Shocking financial results and WTF re: the Democrats

I found this test via Amber Rhea. Most of the personality results for me were bollocks, and I wouldn't have bothered posting about it but for the following element of its conclusions:

Socioeconomic
Your attitude toward life best associates you with Working Class. You make more than 68% of those who have taken this test, and 35% less than the U.S. average.

All I did was a basic calculation, I added up my Jobseeker's Allowance, my Housing Benefit, my Council Tax benefit, and I declared that sum as an annual figure, and I multiplied £ by 2 to get an estimate for $, since the quiz asked for the answer in $.

According to the British Government, that figure is "what you need to live". My monthly rent is extremely cheap for the area I live in (in a big university city I could probably get a flat for a third of what I do here, so my housing benefit would be cheaper there, but prices are much cheaper here than, say, London) so I think it's a fair estimate.

Of course, I don't know where everyone else doing the test came from, and I don't know what the cost of living is like in the USA versus the UK, but to me that seems like a shocking statistic:

68% of people taking the test do not make "what you need to live" in the UK according to the British Government?

If we assume that a disproportionate number of those taking the test are USAian, it seems reasonable to ask if 60% of USAians really are living in what we Brits would call "poverty"? I know that social security (welfare) in the USA is nothing like as comprehensive as it is in the UK (let alone in the rest of Western Europe), but I would assume that most of the people taking the test weren't relying on welfare. What the hell is wrong with you people? Can the USA really be that poor?

I recall seeing Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" where he noted that the US minimum wage hasn't been increased at all for several years - not even altered to take into account of inflation. This is just unimaginable to me. In terms of shitting on poor people, the US Government is way ahead of the rest of the developed world, it seems.

*****

So I look at the Democrats, who at least pretend to care a bit about social issues like these, and who actually have a halfway decent chance of elected in your two-party system, and I wonder WTF is wrong with those people, too.

I happen to think that either Clinton or Obama would make a pretty good President, they're obviously not going to be as leftwing as I would like, but very few in the USA are even as leftwing as Tony Blair was when he first came to power, but we'll take what we can get.

But practically from day one, the two have been tearing chunks out of each other, as though they somehow believe that the November election is a minor formality that the Democrat nominee is guaranteed to win, and the real Presidential election is the Democratic Convention! It looks as though the Republicans have settled on McCain as their guy, so why the fuck aren't the Democratic candidates testing their mettle already on taking him down, to prove their ability to win, and to express what their platforms actually are? Why are they wasting so much time, energy and resources on targeting each other with ever-greater amounts of venom? Why are they so determined to feed the Republicans' campaign with lots of juicy ammo? When Clinton's campaign argues that Obama lacks the experience withg international affairs, that's not a slogan that can only be used by Hillary - McCain will be able to use that slogan, too, regardless of what McCain's own experience is. He just has to plant the idea in voters' minds, and then any comeback on it looks like desperation and tit-for-tat. Except that, Clinton has already done that! Similarly, Obama's "dog whistle" remarks about Clinton's gender are going to do McCain a whole bunch of favours come November, too. And a whole bunch of other tactics they've used over the past couple of months, too.

While the Presidential Primaries seem to me to be a good idea in the USA's presidential system of government, it seems barmy for a political party to tear its candidates to shreds before they put their nominee up against the other guy. It's like a boxer warming up for a contest to win the World Championship, and his sparring partner is going all-out to knock him to the floor! By the time the boxer gets into the ring, he'll be so bloodied and bruised, the fight itself will be over almost before it's begun!

So, for the sake of all those who make less in a year than I get on my welfare benefits, and for the sake of the rest of the world, and for the sake of people who give a damn about other people:

THIS is your enemy.

Not THIS

And not THIS.