More govt ... pleaseFollow

The contradiction is as axiomatic.

And as inelegant.

And as delightfully enjoyable to express.

Christ, gbaji, learn2history. There was generational poverty BEFORE any entitlement programs existed. What right wingers like to pretend is that they are only poor because of entitlement programs. NO! Entitlement programs aren't comprehensive enough to lift families or communities out of poverty. That's how they fail. The biggest failure is when they stopped helping the working poor in the 70s because of conservative pressure to increasingly means test each program. Originally, for example, government housing was designed to be scattered with both women and children (who were unemployed), living among working class families of modest means. With the change in government funding, they eliminated help to working class families, increasing the concentration of poverty in certain communities. It often has a snowball effect where the infrastructure fails (lack of support in schools, business investment, no decent public transportation, no decent grocery stores, etc etc) in the most impoverished areas. Some people wonder if it was designed to isolate the families on assistance--to remove them from living with other people--all for the sake of objectification and demonization by the self-righteous conservatives who oppose funding these programs while giving tax breaks and corporate welfare to the rich--apparently the ones who deserve the largesse of the middle class.

Edited, Sep 14th 2009 7:51pm by Annabella

Sure. But it represented a much smaller percentage of the poor than it does today. Also, we were well on our way to eliminating it pretty much entirely using just public education programs until the 1960s.

It's hard to imagine exactly how US history might have been different if we'd eliminated the obstacles to education (mostly segregation) preventing many suffering from generational poverty from succeeding but had *not* at the same time created government entitlement programs. We've institutionalized it by creating multiple generations of wellfare moms, each of which raises another generation of kids who, instead of just living in poverty and not knowing how to get out (no education), were enticed into following in their parents footsteps because that was the world they see around them every day.



Enough with the "all or nothing" strawman. I don't believe that people are poor "only because of entitlement". However, I believe that entitlement makes it harder to get out of poverty and increases the odds of arriving there in the first place. It's not an absolute.



They cannot do so. Ever. No amount of making them "more comprehensive" will make a bad idea into a good one.


The best incentive for productivity is to make a lack of productivity uncomfortable. If the downside of not working is being hungry and homeless, you'll work really hard to make sure you avoid that. Entitlement specifically seeks to make non-productivity more comfortable. Thus, it always works against the presumed objective of helping people out of poverty.

You're confusing the PR of entitlement with the reality.





Valid assessment of what happened. You might want to gaze back on who did what and why though. It wasn't conservatives who did this. This was a natural evolution of said programs. It's exactly what conservative argue will happen with such programs. You start out thinking it'll work great and it wont cost much. Then it costs too much, so you start looking at ways to reduce the cost. And that results in exactly what you just described. In order to make the programs more efficient, they focused them into tighter areas. This meant that those who needed the benefits had to live in those areas, pushing out those who didn't. Basically, in those neighborhoods, anyone who could afford to moved out, and everyone left was stuck in an area with increasingly fewer job opportunities, increasing crime, drug, and gang rates, and the result is as you described.


This is why you shouldn't do this. What's funny is that when liberals propose these sorts of things, conservatives predict exactly what will happen, including all the negatives. We're told we're wrong, greedy, racist, or whatever and the liberals proceed to do it anyway. And when it goes horribly wrong, instead of admitting they were wrong, the liberals invent some reason to blame conservatives for the failure. No... It couldn't just be that it was a bad idea. It must have been sabotaged by those evil conservatives! Yup. That must be it...


Lol. It's a bad idea. It's an obviously bad idea. Again though, the folks selling it are very good at PR, so most people have bought the story that it would work if only we did more of it, or somehow prevented conservatives from sabotaging it. Nah. It's just a bad idea. Let's accept that and look at real alternatives.

No. I'm saying that statistically, fewer people would make a wage enough above that provided for by welfare to ever have the opportunity to try. And of those who do, the taxes they'd have to pay for all that free stuff would raise the bar to success so high that they'd fail far more often than they would otherwise.


