I know this is about to be sub-defaulted but I couldn't resist.
Link
This is a fantastic article that explains what the last few decades of Liberalism has done to this country.
Welfare and other huge Govn Social programs have created an entire generation of people who have no concept of self reliance. They have been raised to believe that it's the person who has more than them is the reason their lives are "horrible"
The Democratic Party has transformed these people into a huge reliable voter base. They have used them to push their agenda. Liberal politicians have told these same people with cable television, cars and cell phones who collect welfare checks for years that if you vote for me I will punish those people who have more than you.
The American self reliance has been destroyed.
Edited, Oct 22nd 2009 10:15pm by ThiefX
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The Heritage Foundation produced a study saying that liberals are destroying America?
They didn't have a CBO report this week to try to dispute?
They didn't have a CBO report this week to try to dispute?
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
And here I thought, escalators were completely at fault. Thanks for opening my eyes Thiefx.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
ThiefX wrote:
Welfare and other huge Govn Social programs have created an entire generation of people who have no concept of self reliance. They have been raised to believe that it's the person who has more than them is the reason their lives are "horrible"
See, you could make such an interesting and (very, very, very, very mildly) intelligent point if you didn't have to be so damn dramatic about everything.
Example 1:
Good! - "Ow! I stubbed my toe. :("
Bad! - "OH MY FUCKING GOD I STUBBED MY GOD DAMNED TOE THIS IS THE WORST TRAUMA I HAVE EVER BEEN THROUGH IN MY LIFE IT'S ALL OVER FROM HERE ON OUT."
Example 2:
Good! - "I am not a fan of eating cow brains."
Bad! - "No one eats cow brains because it's so disgusting!"
It's your turn! Let me know exactly what it is you want me to understand from this article, and I will happily stop what I am doing and read it. :D
Glancing at the "report", let me be the first to say that I actually laughed at loud at what data the Heritage Foundation was using to make its points regarding levels of housing, nutrition, consumer goods ownerships and property size.
United States Census data.
United States Census data.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
I do not trust the Heritage Foundation any more than ThiefX trusts the CDC.
Well, you are technically destroying society as we know it with your evil liberal ways
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Quote:
Welfare and other huge Govn Social programs have created an entire generation of people who have no concept of self reliance. They have been raised to believe that it's the person who has more than them is the reason their lives are "horrible"
You are not a psychologist. I can't think of anyone I know who does economics who is also interested in psychology. It's hard to even imagine someone studying and applying both as an expert, and according to the link you provided, this Rector chap is also totally ignorant in terms of understanding the psychological landscape of loads of people.
Quite frankly, a charitable reading of this paper doesn't even support your inference. He lists parental work as one important factor for eliminating poverty, (as well as marriage) and makes a few comments about the encouragement of idle behavior among current welfare systems, but I'm going to be really nice to him and ignore them. The paper itself has some decent and properly conservative ideas, and more than half of it is non-judgmental anyway, preferring to simply examine how destitute the "poor" actually are.
You though? Christ. No one would actually object to the notion of using work as a carrot for getting people out of poverty; political change is often, after all, pragmatic. It is ludicrous, however, to insist that the ruination of the country is nigh due to a projected entitlement complex, or the dissolution of "self-reliance" which you have invented to account for the causes of poverty, because you aren't capable of thinking with complexity or even just agnosticism. To take from the prescription that the poor need to work for a government benefit and abstract that the cause of it all was some Liberalism which exists purely for you to vilify does a disservice to the paper you linked.
Edited, Oct 22nd 2009 10:35pm by Pensive
Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
I can't think of anyone I know who does economics who is also interested in psychology. It's hard to even imagine someone studying and applying both as an expert
To some extent, a good social scientist, interested in the impact of poverty should have a good understanding of both economics and psychology. I know in my program, I have to take courses on both.
Turin wrote:
Seriously, what the f*ck nature?
Quote:
Quote:
I can't think of anyone I know who does economics who is also interested in psychology. It's hard to even imagine someone studying and applying both as an expert
Eh, I could imagine someone doing so. The problem is that you'd also want to be an expert in certain areas of mathematics as well for the full combination to be useful, and at that point you're too intelligent to exist among humanity, so nobody will ever hear of you unless they read academic journals on economics (which will get the one work you produce shortly after you die, alone and nibbled on by your pet cats).
Or you know, you'd abuse the stock market, because that's all about using economics and psychology effectively.
Just as Planned.
Annabella, Goblin in Disguise wrote:
To some extent, a good social scientist, interested in the impact of poverty should have a good understanding of both economics and psychology. I know in my program, I have to take courses on both.
