion of Medicaid.

So she went without. So she died.

That's what the political gamesmanship played by the Republicans means. That's what happens when you stand in between a sick woman and her access to medical care.

The people responsible know this. Governor Rick Scott and the people around him are not stupid. They're something else. Maybe they genuinely believe that people like Charlene Dill are inherently inferior and deserve to die. The poor, we keep getting told by right wing pundits, are "jealous," "lazy," "irresponsible." Hey, why'd she have three kids anyway?" ask many of the same people who are doing their best to eliminate safe and affordable contraception and access to abortion.

I mean, c'mon, if we provide access to affordable healthcare for poor single mothers, what kind of message does it send?

Better to let her die.

Then we can work out what to do about her children.

*

paft.livejournal.com

Paul Ryan, on the Bill Bennett Show: You know, your buddy Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard, those, those guys have written books on this, which is, we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. So there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

( Read more )

sophia-sadek.livejournal.com

The party of Caesar was parading in the streets of San Francisco this past Saturday to voice their opinion in opposition to women's rights. The monthly topic got me ruminating on the issue from a position of class interest. Before the Supreme Court ruling that Caesareans detest, there was a significant discrepancy in the availability of feminine health services depending on financial income. Although the gap has been narrowed somewhat, it still heavily favors women of higher income brackets.

The women served most by community family planning clinics are those with the fewest resources to spend on medical treatment. They are also the women most likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy and the least able to provide for an addition to the household. Attacks on these kinds of health care services constitute attacks on those who need them the most. The march this past Saturday manifested a form of class warfare disguised as support for "life."

You might say that the Romans have always stood up for the poor. They have a tradition of collecting alms for the needy. They live lives of poverty and chastity in order to cultivate compassion for those in need. Why would such generous people act in a way that impacts negatively on women in need? It simply makes no logical sense. This war against the poor must be a figment of the imagination.

One might even point out that the Roman Church is bleeding property as a result of law suits over child molestation. The poor padres are not nearly as affluent as they were back when the Roe v. Wade decision was made. Vatican finances are on the decline. They are a mere shadow of their former opulent glory.

The Roman Church has a long tradition of diverting a hefty fraction of its alms income to administrative overhead. The fact that top members of its organizational hierarchy are housed in palatial splendor testifies to the bogus nature of clerical poverty. Few of the Romans I talk with see anything wrong in paying exorbitant salaries to executives of Catholic Charities. The Church can do no wrong in the eyes of the faithful.

What do you think about the attitude of an opulent Church towards the trials and tribulations of women in need? Is this claim of class attack without merit? (I have linked to an article about a recent investigation into Roman charitable activities.)

Links: Nikki Schwab on Boehner's boost after coming out against women's rights. Kendall Taggart and Kris Hundley report on how the Roman Order of Malta benefits from alms.

paft.livejournal.com

Forbes Columnnist John Tamny, on the Daily Show: I think food stamps are cruel… I don’t think anyone is happy if they are reliant on somebody else, if they’re taking a handout.

Jessica Williams: Okay, well what about kids being hungry, nobody getting the food that they deserve or need?

Tamny: I think if people were literally starving, you would see a massive outpouring a charity to make up for that fact.

Williams: What does ‘literally starving’ look like?

Tamny: This is going to come off the wrong way, but I guess it’s where literally people have distended bellies, where they’re getting almost nothing. We don’t hear about the poor in this country starving on the streets…

I guess for Mr. Tamny “com(ing) off the wrong way” means, making sights like this come across as a BAD thing:

( Read more )

paft.livejournal.com

From the New York Times:

Long-term joblessness — the kind that Ms. Barrington-Ward and about four million others are experiencing — is now one of the defining realities of the American work force.

The unemployment rate has fallen to 7.3 percent, down from 10 percent four years ago. Private businesses have added about 7.6 million positions over the same period. But while recent numbers show that there are about as many people unemployed for short periods as in 2007 — before the crisis hit — they also show that long-term joblessness is up 213 percent.

In part, that’s because people don’t return to work in an orderly, first-fired, first-hired fashion. In any given month, a newly jobless worker has about a 20 to 30 percent chance of finding a new job. By the time he or she has been out of work for six months, though, the chance drops to one in 10, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

I've so far had three conversations, online and off, with people who say that, when hiring, they either reject out of hand any resume that shows the person is unemployed and/or over a certain age or instruct their recruiters to do this. They look ever so regretful about it. Shake their heads. Furrow their brows. Shrug as though they aren't responsible and some invisible force is making them do it.

So I have a question for any of you employers who do this or instruct your recruiters to do this. If you are going to systematically shut out Americans who've faced long-term unemployment, or have been careless enough to be born before 1964, surely you support some form of public assistance that will prevent the resulting large pool of the permanently jobless from starving or living on the streets? Is that correct? In between tossing into the shredder any resume or application that indicates the person has been out of work for more than a few months, or (horrors!) has a few gray hairs, no doubt you actively campaign for some permanent government system of financial support for the thousands and thousands of human beings you are consigning to permanent unemployment.

