Why are the American people still divided, into socioeconomic classes.

Where is science's cure for the poor?

The best way to help prevent it is to finish school, get a job, and don't have kids before marriage. That and free market capitalism. There will always be people who are stupid, lazy, make bad decisions and are content with making just enough to satisfy their immediate desires.

In the past the poor lived in shacks, without so much as food to eat or clean water to wash with or even drink.

Today  even our "poor" live pretty damn good compared to the poor in other parts of the world. Can you imagine how "poor" someone with a cell phone, a flat screen TV, and plenty of food in his stomach must look to some one living in the Sudan, or even somewhere as close to home as lets say Haiti.

There will always be people who do better than others, science's job is not to create equality (a ridiculous concept in the first place) but to raise the level of living for all. and to that end science has done a great job, Poor people of today, in our country at least, live much better than "rich" people of just a few generations ago.

Products developed and available in a market economy that were once luxuries only the rich could afford are now common.

The poor should be helped by government policies that actually help business not hinder it, by providing a saftey net for the worst off, by charities, friends, family, churches, neighbors and by requiring some amount of responsibility of the poor themselves for the ones capable.

AJ was exactly right. Get an education, work hard every fkin day, don't burn bridges, dont get your gal pregnant, stay off drugs, dont hang out with scumbags and learn a trade if you dont have the means to go to college and the odds of that person being poor at the end of the day is practically zero.

Kind of a keeping up with the Garciases.

 
I find it strange that the democrats, push for social issues, paid for by science oriented economic plans.

 
Sounds like a failure in the making.

but inflation, or deflation of the USD can be found everywhere else.

 
The average monthly cable bill, is the equivalent to an hour visit with a lady in a saturated market.

So which is it that you don't like? Inflation, or deflation?

Not to mention you speak of both cable and hookers as if they are necessities of life. I would suggest you go visit someplace with "real" poverty, and then get back to me about how bad the poor have it here. Some people on this planet would literally kill for clean running water, or electricity, or to have enough to eat even once a fucking week. You really need to get out more often.

on a tirade about home electronics. Which aren't no good with out some kind of service. I'd rather see a lady, then the cable guy.  

 
... and of course we got it good here. Never said we didn't.

but if science was as great as people claim it to be. All of your needs+wants would be satisfied.

And you confuse "greatness" with perfection.  

And btw, the only time all my needs and wants are satisfied is when my hooker forgets to pick up the fat envelope on the way out of my outcall. LOL.

Hasn't happened yet, but I can still hope right? Maybe science can fix that too. LOL

You must be new around here if you think that was anything even close to a tirade. lmao

and you are free to do both, I think just about everybody here can afford to see both a hooker and the cable guy. and while you didn't flat out say we don't have it good here, you certainly implied it.

You still didn't answer my question, which do you have the main problem with, Inflation, or deflation? I certainly hope you say inflation, since we haven't had anything even close to "deflation" in our lifetime.

Reductions in poverty can be much more directly attributed to advances in technology. Science and technology are two very separate things although science can be credited with many technological advances, but science all by itself doesn't really accomplish much in the way of improving your life.

Do you really want to rely on just our scientific knowledge that is generally just quantitative in it's nature to "solve" poverty? An efficient use of that knowledge requires someone to apply it in a practical way. And don't overlook the qualitative knowledge we have accumulated. Art and philosophy and religion have all contributed to improving the human condition.

Regarding poverty itself, I dare say that when I was a child some 55 years ago my family was considered to be squarely in the middle class. In many ways our standard of living then was below most of what is considered poverty today in the U.S. As far as REAL poverty today, technology exists to "solve" it all (i.e. provide food, water and sanitation). It's not science or technology that is the problem. Maybe you were trying to ask, why can't science (in some fashion) trump the philosophy in some parts of the world and U.S. that seem to be holding things back?

Science should be able to find a way to redistribute wealth. With out having to take away any individuals capital.

Yet there are many causes to becoming impoverished.

 
... if there was a pharmaceutical one could be prescribed to cure their poverty, the free market would make sure it was available for consumption.  

 
Not all "immediate desires" can be quelled by a financial transaction. Can you elaborate more, on that comment.

You know some quack-economist would call it deflation just so they could hold the opposing position.

and what you propose is a contradiction in terms. How can you "redistribute" without taking from one to give to another? It's a ridiculous goal, and exactly what's wrong with socialism. It only works in a vacuum.

You might as well ask science to create a "cure" for the lazy and the stupid.

There is a "cure" for the lazy and stupid, it's called entertainment.

 
I believe ending poverty is the perfect task for science to solve. it would be much more practical then space exploration, and trying to put the brakes on climate change.

but at least I know now that you are just fucking with us. I thought you were serious about this bullshit for a moment. lol

The problem with "curing" poverty is that the first thing you would need to do is spay and neuter virtually everyone living in squalor who still thinks they should have ten kids. Have you ever noticed that it is the people who can't even feed themselves that feel obliged to breed like rodents, while the population growth in the developed worlds tends to be much, much lower.

beer,cigarettes,lottery tickets,tattoos,big screen TV with satellite carrying 300 channels,pimped up cars with expensive sound systems,etc

My response was an attempt to challenge your use of the characterization of science being good. Science is neither good nor bad. I think maybe you meant good as in powerful.  

Or maybe your post was directed at our recent science ideologue?

I was pointing out that scientific knowledge doesn’t live in a vacuum and can do nothing “productive” all by itself. There already is enough scientific knowledge to cure global poverty. For all intents and purposes it’s been cured in the U.S. and similar countries, except we keep changing the definition; so we really aren’t trying to cure poverty anymore but alter socioeconomic classes. The present obstacles to curing global poverty are not scientific or technical problems they are mostly geopolitical and to a degree, economic issues; economics that controls the flow of limited resources both natural and labor.

So why hasn’t science come up with a discovery that can be used to solve this situation? The answer is not scientific. The answer isn’t a downfall of science. The answer is that not enough people have a strong enough desire for it to happen. Their desires are in many other places. Our present political and economic systems allocate these limited resources both natural and human. It sounds like you think a more socialist approach would allocate them better and bring about this discovery sooner. Maybe, but in the process some things in the system will have to give as other things take. Some people may not be happy with the results and none of that will be that fault of or solvable by science or technology.

Now, will there some day be scientific discoveries that solve all our worries and problems? Probably, but it’s impossible to force (and keep us happy in the mean time). Targeted scientific research has limitations; Limitations of resources, natural, capital and human. People have to want to do what is asked of them. Also many discoveries are accidents.

Maybe if only the scientists were in charge? I fear that with all the global warming frenzy there would be a rush to implement what would be no more than an experiment to block the sunlight or create a heat escape valve, with the good chance it goes awry, resulting in our demise.  

Personally, I’ve envisioned for most of my life a time when workable fusion becomes a reality, making electricity so inexpensive and renewable that all standards of living would be elevated and providing virtually limitless supplies of hydrogen. But I bet that if and when it happens, the political forces in play at the time will mess it up somehow.

-- Modified on 6/1/2014 12:15:03 PM

There are several examples that arose from the "scientific" and progressive community that experimented with just that  and similar solutions. Look up George Bernard Shaw and Margaret Sanger.