Max wrote:

"Why is that a bad idea?"  Because is does not provide for those in need, regardless of the reason.

Why are you so hung up on 'those who never work'?  What percentage of the population is that, anyway, keeping in mind that 10 years ago the unemployment rate was 4% (under Clinton)?  Are the 96% who work when there is work to be had supposed to set overall government policy as a means to teach a lesson to the 4% of the population who, for one reason or another, is unemployable, lazy, or whatever?

Unemployment is in place for those 4%.  I believe we are debating those who dont show up on unemployment stats because if you have never work you cant draw.  I think the true fault in the system is the abuse of the disablity SS benifit.  Being bipolar is something I believe anyone can be diagnosed with.  At least that is what I have personaly seen.  If the person is willing to jump through all the hoops they can get disablity by claiming there bipolarness keeps them from working.  I am sure there are case that it is an honest assessment but I have yet to see a case that would prevent the person from working.  That is just one example of many I am sure. 

Max I know you have alot of worldly experience but I have dealt with so many people my age or younger in just as good as health as me whos only job is to wait around for there monthly disablity check.  I hate that but I am unsure if taking that way from them would motivate them to work.  I have a feeling it would only motivate them to be more deviant then they already are.  In that case are my taxes better spent pay for them to have a roof over there head and eat just because it likely decreases the problem they cause for the usefull population of this country?

http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/disabil.html


49 million americans have a disablity, per that link.  I think the biggest question that I would raise is that "do disablities cause a low income" or "do those who refuse to work find a disablity"?   

How many Americans are on welfare?

Around 50.1 million.

In September 2009, around 4 million Americans were served by a state cash-assistance or welfare program, more than 37 million received federal food stamps and about 9.1 million received unemployment benefits. If treated as exclusive numbers, there would be a total of 50.1 million Americans who received federal aid in September 2009. This data is based on a report published in USA today in January 2010.

APRTW wrote:

Max wrote:

"Why is that a bad idea?"  Because is does not provide for those in need, regardless of the reason.

Why are you so hung up on 'those who never work'?  What percentage of the population is that, anyway, keeping in mind that 10 years ago the unemployment rate was 4% (under Clinton)?  Are the 96% who work when there is work to be had supposed to set overall government policy as a means to teach a lesson to the 4% of the population who, for one reason or another, is unemployable, lazy, or whatever?

Unemployment is in place for those 4%.  I believe we are debating those who dont show up on unemployment stats because if you have never work you cant draw.  I think the true fault in the system is the abuse of the disablity SS benifit.  Being bipolar is something I believe anyone can be diagnosed with.  At least that is what I have personaly seen.  If the person is willing to jump through all the hoops they can get disablity by claiming there bipolarness keeps them from working.  I am sure there are case that it is an honest assessment but I have yet to see a case that would prevent the person from working.  That is just one example of many I am sure. 

Max I know you have alot of worldly experience but I have dealt with so many people my age or younger in just as good as health as me whos only job is to wait around for there monthly disablity check.  I hate that but I am unsure if taking that way from them would motivate them to work.  I have a feeling it would only motivate them to be more deviant then they already are.  In that case are my taxes better spent pay for them to have a roof over there head and eat just because it likely decreases the problem they cause for the usefull population of this country?

Exactly.  The irony is that most people with a real disability do everything they can to assimilate themselves into society.  Ever been to a McDonalds where one of the employees is a person with Downs Syndrome?  They absolutely love the fact that they are able to work, even a minimum wage job, because it provides a sense of normalcy.

Any idiot can find a crooked doctor to provide a phony diagnosis and allow said idiot to collect disability.

APRTW wrote:

Not every kid that come from a poor family (for lack of better words) is going to go to law school.  That doesnt stop them from working a 40hr a week blue collar job and there is nothing wrong with that.  It is a honest way to raise a family.

What's stopping people now is that there are not enough jobs to be had.  It varies from region to region, but I recall the situation of early 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was this high, and for a 19 year old kid out of high school, there simply were no jobs at all.  Nothing at McDonalds, nothing anywhere.  A local warehouse had a job on the loading dock and about 50 people showed up to apply. 

This doesn't mean there isn't laziness and abuse of disability, but again, go back to 2000 when unemployment was 4% to get a benchmark for the size of the problem.  Yes, you are correct that number does not include people who are not looking and those on disability, but even so, your number of 4 million people on cash assistance is a tiny fraction of the work force, less than 4%.

forsberg_us wrote:

APRTW wrote:

Max wrote:

"Why is that a bad idea?"  Because is does not provide for those in need, regardless of the reason.