Many more people would simply spend the extra money they're making on luxuries for themselves rather than invest it in a possibly even better future. You've got to look at the whole picture here. I might want to start a business, or put a bunch of money into investment, not because I want better standard of living today, but so I'll have more tomorrow, and specifically to ensure my children will have something. The desire to build that college fund for the kids, is often a big motivator for people to risk their assets. And remember, that we're usually not talking about risking "everything", but the extra that they have. So instead of spending my money on goodies for me, I'll take out a business loan and use that money to pay the interest on the loan while I work on the business. Or I'll tuck that money into an investment account. I'm sacrificing something today for a hopefully better tomorrow. And the prime motivator for that is the need to provide for health care later in life, or the needs of raising children.


You eliminate those things, and you eliminate the motivation to bother. And you also skew the probabilities involved (as I mentioned earlier).


It's a combination of factors which combine to decrease the likelihood of certain types of behavior occurring. People will still invest. They'll still start businesses. But they'll do so at lower rates than they would otherwise. It's not an absolute. Entitlement just acts as an economic boat-anchor is all.

gbaji, if resources were plentiful, as in finite in quantity, but so abundant as to be hard to exhaust, even if definite, would you support the free distribution of them to all, regardless of work, or desire to work?

"The antecedent of your conditional is unfair" is an acceptable, but unfortunate answer. I would prefer if you do not discharge it.

***

Redundancy

Edited, Sep 14th 2009 9:14pm by Pensive

The fact that this is something to be built and paid for by attendees or parents, to the point where it is expected that you are either stupidly wealthy or will take loans to pay for education is only slightly less repugnant than the expectation and acceptance that buying a place to live requires a lifelong debt. The desire itself to build a fund is so ridiculously out of sorts with the ideal that well, I can't actually express my dissatisfaction.

***



Kinda sad to see that no matter the decade, both democrats and republicans are completely powerless twats who can't ever manage to do anything without capitulating with the agenda of the other party.

Edited, Sep 14th 2009 9:19pm by Pensive

I've actually answered this question in the past, but it was a long time ago in the past. Yes. If we had some Star Trek like future energy source, with replicators and the capacity to provide food, housing, education, and medical care to every single person with only a tiny fraction of the whole available resources, absolutely. I would be the first to say lets provide all that stuff for everyone.


The problem is that we don't. Not only do we not have enough to do this, but the cost of doing so on even a relatively small scale hurts us financially in the long run. We progressively require a larger percentage of the total economic pie to provide for those who aren't producing. And since the whole pie comes from the labors of those who aren't, it's pretty obvious that this is a bad direction to go. One of two things will happen: The whole system will collapse (and no one will have any services of any kind). Or we'll find ways to reduce costs, which inevitably means drawing lines in terms of service (rationing or raising the bar to qualify for benefits).

I'm somewhat of a futurist. I tend to look at how we as a species will be better off in 50 or 100 or 1000 years. If we assume that at some point, if we develop enough technology and science we could obtain said future conditions, then does it not make sense to do so at the fastest rate possible? By insisting on paying for a fraction of a loaf today, and tomorrow, and for the forseeable future, we're going to reduce the money left over. The worse case nightmare scenario is that we simply turn inward and focus 100% of our nations wealth on providing for the people. That's stagnation and we'll never get anywhere. But even small amounts will slow us down.

The first thing to go when money is tight is the future. This is true economically, and it's true technologically. If you have a choice between paying your rent or buying groceries, and putting that money into an investment account, which do you do? Obvious choice, right? You can only build a future if you don't consume everything today. But the Liberal economic ideology seems to involve spending the absolute maximum we can on social programs and other helpful stuff *today* with no concern at all for tomorrow.

If your company's bottom line falls, the first thing you cut is R&D budget. The last thing you cut is anything related to putting a product out the door. Because you need that to keep your business running. The R&D only helps you make better products down the line. If you're bankrupt, that doesn't help you at all, right?


That's the concern I have. I've stated this before. There is no end to the number of things we "could" provide for the people. In the past, we started with free K-12 education (not necessarily a bad idea btw). Then we went to providing for retirement. Then providing for medical care for the elderly. Over time we've added to this. Help for those without a job. Help for those who have disabilities. Help for those who need it regardless of circumstance. And absolutely help for any child who is in need. And don't get me wrong, some of those are good things. Heck. Most of them are. But what about the cost? It's not really "free".


So now we're talking about free medical care for everyone, not just the old or disabled. What's next? Free housing for everyone? Free food for everyone? What then? Free internet for everyone? Free transportation (we've already got some of that)? What else? Today, the things we think are the most important needs which aren't being met are those we're fighting for. The "next thing" is dismissed as a slippery slope. But if you'd asked someone back when social security was being debated if they thought that medicare was justified, most of them would have said "no". Because they saw what was the issue at that time as the "need" which needed to be filled. But once you fill that, something else becomes the new "top need", right? There's no reason to assume that even though at every step along the way, those pushing for reach new socialized service insisted that it was "just this one thing and no more", yet within another generation "no more" became "just one more" again, that somehow magically this next thing being pushed for will actually be the "last thing".


I think it's pretty clear that it wont be. The pattern is abundantly obvious. So the question becomes: "What is the cost?". Can we afford that cost in the long run. Are we actually better off providing all these things or would we be better off sacrificing and suffering a bit now to provide a better future for our children?

Each of our lives is a miniature version of our nation, and in this area the same relationships exist. If you scrimp and save, putting your money away and investing it in some way, you'll have less comfort today, but you'll have more later. If you do it well enough and long enough you'll eventually have enough that you can retire and still live comfortably without having to work anymore. But if instead we insist on spending every penny we make on goods and services today, insisting that we "need this" right now, we have no one but ourselves to blame when we don't have anything later on in life. And unlike the solution the left has created for people, the government can't really turn to something bigger than itself to provide it a free ride later on. It has to keep working and keep building. Of course, it doesn't die of old age either, so the analogy breaks down, but I hope you see where I'm going with this.


True investment in our nations future will come, not by spending on social programs today, but by putting as much of our resources as possible into productive and preferably technologically enhancing endeavors. We absolutely should try to employ as many people as possible, but we shouldn't do so just to provide them with a job, but rather encourage them to take part in building the future. Just as you go without today in order to build a life for yourself when it comes to your own spending/saving choices, we should do the same as a nation.



That's my answer. Probably not what you expected though.

"Dogs and cats, living together... MASS HYSTERIA!!"

Conflating two issues there.

Saving for a college fund is a choice. I know many people who got college degrees while working their way through. No loans. No debt. They just held a job, and paid for classes at the local university out of pocket. It's quite possible as long as you don't insist on going to an expensive school.

You're implying that without this one is doomed to a life of inadequacy. That's simply not true.

Um... Also, most jobs don't require a college degree. You don't need one to be successful, but it does help. The point is that it's about reward for behavior. If I put aside the money to try to improve my child's life, shouldn't my child benefit from that? If not, why? That seems incredibly unfair that the guy who puts away tens of thousands of dollars in a fund for his child's education gains no advantage over the guy who didn't. It comes back to eliminating incentives for productivity.


I know you want to live in a perfect world in which everyone can have everything, but we don't live in that world. And until we do, it seems as though the best way to determine how to divide up scares resources is based on productivity of the individual. The more you put into the pot, the more you get out. Makes sense, right? I can't think of a more fair way to do it. Can you?

I agree with the "lifelong debt to own a home", but that's kind of unavoidable, don't you think? There's a lot more people in relation to the amount of space people want to live in. Again. it's about dividing up scarce resources. It makes sense to do this based on productivity rather than any other method. So yeah, that means that people will spend a lot of money to own a home. Supply and demand though. I hear that homes are quite cheap in out of the way places...




You can't understand the desire to provide a better life for your child than you had yourself? Really? Cause that motivation seems kinda obvious...


I think when you've lived more life instead of just theorized about it, you might just understand it a bit better. I don't mean that as an insult, I just think that you're still young and have a lot to learn. We all do.

Those mean, mean Democrats! They've been tying Republicans to chairs and running the country themselves for years! Someone needs to get them under control, stat.

Do I still have that free premium? Because someone needs to roll their eyes here.

You do it ALL. THE. TIME. Why would you even point that out as a problem when it's not like "oh I occasionally do it" but it's essentially everything you post?

You are absurd.

Edited, Sep 14th 2009 10:06pm by CBD

I don't point to a third party who believes the same as I do when supporting the "facts" of my position.

That's the trend I was talking about. When I state a position, I back it up with a step by step explanation of my reasoning. Most people just point to some other source as though since they believe X to be true, it must be true.

You see the difference, right? Oh. Who am I kidding? Of course you don't. Most of the people on this board haven't had an original though enter their brains since they were 5, and wouldn't recognize one if their lives depended on it.

gbaji seems bitter these days.