Slate Interview: Its hard living on food stamps

Yeah, well, see, what I'm doing is making an <i>additional</i> point that speaks to context.

 

Has "community fabric" been lessened/weakened by a transient population, or has the decline in things like Church membership/attendance, and social organizations like the Rotary Club, Kiwanis and others had more of an impact.

In my parents day, you moved, and you joined the Church and social services and/or Fraternal organization in your new town, and you were part of the "Community Fabric".

That doesn't happen as much any more.

 

Spend one day in the D.C. metro area, then tell me about the effect of a transient population on the sense of community.

 

I'm missing the point here.

 

The D.C. metro area has a transient population, and as a result, not only is there no sense of community, it's like you put 3 million assholes in a pinball machine to see how many times they could bounce off each other before losing their sanity.

 

Good Asian food?

 

LOL. OK. But, as the transients are of a political nature, the percentage of assholes will be higher than any other sample.

 

That's the best description of that shithole I've ever seen. It's the Los Angeles of the East; everyone's from somewhere else and can't wait to go back.

 

One of the districts near where I live (not the one where my kids go) just started doing this this year.

This was quite the point of contention at one of the meetings where some of the parents for the kids started complaining that a similar deal wasn't done at our district. The fact that people even think like that pisses me off...

I just think there is way too much entitlement in society today where people think they should get something just because and they're not willing to work for it.

I have no problem with people getting what they need to get them through difficult times. I do have a problem when they decide that it's in their best interest not to look for work and just sit back and live off the government's handouts and that's happening a lot these days.

When I was on unemployment, I got a sick feeling in my stomach every time I filed for it.

 

There's also ample evidence that outsourcing millions of manufacturing jobs to China, Vietnam, Mexico, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc., erodes a country's industrial base. But darn those US manufacturing workers for wanting to own a home! Can't they be happy in their hovels like their great-grandparents were?

But outsourcing sure makes for low prices down at the local Mao-Mart!

 

Living in furnished accommodation is awesome.

 

Ragu, I think you have it backward. The fact that higher home ownership might correlate with higher unemployment is a direct result of the crashing of the economy, and the fact home prices are so slow to come back, not because home ownership is inherently troublesome. At least, it wasn't until the last few years. You could buy a house and reasonably expect, that while there might be some bumps, the value would grow enough that you would at least be in position to sell it if you had to, whether because of job loss or because of opportunities elsewhere. Also, it used to be that companies were much more likely to basically buy your house and resell it as part of a transfer. That happened a couple of times with my father in the 1970s and early 1980s, and he was middle management in marketing. That's not happening now.