56 Replies to “Bill Whittle”

  2. Perhaps this should be shown on the CBC and see how it would go over with the entitled crowd including the whole lot of the CBC paper pushers.
    The truth is merciless it takes no prisoners. It is too bad there have to be poor, though there always will be. No bloody politician can do a damn thing about it except make some good coin for him/her self doing demagoguery. Of course they could privately contribute from their taxpayer windfall though one expect they would rather die than part with somebody else’s money.
    There is nothing that will raise people out of poverty but work. As it is, those that went to school for a long time, make fun of those that sell hamburgers. It is an honest work that pays, it is a good start for anyone to get used to getting up in the morning and get going. Then they can go on and improve on their lot.
    Never understood the putdown of people working at anything, making a living.

  3. “Never understood the putdown of people working at anything, making a living.”
    Part of the propaganda Lev. Didn’t you know that you’re entitled to a corner office in IBM just because you were born? Its true! Them corner office types STOLE it frum ya.
    Every burger flipper is a CEO whut wuz robbed.

  5. Around $22,000 per year. That’s the US Census Bureau’s poverty threshold for a two-parent, two-child household.
    Try living on that just about anywhere in the US for a year or two, and then decide if you are in fact poor or not.
    Here’s the thing the HF doesn’t say: consumer products are cheap and credit is easy (they used 2005 data, before the economic collapse — wonder why they did that?), but the things families really need — health insurance, education, housing — aren’t (americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/heritage_poor.html).

  6. “they used 2005 data, before the economic collapse — wonder why they did that?”
    Just before the Democrats took control of congress, so you could blame Dubya, obviously.

  7. Bottom line Davenport, where are all the poor starving b@stards dying in the streets? Go try to find one for me. I can wait.
    You can fiddle with the numbers all you want, but the truth of the matter is ALL the necessities of life and most of the luxuries are available to absolutely everyone who can bestir themselves to go ask politely. In fact massive bureaucracies exist to bestow these things on those too lazy even to ask.
    It is possible, with effort, to wiggle through the strands of the Social Safety Hammock and OD in a culvert off of Bloor St. But if you’ve ever met one of those @-holes you’d know that they WORK at being f-ed up.
    I’m sorry ducky, but my heart does not bleed for those whose aim in life is to evade all possible help and die busted in a ditch.

  9. By the way Davenport, have you ever even been to the USA? Ever gone to an American hospital in the poor part of town? Seen the facilities, talked to the docs?
    I’m doubting it.

  11. Thanks for that posting Kate, I had not heard of PJTV. That is the sort of entertainment I am willing to pay for and the sort of effort I am willing to support. I will be signing on and encouraging others to do the same.
    Davenport’s brain is mush, there is no point trying to convince him of his misguided views. I can only imagine what sort of brain washing he received in his silly life, or perhaps in a genetic defect.

  12. Sorry davenport probably like many here I’ve luckily known way too many good people that started out without a pot to pi– in yet made a life for themselves and their families to believe that government needs supply a will to work and the ability to carry your own weight. If anything governments are destroying it.

  13. There is no way the ‘ruling class’ will accept responsibility for the economic mess the world is in. They will continue to ‘interpret’ the world to the masses. It can be no other way because reality would put them all out of work. If accountants were ruling the world to a balanced budget think about how few government and NGOs would be needed.
    I fully expect the ‘class’ warfare tool will be used very quickly along with another condemnation of failed capitlism. The fact that government spent beyond the means of the economy will not be debated. These people who take more than they produce will confiscate the remaining wealth and feed off it until nothing is left.

  14. This one comment at August 6, 2011 9:25 AM, about motherhood and apple pie and everybody lived happy ever after is uniformed.
    The US spends more money on all of those listed things than many countries combined.
    ” The federal government’s expenditures in FY2010 included Medicare & Medicaid ($793B or 23%),” In ” Medicare….. In 2009, the program covered an estimated 45 million persons (38 million aged and 7 million disabled”
    “According to a 2005 report …. the United States ….. is tied for first place with Switzerland when it comes to annual spending per student on its public schools ….. spending more than $11,000”
    “In 2010 ….. HUD requests $4.6 billion for the Public Housing Operating Fund, an increase of $145 million over fiscal year 2009.”
    The numbers are mindboggling, most of it is spent on paper pushers like this:
    ” Arizona’s public schools spend 50% more per student than Arizona’s private schools….. teachers constitute 72% of the employees at private schools, they make up less than half of the staff at public schools….. if Arizona’s public schools wanted to be like private schools, they would have to hire approximately 25,000 more teachers, and eliminate 21,210 administration employees”
    The poster is presenting demagoguery, much like the rest of socialists.
    The politics of envy.