Right?

If not, what alternative are you proposing for dealing with this large pool of human resources you are so willing to toss into the dustbin?

*

paft.livejournal.com

The author responds to a comment on her blogpost Why I Make Terrible Decisions:

I would like to understand what you are really angry about. Is it that I am poor and insufficiently servile about it? Is it that you legitimately think that you are somehow morally superior? Is it that I dared to write my thoughts down and someone forced you to read them? Is it that you never spend fifty dollars a month on something that could be used elsewhere, and you are extra judgey about it because it is the thing you have to be judgey about? Is it that you are an antismoking warrior and doing the world A Service by wishing ill on random Internet bloggers? Is it that you are uncomfortable with the idea that even if I have no money I am allowed to sometimes complain about life? How rich do I have to be before I am allowed to have objections to the current class system? What amount of money do you think gives me the right to be human?

More and more, offline and on, I’ve been seeing the “a feature, not a bug” argument about the increasing income disparity between the very rich and the rest of us. It’s an argument best summarized as, “Forget the poor. They’re losers.” Salon has an acid piece up about Tyler Cowen and the upcoming “hyper-meritocracy,” which includes some of the euphemisms people like Cowen love to use about the fate of the non-wealthy in the brave new world he’s so excited about. “Tough trade-offs,” and “common sense” for the rationale (which I’ve encountered here) that since we can’t help every single poor person, we shouldn’t help any of them.

Along with this blithe rejection of an increasingly large portion of the human race is a tendency to vilify the poor. After all, if one is going to relegate all these people to a life of hunger, illness, and exhaustion, it’s important to convince oneself that they deserve it.

( Read more )

brother-dour.livejournal.com

Or if you prefer, No War But the Class War.

Today I found this article, about a free clinic in a major exurb of Houston:

http://www.texasobserver.org/a-galveston-med-student-describes-life-and-death-in-the-safety-net/

To give you a little background about Galveston, Houston, and environs: Galveston was the state's major shipping port and something like New Orleans West until 1900, when a hurricane flattened the city and killed something like 6,000 people. As an aside for the history buffs who might like to read up on the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, I recommend Isaac's Storm by Eric Larsen. Anyway, if that hadn't happened, Houston would be a satellite community of Galveston, not the other way around. That storm shifted all shipping by rail and sea to Houston- and Galveston never caught up again. Between the two are Texas City, League City, Deer Park, La Porte, La Marque, Webster, and others. All of these cities are at least half oil refineries- that huge white blob you see in Google Earth is a massive cluster of oil refineries at Texas City. The fun thing about Galveston and Houston ism in the winter prevailing winds blow refinery pollutants right into Galveston, and in the summer prevailing winds blow pollutants right into Houston proper. The result, as you can imagine and as the article suggests, is one of the highest rates of certain kinds of cancer, lung disease, emphysema, and asthma in the nation.

To quote the article:

"UTMB ascribes these changes to financial strain from Hurricane Ike, the county’s inability to negotiate a suitable indigent-care contract and loss of state funding. The state blames budget shortfalls. The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, could have been a huge relief. However, Gov. Rick Perry rejected billions of dollars in federal funding to expand Medicaid, funding that should have brought access to more than a million Texans, including many St. Vincent’s patients.

Perry’s refusal is catastrophic health policy. For patients, it means that seeking medical care will still require risking bankruptcy, and may lead nowhere."

And that sums it up. Tell me again how the class war isn't real?

peristaltor.livejournal.com

Fun time! I got to receive two very different posts on two very different topics today in the same Friend's Feed. Trouble is, they aren't "different" at all.

The first comes to us from our Friends at Faux News.

Oh, a surf bum who eats well on the taxpayer dime! The horrors! I haven't heard about this since . . . the 1970s. Lobster-eating food stamp recipients were a common trope back then, too.

Next, compare poor Jason's chosen fate to that of others, like you and I, perhaps. ( Jesus, Perry, down what rat hole are you scurrying now? )

paft.livejournal.com

I was sorry to see that my original post was removed. Unfortunately, I was not at my desk when I was notified of the problem, so I could not alter it in time. Here is an amended version:

Remember Donny Ferguson, the Steve Stockman's aide who took the SNAP challenge and declared it a snap?

Well, it turns out he couldn't actually manage it.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2013/06/on-food-stamp-challenge-stockman-aide-busted-budget-but.html/

But Ferguson, who bought his food and planned his meals at the beginning of the week, ran into a problem when attempting to travel –

Foiled by TSA. Can’t bring my #SNAPChallenge food on the plane with me, and I’m not paying $50 for the privilege of losing checked luggage.

