Marxists

btw, i love rants too...kinda for instance yesterday my friend ranted to this girl who we're also friends with about how she is not black (no offense, but she can be quite the poser sometimes)



in a fully capitalist country the govt has absolutely no control over any of the businesses, however the US does...

US Postal Service
AMTRAK
CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

etc

this is true cept sweden and norway are not socialist countries, they are defined to have a mixed market economy, similar to the US, but they are still far more to the left in terms of how they allocate taxes, health care and governemnt expendatures etc... yet they are a far cry from socialist

i think drew is making a case for the poor outside of the U.S. the sweatshop workers who make clothes for cents an hour don't stand a chance of overcoming their poverty. there is a difference between being from bumfuck new york and being poor and being from bumfuck china or korea and being poor.

first world countries rape third world countries and steal so much profit from them in the name of helping them, i'm trying to recall whom i read on this subject but my memory is slightly failing me right now possibly a guy named James Speth... The point though was that through trade orginizations the first world was able to keep billioins of dollars from developing nations in the namesake of 'helping' those nations. and the poverty gap between the rich and the poor is continualy spreading. something like half of the world, 3 billion people live on >$2/day

there is a ton of stuff to learn about world poverty this is googles cashe of the world banks poverty statistics (their pages wernt loading so i just grabed googles cashed page) http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:cOmKQMCeu-wJ:www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp+world+bank+poverty+statistics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

your dad is party of 1% of the US population that actually moves up in class, from working to upper.

I know - which is why I started that with "not ALWAYS the case."

It's such a shame that that's true though. My dad was afforded NO benefits beyond the average poor person (with the possible exceptions of good health and motivation), though he looked around and thought, "Hm, do I really want to stay in this town and be in the manual labor force for the rest of my life?" and obviously, no. It's not THAT simple, but a poor person CAN (have the ability to) look around and see that some people are doing better economically than they are and make the decision to change their pre-molded future.

This is why having resources available to possible first-generation college students is CRUCIAL. The organization that my mom and dad work for (VSAC) deals with student loans but put a HUGE emphasis on making available these sorts of resources by visiting schools (and having a close relationship with the school), having a resource center, and setting up events and college/career/resource fairs.

Mentors are also a great way to encourage kids to get their lives back on track. My parents are both mentors and I've seen their proteges (and others) go from kids who were lost in their lives, after tragedies in their family or just shitty living/family situations, to graduating high school and going to college or becoming an EMT or whatever. Right now my mom's focusing on showing her protege different college atmospheres, by just bringing her to campuses (she's in 8th grade), taking her to lunch in cafeterias, going to college sports games, and she's gone from not going to school to becoming a focuses student, getting ready for high school, and compiling a list of colleges and subjects that she'll eventually want to consider/look at.

So ya, rant aside, there are ways for poor people to move up the economic ladder, given the right motivation, making good decisions, and having the resources available for them to MAKE these decisions.

Ya, I misunderstood his point - but it doesn't hurt to throw this in there anyways, as I'm sure some people on here feel that it's hopeless to change classes.

true I was just more meaning to say they're pretty far left wing. But ya saying Norway and Sweden are Socialists is kinda like saying the US is capitalist.