Is libertarianism about liberty or tyranny?

If the government has little power, the corporations more or less provide checks and balances on each other through competition. The only time the government might need to regulate them is if a monopoly or trust develops.

If the government has a lot of power, then it has a monopoly on that power by definition. That's why I'd generally prefer to take my chances with corporations than government.

 

It's that they feel that the welfare system that was put in place during the "war on poverty" of Johnson was geared towards welfare being more long term,than short term.

So why are people claiming welfare long term?

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I also heard that people on welfare were penalized for saving money under the pre-reform welfare system. This would discourage people from doing something that would move them up. You need to be able to save money as part of an anti-poverty plan.

To save money don’t you need to have a surplus to save? If people are eligible for food stamps and need them to survive while being employed by Wal-Mart do think they have a surplus to save?

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The criticizm of pre-reform welfare was that it simply penalized a family just for having a man in the household. This they felt interfered with the incentive to create and maintain two parent households among the poor. It makes no sense to penalize two parent households.

In what way were people penalised and in what way?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balbus

So if the father can’t be found or is not earning enough to support the mother and child, the mother and child should starve? Should the child be forcefully taken from the mother in such circumstance?


That's a different situation.

So are you saying that in the case where the father can’t be found or is not earning enough to support the mother and child, welfare would be given?

 

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What things do you thing should be done to help people out of poverty?

In what way would the removal of state welfare help?

Would replacing state welfare with charity welfare help, if so why?

 

Here's some detail on that. It seems to be a little more about people being able to qualify for public assistance:



" In interviews with welfare families in the 1980s, sociologist Michael Sherraden came to believe a double standard was at work between society's haves and have-nots.

If someone had more than $1,000 in the bank, he wouldn't qualify for public assistance in most states. So while the poor were effectively penalized for saving money..."
http://gwbweb.wustl.edu/csd/Areas_Work/Asset_building/News_articles/401K.html

It's been pointed out that AFDC favored single-parent families over two parent families with the differences in benefits available for the two. AFDC benefits and food stamps are available to families headed by a female,but two-parent families could only get food stamps.

I'am not sure about how the current U.S welfare reforms has altered this with AFDC or being able to save money.

 

Actually I'am not against welfare for those who actually need it. I just think it should remove anything that has been shown to be counter-productive for poor people.

There are many examples of people who have moved from poverty to the middle-class. I think there needs to be a focus on expanding on the methods or approaches that have moved these people to the working and middle-class. I think a welfare program should include some sort of financial management program. People need to be shown how to manage the money that they do have,or will be earning after they are off welfare to reduce the numbers of people who would have to go back on welfare.

 

Ummmm. I'm gonna say... "Liberty" for $1000 please?
Answer: Based on the french word for FREE, this word, defines the United States.

Question: What is LIBERTY?
DINGDINGDING!!!!!!!!!!!! We have a WINNER!

 

Here's some info on some of the changes that came with the welfare reforms of 1996:


What did welfare reform do?

The AFDC program underwent a significant change under Republican-sponsored legislation in 1996 which was signed by President Clinton. States were given far greater latitude in designing their family welfare programs. As the new name implies, TANF can no longer be a lifelong program. All states are required to limit benefits after the expiration of a specified period of time. Under most state plans, all benefits will be terminated after five years. Each program requires virtually all adult participants to participate in work programs. If not working within two years, recipients must perform community service as a condition of receiving benefits.

What has been the effect of welfare reform?

In the short

http://www.newsbatch.com/welfare.htm

 

If libertarians were consistent and systematic, it might work, but maybe because libertarianism is just a tool for the rich elite, they have no intention of handling the question systematically or consistently. I'm being a bit polemic, forgive me, please! I think in social discussion, 'right' is a very useful term. We can have rights to somethings. freedom is also a good term. There is both positive and negative freedom. Freedom to do something and freedom to enjoy some absense of some things. The less we have laws and regulations, the more we have the positive freedoms, but the less we have the negative freedoms. For an example. If guns are allowed to citizens, it means less security, one kind of negative freedom. Or in some arab country the women have very few rights, but then again the men have a lot of liberties with their wives that men don't have in today's west. If we follow the libertarians, we get one quite carismatic society: the wild west. The freest country of the world. If someone has the money to hire enough gunmen it's no problem. But in today's international politics, we can see how it works. There is one country that has so much freedom that no other country can even dream about it. This country does whatever it wants. It wants to turn the whole world into one big Wild West. Whereever it looks, it creates chaos just by concentrating it's focus on that spot, and it's getting better and better at it. They take whatever they want and the others get poverty, hunger, diseases, no clean water(or even dirty sometimes). There are some liberties which demand us to create some rules to protect those liberties. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand, maybe they are just fooling around. Libertarianism is a true utopy like the global capitalism. They are the creation of some wild imagination. Although the imagination may have some hidden purposes. If you seriously study some social scienses, you quickly come to realize this.

