I don’t think I’m a cold hearted prick. I realize that bad things happen to good people. I understand how the real world works. People lose their jobs due to circumstances beyond their control. I believe there should be a safety net for these people to help get them back on their feet. But I also believe in personal responsibility, spending less than you make, not living above my means through the use of consumer credit, saving for a rainy day, and picking myself up when I’m knocked down. These stories of woe that you get in the MSM are enough to make me gag. The standard storyline is to pick some poor schmuck and make you feel sorry for them.
I had to laugh when reading the sad sad story of Laura Fritz and her poor parents. She grew up “wealthy” and went to Hawaii EVERY FREAKING YEAR!!!! Her poor parents hocked themselves up to the gills and bought a $500,000 mansion in Denver. You don’t get the details, but it is clear these morons thought they were wealthy because they could buy any shit they wanted on credit. The parents had to go on food stamps and spend her college money. Her entire story doesn’t fit my description of down on your luck. Her situation is due to bad choices by her and her parents. She doesn’t look disabled to me. It must be that dreaded back pain. Why the fuck did she have a baby when she has no money and no husband? Is that bad luck or is that a bad choice?
I’m sick and tired of living my life in a responsible manner so that I can pay for the irresponsible dumbasses that are proliferating across the land. Ignorance, laziness, and irresponsibility are choices.
‘Levels Unseen’: U.S. Poverty Rate on Track To Be Highest Since 1960s
(The Blaze/AP) — The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, according to the Associated Press, erasing gains from any sensible economic policies in recent decades.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections, and Tom Blumer at Newsbusters suspects the Associated Press’ lengthy write-up is being released now so it doesn’t have to be given as much attention right before the election.
“It looks like the strategy is to get a comprehensive report out on how bad things are in July when few are paying attention, and then to give the official report short shrift when it arrives in mid-September,” he wrote.
The Associated Press reportedly surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
(Photo: Getty Images)Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest of the poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz’s college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can’t find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don’t know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz’s case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty.
“The issues aren’t just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy,” said Peter Edelman, the director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy admits.
The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
The analysts’ estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were “poor” last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.
Though the reported unemployment rate reportedly improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers just stopped looking for work.
Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.
Demographers speculate:
-Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels – 15 percent to 16 percent – will last at least until 2014, and a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent with weak wage growth.
-Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will continue to increase.
-Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
-Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
-Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
Analysts also believe that the poorest in the nation, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
“I’ve always been the guy who could find a job. Now I’m not,” said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
“You keep thinking it’s going to turn around. But I’m stuck,” he said.
(Photo: AP)The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama’s stimulus package.
An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social “safety net” has served its purpose and it is time to cut back. He notes that many government recipients live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs, and that the net may be preventing them from working.
People like Jose Gorrin, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens, are now deciding the best way to tackle the historic problem. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, Gorrin was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.
Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he’d just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn‘t decided whom he’ll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation’s economic problems. “They all promise to help when they’re candidates,” Gorrin said, adding, “I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don’t know where else I can go.”
Pirate Jo says:
“Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend …”
If she is able to care for an infant, she is probably not too “disabled” for most jobs.
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24th July 2012 at 3:53 pm
AWD says:
From faux rich to disability in a few short years. More people getting on disability than are getting jobs. Disability is ultimate “in” thing to do. She’s styling, and living large (literally). There’s even a new reality show coming out “only jackasses aren’t disabled”. Now she’s set for life, and will be getting little billy on disability also when he’s old enough. She obviously wasn’t disabled enough to roll in the sack with her baby-daddy. Little billy is a bastard by the way (mom not married). Yea, a touching story. There are going to be many such touching stories when the government goes broke and these welfare/disabled people will have to fend for themselves.
Laura Fritz in 4.5 years
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24th July 2012 at 4:06 pm
flash says:
Back when cotton was king , pregnant farm women in the south would pick cotton in the morning,birth a baby at lunch and be back in the fields that afternoon picking cotton.
And most farm women would have ten to 14 kids just to have hands to work the farm.
But I feel poor Laura Fritz’s pain. Really ,I do.
