"Bush campaign ads using team"

[kandrathe]

:lol:

You do know that that makes you part of the axis of evil do you??

I just flirt with the Axis of Evil. I didn't marry the girl. She actually was a radical and returned to help with the Islamic revolution.

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services The official number is about 12%, or 34.6 million people.
2002 American Community Survey

40 milion americans lived under the poverty line.

That's the problem with a poverty line. Earning $20,000 per year results in a much different quality of life if you live in NYC, versus outstate Alabama. The measure should be on misery, which is more a factor of having the basic necessities of life. Some poverty and misery is self-imposed due to habits that are destructive whether they be alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, or just plain wild living. How much poverty is a result of squandered opportunity? From my experience, there was at least %20 of my high school class that was not motivated to improve themselves. Here is a right wing slant on it here. I wouldn't suggest that poverty is not a problem, but one which is difficult to measure and more difficult still to cure. By all means, let's take care of those people who need help and get those who have stumbled back up on their feet.

I know that if those 40 milion would vote for a socialist party they would have directly an enormous amount of seats in parliament, so they could make changes. For some reason this does not happen.

Thankfully. The death knell of a democracy is when the people selfishly vote themselves money from the State. Socialism and Communism only work as ideologies. The reality is that some worker had to produce more at personal expense to accommodate the ones that are not contributing. Ideally, only the infirm, elderly, and children, etc are the ones we are subsidizing. But, once the mechanism is in place that removes the negative consequences for complacency, more and more people find that they can rely on the State to provide for their needs and do not contribute as they should. Look at unemployment in Britain, or Germany as examples. The problems with our current system are when the successful use their wealth to prevent others from attaining a similar success. There is a happy medium between giving a person a fish, and teaching the person to fish for themselves. In the former case, the person is dependant on you and subject to your will, and in the later case that person can tell you to take a hike if they so desire. So that is why I'm a bigger advocate for educating rather than subsidizing.