There's a roughly 50 year old man who rides his bike past my house almost
every day. When he gets to his chosen workplace he stashes the bike, puts on
a leg brace, hobbles around holding a sign asking for money.
Even donating to charities without taking the time to look into them can be
a waste of money. Locally there is a "Support Your Police" charity which
keeps 95% of the money they raise, passing on the remaining 5% to the
various police activities they are supposedly raising the money for. Both
the local Goodwill donation/thrift shop and a large donate your car to
charity organization have had problems with the money going into supporting
luxurious lifestyles rather than helping needy people/groups.
For sure there is plentiful belief that people who have money are good while
those who don't are bad but the continual stream of fraud is breaking down
the automatic assumption of rich = good.
I would mostly agree with the "slim thread of truth". I would guess that
most of the current US middle class hasn't seen how a small difference in
opportunities can make a dramatic change in circumstances ... so it is easy
to assume poor people did something wrong. Those who have lost hundreds of
thousands of dollars of their money in real estate might be a little more
thoughtful unless they managed to pass the loss onto the taxpayers.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Norcutt [mailto:chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Subject: Re: [OM] Economics
I think it is a gross generalization but not without at least a slim
thread of truth running through it.
Chuck Norcutt
(an actual Puritan descendant... but that was a very long time ago)
On 12/21/2010 6:02 PM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Ah but do the poor and underemployed actually vote? It has often
> struck me that Americans can be astonishingly philanthropic and yet
> are often viciously unsympathetic to the unfortunate. A gross
> generalisation, I know and based on anecdotal evidence in the main so
> don't beat me up. But I did hear one interesting thesis that it is
> part of the historic culture. The Puritans believed that God would
> make the righteous prosper. Therefore the poor and indigent must be
> evil. And that this is a deep prejudice that is at the unthinking
> core of the problem. Interesting logic Andrew Fildes
> afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|