CBD wrote:
Example 1:
Good! - "Ow! I stubbed my toe. :("
Bad! - "OH MY FUCKING GOD I STUBBED MY GOD DAMNED TOE THIS IS THE WORST TRAUMA I HAVE EVER BEEN THROUGH IN MY LIFE IT'S ALL OVER FROM HERE ON OUT."
Good! - "Ow! I stubbed my toe. :("
Bad! - "OH MY FUCKING GOD I STUBBED MY GOD DAMNED TOE THIS IS THE WORST TRAUMA I HAVE EVER BEEN THROUGH IN MY LIFE IT'S ALL OVER FROM HERE ON OUT."
Obviously, you've never stubbed your toe hard enough to realize that yelling to the top of your lungs isn't an exaggeration and your life is actually all over from that point forward.
Here's the paper in a nutshell:
Poor folk in the US aren't as poor as poor folk in Zaire so they ain't really poor.
The folk who are poor are poor 'cause of they're lazy or single parents or immigrants
Welfare is makin' them folks lazy and single. Lack of a giant laser wall is lettin' in immigrants
Democrats are for welfare and won't let us build a giant laser wall
Poor folk is all the Democrats fault.
There's some really bizarre stuff to it such as comparing the size of an average poor folks home in the US to an apartment in London or Paris as opposed to, say, a home in England or France. Or acting as though it's noteworthy that most poor people own a VCR or DVD player given that VCRs are so obsolete the Goodwill won't take them as donations any longer. Or acting as though cell phone ownership is important despite the popularity of pay-per-minute plans which allow you to drop the monthly charge of a landline. Basically stuff to make it sound like them poor folk really got it pretty sweet. Not that there's no points to be made of it all but they're so interested in forcing the point that they make some really stupid comparisons that don't hold up to scrutiny.
Poor folk in the US aren't as poor as poor folk in Zaire so they ain't really poor. The folk who are poor are poor 'cause of they're lazy or single parents or immigrants Welfare is makin' them folks lazy and single. Lack of a giant laser wall is lettin' in immigrants Democrats are for welfare and won't let us build a giant laser wall Poor folk is all the Democrats fault. There's some really bizarre stuff to it such as comparing the size of an average poor folks home in the US to an apartment in London or Paris as opposed to, say, a home in England or France. Or acting as though it's noteworthy that most poor people own a VCR or DVD player given that VCRs are so obsolete the Goodwill won't take them as donations any longer. Or acting as though cell phone ownership is important despite the popularity of pay-per-minute plans which allow you to drop the monthly charge of a landline. Basically stuff to make it sound like them poor folk really got it pretty sweet. Not that there's no points to be made of it all but they're so interested in forcing the point that they make some really stupid comparisons that don't hold up to scrutiny.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
It's funny how republicans idealize Eisenhower's America, not realizing that back then the top rate was 91% taxation as opposed to our 35%. During Richard Nixon's administrations, it was 70%. As far as "self-sufficiency" not being rewarded and all these new poor people being created, I think the rich white nativists at the 19th century pretty much said the same thing even though there wasn't any welfare state to speak of then. They analyzed it as much as it sounds some of the right wing critics have.
Turin wrote:
Seriously, what the f*ck nature?
Quote:
It's funny how republicans idealize Eisenhower's America, not realizing that back then the top rate was 91% taxation as opposed to our 35%. During Richard Nixon's administrations, it was 70%. As far as "self-sufficiency" not being rewarded and all these new poor people being created, I think the rich white nativists at the 19th century pretty much said the same thing even though there wasn't any welfare state to speak of then. They analyzed it as much as it sounds some of the right wing critics have.
The current effective highest tax bracket is less than 35% (Based on '09 data)
Just as Planned.
Quote:
Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of houseÂholds equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.
Yeah. Poverty. Middle class in the 70s is poor by today's standards, but hey, liberals are making everything worse, right?
Quote:
Crowding is quite rare; only 2.4 percent of all households and 5.6 percent of poor households are crowded with more than one person per room.[12] By contrast, social reformer Jacob Riis, writing on tenÂement living conditions around 1890 in New York City, described crowded families living with four or five persons per room and some 20 square feet of living space per person
That's pretty good, poor folks today are less poor than poor folks in 1890. Glad to see the last 120 years were useful for something.
I have to agree that the overall impression I got from this report is that welfare is working pretty well in making the poor less poor.
Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
It is ludicrous, however, to insist that the ruination of the country is nigh due to a projected entitlement complex, or the dissolution of "self-reliance" ...blah blah diatribe...
Why is it ludicrous? You dismiss the idea without apparently bothering to spend even a moment thinking about it. I'd also lose the hyperbole. It's not about whether there's "ruination" going on, but the effect entitlement and poverty play in the political arena. And in that context, it's not only not ludicrous, but it's quite reasonable to expect that if you can get people hooked on government benefits, they'll be under strong incentive to support the politicians and platforms which continue to maintain or even increase those entitlements.
And, once you understand that pretty obvious truth, it's not a stretch to accept that perhaps a political party might seek this out as a means to power. The process goes beyond just party politics, but it absolutely starts there.
I guess I just have to ask. Why do you assume this is ludicrous? You don't need a degree is psychology to understand that a poor person will vote for the guy who's going to give him food and shelter in a way that someone who is not poor will not. The motivation to make people poor (or at least make them think they are poor) for a political organization would seem to be pretty clear. Are you just unable to see this? Or is there some other reason you refuse to even consider the possibility?
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
gbaji wrote:
I guess I just have to ask. Why do you assume this is ludicrous? You don't need a degree is psychology to understand that a poor person will vote for the guy who's going to give him food and shelter in a way that someone who is not poor will not. The motivation to make people poor (or at least make them think they are poor) for a political organization would seem to be pretty clear. Are you just unable to see this? Or is there some other reason you refuse to even consider the possibility?
You sound more and more like Andrew Ryan every day.
Quote:
It's funny how republicans idealize Eisenhower's America, not realizing that back then the top rate was 91% taxation as opposed to our 35%. During Richard Nixon's administrations, it was 70%. As far as "self-sufficiency" not being rewarded and all these new poor people being created, I think the rich white nativists at the 19th century pretty much said the same thing even though there wasn't any welfare state to speak of then. They analyzed it as much as it sounds some of the right wing critics have.
Fuck, the taxation rate of the top 1% was 50% when Reagen was in office & back then said top 1% controlled 8% of the total wealth in the country.
Now they control 25% & Obama's a commie for raising their tax rates to 36%ish.
"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
gbaji wrote:
I'd also lose the hyperbole.
Like "a doublewide trailer in the backwoods of West Virginia is bigger than a Paris studio apartment so the guy in WV isn't really poor. Also, he might have a VCR from 1993"?
Maybe you should take your hyperbole complaints to the Heritage Foundation
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
ThiefX wrote:
The Democratic Party has transformed these people into a huge reliable voter base. They have used them to push their agenda. Liberal politicians have told these same people with cable television, cars and cell phones who collect welfare checks for years that if you vote for me I will punish those people who have more than you.
The American self reliance has been destroyed.
The article you linked seems to want to point out that 'the poor' in america are living rather comfortably versus starving, cold and ignorant. Seems to me that is the goal of welfare. I'm very happy to see that, according to teh chart #1, 99% of the poor people have fridges.
Alma wrote:
I lost my post
Quote:
I'd also lose the hyperbole.
The one that's explicitly and implicitly espoused by you every week, and actually explicitly espoused by the OP?
Quote:
You dismiss the idea without apparently bothering to spend even a moment thinking about it.
Te one that I've thought about many times in the past when refuting your total bullsh*t, and will think about many more times in my life as a consequence of breathing?
Quote:
And, once you understand that pretty obvious truth
The one that you assume is true for the purpose of scaring or manipulating people into agreement? The truth that you, gbaji, can do nothing but intuit as a function of your genius, which often contradicts inductive science?
Shut up.
Edited, Oct 23rd 2009 9:18am by Pensive
Quote:
I guess I just have to ask. Why do you assume this is ludicrous? You don't need a degree is psychology to understand that a poor person will vote for the guy who's going to give him food and shelter in a way that someone who is not poor will not. The motivation to make people poor (or at least make them think they are poor) for a political organization would seem to be pretty clear. Are you just unable to see this? Or is there some other reason you refuse to even consider the possibility?
So you're saying that people shouldn't vote for their self interest? And that since the GOP isn't basing it's decisions on the interests of that political base it should still be entitled to support from them?
What you're effectively saying here is that a political affiliations should not target a group of people not being catered to by other groups? C'mon, it's just like free market competition.
Just as Planned.
Poor people in America are rich compared to the rest of the world.
What this article means to me (ignoring the obvious slanted data) is that we need to set aside more for foreign aid.
What this article means to me (ignoring the obvious slanted data) is that we need to set aside more for foreign aid.
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