Why are you so hung up on 'those who never work'?  What percentage of the population is that, anyway, keeping in mind that 10 years ago the unemployment rate was 4% (under Clinton)?  Are the 96% who work when there is work to be had supposed to set overall government policy as a means to teach a lesson to the 4% of the population who, for one reason or another, is unemployable, lazy, or whatever?

Unemployment is in place for those 4%.  I believe we are debating those who dont show up on unemployment stats because if you have never work you cant draw.  I think the true fault in the system is the abuse of the disablity SS benifit.  Being bipolar is something I believe anyone can be diagnosed with.  At least that is what I have personaly seen.  If the person is willing to jump through all the hoops they can get disablity by claiming there bipolarness keeps them from working.  I am sure there are case that it is an honest assessment but I have yet to see a case that would prevent the person from working.  That is just one example of many I am sure. 

Max I know you have alot of worldly experience but I have dealt with so many people my age or younger in just as good as health as me whos only job is to wait around for there monthly disablity check.  I hate that but I am unsure if taking that way from them would motivate them to work.  I have a feeling it would only motivate them to be more deviant then they already are.  In that case are my taxes better spent pay for them to have a roof over there head and eat just because it likely decreases the problem they cause for the usefull population of this country?

Exactly.  The irony is that most people with a real disability do everything they can to assimilate themselves into society.  Ever been to a McDonalds where one of the employees is a person with Downs Syndrome?  They absolutely love the fact that they are able to work, even a minimum wage job, because it provides a sense of normalcy.

Any idiot can find a crooked doctor to provide a phony diagnosis and allow said idiot to collect disability.

It's not that I disagree with the gist of this, it's that I think your indignation is misplaced.  Sure, every societal ill needs a champion, and if you want to make it your cause in life I won't stand in your way, and if it truly is your passion, it wouldn't make any difference if I did.  But I think you are focused on small potatoes, rather than upon the meat of the issue of facing our future as a nation.  There are farmers abusing the subsidy system, and lots of people abusing the Mining Law of 1872 to grab Federal land, and I would be glad if some Ralph Nader appeared on horizon and motivated society to demand these abuses be corrected. But in the grand scheme of things, they are small potatoes, too.

Last edited by Max (1/05/2011 11:37 am)

Max wrote:

As for your statement, "But if the tax becomes exhorbitant it minimizes the incentive to work hard.  Combine that with a death tax, then there is no incentive to succeed, simply an incentive to do enough to get by."  In theory that might be true, but the top income bracket paid 90% income tax during the Eisenhower years, and we hadn't yet met your Doomsday scenario under that real life situation.  So that is, dare I say, "proof" that income taxes can still go WAY higher without triggering the calamity that you fear.

Not proof at all since someone was smart enough to come along and change it.

You believe your way Max, I'll believe mine.  You continue to resent the wealthy, I'll maintain my disdain for the lazy.

Max wrote:

We are talking apples and oranges here.  Fors and I were talking about people too lazy to work when there is work to be had.  You are citing figures for each and every person who receives some form of federal aid in the form of cash assistance and/or food stamps.  Lots and lots of what is now called 'the working poor' receive food stamps.  These are people, many of whom are working their asses off, whose income is not sufficient to stave off the negative effects of not eating enough.  It also includes all of the children and elderly who are unable to work, not because they are lazy or on disability, but because of their age.  If we use 96% employment as the benchmark, then the number of people who do not want to work is very small relative to overall population, in spite of your personal experience.  For each of us, our experience is hardly representative of the wider world around us, and that ought to be important when formulating opinions of the unemployed as lazy, Muslims as terrorists, Jews as controllers of commerce and media, or whatever.

That is hardly true at all.  As I said before, unemployment only accounts for those who are pretending to look for jobs.  Not those who dont have, never had and never will have a job.  That isnt debatible. 

The first thin g I quoted applies directly to the SS disablity debate we are have.  The second thing I found interesting.  Notice I didnt try and interpreter it at all.

forsberg_us wrote:

My "gratitude" is pretty diminished by the fact that my hard work isn't rewarded.  It goes into the pocket of some piece of shit whose going to spend most of the day playing X-Box online while collecting his disability check because of his "bad back" which probably hurts less than mine.  And you're telling me that I should be grateful for the opportunity to pay that prick because if we weren't giving him money, he might show up at my doorstep .  Trust me Max, I couldn't get lucky enough for one of these wastes of life to show up at my door, but if he did, we'd have one less person collecting from the doles of this country.  Then again, we probably wouldn't because I'm sure his baby's mamma or someone else in his family would figure out a way to defraud the system and keep collecting checks even after his death.

I understand I don't have a choice but to have SS withheld from my check.  But don't you dare preach to me that I should be fucking thankful for it.