I’ll bet she’s not to debilitated to get to polls on election day.
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24th July 2012 at 4:10 pm
FBD says:
Laura and her landscaper boyfriend just aren’t looking hard enough. There are PLENTY of jobs out there. All of them shovel ready.
Like the jobs below in NY / NJ. MUST SEE video about a couple union bosses talking about shovel ready jobs to a couple other guys who are secretly filing the conversation. Funny and infuriating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHYFONbT8EM&feature=player_embedded#!
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24th July 2012 at 4:13 pm
AWD says:
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24th July 2012 at 4:14 pm
sensetti says:
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24th July 2012 at 4:24 pm
Chicago999444 says:
Read this article in the MSM this morning.
Let me tell you that I just cried my eyes out at the pathos in this story.
But I was NOT crying in sympathy for Fritz or her parents or her unemployed boyfriend.
I was weeping because this is what the “middle class” of the USA has become.
Sorry, but these people are morally lower , and possibly even dumber, than the ghetto blacks in West Philly or Chicago’s Wild 100s.
Here are people who had middle-to-upper-middle incomes, were nominally educated, with I.Q. scores mostly likely medium or better, and have squandered all the advantages of class and money that they had, which were considerable. Most white Americans can’t afford $500,000 houses and yearly long-distance vacations. Most white (and black) Americans, even those with education, scrape by on far less money than these people squandered in their flush years, and even manage to save and, sometimes, accumulate considerable assets. I know people who have never made more than $50K a year in their entire lives who have accumulated wealth merely by being frugal and careful.
Forget about West Philly and the south side of Chicago, or Detroit. When things start really unraveling, the people who will be the most dangerous and disappointed will be our suburban middle classes who’ve been living large in suburban houses with 3 cars and a boat. Believe me, people like Fritz and her family will be INCONSOLABLE when they realize that the debt-based lux lifestyle is over forever.
And I don’t think we can bear their pain.
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24th July 2012 at 4:29 pm
Wyoming Mike says:
I see her taste in men is as good as her financial skills. At least she’s not too disabled to spread her legs. If only they paid for that…wait?
I think they’re finding the biggest dumbasses out there just to have fun with the sheeple.
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24th July 2012 at 4:35 pm
flash says:
WM, He scapes land. A prime ketch!
The only other scaper of land available was a Mexican, but he’d already left for greener lawns.
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24th July 2012 at 4:42 pm
howie says:
Yo ah grew up going ta Hawaii every summer. Now ah’m here, applying fo’ assistance cuz it’s hard ta make ends meet. It’s very hard ta adjust you know das right!
Yo motherfuckin lazy cunt should git uh motha fuckin job an’ let her nigga peep afta da kid Ya’ know what I’m sayin’?
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24th July 2012 at 5:03 pm
Pirate Jo says:
Wish he’d scape that pathetic excuse for a goatee. It looks like a bunch of stray armpit hairs that got loose in the middle of the night and set up camp on his chin.
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24th July 2012 at 5:08 pm
SSS says:
FBD
I watched that Project Veritas video you posted. Thanks, very informative and creative on the part of the YOUNG PEOPLE who made the video. Good on them. BTW, I wasn’t amused by the video, but I was infuriated.
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24th July 2012 at 5:15 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
I wonder how much of our current predicament is caused by people who are “too good” for the work that is available.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again:
We are well and truly fucked if our fates in the hands of fuckwads like that. I hate being a minority.
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24th July 2012 at 5:29 pm
TeresaE says:
Meanwhile, the government unions are crying – and getting media coverage – because in a city that has nearly died, they are being asked to save their jobs and cut their pay and benefits.
Yes, I know it is “again,” but that is because we keep making marginal changes and then kicking the can. The city is bankrupt, there is no can left to kick.
The problem is that if the poor schlub goes forth and finds a job, they could lose their free healthcare and foodstamps. They definitely would “lose” his unemployment.
Why work until you have to? That’s turning down free money!
I don’t care much anymore. Ain’t nobody giving up anything, nor puling their heads from their asses, nor waking up.
Screw it. If you can’t beat them, join them. I would if I could.
