Snyder Than You
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Bagan, Mandalay, Myanmar
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My mom was a baby when the Golden Gate Bridge first opened. My Grandparents took her with them and joined the throng of people,...
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Homemade ice cream from Sick Science! A perfect DIY for a long weekend…
(via usgroovykids)
It’s easy to make fancy products for the chunk of the world that can buy them. But imagine the potential if you made a product that everyone—even the world’s poor—could buy and use.
“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”
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The family rents a three-bedroom summer house in Connecticut and will go there again this year for one month instead of four.
Wall Street Bonus Drop Means Trading Aspen for Discount Cereal - Bloomberg (via thatmeggirl)
Also:
“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”
F*** that guy. Jesus Christ. F*** that guy hard.
(via thesemicullen)
yes… f*** this guy..(myvonne)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, my, that’s… um… rich. The trauma and the drama of the suddenly not-as-rich. The sobbing! The anguish! The gnashing of teeth!
Have I mentioned I haven’t had a regular income in over three years and am living in my mother’s house with my wife and three children? In a small brick house with mold and leaky windows and occasional visits by bats and other unwelcome creatures? While pursuing a teaching license over an hour away? With only two cars between three drivers? And $60,000 in student loans?
And I’m just thankful that we’re not homeless and living in a tent in the middle of a field in a snowy winter.
STFO and GTFO.
(via myvonne)
Well, besides that they’re not asking for government handouts, per se, but for a more just economic system where CEOs of failed financial biggies that get billions in bailouts don’t get bonuses and those failed banks be investigated and brought to trail for screwing people so thoroughly…
And that the government is perfectly fine with leaving armed Tea Partiers alone to frolic and demean people while pepper spraying unarmed college students.
And who really cares how many stretches of colored fabric a group is carrying in a protest?
Meanwhile, millions of Syrians are being slaughtered by their own government. And conservatives care about the number of flags and the plight of the rich.
(via agirlcalledchris)
Yes…he actually said this. Is it okay to hit him?
I really want to hit him.
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My dad’s family was incredibly poor. They would not have survived without government assistance and each member of the family had at least one job. My dad has had a job since he was 4-years-old. He used to pick beans and he’d receive about 5 cents for every 10lb bag he picked. He used his money to buy his first new winter jacket when he was in the 6th grade. Because his family was so poor, he put himself through college with the help of student loans and scholarship programs and he worked incredibly hard so that he could give my brother and I a better life than he had.
What the hell were you doing at 4-years-old, Newt? Wetting the bed?
(via agirlcalledchris)
Just previously, I posted a reply to a Christian article about Occupy Wall Street. Here, I am continuing in a slightly different vein.
I had said that, as Christians, we are required by God to care for the poor. I listed several links to various Bible passages that spoke of caring for or neglecting the responsibility to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the homeless, and the immigrant.
All in all, doing a simple search for “poor” in the popular Message paraphrase garners 161 mentions of the word “poor.” For those of you who think the Message paraphrase is apostacy or whatever, the KJV has 199. Chew on that for a bit. Some of those 199 are from James 2. Read and ponder that for a bit. (You’re welcome to choose your own translation.)
Now, we can argue about government welfare or church welfare. I completely agree and vouch that the Christian church (and, reading the Old Testament links in the searches, I’d add Jews to this as well) should be the primary caregivers of the poor, the homeless, the widow, the infirm, and the orphan.
This only adds to the sad irony that so many Christians are so diametrically opposed to welfare and stingy in their charity. Note, I said “so many” and did not say “all.” There are several Christians and Christian organizations that give and do what they can to care for neglected peoples. There are even several people who would give the modern-day equivalent of the widow’s mites. Sadly, though, this is not the majority, let alone all. As we all know, there are millions who claim Christ as their savior yet disregard or blatantly ignore the words and mandates of Christ (let alone simple common decency).
I also do feel, though, especially given the freedom of governmental religious establishment, that we as a political entity (AKA, nation) must recognize the social contract. (This is actually a funny thing, considering the strong impetus toward scientific evolution and social Darwinism and “survival of the fittest,” but that’s another matter for another time.)
Am I advocating exorbitant taxes on the rich and unmitigated handouts to those who willfully do nothing to take care of themselves?
No.
While I would prefer that welfare would totally be a dictum of the church and the synagogue (and the mosque? I do not know the Quran that well.), I also feel the government, as representative of the general public and as part of its taxation of the public, should have programs in place to care for the poor. Corporations, as well, as part of their community programs, should be hands-on helping the poor.
What is this care?
It is not merely handouts and should not be unlimited and lifelong without question. While continuing food stamp, unemployment, income assistance, Medicaid, and such need-based programs, there should be better funding for educational programs and opportunities for people to gain and practice skills. Better funding and staffing for job search and interviewing programs. Access to clothes for interviews and professional dress and shavers and soaps to clean up.
And checks and balances to confirm that people are doing this. There should some evidence on the part of the receiver that they are doing what they can to find what they can.
Now I know what you’ll say: “Most of these programs are in place!” and/or “There are too many people abusing these programs to their own advantage without giving back or seriously working at getting a job.”
My responses would be as such:
- Yes, there are several such programs, but I would argue that they are not well funded, they are not well staffed, what staff there is is not well trained, and they are not well marketed.
- Yes, there are several people who abuse welfare and job training and other such programs. We’ve all heard the anecdotes of families on food stamps driving new Cadillacs to their pedicures while leaving their children to watch the big screen HDTV at home. These, though, are not the majority and they harken back to the argument I mentioned in my previous post: Do we stop wishing for a better future simply because it cannot be perfect? Do we give up on all such services simply because a few are abusing it? I seriously hope not. or else the church should just shut down and reject the Gospel right now.
This, I think, is yet one more reason we need to fund better training and better staffing. Initial investment will create a better and more affordable long-term.
What it will all really take it a complete mind-set change. Of so many people in so many classes and walks of life in so many aspects on so many levels. And that is what is disheartening.
And I think the disheartening aspect of the revolution needed in everyone is what causes people to argue against speaking out for it.
