Tent Cities Return to America!

mardatha

And yet you get a lot of people in this site who think socialism is a bad thing .. maybe they would care to try tent city living first and report back to us how it was for them !

vivatifosi

chopperharris wrote: »

For too long we see in films and tv programs that americans live in idillic homes , with large gardens , in the burbs.The reality is that very few actually do , the tv programs are all lies , there is no way that those characters could actually afford to live in the types of properties the show revolves round....or the medical bills should they become ill.

The majority of americans are poor as hell , sure they are taxed less than we are but take a look at anywtown america and you will see that its but a meagre step up from a third world country.

I don't know about the majority being as poor as hell, but it is certainly a substantial minority. The US census document on poverty I've linked to below makes for pretty sober reading. The official poverty rate is 12.5% (24.5% for black Americans), poverty amongst children is 18%. 5.2% of people have an income half of that for the poverty threshold.

Over 15% of the population has no health insurance cover, rising to over 32% for hispanics - the same rate as Native Americans and Native Alaskans. Native Hawaiians have a lower rate, but their rate of non-insurance is still higher than the average. 33% of the foreign born have no health insurance.

20% of hispanic children and 12% of black children have no health insurance cover.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

Scary stuff, especially children having no health cover.

chopperharris

mardatha wrote: »

And yet you get a lot of people in this site who think socialism is a bad thing .. maybe they would care to try tent city living first and report back to us how it was for them !

Socialism is long gone , in fact it never really existed in the first place.

The idea that the good of the people is the only goal has never been acheived , is there any socialists living in their community housing?IS there any poor socialists? no.

Labour of old was full of the workers man , it prided itself in being the socialist party....current labour full of tory cast offs that have never had a real working mans day in their life whom got into power on the tails of maggies discontented masses and the belief that it was still a workers party.

Show me shop stewards in the labour party that have any real say in governement and the treatement of the great unwashed , they are all schooled not by the shop floor but by the poshest of schools....how can they promote socialism when they are not a product from it?

AS long as there is rich at the expense of poor then there can be no socialism , as long as man fills its wants instead of its needs there can be no socialism.....The socialism of today is talking about last nights tv at work , or what some c list celeb is up to , instead of knocking on your neighbours door to see if they are ok instead of complaining about the pile of milk bottles on their steps instead bringing down the house prices.

sabretoothtigger

That is also my impression of america, a nation of extremes. A first world country with some second or even third world elements.
But it is a very large (divided?) country and maybe should be compared more to europe which also has its faults

symikins

l know someone who lives in michegan who has a real nieve outlook as an american citizen ,, just like the " home bred american boy" .. on his last visit he looked in horror at page 3 ..:rotfl: gawped at anything on the sex channels [not my subscriptions but my exe,s ]l might add :eek: with amazement that, that sort of thing is accepatable on tv!!:D yet l believe they have the biggest sex industry ?? [pse correct me if lm wrong ]

and he just seemed to have had a cocooned life in general + there seemed to b an element of dare l say " brainwashing" and "america "is all you need , no outside influence , even his ex wife who his 2 kids live with when asked if he could take them to europe to experience the difference in cultures ect [ and she has no axe to grind with him as a responsible + safe parent, no issues whatsoever ] totally refused on the grounds that why do they need to go outside the USA ?? everything they want is here , they dont need anything else .. l find that so sad ...
l realise this is not every americans view but its a shame that quite a few feel like this.... there,s a great world to explore out there and so little time to do it...
only my observations .... comments welcome xx

Rochdale_Pioneers

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

...assuming they could put their KFC buckets down for long enough, I am sure they would. My point is that the US, with no welfare state as such, has tent cities.

The UK, with a huge welfare state funded by billions and billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, has, after over a decade of socialist government, produced little better in the form of sink estates. Yet we insist that our system is 'better'...

You're still insisting that a house with running water and electricity and furniture and heating is little better than a tent pitched outside with sewage running down a ditch.

You're a moron.

mewbie_2

It's perhaps ironic that the first tent cities belonged to the Sioux, Apache, Cheyenne and the other original inhabitants.

mardatha

LOL yes spot on mewbie ! Karma is alive & well & living in america !!

taxdodger

Shows the US is as corrupt as every those people shouuld have housed, bonus for failed banker should only be paiid when they have been given homes.

sabretoothtigger

The merrill lynch 4 billion dollar bonuses bought forward are obviously totally wrong

696 people were paid over a million each as the company lost 15 billion with government forcing a takeover. After this the government were asked to provide 20 billion in funding

http://consumerist.com/5159060/merrill-lynch-ceo-nothing-happened-in-the-world-or-the-economy-that-would-justify-suspending-bonuses


If they had all been left like lehman would this had then been viewed as asset stripping
http://www.sfo.gov.uk/news/prout/pr_366.asp?id=366