Forum Post: Bill O'Reilly on poverty
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 27, 2011, 7:15 p.m. EST by bakerjohnj
(121)
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"But here's the problem with having too little money. You are at the mercy of other people. People who do not care about you! Without substantial assets, your whole life is in the hands of people whom you cannot control, like bosses and bankers and public officials. These people can terrorize you and make you do things that are not at all to your advantage or in the interests of your family and community. This is not good!" - Bill O'Reilly
The PublicMind poll by Farleigh Dickinson University @ in New Jersey showed that of all the news channels out there, Fox News viewers are the least informed. Posted: Nov 22, 2011 12:01 PM EST
People were asked questions about news habits and current events in a statewide poll of 600 New Jersey residents. Results showed that viewers of Sunday morning news shows were the most informed about current events, while Fox News viewers were the least informed. In fact, FDU poll results showed they were even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all and they were also less likely than any other group analyzed to have forms of higher education. Readers of The New York Times, USA Today and listeners to National Public Radio were better informed about international events than other media outlets.
In one major example, New Jersey poll participants were questioned about the outcome of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa earlier in the year. Non-Fox News viewer statistics showed 53% know that Egyptians were successful in overthrowing dictator Mubarak.
48% know that the Syrian uprising has thus far been unsuccessful in ousting Assad. But Fox News viewers showed 37% know that Egyptians overthrew their government 42% know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government thus suggesting a daily dose of sound bytes from CNN at the gym, and headlines from Google News were enough to surpass what average Fox viewers knew about current events.
“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll. “The results clearly prove that there is something about watching Fox News that fundamentally leads people to be mis-informed – even compared to those who don’t watch any news at all.”
This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe lies and false information about politics and world events.
I talk to a lot of people, and in my opinion, the Fox viewer has always been more conservative; they are more focused on issues of the national debt, rising taxes, the evils of neoliberalism, particularly in respect to outsourcing and the devaluation of labor. Those who favored the other stations, those of a self professed "liberal" stance, were more heavily invested, mentally and monetarily, in "Globalism" as the profits derived from the international corporation through the aid of such as the WTO, the world bank, etc. Is there a true correlation here? Most certainly.
The liberals in the metro area of NY have always been almost uniformly motivated by greed. And they still are. Few have ever known poverty.
if you have talked to that many foxes - ouch!
or are you just trying to diplomatically say they are stupid?
I talk to investors... they're democrat, they're liberal, and they have almost uniformly invested all future hope in Wall Street's Globalism.
You won't find many conservatives there.
Did he just reveal one of his own fears?
Is he jumping through one of our hoops?
Is he feeling the weight of our heel upon his throat even now?
yes! I say . . .
yes!
He revealed this in 2002. Since then income disparity has only widened. How he reconciles himself is anybody's guess.
[Removed]
A miser, cheapskate, snipe-snout, penny pincher, piker, scrooge, skinflint or tightwad is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities. ------------------------------ this is what we all need to become---
Bill O'reilly is alright I suppose.
How can 'these people' (people you choose to work for (or not), people you choose to do business with (or not)) terrorize you? How can they make you do things which are not in your best interest? That sounds like power only the government has. Which means that the only ones in his argument you need to be worried about are the public officials. And this is something I agree with. You do need to be worried about public officials, but only so long as they maintain the power to violate individual rights. This power is granted to them via the commerce clause. It is this clause which is, as O'Reilly points out, 'not good!'.
Once you get out in the real world and work for a living, you'll understand.
I am out in the 'real world' as you say and I do work for a living. What I understand is that my employer is forced to take a percentage of my earning out of my paycheck and hand it to the government, who then spends it on programs to destroy my life (directly and indirectly). It is this kind of terror and coercion that only government has the ability to wield. If my employer took a percentage of my paycheck and put it in his pocket, then spent it on programs to destroy my life, I would not work for him. The reality is that any employer I work for will be forced to do this. I take the rest of what I have earned and spend what I need to on the requirements of my life today and save the rest for tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, or forty years from now. Meanwhile, I am working to create my own means of earning a living, so that I do not have to depend on the offers of others, only on the value of my own work.
What programs are you talking about that will destroy your life? Medicare? Social Security? Financial Aid? Or, are you talking about the military? Because, yes, that - that can destroy your live and everyone else's.
Any program which demands that I hand over what I have worked for so that the government can 'manage it for me' (which means use it and take whatever they can from the next generation to give to me if I am still qualified to receive their 'aid') destroys my life and forces me to work for it. So yes, I think Medicare, social security, and financial aid do those things. If they did not take the money from me in the first place, I would not 'need' their aid.
Speaking of the military, have you heard about S. 1867? It will give the military the power to hold anyone without charge for an indefinite amount of time. This is a huge bill and I haven't had a chance to look through all of it, but it does seem as though the warning cries of the ACLU and others are correct.
As far as military bills, I tend to be against most of them. Most are designed to be a pipeline to the high-tech industry and to support defense contractors, who make big profits off of government expenditures. Another aspect of military bills is that they provide an apparatus to cater to the paranoid segments of the population. Many in the 1% want to be protected, because they fear us as a threat to their operations.
If the government is trying to push through these bills, then it must mean that what we are doing is to some degree working. Frightened elites are going to try to use whatever they can to stop political dissent. They do not want us to be a problem for them in the future. We must be strong. We must stand our ground. And we must not allow them to hold us hostage.
As for your first paragraph, I think your views on the matter are out of sync with much of the population. You never know when you will need aid, as very few make enough to pay for health care costs.
I suspect then the burden would be on you to come up with a plan that would be able to achieve a high rate of income such that the government no longer had to take money. I doubt, too, if any of it is really destroying your life but is rather an inconvenience on the desire to spend lavishly. If you are struggling, then you are likely putting yourself in a never-ending loop of poverty.
