Taxes!

[Osteomata]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:

[COLOR="red"]So regardless of the facts, you are going to ignore them and live life as ignorance is bliss? The issue has nothing to do with color, but 100% to do with culutre. You can give them all the money and special programs you want, but until you address their personal culture, which as a society we so enthusiastically embrace, it will keep happening. I have ants in my garage, they were getting into my dog's food. I took away the dog food, the ants went away.

This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.

You know what I mean, I notice you left out smoking/drinking/drugs. At 50 bucks a carton, or 20 bucks a bottle and so on. Incredibly expensive. I was just using those as non-neccessities that have somehow become entitlements, like cable or high speed internet.

I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

[Marlin]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:


This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.



I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, “55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.” Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.”"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Osteomata]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, ?55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.? Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.?"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Marlin]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.

[Ldub]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Osteomata]

It is a fair question, and I am not particularly hard over on the issue, nor especially well versed in the argument. Three things spring to mind, let me run them up the flag pole:
1. The majority of the high paying jobs you are referring to are in the corporate/private sector. I think it is one thing to enter into voluntary contract with an employer in which they pay you hefty salary in exchange for standards of conduct of all types, and quite another to cede to the State yet another power over personal privacy and actions for an ever widening sector of the populace.
2. Food stamps versus a high paying job? No contest. Lots and lots and lots of people would trade the first in favor of the second.
3. Given that these programs dramatically impact the children of the poor to an even greater degree than the adults, are you not simply stigmatizing poverty rather than merely government assistance?

But I would like to know

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Ldub]

It is a fair question, and I am not particularly hard over on the issue, nor especially well versed in the argument. Three things spring to mind, let me run them up the flag pole:
1. The majority of the high paying jobs you are referring to are in the corporate/private sector. I think it is one thing to enter into voluntary contract with an employer in which they pay you hefty salary in exchange for standards of conduct of all types, and quite another to cede to the State yet another power over personal privacy and actions for an ever widening sector of the populace.
2. Food stamps versus a high paying job? No contest. Lots and lots and lots of people would trade the first in favor of the second.
3. Given that these programs dramatically impact the children of the poor to an even greater degree than the adults, are you not simply stigmatizing poverty rather than merely government assistance?

Emphatically NO!!!...I NEVER said HIGH paying, I said well paying, as in $8-9.00 an hour, yeah, you heard me right. I've had to piss just to do menial labor on the bagging floor of a sunflower seed processing facility, I've had to piss for the privilege of doing carpentry work, from framing to finish, & most disciplines between the foundation & the shingles, I've also had to submit to a test of my precious bodily fluids for the right to work WAY too many 0000-0800 shifts as a security guard...LUCKY F-N me!
All done under the guise of lower insurance rates...
A couple of those jobs included the option of purchasing medical/dental & vision coverage, my current job has no such option.
You will probably reply that it's my choice to work in these capacities, & due to a few bad choices in my mis-spent yoot, I probably should have gotten a better education after graduating high school...at the time, it wasn't a real option, & i'm OK with that.

In the mean time, organizations such as lutheran socialist services continue to bring "refugees", from third world $h*# holes around the globe, into our community, to place an even larger burden on all aspects of local & federal social betterment programs.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...I live from check 2 check, make just slightly too much to qualify for any type of government assistance, & DREAD having to sell my truck & guns & what not, to cover whatever medical emergency/procedure (priced a colonoscopy lately?, or having a tooth pulled/filled?, or maybe even a splenectomy, or the removal of a gall bladder that's gone on the fritz?) that may well blip the radar after reaching the age of fiddy.

Why yes, there are a few of "them" who are fine upstanding citizens, & I have more than a few friends who qualify as "upstanding them", including friends from Sudan, Usbekistan, Somalia, & Bosnia.
However, there are an equal, if not greater number of "them" who are out most evenings cutting cats off parked vehicles for the recycling $ (I know, industrious, creative, & eco friendly), burglarizing homes, & just being $h*# heads in general...you're damned right there are a lot of home grown, hard working, well armed SOB's out here in the heartland wondering why they've gotta go PP in a cup to support all this crap.....

