Here is an awesome article about the effects of conservatives' economy:

[Dark]

http://www.gatt.org/trastat_e/

This is awesome. It proves that the conservative ideaology of economics is ridiculous, that making the economy more liberal, as Bush loves to say helps the middle class and the poor, is in fact a TERRIBLE idea.

Here are some excerpts:

"The numbers of people living on less than $2 per day has risen by almost 50% since 1980, to 2.8 billion—almost half the world’s population. And this is precisely the period that has been most heavily liberalized."

snip

"The world’s poorest countries’ share of world trade has declined by more than 40 per cent since 1980 to a mere 0.4 per cent.The poorest 49 countries make up 10% of the world’s population, but account for only 0.4% of world trade. This disparity has been growing."

snip

"Poor are getting poorer in both relative and absolute terms, as one UNICEF study has commented: “A new face of ‘apartheid’ is spreading across the globe…. as millions of people live in wretched conditions side-by-side with those who enjoy unprecedented prosperity. Even in the First World, the gap between upper executive and worker salaries has never bigger--it is in fact many times bigger than it was twenty years ago.”

snip

"Trade liberalization is negatively correlated with income growth among the poorest 40 per cent of the population, but positively correlated with income growth among higher income groups. In other words, it helps the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

This is a fucking gold mine of information. I can't believe I found it. My classmate and I have to do a project on the poor, and this will help immenseley. Please, reply with any other good links.

(Edited as per request by KittyKitty)

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. You know what dawned on me the other day? That American

Christians can't really be Christians because the first thing they do is insulate themselves from the poor. Where I was raised, the poor relied on charitable donations that were constant in nature. Rarely a week went by when you weren't helping someone out. It became second nature, and you even got to the point where you found yourself saving things so you could share it with others.

American life is nothing like that. I've had one Republican Christian say that they would help the poor in their community, but there aren't any. Well, I guess that's okay, because there aren't any real Christians here either.

[strategery blunder]

2. "There aren't any poor people in my community"

That's a bunch of BS...often times people hide their financial troubles with predatory credit (credit cards or worse, payday loans). Sometimes it's hard to tell if someone is poor unless they are wearing rags for clothes. People are good at hiding this.

I should know, because when I was in high school, my mother went without food sometimes so she could feed me.:cry: She never told me until about a year ago. It was even worse when I was a small child.

[Dark]

5. I have heard so many people say that

who are waist deep in debt.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. I don't think I could repeat my childhood in the States and

achieve the same results. In my adult-aware years I came to understand that my parents forfeited our childhoods in order to pay for our college tuition. Now, I recognize that I had a better childhood over seas under these circumstances than I could ever have had in the U.S. I can't even begin to imagine how terrible I would feel growing up here recognizing how much I was doing without. I was rich in so many ways that materalistic things don't motivate nor impress me.

But whatever I went through, my parents had it much, much worse. We are both where we are today because of their sacrifices.

[strategery blunder]

7. I know what you mean (rant)...

The only reason why I am in college now is because my grandmother grew up in the Depression and saved everything she got her hands on...SHE is paying my tuition. My mother makes just enough to push my financial aid into subsidized loans instead of grants, but it isn't enough to really live on in Chicago when she was trying to keep me in the same school district (we moved around so much before high school that Mom promised that she wouldn't uproot me again...she paid dearly for that promise). And quite a bit of it has to do with shrubbie not funding nclb--the district that I was in was one of the hardest-hit in the state, if not the country. The school has to get money from somewhere, and the escrow payments for property tax went up so quickly that she was taxed right out of the 800-square foot townhouse. She worked about 15 hours of overtime a week to keep it until I graduated--she sold it a month later.

God, my family has sacrificed so much for me. I feel so guilty about it sometimes.

Were it not for Grandma, I would be caught up in the poverty draft:scared:, though I would have gladly deferred it until Kerry becomes President. I probably would have worked a minimum wage job to appease the cheap-labor conservatives in the meantime; I do work a min. wage job over the summer.

Ooooh, I hate this type of rethuglikkkan ignorance, and when I criticize bu$h* for being pro-poverty and pro-death, the freepers rant about my baby-killing. Never mind that I oppose abortion.:grr::mad::grr::mad:

[nodictators]

3. Free Trade benefits corporations and their executives

That's why we have no say in NAFTA or FTAA. Some democracy, eh?

Congress gave BushCo fast track authority for the FTAA. We'll Lose big! Unless Kerry wins!

Great post, Orion523.

[kittykitty]

4. "My classmate and I. . . . . . . . . "

[strategery blunder]

8. Kick, this is important

Or maybe it's because I want people to read my take on this, I can't tell which...:kick: