Yeah, you do hit a point where survival is so time consuming and you are dirty and food is more important than buying shoes or renting a computer at Kinkos to craft a resume. I have been there.

Classifying it as a disease is a bit rough. But if my sister didn’t let me use her address and phone number and computer and bought me shoes and nice clothes and let me shower at her house I would have probably died under under the i-5 overpass I was living under.

You missed the WWJD tag on this question.

Poverty is a disease but it is a disease of the system, not of the individual.

^ So what is thew fix, scrap the system? What would you put in its place?

Simple things would help such as raising the minimum wage. A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work would be a good start.

There is the whole baby and bathwater thing. There isn’t a 100% solution. You just try to do better. The current system is in no way perfect or even good. And from your question you don’t really give a shit about finding a solution. You just want to vilify people that you view as lesser humans.

Where you have extremes in income such as you find in present day USA it is society that is blind and deaf and deformed not the individuals within it.

@flutherother Simple things would help such as raising the minimum wage.
Even if the price of certain goods goes up to cover it that will be better?

Where you have extremes in income such as you find in present day USA…]
Then the solution is to level it out in some fashion like communism was supposed to do?

@johnpowell You just try to do better.
What does that look like?

And from your question you don’t really give a shit about finding a solution. You just want to vilify people that you view as lesser humans.
Either your powers of clairvoyance have failed again or you are just making a bold attempt at lying. If something is chronic and can’t be righted, repaired with an operation, corrected with a prosthetic, you classify it as a disability. For all you know I was the poor, am the poor, or might soon be one of the poor, until your powers of clairvoyance knows you do not know how I see people in poverty.

Yeah dude. I know how you see people that aren’t just like you. I have had seven years of it and it makes me sick.

What does that look like?

-Make more people eligible for food stamps so they can shift their limited time to seeking employment instead of procuring food.

-Provide dental care so you don’t have a fucked up smile. McDonalds won’t hire you with a fucked up grill.

-Free bus passes so you don’t have to decide between eating and catching the bus to the job interview when you know you will probably not get the job.

Lots of things. I could go on for days.

The thing to appreciate about poverty is that the condition though endemic requires certain widespread perceptions in order that the status quo be maintained. In other words, the only way that obscene wealth can possibly coexist in a democratic society plagued with endemic and expanding poverty is if those perceptions are relentlessly generated and widely dispersed. This is easily accomplished by lumping the poor together as a group and highlighting the “stars” when it comes to discussion. Consequently, the personal responsibility rap is brought to the fore and even sounds reasonable when our image of the poor is reduced to a crowd of winos, dope addicts, criminals, and our mentally ill. The discussion here is a clear example of just how widespread and successful this perception remains. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the poor in the country are kids.

Purge night fodder

Worth note. If not for sports in America, the poor would be in far worse shape. At least they have a shot with an athletic scholarship. Otherwise many poor people would have little chance to attend college. Little chance to be more than poor….

In addition. It would be nice if there was no way to avoid paying your share of taxes like the rich do.

If you make the wealthy pay their taxes,and cap campaign contributions, we’ll see a different country quickly.

What makes you think poor can’t do anything for themselves?

Also, even though I don’t exactly disagree, classifying poor as disabled may give people more self worth than they should have.

disabled are not treated kindly, you know.

If it were to be treated as a disease with those in poverty placed on Disability, I can imagine how all of our taxes would go up to pay for the increased Disability recipients.

Poverty is anything but a disease and therefor should not be “treated” as a disease. Poverty is a level of financial status that some folks at the poverty level are there because a disease and the costs of treatment or even lack of treatment got them there and can keep them at the poverty level. Going broke is many times the only option for some to be able to qualify for health care to get the treatment they need.

This is going to make me sound like kind of a jerk but poverty is probably about 60% behavior and choice.

Poverty is not a disease, but much like having a disease, it is something that puts people at a disadvantage in nearly everything they try to do. Much like having a disease, there are of course stories of people rising above it, showing that it is possible for some people to do, but statistically speaking someone who was born into poverty is much less likely to be able to get at the same opportunities as someone who was not. It is not a disease, so I don’t support putting people in poverty on disability, but I do support separate social programs to aid people in poverty, such as food stamps.

Democrats have been trying to cure poverty by giving away money since the Johnson administration. It doesn’t work. All you do is create even more dependency. The solution to poverty is jobs. Create productive jobs by getting the economy growing not by giving away more money.

I just don’t think that is the definition of the word “disease”.

@johnpowell Yeah dude. I know how you see people that aren’t just like you. I have had seven years of it and it makes me sick.
No you DON’T, if you quit looking through the bottom of a thick wine bottle you will see those who are different than me I have more love and compassion for than you have of those different from you.

@Sneki95 What makes you think poor can’t do anything for themselves?
That is what people tell me, I grew up poor, I felt there was nothing I could do when I drank that poison Kool Aid, but I realized I could do better, it was up to me. I have had opportunities to be wealthy, a few I did not realize, others I did but I did not care to make that much effort in my youth. Maybe I did not truly think I would become old so it was live it up as best I could at the moment and not work towards a future where I can rest on my gains. What I seem to be told here exponentially once poor it is a wash, you will never get out of the lion’s mouth unless he messes up and coughs.

@jca If it were to be treated as a disease with those in poverty placed on Disability, I can imagine how all of our taxes would go up to pay for the increased Disability recipients.
It would all be fair and good; they will just raise the taxes on the wealthy and leave everyone else alone. ~~

@ARE_you_kidding_me This is going to make me sound like kind of a jerk but poverty is probably about 60% behavior and choice.
We do not often agree but you charmed one of my judiciously given Atta boys out of me for that. To those who care not to see plain, clear logic it might, if you get your emotions aside and deal with the preponderance of the evidence, it is not.

@Jaxk Democrats have been trying to cure poverty by giving away money since the Johnson administration. It doesn’t work. All you do is create even more dependency
Heresies, heresies, say it ain’t so! Just bleed the wealthy back to the middle class, it will be fixed. ~~

The solution to poverty is jobs. Create productive jobs by getting the economy growing not by giving away more money.
They can’t do that, those who have the jobs are the corporation and the wealthy, they will just get richer off the backs and sweat of those poor ”wage slaves” and the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer they just won’t know it because their credit cards will mask it. ~~

Heck no!

poverty is only the symptom.
the disease that needs to be cured, is capitalism.

I’m sure the impoverished people in North Korea would like to know how capitalism caused their misery.

@Hypocrisy_Central Yes, I would find it acceptable if prices increased to cover a rise in the minimum wage. It doesn’t necessarily follow that they would however.

I also pointed out that the huge and increasing disparities in incomes in the US were a problem that needs tackling. I didn’t suggest a solution and certainly not the radical and discredited one you mention.