— Donny Ferguson (@DonnyFerguson) June 21, 2013

His solution? Since SNAP funding breaks down to $4.50 a day, Ferguson limited himself to $9 in meals while traveling.

#snapchallenge Update, Day 5: On the road. Buying $9 of food for dinner tonight and Saturday and Sunday.

— Donny Ferguson (@DonnyFerguson) June 22, 2013

The Huffington Post noticed Ferguson’s tweet and pointed out that adding $9 to the original bill of $27.58 brought Ferguson beyond the $31.50 budget.

In the end Ferguson spent an additional $8.45 — $6.70 to feed himself and the rest to buy two cans of pork and beans for a local food bank. He spent $36.03 in total, going about 14 percent over budget.

In short, he discovered that a single unforeseen circumstance can toss you off the SNAP budget.

And yes, that unforeseen circumstance could quite possibly include a SNAP recipient taking a flight. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to imagine someone on SNAP taking a bereavement flight in the event of a family emergency. (I took one last autumn, after a close relative was diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer. Coast to coast for $10.) Nor does it break the bonds of credulity to imagine some other unforeseen event taking place that could have the effect of forcing the recipient to spend more than what is allotted by SNAP.

Not that this matters, of course, because we've reached the stage where, for many on the American right, it's about whether or not people are worthy of being fed -- not whether or not they can feed themselves adequately. We seem to be approaching a mindset similar to the old British poor laws, in which recipients were deliberately starved and humiliated on the dubious grounds that poverty is an indication of of laziness, shiftlessness, or some other moral malaise.

It is my opinion that the issue should not be whether or not we approve of everyone who gets aid. It should be whether or not they need it.

.

paft.livejournal.com

From Monty Python’s Hell’s Grannies sketch:

We ‘ave a lot of trouble with these oldies. Pension days are worst. They go mad! As soon as they get their ‘ands on their money they blow it all on milk, bread, tea, a tin of meat for the cat…

Mitt Romney at a millionaire’s fundraiser in 2012:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.

From a letter by Montana Republican legislator Dave Hagstrom, to his tenants over Easter weekend:

Much of the problem stems from the public demanding that the government provide services, in the form of healthcare, food, housing, unemployment compensation, etc. and the government has merely printed the money needed to meet these demands. This has given all of us in this country an inflated life-style. In short, all of us enjoy services and luxuries that we have not earned by our own hard work.. Every one of us is living a bit of fairly-tale (sic) life-style.

…It creates a mindset that, if you have a premature baby, the government should spend whatever it takes to keep it alive It creates the mindset that if I have committed a crime while on drugs, the government should give me a treatment program rather than send me to prison. I creates a mindset that, if I have kids and their dads are dead-beats, the government should buy my groceries and help me get a job while they provide day-care for my kids and send me to school to educate me so I can get a better job. It creates a mindset that the government should get my mom out of the nursing home and pay someone to watch her in my home. It creates the mindset that even though I was the one who choose to smoke my whole life, the government should pay for cancer treatment at the local hospital. It creates the mindset that since I only know how to cook Hot n' Ready for supper, the government should give my kids a nutritious breakfast and lunch…

First, you accept that not everyone, including yourself, needs to live as long as they currently do, or as "comfortably" as they currently do

Second, you accept the fact that you and your neighbor are going to have to work harder than ever, maybe take a second or third job and live on less.

----Third, that you plan to take your own health seriously and assume that it’s you’re responsibility to be healthy – by getting more exrerrcise, watching less TV,, and eating cleaner, cheaper, healthier food than you have been.

Forth, that you manage the relationships in your Ufe by removing those friendships that are abusive and destructive.

Fifth, that you begin taking into your life those family members who need help even if you could pawn them off on the government.

( Read more )

peristaltor.livejournal.com

“1 At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. 2 And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, because it is called the Lord’s release."

Deuteronomy 15: 1-2

I've been lying quietly as a few in this community actually defend the practice of lending money at interest, even at extreme interest. In that linked comment,

badlydrawnjeff even went so far as to say, "The system and the banks aren't the problem here." Though he is entitled to his opinion, I still disagree.

( This is an LJ Cut. Some say they are )

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Entries tagged with poverty

Elon strikes again

Breaking out of the poverty trap

Poverty as a factor for social exclusion

It's a Wonderful Life

The Privilege Walk

On-topic: It's poverty that pushes all those hordes to the US border

Homes for the homeless

Poverty is here to stay

Free [Food] For All

Another American "Chooses" to Die

Call it "Culturalism"

Rendering Unto Caesar: Class and Life‏

Don't be Cruel! Cut off all Food Stamps.

The Permanently Unemployed

Hating on the Poor

Life and Death in a Red State

Bullshit Jobs: Who Designed YOUR Job?

As I was Saying...

Dave Hagstrom Explains it Lovingly

A Forced Return to Ancient Wisdom

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June 2025

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