  15. Lev said: “Perhaps this should be shown on the CBC….”
    Good luck with that one.
    Oh, and by the way, Davenport….PULEEZE. Now back to your video game.

  16. Envy’s incredibly corrosive, both societally and to one’s own relationships.  Having watched it work its poisonous magic amongst so many people over my lifetime, I’m almost at the point where I think the latest edition of the DSM should list it as a psychiatric condition.

  17. Lev
    Arizona’s public schools sound a hellu’va like Ontario Hospitals prior to Harris.

  18. Have you ever once,…once, seen a rural conservative welfare bum Saskatchewan farmer thank the people whose extra work made their cradle to grave entitlements possible? Shouldn’t they have a parade and celebrate that fact? Not if your a small dead teabaggin’ conservative.

  19. I’ve been making essentially the same point in various places – here, Dennis millers show etc.:
    Yes quantitatively the very very rich may indeed be richer than the very poor but QUALITATIVELY the gap between rich and poor has never in the history of America and the world been as close as it is at the present time. And it is growing ever closer.

  20. Davenport, seriously, read this, please. It’s not very long at all and it’s very well written in a quiet way. (Like Steyn, this man is a god to me. I wonder what his signature is like.)

  21. Black Mamba — Dalrymple’s “culture of poverty redux” arguments are as lacking today as they were in their original form 50 years ago. Now as then, they ignore the roles of power and political economy in shaping “choice”, they treat culture as an independent and sufficient explanatory variable in the (re)production of poverty, they gloss over both historical and social structural contexts in their all-in rhetoric of “personal responsiblity,” they confuse cause and effect, they lack empirical support, etc.
    He’s a fine writer and polemicist, though, and no doubt his signature is as impenetrable as Steyn’s. But that doesn’t make his ideas sound.

  23. chesterfield:
    My dad left when I was eight years old and we were on welfare until I left home at 18. My mom could not afford to send me to university.
    Today, I have a net worth over $1 million gained through hard work and crafty investing.
    What’s your excuse, loser?

  24. The common denominator among the poor people I have been acquainted with over the years is they never learned to take care of anything they had. It costs nothing but time (and time is in abundence with folks on public assistance)to pick up after yourself; take out the garbage clean the kitchen, put away your clothes.
    A little planning means you buy flour & yeast to bake bread, some veggies and a bit of meat to make soup or stew and some laundry soap tp wash the clothes in the sink. They have the time but limited cash. All this uses time but little cash.
    But no, they will buy canned soup, bread and cookies at the 7-11, leave dirty and clean clothes piled throughout the living quarters (and it is astonishing how many clothes they own!) and never clean anything.
    Of the dozens of folks on welfare whom I have known, if it was my call only one would have received a cheque.

  25. Oh look, Davenport is still here.
    So ducky, any response to my questions or are you going to just keep picking numbers out of that cherry tree?
    To recap, where ARE all the starving poor? Do you know any? Have you any first hand experience of:
    America?
    American hospitals?
    American indigents?
    anyone who is genuinely disadvantaged?
    Or are you content to merely pretend to have seen the elephant while hiding in your UofT residence?
    You should talk to people like Kathy Shaidle. She actually knows some poor people.

  26. Black Mamba, I skimmed that piece of yours. It replicates my own experience to a “T”. I’d say Davenport’s flippant dismissal is sufficient evidence that she has zero personal experience in the area and argues 100% from theory.
    Dang, is she going to get an eye-opener one of these days. Word of advice Davy, you haven’t heard lying until you talk to your first crack-head.

  27. Phantom:
    Or an alcoholic.
    Or a socialist. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
    How come no one ever thanks the left for the bomb??

  28. The poor remain poor not because of low income, but rather because they don’t wisely spend the money they get. On the plus side they do put the money right back into the local economy, rather than using it to blow things up overseas.
    The ‘poor’ in N.America live like royalty compared with the real poor in the rest of the world.