Sadly, I’m still trying to figure out a way to pay for them all.
I’m the schmuck.
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24th July 2012 at 5:33 pm
TeresaE says:
Flash, yep they sure did.
The day I had my daughter, well the day before, I woke up and within an hour realized I was in labor. I worked all day long, most of it standing and pacing (because it felt better) because I had to get payroll and accountant things done before I could take two days off to be in the hospital.
My daughter went to work in my shop office a few times a week, for a few hours at a time, for her first six weeks of life until I felt secure enough leaving her with a sitter for a few hours (she weighed less than 5’10″ when she was born, full term, just tiny).
WE as a people used to do what we needed to do to survive. If that meant working as a mechanic with blown out disks in your back (uncle), needing a hip replacement for a decade (father), with heart problems (genetic/birth) in a chemical company (grandpa), the same day as chemotherapy (father-in-law), we would do what we needed to do to feed our families and keep a roof over their heads.
No more, we have abdicated 100% of personal responsibility for our own survival. And we wonder why the government feels justified in controlling every last facet of our lives? We can’t even feed ourselves anymore.
Fools. Without complete destruction of both society and our government, we have no hope for a better future ever.
Happy freaking Tuesday.
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24th July 2012 at 5:42 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
“I’m the schmuck.”
Aren’t we all? Most of us TBPers are productive members of society so we are all paying for this shit.
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24th July 2012 at 5:44 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
“Fools. Without complete destruction of both society and our government, we have no hope for a better future ever.” – TeresaE
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24th July 2012 at 5:48 pm
Pirate Jo says:
Take heart, Chem! We aren’t actually paying for it. We are borrowing it.
I hope the next generation repudiates this odious debt, lives within its means, and embraces frugality as the new hotness.
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24th July 2012 at 6:42 pm
Llpoh says:
Admin regularly busts my balls about my attitude toward thumb- ring wearing young- folk who look like that moron in the article. That stupid fuck is supposed to be looking for work, and he looks like that? He has whatever that growthis sprouting from his chin,, is wearing a damn necklace and a ring on his RIGHT hand. Seriously, what the fuck?
Who in their right mind would hire a moron like that? He isn’t smart enough to realize that his odds of landing a job are dramatically improved if he looks more mature and responsible. But his attitude will certainly be that he isn’t going to change how he looks just to land a stinking job. Unbelievable. Whatever happened to the idea of doing whatever necessary to feed your family?
And how about that fat skanky looking thing he has his arm around? I was as eager for it as the next guy in my youth, but I wouldn’t have gone near that with a ten foot pole. Sure am glad that tax dollars are supporting that pair of idiots.
The world is screwed. Morons like this will never add to society. Never.
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24th July 2012 at 6:44 pm
Llpoh says:
Teresa – you are a smart cookie. You are forgiven your incorrect position on vaccine – a very small aberration in an otherwise outstanding body of work!
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24th July 2012 at 6:47 pm
Administrator says:
How low are the standards to get in the U.S. Army that she got in? No wonder we keep losing wars.
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24th July 2012 at 7:20 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
Is this an Onion piece?
Seriously, either this woman is Queen of the Stupid and Irresponsible Morons Club OR she has acted in willfully, gleefully without a shred of personal responsibility and deserves what she gets.
I know! I know!
She and this boyfriend are the new poster people for “How To Survive In Amerika Without A Brain or Conscience”.
Probably voting for Obama.
And for the kiddo:
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24th July 2012 at 7:27 pm
sensetti says:
LLPOH He probably has a spider tattooed under each ear just doesn’t show from that angle.
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24th July 2012 at 7:29 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
crap, you can’t get sodahead pix to post.
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24th July 2012 at 7:31 pm
DaveL says:
Admin says: ” I don’t think I’m a cold hearted prick.”
There’s an opening here somewhere….tee hee.
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24th July 2012 at 8:07 pm
IndenturedServant@comcast.net says:
I have not read this posting yet but saw the title as I was off to bed and had to give that alone a thumbs up!
