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Mar. 6th, 2003
I'm moving one part of a thread from 31seel's thread on smoking in order to just reply to one line in it:
This is precisely why we will never see and end to poverty. In order for some one to be rich, some one has to be poor.
Which I do not agree with, and felt the need to point out why, although it once again distracts me from my post about the play Outrage:
It all depends on your definition of poverty. If you define a poor man as someone who has less money than those around him, then, yeah, we'll always have poverty (unless we institute some kind of super-Draconian communist regime or something, and probably even then).
That's the definition I believed while growing up, when I thought myself poor because I never had the latest toys, and my family only had a single TV, which was black-and-white.
However, I think a better definition of poor would be someone who does not have, or cannot count on having from day to day, the following:
- Enough food to keep them alive and healthy
- A place to sleep sheltered from the elements
- Enough leisure time to pursue activities that would improve their life. (That is, not spending 100% of your waking hours simply trying to maintain the first two)
If the above is the definition of poverty, then we could wipe out poverty altogether. We (that is, the people of the US overall, not any one particular one of us), have more than enough resources to do it easily. The only thing we lack is the political will to do so. (Easy in the US, but even world-wide, it's still a problem of politics, not of resources).
This is precisely why we will never see and end to poverty. In order for some one to be rich, some one has to be poor.
Which I do not agree with, and felt the need to point out why, although it once again distracts me from my post about the play Outrage:
It all depends on your definition of poverty. If you define a poor man as someone who has less money than those around him, then, yeah, we'll always have poverty (unless we institute some kind of super-Draconian communist regime or something, and probably even then).
That's the definition I believed while growing up, when I thought myself poor because I never had the latest toys, and my family only had a single TV, which was black-and-white.
However, I think a better definition of poor would be someone who does not have, or cannot count on having from day to day, the following:
- Enough food to keep them alive and healthy
- A place to sleep sheltered from the elements
- Enough leisure time to pursue activities that would improve their life. (That is, not spending 100% of your waking hours simply trying to maintain the first two)
If the above is the definition of poverty, then we could wipe out poverty altogether. We (that is, the people of the US overall, not any one particular one of us), have more than enough resources to do it easily. The only thing we lack is the political will to do so. (Easy in the US, but even world-wide, it's still a problem of politics, not of resources).
Bush is cheating like a televangelist!
Mar. 6th, 2003 11:27 pmPresident Bush was fed his lines from his last speech through an earpiece. His pauses seemed a little funny, leading some to speculate that he was being fed lines. Someone pointed out that his ear looked a little different. He had a flesh-colored prosthetic in it. For most of the speech, he kept his right side or face to the camera, but every once in a while he turned and showed his left side, and it is quite visible. I'll try to upload a screenshot from the news soon...