  29. I am late to this comment thread – but hopefully people will read this far. I work with a lot of young women(19-29)who are paid very well for the work they do (they clean houses). They work from 8:30 to 3:30 on average. So they could take another job after work. Only one has done so and she was so good at it, she has been promoted to manager of the store, so is now leaving. Most live on paycheck advances – not to pay the rent – but get things like tattoos, or I Phones or video games. Then when they are evicted, they blame the landlord because they did not pay the rent on time. My business hit the toilet in the early 90’s when I also became a single mother. I did not qualify for welfare because I was self-employed, owned a house and had some RRSP’s. I took in students for a language school to meet the mortgage payments and shopped at Value Village and No Frills grocery stores. I also do not buy the crap about the deserving poor.

  30. In the future we the working class won’t have to practice being homeless via camping we’ll be living the Davonport dream.

  31. Yeah funny an associate commented after seeing me rip the in-seam of my trousers picking up a piece of furniture….
    I hauled out the sewing engine and nailed it up in a minute or two….
    His comment…I don’t know anybody else who fixes anything.
    My patronizing the Good Will Store has recently discouraged more extensive repairs to my raiment….it’s like why spend an hour fixing a thread bare pair of casual pants when a beautiful nearly new pair can be had for $7.00….??? Really??
    Same with a vegetable garden…
    Ammo….”rolling your own” (with a bit of care…”hand-loads” rather than reloads)is lots cheaper than factory loads, more reliable and effective. I always say that accuracy begins at the loading bench….
    On the other hand….
    An associate picked up a beautiful Husquevarna (308) real cheap….sought my assistance divine why it would not chamber a round….
    My examination provided the explaination…the former owner, a dofus, musta figured he had made a unique discovery..overloading yielded more performance….in the process springing the receiver…Never seen a mauser action sprung that bad….before that…woulda said it was impossible.
    It musta kicked the crap outa the fool….
    My advice…don’t even think of firing it…take it back to the dealer and complain bitterly…
    My observation is that low income types do well once they abandon the notion that they must drive a car…..You either pay maintainence or depreciation….a winter-beater can nickel and dime(actually hundreds at a time) ya to death real quick……..
    Mobility by motorcycle has severe restrictions in Canadian weather….same for a bicycle….cargo carrying is nominal at best…

  32. Black Mamba, THANK YOU for the Dalrymple article. He is one of my favourite writers: like Steyn, his writing is lucid and right-on. We own many of Dalrymple’s books: maybe this is one of his essays I somehow missed. (Too bad for me.)
    As a teacher, I’ve had a front row seat re the spiritual decadence and accompanying entitlement of “a lost generation”—one that’s willing to take all of us down with it: what else do these poor, ignorant, truly abandoned souls know? (And the secular, socialist idiots who’ve allowed this are even more culpable.)
    Davenport’s poverty stricken response is a perfect illustration of Dalrymple’s thesis.

  34. Here’s another fact about being poor, particularly applied to women – and it is from empirical studies, but is never, ever talked about.
    Your chances of being poor and remaining poor are influenced by three factors (and these factors hold true across races and time).
    1. Do not complete high school (which is free btw) – it is better to go beyond high school even if it is a one certificate, but high school completion is the key factors.
    2. Do not remain in a committed relationship (nothing about marriage, just a committed relationship).
    3. Have a child (or worst children) outside of a committed relationship.
    If you have one factor, the chances are about even remaining poor, add one and your chances increase significantly, add all factors and you are toast. All the social support factors (including providing more money to solve these factors), have little impact.

  35. Maureen: Kicked out of school in grade 3.Worked hard but can’t keep a wife.[to much time at work] One kid who won’t talk to me. But am well healed. So now what is your idea to improve my life.

  37. Davenport – You say Dalrymple’s explanation is incorrect. Please explain what was really going on in those scenes he describes.