Oh, & lest we forget all the children...HELLO...if you're already impoverished, & receiving every conceivable form of govt assistance, the logical thing to do would be:

1 - get the unit, (on either mom OR pop (if you know who that might be)) fixed.(prolly won't co$t much...y'all welcome, that's something I wouldn't mind helping to finance...)

2 - practice some other form of birth control ( I happen to know that this option is available at little or NO cost through various organizations, such as planned parenthood or community health (MUCH cheaper for those of us paying the bills than another mouth to feed, clothe, educate, etc)

OR...

3 - keep popp'n em' out every 10-11 months, thereby insuring a continuous flow of free $ until the last one is "out da house", & the aged "hoo-hoo" won't put bread on the table no more.

To say that you (anyone in disagreement) & i see things differently would be a safe bet, & that's OK by me...you're still one of my VX brethren &/or sistren...

Stigmatizing poverty?...yeah, you got me...... I AM poverty, with no freebies.
Why NO...I don't have cable, a cel phon, or food stamps. I use as many coopn's as I can get my hands on to reduce the grocery bill...wonder how many "on the dole" use coopn's... Got any stats on that?

And this is not to brag, just fact...I do my be$t to give back, by shopping at/donating excess items to thrift stores that benefit childrens organizations (dakota boys & girls ranch)
And LENDING money to friends/co-workers who might not be in as good a $hape as I currently am. My most recent borrower just repaid 3 franklins, that he borrowed before Christmas, so he could get his heat back on.

Hefty salary... yeh b1tc4es, I'm kick'n it LARGE...

Sorry all, rant over...

[Ebenezr]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

It's real simple Dub, your living in a country of idiots.

[Ldub]

It's real simple Dub, your living in a country of idiots.

Yeh...bleeding heart idjutz.

Then: YAY...no child left behind...

Now: OK, let's lower the bar a bit, & just leave a few behind...

Amazing how economic reality can change this or that...

NEVER the compensation/benefits of the powers that be, just those who may have been stupid enough to put them there...

[VXR]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

Just kidding X2

[Osteomata]

Why are we stuck? I don't think the current system is particularly broken. In exchange for moderate assistance, we preclude a significant chunk of our society from ending up in prisons (expensive), diseased (dangerous to the herd) or further destabilizing our country do to rampant illiterate unhealthy starving mobs. it also provides quite a number of people the opportunity to get back in teh game rather than end up in an every spiraling cycle towards grinding poverty. The flaws in our social safety net system, which by industrialized world standards is pretty conservative, is not these limited cost provisions that worry you so, but rather the structural aspects of the three big ones (Medicare, Medicaid, SS). Food programs and dozens of other lower scale programs make us all a bit safer and our nation more stable.

And as a minor recommendation for your future discussions with people more sensitive than me: it just sounds a little odd to refer to them as "breeding" their way to the top." Its that whole animal thing again. Take it or leave it. Besides, if minority representation in our country has been growing steadily, and yet the poverty threshold has held steady, does this not refute your assertion that these breeding minorities are endangering our future?

As for just hoping that churches and what not will take over that responsibility: nothing is stopping them now! Nothing Nothing Nothing, as you would say. Government programs do not exclude the participation of churches and the religious in charity work outside of a few very narrow and socially contentious areas like adoption agencies. What we know from the historical record is that exclusive church/philanthropic based charity is grossly insufficient and unevenly applied, to say the least. Besides, for every anecdote you can provide about the white guy in Moab, do you think I can't come up with an equally compelling story of a black guy in Baltimore or Hispanic guy in Miami that got himself back on his feet, or was able to transition out of poverty to college, first in his family etc etc due to a gov program? Anecdote anecdote anecdote. Which is not evidence.

Every single program that is in any way broad and semi-comprehensive will have cheaters and various levels of abuse or inefficiency, but the presence of such issues does not mean the program as a whole is wrong or a net negative impact on our country, particularly given the alternatives.

Immigration is a hole nother issue and would only further derail us for sure. But for the drug testing thing: for someone so distrustful of government programs, you seem might quick to render yet another intrusive power to the State. No way that would be abused heh? No way it would steadily spread beyond a few select aid programs, all in the name of "won't someone think of the children" or "terrorism" or the "war on drugs" or whatever, into ever broadening, unevenly applied, deeply abused authority by multiple levels of government.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.