If the government is defined as a collective of individuals operating in a manner of consensus and using other forms of democratic decision making, then the government managing a program is just the same as people opting to make decisions regarding the nature of a program. Yes, it can be argued that today's government is not such a government. It can't be, until there is a removal of the corporate controls that dominate through hierarchies and bureaucracies.
Perhaps 'destroys my life' was too harsh for this particular situation. That does not mean, however, that a government (or any organization) which believes it has the right to determine how the results of my effort are used is not a danger to my (and everyone's) wellbeing. It is such a belief which allowed our government to engage in everything which this movement is against.
I am out in the 'real world' as you say and I do work for a living.
Having a paper route doesn't count.
It does if it pays your bills, jerk.
And I don't have a paper route.
Well, when you move out of your parent's house then.
Are you going to do anything other than troll or did you actually mean something when you said: "Once you get out in the real world and work for a living, you'll understand."
You reject the idea that if you have no money, other people control you. This is sort of a life lesson, it's not something you can explain in a post anymore than you could explain in a post or two what common sense is to someone who didn't have any. You need the real life experience to understand.
I am not "controlled" by anyone if I have no money. It is up to me to obtain what that money represents (the goods required to sustain my life) in any way I choose to do so. The means which I choose will (should) be legal so long as I do not violate the rights of others. If I can create something which is of value to others, they will trade to me what they think my work is worth. If I can survive doing this, this is what I will do. If I can not, I will work for someone else who values my ability. The person I work for does not control me. If I choose to leave their employment, I may. If I do not agree to do what they ask of me, I will not choose that job. If they present me with a contract under which I may not leave at will, I will not sign it. Doing so would place me in a situation in which I could be "controlled" to a certain extent, though any viable legal system would protect my rights (ours does not because it does not recognize that we have rights).
I agree that the idea that "if you have no money, people control you." cannot be explained in a post or two. It cannot be explained at all. It is not true.
You can't understand til you've been there, but I'll try to explain.
For beginners, if you have no money, you don't choose the work you do. You take, what you can get. That's the real working world for people at the bottom.
The person you work for in such a job does control you. You're disposable. He has leverage over you because you need the job to survive. You don't have any leverage over him. It's not as simple as "oh I will just get another job" all of the time. You may lack references, and need a good reference from that employer, to get another job. You may be living paycheck-to-paycheck and not be able to afford the disruption in income between jobs. There's so much other stuff, a galaxy of it. For example, most people in low-wage jobs can't afford to rent their own apartment, so if you're one of them you can get in all kinds of strange living situations (like being stuck with a girlfriend/boyfriend after the relationship dies because neither of you can afford to move out and can't find a roommate).
Your ideas are nice, but they're theoretical, and they don't really have much to do with the reality of the working poor. They are fairly true for those who have skills that are in demand and make good wages, but then, you aren't poor if that's the case. You can argue theory all you want ... but until you experience reality, it does not matter.
I'm assuming you're living at home. Trust me, until you get an education or luck out and get a good job without an education (maybe a union gig or something, they're hard to get though), stay there. In this economy you do not want to go out and try to support yoursef with a minimum wage job. It isn't freedom, far from it. Even though you may have to live with your parents, you are more free in ways you can't appreciate yet. You are free to do things like leave a job and just find another one, for example, because for you, it is that easy. Until you've got a good job or the kind of education that will get you one, staying with your folks is as much freedom as you can possibly have. Never mind all the theoretical bullshit on libertarian anarchist blogs (or left anarchist ones either), that stuff is great on paper but ....
I simply don't see how someone could be so devoid of skill that they couldn't find or create a job to make enough money to find a place to live and save enough to protect themselves while 'between jobs'. The only thing I can imagine that would leave a person in such a situation is an inability to prioritize expenses. I should know. When I first moved out of my parents' house I blew wads of cash on drugs and alcohol. That first (okay, second) time I had to borrow money from one of my roommates to pay rent was the last.
I simply don't see
I know. You may never see if you haven't been in that position. That's what I said before.
I had to borrow money from one of my roommates to pay rent was the last.
So you had to depend on someone else ... but only once, so it doesn't exist? Not everyone is you. Some people aren't blowing their money on dope and booze, they knocked someone up/got knocked up and now they have mouths to feed, on the same income. They can't just 'quit kids' and everything will be ok. Some people live in places where rent is a hell of alot more expensive. There are all kinds of things. I've noticed on the right, many of the times their criticisms and views make sense - if everyone was them. But people are in all sorts of different situations in life.
Well, those are all fair enough responses. But going back to the topic we were discussing (my bad, my tangent), just because someone is in an economically difficult situation doesn't mean that they are controlled by someone else. As soon as you start thinking someone else controls me you give up control of yourself. I know because I've thought that before. You start to feel like you deserve handouts and charity from others just because you need it. It is only when you give up control of yourself that others can truly control you.
Well, yeah, I agree with you there, some people don't take charge of their life. There are lots of those on the radical left. But not all the left is radical, and some of those people do go on to do succesful stuff. And, I've noticed something really bizarre lately, there are young people on the radical right who are the same! The neighbour's kid for instance. He's 22. Smokes alot of pot and spends all day on the right-wing blogs, listens to the radio shows, has no job, lives at home, complains about the 'unemployed bums' all the time. I don't know the deal, I think he thinks if he aligns himself with those views it'll change his life or someone will give him a job because they agree with him or something. He'll grow out of it I'm sure.
There's a little truth to both sides ... and its a weird, weird world sometimes.
Bill O'Reilly. Fox news is number one in the ratings