 

personally i don't think the answer lies either with libertarianism or socialism. but if i had to pick one i'd certainly lean more to the left.


personally i think we should all live in happy sustainable eco-villages, have no need for currency, smoke pot, eat organic soy products, walk around barefoot and give each other massages. but, i will admit to being a bit of an idealist.

however, i do need pressed rat to check his messages and pm me, or sign into yahoo right now. it is urgent.

 

Motion

Your do not seem to be looking at the issue and you do not seem to be addressing my questions -

Is the idea that if someone had a choice between being homeless and starving or working they would work?

That welfare means that a person will have shelter and will not starve therefore they will not work?

So why does the removal of welfare mean such people would not live in poverty?

Do you believe that only the fear of starvation and homelessness will make people work and that they are the only things people want out of life?

If yes and welfare means people don’t starve and have shelter why aren’t there a lot more people claiming welfare?


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So why are people claiming welfare long term?

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To save money don’t you need to have a surplus to save? If people are eligible for food stamps and need them to survive while being employed by Wal-Mart do think they have a surplus to save?

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So are you saying that in the case where the father can’t be found or is not earning enough to support the mother and child, welfare would be given?

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I think a welfare program should include some sort of financial management program. People need to be shown how to manage the money that they do have, or will be earning after they are off welfare to reduce the numbers of people who would have to go back on welfare.

I would agree with you but that would involve education, training and welfare but in a libertarian system those things would be unavailable to many people. Education and training would only be for those that could afford it and welfare would be removed.

That has been my point.

 

Isn't that why most people work,to prevent homelesness and starvation? If jobs aren't available to provide work, then that needs to be address by business people and other experts.

Libertarians don't seem to be against feeding,clothing and sheltering people who need it. They just think that these things could be better supplied by non-government sources,such as charity and churches and other organizations.

It depends on the person. Many welfare recepiants are eager to work so they can eventually move off welfare. I recently read a thread on another forum where someone who worked in social services complained that she was tired of working for social services because according to her observation, she saw too many people who just wanted to "live off the system".

Does welfare end poverty? Government provided welfare is an aid to coping with poverty not an poverty remover itself. When it's all said and done, it's up to individuals to actually end the poverty in their lives,by determination,having a plan for themselves and their families,identifying the things that they need to change that's contributing to their situation and making changes where needed.

Well according to the U.S welfare reforms, welfare is no longer long term as it used to be before 1996. Welfare now is geared towards being short term.

I don't think the recent welfare reforms penalize recepiants or possible recepiants for savings as the old system did. I don't think all people on welfare are completely broke moneywise.

Well welfare was given either way. If a father was there, they got welfare,and if he was not earning enough, they got it,and if he wasn't there, they got welfare. The problem was that under the the old AFDC program, two-parent families didn't recieve the same benefits as single parent families. To many, this seemed to favor single-parent households. This was short-changing two-parent families in many people's opinions.

How have you deteremined that? Keep in mind that Libertarians vary with their views. Policies on this would vary depending on the Libertarian who's in office.

 

Motion

Ok I can see we need to go back to the basics.

We need to establish what you mean by libertarian policies, when you say that your answers to my questions depend on the type of libertarianism, it is obvious that I need to understand what you mean by libertarianism.

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Isn't that why most people work, to prevent homelesness and starvation?

But most people work for a lot more than just shelter and food. What the idea behind removing welfare seems to be is that if the state keeps people from being homeless and having money for food then they wouldn’t work. So I asked - if food and shelter were all what people wanted out of life and “welfare means people don’t starve and have shelter why aren’t there a lot more people claiming welfare?”