I_S
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24th July 2012 at 8:27 pm
Muck About says:
Well, down here in Dixie (Central FL) there are a certain class of people who are starting to work harder for their daily bread.
Home invasions and car jackings have more than doubled in frequency over the past few months with 14 home invasions (many happening to McMansion owners) over the past ten days. All black perps and the NAACP is screaming “Now don’t you dare profile blacks when you try and solve these crimes!”
The calibre of my “carry in the car” just went up.
MA
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24th July 2012 at 8:50 pm
a cruel accountant says:
Admin said
“People lose their jobs due to circumstances beyond their control. I believe there should be a safety net for these people to help get them back on their feet. But I also believe in personal responsibility, ”
Bullshit. Let them fail without a safety net. Thats the only way they will learn.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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24th July 2012 at 11:36 pm
Hollow man says:
Wondering where your next meal is coming from——————-GREAT Motivator
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24th July 2012 at 12:04 am
Hollow man says:
In this day and time to go to the welfare office. Thats what is killing us. It is to dang Easy to get welfare. That is our moral failing. Not enough tough love for our fellow Americans. We have let our downtrodden down.i know speaking to the choir.
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24th July 2012 at 12:13 am
TeresaE says:
Hollowman, that is a truism that the Ivory Tower academics and politicians either refuse to admit, or are exploiting. I know which I think.
The majority of people are only motivated to do the bare minimum, ever. They will work just hard enough to get the things that are important to them, and not a penny, nor their own future, more.
When my first econ professor made that statement, I thought he was full of shit. Wasn’t too many years later, I knew it was true.
Taking away the individuals need to feed themselves creates nothing good for society as a whole. Nothing.
So what do our fearless leaders do about this fact of human psychology? They double down on a known-failed policy. I just ain’t buying its an accident. Nope, no way, no how. They know exactly what they are doing.
And it’s working.
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24th July 2012 at 12:14 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
“Bullshit. Let them fail without a safety net. Thats the only way they will learn.”
A friend of my wife’s got stage 3 melanoma at age 24. She was a Registered Nurse who had partnered with a hospital to get the loans forgiven, zero kids, no divorces….normal gal.
Cancer cost her almost everything. By your count, everyone should have abandoned her to die.
Nice outlook on life.
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24th July 2012 at 12:16 am
LLPOH says:
TPC – her family should have helped her, and she should have been the recipient of private charity. But forced public charity is bullshit and leads to destruction of society. In my opinion. When you force me to pay charity – and that is what tax is – you create a class of people that invariably abuse the system, and the “doubling down” Teresa mentions above occurs, leading invariably to a failed welfare state and the temptation of the government to continually seize more from fewer.
It is imposible for governments to determine who is really a charity case and deserving of help, while separating out the abusers of the system. That is why disabiility recipient numbers are exploding. They – the government drones – are incapable of distinguishing needy from lazy. Private charities, and families, are able to make the distinction.
Welfare states will not work in the long-term. They suck endless resources out and create a class of people that will not contribute anything back. I am against public welfare in all of its forms.
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24th July 2012 at 12:29 am
dilligaf says:
it gets more and more tempting to give it up and go on the dole, not out of laziness, but just because of the side of me that says ‘fuck it, why am i busting my ass for them’, as my insurance rates just went up 11%, not to mention everything else. but….. no matter how bad it gets you still have to live with yourself, and look in the mirror.
i will live in a box, before i join the ranks of these pathetic leeches.
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24th July 2012 at 12:53 am
Ron says:
I still think its better to help people.Than fund overseas military bases. Your thinking suggests that everyone who is unemployed or gets assistance is a scumbag. Just lump everyone in as one group. In that case i would think everyone on the east coast are dumbasses.You are close to Obama central,right?
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24th July 2012 at 1:24 am
Nonanonymous says:
Ron, balance the fucking budget, then you can talk about what to spend it on.
I like the Casey piece on Stockman. When government spending contracts, unemployment goes up, and the safety net eventually fails.
Who is going to bail out the US? Income is going to fall rather precipitously, and little miss welfare queen is going to need to find something productive to do, besides giving birth.
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24th July 2012 at 4:22 am