  38. Davenport is absolutely right, $22,000 per annum for a family of 4 is tough to do. That said, if you don’t like trying to do it, go get a better job or whatever. On the other hand Phantom, if you are happy flipping hamburgers then it is none of anyone’s business. Not everyone needs to compete with their millionaire neighbours. All work is blessed and dignified (you know, the widow’s mite and all that) and we all know that you can’t take it with you, money is not everything, but it is pleasant, though I wouldn’t know myself. (Actually, some say it is the root of all evil)

  39. The trouble with Bill’s graphs is that they do not account for the progress of technology. For example, in the late 70’s an electronic calculator cost hundreds of dollars. Today calculators that do the same functions can cost less than a dollar. The same is true for air conditioners, DVD players, game counsels etc. So I agree with the overall premise of the argument, but it must be compared in the context of scientific and manufacturing progress. This is the miracle of free enterprise, and one of it’s greatest achievements is allowing the poor to have undreamed of luxuries at an economical price.

  40. The trouble with Bill’s graphs is that they do not account for the progress of technology. For example, in the late 70’s an electronic calculator cost hundreds of dollars. Today calculators that do the same functions can cost less than a dollar. The same is true for air conditioners, DVD players, game counsels etc. So I agree with the overall premise of the argument, but it must be compared in the context of scientific and manufacturing progress. This is the miracle of free enterprise, and one of it’s greatest achievements is allowing the poor to have undreamed of luxuries at an economical price.

  41. robert,that leads me to the second part of my assertion above:
    The poor need the rich – not to just to pay taxes to pay for support programs etc. but to deliver the new advances in technology. the rich are the product testers – they are the ones who spend 5 to 10 gr for the HDTV that now costs less than an order of magnitude less. Cellphones used be briefcase-sized and cost 5000. Now they are less than 50 and fit in the palm of your hand. the rich footed the bill for that engineering. If there were only poor people there would not be any cellphones at all. and cars wouldn’t come standard with power windows and locks cruise and air.
    Poor people should kneel down and pray to god thanking him for rich people – for it is they who have lifted them out of the filth (running, heated water courtesy of the rich investing in sewers and electricity) and toil (what percentaage of poor households have a dishwashing machine?) and drudgery (TV, internet, TMZ) that was the plight of the poor just 50 or so years ago.

  42. The last time I received 100K yearend bonus, I also knew my colleges received more. So what, other years the shoe is on the other foot. It’s better to take whatever sour lemons life hands you today, carry on, and make enough lemonade to choke the thieving “Davenports” of our world at a later date.

  43. Here is the excellent Theodore Dalrymple in a long—but well worth the time—interview about the welfare state and its ruinous effect on morals and accountability. (As I’ve said, I’ve watched the ruin from the front row in our public schools.) He’s a retired psychiatrist (real name: Anthony Daniels), who spent most of his career in the lower to lowest echelons of British society. He notes that the combination of low to no expectations and entitlement has been a total disaster for both a critical mass of individuals and for society as a whole. (He does NOT let the ruling class off the hook by any means!)
    http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/ncrv/netwerk/X64739_dalrymple-compl_WM_bb.wmv

  44. a@c – and what is preventing you NOW from completing highschool (I’m assuming from your sob story that because you were kicked out of school in grade 3 – really? that you did not complete high school). That may also contribute to not being able to keep a wife because you are working at many low skilled jobs. However since you also have a kid who wouldn’t talk to you, it may be a personality thing (in spite of your feeling that you are well healed which I assume from your spelling that you mean well spiritually rather than monetarily which would have been well-heeled). No study can account for personality traits – if you are not a nice person, you are not a nice person.
    My point is that the left loves to site their ’empirical’ studies that are nothing of the sort but rather just opinions about how people ‘feel’ about their lives and why. But they never talk about other empirical studies that they don’t like.
    There is another study done by the Cdn Banking Association (so of course it is bad) – they interviewed bank clients that had over 1 million dollars in assets (this was from about 15 years ago when house prices didn’t influence net worth as much as today) – they asked what contributed to their wealth (excluded from the group interviewed were people who had inherited their assets) – the top three answers were:
    1. Got as much education as possible and that didn’t mean advanced graduate degrees, but whatever they could (2 day course at the local community college, 3 hour course offered by their employer etc. ) Most of those interviewed did not have university degrees, but rather were working people – not a lot of the high income professionals (few actually have many assets because they spend it to live their lifestyle!)
    2. Used credit only to buy things that increased in value (education, real estate) – no consumer goods that decreased after wearing them once!
    3. Delayed spending in that they saved for what they wanted.
    At the same time an advocacy group for the ‘poor’ did an almost similar study and asked poor people why they were poor and their answers were:
    1. Employers were cheap and didn’t pay them enough
    2. The government didn’t provide enough in benefits
    3. Interest rates were too high.
    The difference between the two groups is those would had assets saw themselves as the main reason for those assets and the poor people felt it was always someone else’s fault – which fit in with the advocay group because their recommendations wanted the government to provide MORE for the poor – increased welfare, increase the minimum wage, control interest rates. Not a hard recommendation to make since it relys on OTHERS solving it, not the poor people themselves!

