(no subject)

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

In what ways are poor people oppressed?

Comments

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Umm, they can't afford a cable package that includes the 24 hr. 'news' networks?

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Or mochas at Starbucks. Oh, what a cruel world!

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

Bootstraps!

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

In what ways are poor people oppressed?


Well, for starters they find themselves the subject of posts guaranteed to generate at least 200 replies of pure wank.

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

Just the two ones that often come to my mind:

1) Poor people have far more limited representation in our government due to the influence corporations and individuals with greater amounts of money. As a result, those who have power are too often deaf to those who have none (i.e., the poor).

2) Poor people often get sucked into a cycle in which higher education and / or a means to improve their lot in life seem out of reach due to low income, high crime and a system that doesn't do enough to actually lift the poor into the middle class.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The first is not oppression,(after all, Aboriginal Autrailians also lack representation in US politics) it is neglect, which coinicidentially leads to your second premise.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

LET THE DRAMA.....BEGIN!!!!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

No government representation.

No health care.

No mobility options, other than prison or military.

If you're poor, you can die in the streets.

[vnsplshr.livejournal.com]

Victims of a multi-decade, failed war on poverty

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

A 'war on poverty?' when exactly did that start? Are you talking about any particular US State?

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Depends on which poor you're talking about.

The poor in America go to worse schools and find it harder to do things like pay for college.

The poor in most of the world who have very few opportunities available and, if they have some success, can be sure that someone who is powerful and corrupt will likely take the lion's share.

[my-wits-end.livejournal.com]

The poor in America go to worse schools and find it harder to do things like pay for college.

I think this is a HUGE part of what makes it difficult to break the cycle of poverty, and ignorance of the dramatic variation in quality of public education offered in poor vs. affluent neighborhoods makes the libertarians posting below appear completely out of touch with reality.

Also, to the OP: poor often, not always, tend to be members of groups which are oppressed for other reasons. In other words being poor can manifest as a symptom rather than a cause of oppression, although of course it can also be a direct cause as well.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They are oppressed by having to live in a society where things are increasingly expensive without the means to redress them, and often as their poverty is due to factors not in their power to control (like how a lot of homeless teens are LGBTQI) they are told that in fact it *is* their fault. The poor end up starving or choosing habits that are unhealthy because they cannot afford the healthy options, but rather than make the healthy options affordable the choice is made to prohibit the unhealthy ones by sin taxes. The poor end up being used as a pawn by all sides in political arguments, denied ever a voice to speak for themselves, assumed by whatever side speaks to automatically agree with them while nobody bothers to actually ask poor people.

The poor also suffer to a real extent because society in the United States is geared to benefit the wealthiest substratum, leaving the poor with nothing at all, but due to the way the system has been set in since the 1790s the paradox is that fundamental change requires by now a complete overhaul of the system. Otherwise various symptoms of the problem can be addressed, but the problem itself would never be.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

We should treat them better, opressed meat is gamy and tough.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Generally, the same ways that every person could be oppressed.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

nice try ;) of course the poor are oppressed directly, fixed penalty fines and a rather skewerred taxation system ;)

[oportet.livejournal.com]

They have to drink Ten High?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Living conditions too. Crappiest places goto the poor. Check out any Native American reservation conditions.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

Living conditions too. Crappiest places goto the poor.

Oh be fair now, in blighty you could give a mansion to the poor, give it a week and the land would be snubbed by travellers!

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Poor people are subjected to the highest standards of scrutiny and blame in a system wherein they have no power or ability to change things.

See: all these threads.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

For instance, every aspect of a poor lifestyle is held up to ridicule and scrutiny. The lesson? The poor people are wrong in everything they do, even though everyone else does it as well.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Also, no law enforcement. I couldn't get an ambulance, taxi, pizza, or a cop on the telephone when I lived in Hunters Point, which is a poor area in San Francisco. I don't think people in those Russian Hill mansions had any trouble.

I didn't have a nice green park with grass and slides. We had concrete glass ridden places to play and abandoned lots with "WARNING DIOXIN" signs. Junkies and hustlers orbiting the 20 foot rusty fences.

I didn't have a chemistry class in all of school. Never once. I knew wealthier kids who did, hell I heard of one school that had a radio station. Wasn't that because I wasn't wealthy?

Is having less being oppressed?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I didn't have a chemistry class in all of school. Never once. I knew wealthier kids who did, hell I heard of one school that had a radio station. Wasn't that because I wasn't wealthy?

Not only because you weren't wealthy, but because the poor are concentrated into specific areas, and schools are funded by the value of the local area in property taxes.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Who is poor?

What does it mean to be oppressed?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Also, poor people are easily manipulated too, and you get all types of priests, businesspeople, politicians, who know that they are wanting and use it to hustle them - its not like they can afford a lawyer or anything.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

You can have the best justice your money will buy "sir"

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

If you come from a poor background, you are far less likely to have been offered educational, social and cultural opportunities growing up. As a result, you are less likely to go through tertiary education or earn a high income.

Thus, the poor are oppressed by any policy that is supposedly about equity that isn't about trying to balance out the inherent advantage the silver spooners get at birth.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Clearly the poor are oppressed by the fruits of libertarian freedom ideas.

Classy post.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

So what do YOU think?

Re: Classy post.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I think it's an interesting topic for discussion. Apparently, there are people who deny that such a phenomenon as "oppression of the poor" even exists -- while another group seems able to primarily offer as probative examples only the consequences of being poor, which might rightly be distinguished from "oppression" in the sense of an intentional activity.

I think it might be possible to examine more specifically how wealth is used to co-opt the mechanisms of state power in its own interests at the expense of the poor. Vagrancy laws and selective enforcement of environmental protections come to mind. In many municipalities, for example, it is essentially illegal to be homeless.

This puts the dispossessed in the odd position of being criminals -- and, to a large degree "rightless" -- simply by virtue of their economic condition.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Tell me Lenny, what are you aiming with this post?

And in what way do posts like this advance discourse on this forum?

Because I saw it late, let's say you have 12 hours instead of 1 to amend it as per #8. I don't mind having some fun but not this way.

So, 12 hours. Deal?

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Since the post already has 100+ comments, and changing its contents would make most of the thread moot, lets make it so: this post stays as it is; in the future we'll know better. Y/N?

By the way Rule 8 starts with this:

"We strongly encourage personal opinion and analysis >>, rather than << posting a single link...", etc. The whole purpose of this requirement is to do exactly what it says: encourage analysis. I think the OP would agree that one-line posts consisting of 5 words and nothing more are very, VERY low quality.

But, sure. We're flexible. Now that there are 100+ comments, lets leave is as it is. But i'll ask Lenny to refrain from doing that in the future. Okay?

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Define poor

Define oppressed.

Seriously, the question cannot even be approached until clear definition of those terms which are entirely relative and/or subjective are established.

One may as well ask in what ways are blergs flugled.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

fucking blergs.

The greatest oppression of the poor...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The poor lack access to the technology and literacy skills required to interface with all of the hip and happening people at talk_politics. This is a burden of which they are oblivious. This obliviousness is an even more onerous weight upon their deprived psyches.