That leads to the question of how replacing state welfare by charity would make a difference to people poverty.-

Libertarians don't seem to be against feeding,clothing and sheltering people who need it. They just think that these things could be better supplied by non-government sources,such as charity and churches and other organizations.

There seems to be a contradiction here in your thinking.

Are you saying that people that wouldn’t work when they got state welfare will work if they get charity welfare?

But then you go on to say that

Government provided welfare is an aid to coping with poverty not an poverty remover itself. When it's all said and done, it's up to individuals to actually end the poverty in their lives,by determination,having a plan for themselves and their families,identifying the things that they need to change that's contributing to their situation and making changes where needed.

This would seem to imply that welfare had nothing to do with people working or not.

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So what is it does the removal of welfare get people working or not and if it does why replace it with an equal amount of charity?

And if welfare doesn’t have anything to do with people getting out of poverty what are the libertarian policies that would?

 

Here's a Libertarian site. It has a disscussion forum. Some there could give you info on what you want to know about them,and how their views on various things may vary.

http://www.libertarianthought.com/

 

libertarianism is the ultimate utopian dreamland... and unlike communism its never worked -- not even on a small scale... yes, in this land corporations are free to do what they will... how do we stop them from enslaving us and turning us into pawns for their profits -- more so than we already are --? Easy... they wont! because... well... they havent really figured that part out yet... they just wont!

and like socialism it uses the same political agenda to get people to support it... eliminate drug laws and other victimless crimes, ending wars and such...

The corporations that run america would love for libertarianism to sweep the united states... less taxes for them, more profits... and no government involvement or minimum wage to stop their corporations from using child labor... what a dreamland!

And you know you can trust the libertarian party... cause they arent like every single other party -- when they have power things will just be perfect... a libertarian president wont be corrupt like everyone else!!!

Vote libertarian, so I can get rich while my workers starve!

 

i actually don't really know all of their stances on issues. i went onto their website, but i didn't really understand everything. i don't really understand everything about the economy. it is confusing to me. the taxes, wages, stock market, it's all confusing to me.

 

that's how I see it.

 

Libertarianism is all about liberty (obviously), emphasizing the inherent freedoms of the individual over the powers and control of governments.

 

Musicman77

Prove it.

All I can see is a right wing doctrine that would inevitably give more power and influence to wealth.

 

Something that is worth pointing out is the term "libertarianism" has somewhat a different meaning in America than what it does in Europe and the rest of the world. It's the same sort of distortion of the word "liberal" as seen in the US.

Libertarianism originally meant anarchism, but not anarcho-capitalism. Rather libertarianism originally applied to individual freedom as defined by socialist anarchism.

I'm sure many of you have heard of the term "libertarian socialism". I would consider myself one. Libertarian socialism is the original libertarianism. Socialism (equality) cannot work without libertarianism (freedom); this is why all the statist regimes claiming to be marxist failed.

Now as for the american usage of the term "libertarianism", I think many american "libertarians" are devoted to individual freedom more than anything else. At least to an extent, depending on the person. Many libertarians that I talk to do see the privileges corporations and big business get as unnecessary and should be abolished. I guess my main issue with american libertarians is that they seem to care less about corporate exploitation, even if they are actually oppose to it. And obviously some libertarians defend corporations....these sort of libertarians I'de like to call vulgar libertarians or pseudo-libertarians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wriQGI5NGOM"]YouTube- Noam Chomsky - Libertarian Socialism Contradicting terms

 

The thing is that very few people use the term "libertarianism" in Europe (or at least not in any of the places I’ve been in and I’ve travelled most of Europe), you just don’t get people declaring they’re libertarians the way many Americans seem to do.

And so this particular political ‘philosophy’ doesn’t really appear on the European political radar as it does in the US. I’ve commented on this before and my tentative conclusion was that as a ‘philosophy’ it seemed to get an exceptionally easy ride in the US.

I mean it seems common for ‘libertarians’ to declare that they are neither of the left or right, yet when their views are examined many turn out to be definitely of the right not of the conservatively repressive or religious right of America but definitely of the US right. But if often seems to me that people in the US accept the assertion that ‘libertarianism’ is some kind of third way without question.

And the think is that when challenged virtually all self confessed ‘libertarians’ seem unable to defend the ideas they claim to believe in.