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

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Fuck off Indi, I hope the villagers eat you for lunch

 

Well, stick around then and don't complain if your blood pressure rises.

 

Several trillion spent on war and poverty still unaffected. Do the middle class and the poor have ANY say in ANYTHING that takes place within this or any other government? Middle class and poor start the wars? Middle class and poor fuck the world economy up? There's some suck-ass motherfuckers around here.

 

We were talking about spending on welfare and its affect/effect on poverty. War is another subject entirely. Only government has the power to take us to war, but each individual should assume some personal responsibility for his/her poverty.

 

OK. What do you propose be done about it?

 

Personally, I don't believe poverty will ever be eliminated in a world where the population is continually increasing, and about the best that can be achieved is a reduction of the effects of poverty. The most immediate need is to reduce unemployment, and the only thing government can or should do in that area is create an environment which induces those who can employ people to do so.
The solution is not an easy one, and will require each individual to assume more responsibility for their own life and to reduce their dependency on government to provide their needs when times are hard. Compassion for others is a human emotion, and government, like corporations as most on the Left like to say, are not persons.

 

The best thing that can be done for poverty is to create an environment that gives the maximum amount of incentive for people to produce. The ONLY way wealth is created is through production (this means work), and also innovation that improves the means of production. Any policy that removes people's incentive to produce and innovate cannot be good for people in poverty. Which is exactly what welfare programs do at all ends of the spectrum. Both imposing heavy taxes on people's success, and also subsidizing people's lack of success via handouts.

You can't really blame rek for taking advantage of government assistance, in a society permeated with government intervention. People will always do whats in their best interests. If I can live even remotely as comfortable sitting at home doing nothing, than I can if I entered the work force, of course I'm going to sit at home. I don't blame welfare dependents for not working. I blame the bad policy that gives them the incentive not to work. Also, in the case of student loans. Tuition prices have increased something like 3 times greater than the rate of inflation, and it's because the government started subsidizing it with their student loan program. Rising tuition prices mean that more and more people are becoming dependent on the government handouts that are causing tuition prices to rise in the first place. Once again, I don't blame the recipients of these government loans, I blame the policy that doles them out. It'd be moronic for a person whose eligible for something free to not take advantage of it.

 

So you mean create decent jobs for everyone, including those on welfare? How do you think that could be done?

 

So you mean create decent jobs for everyone, including those on welfare? How do you think that could be done?

By creatring the environment for businesses to get up and running cut the cost of regulations not the regulations themselves but make it possible for mom and pop to be able to afford or keep their doors open. Mom and Pop has been loosing big time and it has meant a lot of job loss. Big Corpo lobbyist have been writing the legislation to take out the small business competition it is unfair as hell.

 

Lowering taxes and weening people off hand outs. Also, removing all the hoops people have to jump through to start and run businesses, which means removing regulations, licensure laws, and business taxes. I'm not sure if you have any experience trying to start a business, but there are quite a few requirements that must be met in almost any industry. These laws offer little to no protection for consumers, and do nothing but discourage people from starting businesses (which could potentially create jobs). I don't need a government agency to help me decide what is "safe" and what is a quality product. It's my belief that humans are perfectly capable of making good decisions in the absence of some "wise" government overseer. Basically, it's my belief that jobs and work is readily available to anyone who wants to do it, we just need to give them the incentives to do that work and create those jobs. Which means shrinking the burden that government places on society. This includes wars, taxes, regulations, welfare programs, etc.

 

But I think we shouldn't really be aiming at "descent" jobs for everyone. I think we should be aiming at a system that pays each worker according to the amount he or she contributes (based on their skills and work ethic). It's this exact system that gives everyone the greatest incentive to contribute to the best of their abilities.

So what about the people not physically or mentally capable of contributing anything? There have always been private charities and organizations that take care of such people. Prior to all this welfare, there weren't throngs of disabled and crazy people starving in the streets. I don't think humanity is so vile that we require government force in order to take care of our weakest members. And if we did, I wouldn't consider any of humanity worth taking care of anyway.

The fact is, we made the greatest strides in lessening poverty when the level of government involvement in people's lives was also the least. So regardless of whether you believe in welfare programs or not, there has to be a point where you ask yourself whether or not it's working. Do a cost / benefit analysis. Have these programs been a success? Have they been worth the resources we've poured into them?

 

I know I've mentioned this before, maybe in this thread, maybe in another, but my point never seems to get across. Just because someone says that the welfare system is corrupt and needs reform, that there are people abusing the system, doesn't mean that they are against the poor or want to eliminate the safety net. I am all for a safety net....I just dont want to see it used as a safety hammock.

RJ, although I'm sure you see your use of the word "con" as clever wordplay, your beef should lie with the Republican party. In which very few could legitametly be called conservative

 

Rak

So lets see you are getting a scholarship presumably to learn something are you saying you are not doing that – why are you not doing that?

Are you saying that other in your family are receiving unemployment assistance but are not looking for work if so – why are they not looking for work?

Are you claiming that even if offered a job with a living wage and with the prospects of improving you life you and these others would refuse to take it – if so why?

 

Oh for hells sake Indie once again you repeat but don’t address the many criticisms of your ideas.

You don’t cause blood pressure to rise you merely induce boredom…you just repeat like an programmed machine that cannot seemingly think for itself, the only excitement you could cause would be if you suddenly began debating in anything like an honest manner.

 

YoMama

Then why do you want to increase their power and influence.

 

Wrong

You seem to be shaping up to be another Indie clone that just refuses to address criticisms of the flawed ideas you rhetorically proclaim are the truth and the light.

The problem is it is the same old and tired right wing, neoliberal gibberish that has hundreds of criticism outstanding against it that so far no supporter of it has been able to address let alone refute.

Sit at home and do nothing?

What do you define as ‘comfortable’?

Are you claiming that even if offered a job with a living wage and with the prospects of improving you life you and would refuse to take it – if so why?

 

What does it take to get people to look at the numbers. a debt interest payment that exceeds the GDP?
Government is spending money it does not have, and reducing military spending only to increase spending on another program does nothing to resolve the spending problem, especially when it is used to increase entitlement spending or welfare spending.
While decreasing the deficit sounds good, only the elimination of deficit spending along with decreasing the debt owed will make a difference for future generations.

 

Maybe I've missed a post, but it would appear that the impetus is to reduce the power of the Federal government over which wealth can exercise its influence.

 

I am learning things, but the reason why I study is because I want the scholarship money and not because I think I can learn much at University that I cannot teach myself or that I am not teaching myself through my own damn research.

Those in my family who are receiving state money mostly are not looking for work. Much of the jobs that are being offered are jobs that involve selling things of a low quality and that are not in demand or jobs that involve dangerously tough physical labour for little of no pay. The third alternytive to those carcenogenic low pay slave jobs is to get double or tripple the amount of money you get for working in such shit jobs by getting money for free.

Nobody would refuse the opportunity to get decent work and a decent pay, but in most cases that is not the way the world works. In a free market economy that hardly legally restricts employers, they will pay you as little as possible or no money at all if they can get away with justifying not giving you a work contract.

The result of this is that many employers will overwork you for such a shitty hourly wage that on some days you will hardly be able to afford to buy a decent meal, let a lone pay your bills(Unless you get one or two more jobs).

That makes free state money an almost irrisistable alternative that will become more irrisistable as I read that politicians still try to improve the economy by placeing less and less restrictions on company policies that will just make it easier for them to underpay and overwork the workers; hence making unemployment more desirable if not neccessesary to most people in society.