Study: More Than Half a Trillion Dollars Spent on Welfare But Poverty Levels Unaffect

Exactly what is it about my 'ideas' that you feel I need to defend? Perhaps the problem is more related to how you and I differ in our definitions of what is rational and reasonable?

Recognize also that I had finished school prior to your birth, and was educated in the U.S., not Great Britain, and considering what I see from younger Americans, the emphasis on how history is currently taught is much different than when I was schooled, although the subjects that mattered most in finding gainful employment served me quite well in the world of rapidly developing technology even before I went to college, which I found valuable but had no positive effect on my income earning ability.

Would you prefer some order of civilized conversation with intent to either reach a consensus in some areas or at least understand where and why we can not, or would you prefer to have me post evasionary tactic numbers?

 

Bal:

The ideas I promote are based upon experience gained from putting them to use over my working life, as well as the last couple of decades in retirement, and had they not worked very effectively I would refrain from promoting them. So while you may criticize them, I will continue to both use and promote them as long as they continue to work.

How could I better defend your criticisms when you are not privy to the results I obtain?

 

Oh good I was waiting for the entitled poor little rich boy pity party were we bemoan that our HARD EARNED CASH is going to DIRTY POOR PEOPLE. None of this is relevant to the fact that there's no evidence decreasing welfare to nothing is going to do any good.

 

If its not the majority, how is it relevant to our argument?

I don't know what the factors are. I'm assuming lack of opportunity, skills and competences are probably a fair bit of it.

Of course there's some people who could use a little motivation. You say you haven't implied that all people need to be motivated to work... So why are you suggesting all people should have their welfare taken down to nothing to, in your words, motivate them to work?

 

Well, if the government could do that all along, why not! Go for it! Hell I was only thinking that a government has a duty to provide a safety net to prevent citizens from needless suffering, thereby maintaining health standards, keeping people out of crime and generally using their power for good not evil. But since you've found the solution to utopia you'd better email Obama, pronto!

 

Also, have you got any evidence yet? I'd love to see some, you did offer to provide some.

 

So only the rich pay taxes?

You might admit that there is also no evidence that gradually decreasing welfare would NOT do any good. Although even the Democrats seem to take credit whenever possible for the good results of the 1996 welfare reform act which Clinton eventually signed into law. So there is after all some evidence if you can bring yourself to accept it.

 

Read my previous post.

And a quick google found the following sourced from the Department of Health and Human Services:

Welfare families August 1996 = 4.4 million ... June 2005 = 1.9 million a 57% decline
Welfare recipients August 1996 = 12.2 million ... June 2005 = 4.5 million a 64% decline

 

So it's all or nothing? If poverty could only be reduced by 10% then it would be a waste of time?

Those factors among many others, but who is in the best position to obtain that knowledge?

A gradual reduction over time would allow private charities to pick up the slack and make more rational decisions on how to best provide assistance to those who are truly in need, and provide it.

 

Don't need to email Obama, the Fed has already begun QE3, at a cost of $40 billion per month going forward with no defined end in sight. So don't complain when the rich become even richer and the wealth disparity between rich and the poor and middle classes grows much greater.

 

Oh Indie – we have been through this many, many times before, claiming some supposed (but always strangely self serving) experience as ‘proof’ that backs up your ideas is not rational or reasonable evidence or argument – basically you are saying you are right because you think you are right - the problem with that is that is still leaves all those outstanding criticisms outstanding and if you can’t actually address them then they’d seem to have validity.

 

Bal,

As an individual I can only work with the facts I can reliably reproduce myself. Until put into practice on a larger scale you can relentlessly criticize them without proving them wrong. So until such time they are tried on a larger scale I see no point in trying to satisfy your, in my opinion, unfounded criticisms.

Note: This is an example of where the 10th amendment of our (the U.S.) Constitution
has great relevance in how our government used to be able to solve such problems without endangering the Nation as a whole.


I'm sure if you lived in the 15th century you would have been one of those who unfalteringly accepted as fact that the Earth was flat, and only fools would venture a course at sea towards the horizon where they would most certainly fall off.

 

Haha, ok very good, now we're onto the negative evidence.

There's no evidence that cooking and eating children won't solve the economy either. Maybe we should try that. There's also no evidence that buying every citizen a new car won't fix the economy. Let's do that too.


You seem to think you'll get a reaction by targeting the darlings of the left as though I'm going to be especially partisan, but I'm not. Anyway like I said, the 1996 bill did not aim to begin reducing welfare in order to eliminate it, so it cannot be held as evidence that doing so is effective.

 

Link me?

 

Your 'solution' is based on motivating people into the workforce.

If this isn't what most people need, how can it work?

 

I'm not familiar with QE3. Explain?

 

So other than a bill from 1996 that does something different from what your suggesting, and that there's no negative proof (check out the 9-11 conspiracy thread for more on that particular technique) do you have any evidence from actual application of your ideas or economic thinkers.

Protip; if yes share it. If no, don't keep saying yes.

 

You just said, for all intents and purposes, that people can't work together, because we're all individuals, and furthermore, that you're too much of an individual to learn.

No man is an island, Without outside influence, you couldn't come up with the technology to knapp flint, much less talk on the internet. Get over yourself. There is no "self made man" -- you're just arguing that people who are NOT you should have to make things that they can't, while you reap the benefits.

 

The creation date and source of each link varies, but trend they display is a positive one.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...m0PZ3u&sig=AHIEtbTh4rIFFrxOxa4UBaKksggDEUWVsQ

http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2001/09/20welfare-haskins

http://heartland.org/policy-documen...-after-ten-years-state-state-analysis-summary

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/02/the-continuing-good-news

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-17-welfare-reform-cover_x.htm

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/federalbenefitprograms/a/welfarereform.htm

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ksgpress/bulletin/autumn2002/features/welfare.html

 

How ridiculous.

Are you not being especially partisan? The 1996 Welfare Reform Act seems to quite positively show that by allowing States to limit the time benefits could be obtained (essentially eliminating them after a period of time) did indeed motivate many people to take a personal interest in becoming responsible for their own lives. One of the links I provided shares stories from several persons who were previously welfare recipients, and no longer are.