Posted by Six String Stu on 10/04/07 16:59

"Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t" <rem642b@yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:rem-2007oct04-004@yahoo.com...
>> From: Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net>
>> Poverty is not a disability covered by disability law.
>
> This is an interesting point. IMO it's reasonable to require that
> somebody wishing to purchase something have the money to pay for
> it, and that somebody wishing to purchase some very expensive item
> have a lot of money to pay for it. If people are unemployed because
> of disability, and because of their unemployment they don't have
> money to buy stuff, then it's reasonable that they be disallowed
> from buying it, and it isn't the fault of the seller of goods that
> the disabled person doesn't have enough money to buy stuff.
>
> But what about employment itself? It shouldn't be necessary to have
> lots of money before-the-fact to start a new job to earn money. If
> an employer requires somebody to have lots of money already, as
> qualification for a new job, then the employer *would* be partly
> responsible for the person continuing not to have enough money, and
> I think that would be wrong, and the courts might interpret that is
> deliberate barring of already-poor disabled people from ever
> escaping their poverty.
As the middle class becomes more few and the sepperation of the haves and
have nots widens, folks will start believing that America has been sold to
the coporate greed machine. Our laws become more and more tilted every year
to serve big "industry" and subject the populace to more restrictions.
Face it, we are headed into an elitist society. Didn't work for Rome either.

>
> Making a shopping Web site inaccessible to poverty-level people
> might be reasonable, because after all <hyperbole>if they can't
> afford a brand new computer they probably also can't afford the
> toothbrush they were trying to buy online</hyperbole>. But making
> an employment Web site inaccessible to low-income people who can't
> afford a brand-new computer would seem to me to fall within this
> type of case. Why should ownership of a brand-new computer be a
> requirement of applying for a job online? For work-at-home
> contractors, of course the contractor is expected to provide his
> own computer, but for regular employment if the new computer is
> needed for the job then the employer is supposed to provide it,
> right? What do the rest of you think?
I think the employer would even put in a sepperate phone line to go with
that computer, as long as they could turn a profit and ensure that the
equipment and services were only used for the employers purposes. But I also
think it'd be sort of hard to get an employer to think that way. It would
have to be an employee that showed great promise.

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