Almalieque wrote:
My argument was that welfare is no different than other financial interactions that we experience in life.
So is mine. That's why I repeatedly compared the choice to work the minimum amount required to receive welfare benefits rather than working to increase real earnings to the choice to buy the half off t-shirt rather than the one not on sale. When you affect the reward/effort equation, you will change the rate at which people make different choices. And in the case of welfare, the change is that more people will choose to remain on welfare rather than expend the effort to earn a higher wage on their own.
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You've misconstrued into a circular argument.
No. I've actually applied the financial rules that work everywhere else. You, on the other hand want to believe in this magical case where welfare does not influence people's choices. And you defend this by repeatedly insisting that people only stay on welfare if they choose to, so it's still their choice, so nothing bad is happening. I think that's circular. You're ignoring the fact that the mere existence of welfare benefits affects people's choices, in the same way that the existence of a sale affects what people will buy. You can't just hand wave that away.
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Furthermore, I've said that it provides the opportunity to not worry about paying for the necessities which opens way for education and training. So when your interpretation of my argument is "yea, but look over here at these other problems", you are indeed arguing a strawman.
No. I've directly responded to your argument several times. The problem is that bit above that you keep ignoring. That welfare influences people's choices. The number of people who might otherwise have chosen to work harder/smarter/whatever and improve their real earnings but do not because of welfare is much higher than the number of people who were able to use welfare to pursue education and training and improve their lives
who would otherwise not have been able to do this. We have to look at the relative deltas. Welfare causes a net decrease in
real economic prosperity. It attempts to make up for this with
false prosperity in the form of the benefits themselves.
Which would be fine if the only factor involved was whether someone could afford to put food on the table. But what we find is that there's a massive sociological effect based the difference between "real" and "false" prosperity. It's that difference that affects statistics like why blacks are so much more likely to be on the wrong end of police activities than whites.
And, of course, the recipient of the "false" prosperity has a much steeper hill to clime to get to "real" prosperity as well. As I stated earlier, someone who actually earns 30k/year is much better off than someone earning $10k/year with $20k/year in benefits. Both may live at the same level economically, but the latter person has to increase his earnings by $20k/year before he sees any increase in outcome. The person earning $30k in
real income gains a dollar of prosperity for every dollar he increases his earnings from that point on. That creates an absolutely massive difference in reward to effort ratio for those two people.
There's just a huge list of negatives to welfare and not much positives except the assumption that without it, maybe people would starve or something. And yet, people weren't starving before Johnson's "Great Society". We managed to find ways to help the truly needy without creating a gigantic government safety net. It's been a disastrous social experiment IMO. And yes, it's most negatively impacted people of color, which is why I find it ironic that you're so steadfastly defending it. I'm honestly not sure if this is because you refuse to believe that it's negative, or if you just don't want to admit that the party you've aligned yourself with may have been involved in one of the greatest negative socio-economic impacts to blacks in this country since segregation.
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I provided reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, as opposed to simply against Republicans.
And as I quite clearly stated (with quotes of you as well), you did so by talking about positions you oppose, not ones you support. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can state this. What's funny is that this is a kind of subtle word difference, but it's very noticeable once you start looking for it. And it's amazing how often liberal positions are defined not by what they are "for", but what they are "against". As I have said many times in the past (and will probably repeat many times in the future), it's much much easier to get people to agree on what they don't want, than to get them to agree on what they want.
Which is precisely why the Left defines themselves this way. Which is ironic given that their platform is all about "change" and "progress". You'd think, if you are proposing some new change, that you should have to justify that change by showing that it's "better" than the status quo. But nearly always, the left simply points to the flaws of said status quo and then calls for "change" or "reform", absent any details of what that entails. Then, once they've got enough people clamoring for something new and win some political power, they are free to enact the change they want. Which, most of the time, isn't what people would have supported if they'd started out by saying what they wanted to do. The ACA is a great example of this btw. Generic "health care reform" polled at somewhere around 80% back in 2008. But the ACA itself has consistently polled at 55-60% in opposition. That's a pretty big gap, right? How'd we get a law in place that the majority opposed? Because they weren't voting *for* that law. They were voting *against* the status quo.
Again, that's why the Left does it this way. It's about tricking people into supporting an agenda they would not support otherwise.
Alma wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
The part you keep balking at is when I point to welfare as a major contributing factor to the initial difference (poverty rates between black and white). But that's you refusing to even consider that your chosen party might not actually be "good for blacks" as you assume. Cart before the horse though.
Two party system. We're going in circles. As I said pages ago, it's the lesser of two evils. You're arguing a fallacy that since the Democratic policies aren't "good" for blacks, then Republican policies must be "good or better" for blacks. The reality can be and often is, that neither are good. Look at how HRC is now arguing against her own prison policies.
Ok. But I'm asking why blacks vote so overwhelmingly Democrat. You can say "lesser of two evils", but are you actually assessing the relative "evil" here? As I pointed out earlier, all you seem to do is point to things you don't like about the GOP, but not so much what you like about the Dems (or dislike about the Dems and like about the GOP). There's a whole slew of issues out there, all of which should weigh in any rational pro/con decision, but you're basically saying "the GOP is bad for blacks on this small list of issues, so blacks vote Democrat".
I just think that's a poor way to make a decision like this.
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The more Democratic you behave, the more likely you will attract Democrats and not Republicans. Since more blacks tend to vote Democrat, the more likely you will attract black voters. That statement has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Republican policies are good or bad for blacks. It has nothing to do with blacks needing to be liberal.
Except that you're assuming that "blacks tend to vote Democratic" is some natural state of being that can't change. I keep telling you that this is circular. Why don't blacks tend to vote Republican? If your answer is "because blacks tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans aren't Democratic enough", then your answer is completely meaningless (and circular). And that's what it looks like you just said.
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You can literally replace the word "black" with any other voting group that is factual and it would be just as true. This statement is to disprove your claim that there is no correlation.
Except that no other group votes in such lockstep with one party along racial lines. Which is the whole point I'm trying to make. Why do blacks "tend to vote Democratic"?
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Are you going to tell me that you didn't skip my entire explanation of this? I'm the one telling you that you don't understand what an Uncle Tom is.
I'm telling you that I honestly don't recall you ever explaining what you think an Uncle Tom is and I'm not going to read through 17 pages of this thread to try to find it. And I'm asking you to write this explanation down so that we're not playing this stupid game of "What do you mean?" "I already told you!".
I've been very clear about what Uncle Tom means and how it is used to apply pressure to black people to comply with a social ideology. If you think I'm wrong, how about actually providing a counter argument? Wouldn't that be shocking!
Edited, May 5th 2015 5:46pm by gbaji