  46. “Theodore Dalrymple
    He’s a retired psychiatrist (real name: Anthony Daniels), who spent most of his career in the lower to lowest echelons of British society” Lookout
    He nails the observed mental failures of those in the poverty class, but I think he falls short in his conclusion/solutions. The failure of our economy to deal with the flat liners, in developed countries, is that we don’t understand or respect the ingenuity of human nature….
    IE:
    The Obama administration Economists expect that a dollar spent in Unemployement/Wefare will result in increased taxes, that is a false premise because that money becomes untraceable in the real world. In California & Arizona most ends up in Mexico…
    We, in the USA, have a very sophisticated & organized poverty class that only deal in the under the table economy (Cash).. The society support systems are made up of “multiple” organizations that provide free Food & Shelter, once folks get connected they can actually live better than the lower end of the middle class…Green Stamps are traded for cash because they get free food from other sources, and rent goes unpaid because they can always get free shelter. It becomes a game…
    The hard core solution would be to stop providing food & lodging through multiple sources.. Make the real flat-liners, not those just needing a helping hand, go to soup kitchens for food & live in low cost housing
    The elimination of the black market/under the table cash economy..Canada does a good job in small centers, but the US is willfully deficient
    Davenport: Small town solutions don’t work in big towns.

  47. The Phantom: “Black Mamba, I skimmed that piece of yours. It replicates my own experience to a “T”. I’d say Davenport’s flippant dismissal is sufficient evidence that she has zero personal experience in the area and argues 100% from theory.”
    lookout: “As a teacher, I’ve had a front row seat re the spiritual decadence and accompanying entitlement of “a lost generation””
    small c conservative: “Davenport – You say Dalrymple’s explanation is incorrect. Please explain what was really going on in those scenes he describes.”
    No, Phantom, not just from theory, but also from evidence. You should try it some time. Like Dalrymple, you and lookout are drawing conclusions about social phenomena based on personal experiences, which are no doubt compelling but by definition narrow, limited, selective, and empirically weak.
    A half-century’s worth of research on the culture of poverty thesis, on the other hand, exposes the myriad flaws of Dalrymple’s simplistic explanations. Here’s a tiny sampling, to start you off:
    – jstor.org/pss/2576025
    – jstor.org/pss/1389697
    – jstor.org/pss/1389226
    – onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/ae.1979.6.3.02a00120/abstract
    – informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1081/ADA-120037385
    @small c conservative — I’ve no doubt Dalrymple’s anecdotes are real. The problem is that they are just that — anecdotes. Personal experiences recounted does not a theory of poverty make.
    I don’t know the details about the people in those scenes, but for possible alternate explanations, I might suggest a mix of work on the interplay between social structure and “choice”, critiques of the limits of the rational actor theory, and perhaps some psych research data on learned helplessness, social adaptation, and resilience.

  48. Phil, I suggest you stop eating. Maybe then you will appreciate the #1 driver of the sask economy-the farmer. BTW, I have never once, in 40 years of farming, taken a handout of any kind. As was suggested before, go to hell!

  49. Davenport @2:18 – wouldn’t it have been easier to say: “I don’t believe in free will, it’s all societiy’s fault”?

  50. Black Mamba — About as easy as saying “I don’t believe in social context, it’s all the individual’s fault”, and about as simplistic and wrong.
    Nobody’s saying it’s “all society’s fault”, individuals have no free will, etc. I’m saying that structural influences and individual “choice”/free will are inextricable, and that you can’t truly explain any social phenomenon (poverty, crime, etc., or conversely, wealth, success, etc.) without considering both. People are not without autonomy, bobbing along to whatever life throws their way, but neither are they masters of their own fate. We all steer our own ships, but those ships are often buffeted by currents and winds beyond our individual control.

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