Friar Bijou wrote:
Gosh, gbaji, I was wrong. If all the money spent on Iraq/Afghanistan since 9/11 was given to US citizens each family would get $50k...my bad. (Conservative estimate)
Except you said this was the amount "lost" in Iraq (not total spent) for just the last 12 months. And you said for each man, woman, and child, not each family.
But let's look at total cost. Right now the
total cost of all expenses related to Afghanistan and Iraq (and everything else "war on terror" related in any way at all) from FY2001 to FY2009 is 864 Billion dollars. If we take "households" (112 million), that's a whopping $7,714 each. If we use "all family households" (about 75 million), that rises to $11,520 each.
source Neither is anywhere near your "conservative" 50k number. I'm just suggesting that if you have a point to make, inventing numbers might not be the best way to do it...
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Gbaji wrote:
First off. That's almost certainly not the "average" salary.
I didn't say "salary" I said
wage. As in people who WORK, y'know, at the grocery store and restaurants and laying carpet and such?
A salary is a wage paid on a regular basis. Given that we were talking about a rate per hour, can we agree within this context that we're not talking about only people paid per year? According to the
Bureau of Labor the current adjusted average weekly wage sits at $611. For a 40 hour week, that's $15 bucks an hour. So you're only off by a factor of two on this one.
Um... That's also non-supervisory workers. So we're not really averaging in all wages, just the ones at the lower end of the spectrum. Still. It's not nearly as low as you claimed. And while I'm sure some people work more than 40 hours a week, some are going to work part time as well. I'm not going to look up the average work week in hours at this point, but feel free to do so yourself if you want.
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$1100/mo - $100 for nonpayroll taxes - $550/mo for apartment - $50/mo auto insurance at a maximum leaves $400/mo for food and everything else. I am not even including a car payment or child support or, for that matter utilities.
I pay something like $150 every 6 months for car insurance and I likely own a more expensive car than the average person living on $7/hour. But let's ignore that for the moment. $400/month is plenty to live off of. More than enough for one person.
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And you are telling me you can live on that? Kindly take your bullsh*t lies and cram them in your ***.
Absolutely. What on earth are you spending your money on that you can't live on that? Figure $100/month for food (you could spend less but I'll be generous). Another $100/month for gas if you drive a whole lot (or you could do without the car entirely and save quite a bit). I'm not sure if that $550 apartment includes utilities or not, but that might run you another hundred. The remainder is money you can spend on whatever you want. That's not a lot, but it's plenty if you're frugal.
What part of making at/near minimum wage makes you think you should be able to afford the best things in life?
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Bijou wrote:
I should mention at this point that most of the guys who live here at the homeless shelter work full time and simply cant afford to rent anywhere.
Gbaji wrote:
I find that pretty darn hard to believe.
Considering some of the completely batsh*t insane stuff you have made clear you do believe, this does not mean much, one way or the other.
Exactly how many people at the homeless shelter actually work full time? Doing what exactly? Most of the people at a homeless shelter don't work. The few who do likely don't work full time. Those few who do work hard tend to leave the homeless shelter relatively quickly. Of course, those that stay will insist that it's just too hard for them to find a job, rents are too high, etc. There are a million excuses for not doing what you need to do to support yourself.
I personally know people who have lost everything, ended up in a shelter, did the job placement program thingie, got a job an apartment, etc... all within just a few months. It's not going to be handed to you, but it's far from impossible. The problem is that most people in that situation wont put in the effort. It's far easier to stay in the shelter and tell everyone how impossible it is to get out than to do something about it.
Edited, Jan 19th 2009 5:16pm by gbaji