I think that is my line not Max's.  How do you honestly feel that it would effect the country if the government were able to cut all the deadbeats out and give money to only those who truely needed it?  Put aside the fact that it would be impossible to do in reality.  I understand that my paychecks would be fatter but do you think that the overall standard of living in the country would drop?  I know you say you will take care of it yourself if they come on your doorstep and I have trouble relating to the difference in the communities we live in.  However in my setting it is worth something to me that for the most part the lazy, worthless unworking keep to themselfs.  I dont want them on my property hunting around for something they can take to the scrape yard and generate enough money to buy their smokes.  Sure I would take care of it if I caught them but I like to sleep when the worthless like to roam.  Not only that but I am not the only one who lives here.  I wouldnt want my family subjected to them either.

Max might say our personal interactions with the matters we have disscussed are meaningless but I would argue that they are all that matter.  How would a change effect the world around me.  In this little village of 300 that I live in I can think of a handfull of household off the top of my head that are no problem at all right now.  If there state funded lifestyle was taken away I could see that changing.

FWIW, the best analogy that I can think of for hereditary poverty CAUSED by government handouts is heroin addiction.  No one grows up wanting to be a heroin addict, but shit happens.  So after years of criminalizing heroin addiction--with good cause, I add--and experimenting with any number of ways to break heroin addiction, researchers in England assembled evidence, with which they argued that the best thing to do was to allow addicts to register, provide them with heroin in a monitored situation, and hope for the best.

I won't remember the details exactly, but the way it worked was something like this:

1) people spontaneously kick the addiction all by themselves at a rate of about 12% per year.

2) the life expectancy for a heroin addict is low (the percentage of who die of overdoses is high).

3) the percentage of heroin addicts who wind up in jail for crimes they committed to fund their habit is high

Thus, the best solution is to provide registered addicts with heroin (so that they do not need to commit crimes to get it), and to give it to them in a monitored situation (so that they do not OD), and then sit back and wait as 12% (or whatever) cure themselves each year.

My guess is that the best solution for the welfare poverty cycle will be along those lines: provide handouts (so that they do not need to commit crimes to survive), make the process un-fun (e.g., require them to spend 40 hours per week in an employment office "looking for work"), and then sit back and wait as a certain percentage of them break the cycle each year and discover that a life of self-reliance is more rewarding than one of reliance on handouts.

Call me naive, but I counter by arguing that the current 'gold standard' for heroin addiction flew in the face of common morality and wisdom, and it was only after some patient and dedicated research that experts from an unexpected field (medicine) found a solution for a cycle of crime and death that eventually made policy makers say, "Oh yeah, I guess that does make more sense than what we've been doing."

Last edited by Max (1/05/2011 1:25 pm)

APRTW wrote:

Max might say our personal interactions with the matters we have disscussed are meaningless but I would argue that they are all that matter.  How would a change effect the world around me.  In this little village of 300 that I live in I can think of a handfull of household off the top of my head that are no problem at all right now.  If there state funded lifestyle was taken away I could see that changing.

I wouldn't say that our experiences mean nothing, but it is not quite the case that the opposite is true, and that our experiences, and those of the people we meet or otherwise learn about, mean everything. 

Many years ago I worked in a small cabinet shop, never more than about 5 guys on payroll including the boss/owner.  He rented the workshop from a guy who happened to be Jewish, and all the years I was there I heard "Jews (this)" and "Jews (that)", and "He's 'Jewing' us."  In fact, the landlord used to drop by every so often and he was a very nice guy. I know for fact that the financial end of the cabinet shop was a shambles, and it was very common for payments to be made late, and I assume that could have been the case for the rent check, as well.  But the landlord was always polite and friendly when I saw him.  So, what's the take home message from my experience there with all that Jew-bashing?  Is it that Jews are cheapskate skin-flint business owners, as they were portrayed?  Or that blue collar workers in the Midwest are Jew-bashers?  Well, it's neither, right?  Even though, since that experience, I moved away from the midwest and haven't worked another blue collar job, and that's pretty much the limits of what I know on the subject. 

All I was trying to say is that to understand the world around us, beyond our own experiences, it helps to have more than my own experiences and the anecdotes of others.  Quantitative data is crucial, for example, what percentage of blue collar Midwestern workers have that kind of Jew-bashing work environment?

APRTW wrote:

I think that is my line not Max's.  How do you honestly feel that it would effect the country if the government were able to cut all the deadbeats out and give money to only those who truely needed it?  Put aside the fact that it would be impossible to do in reality.  I understand that my paychecks would be fatter but do you think that the overall standard of living in the country would drop?

Not necessarily.  First off, let's start by asking why did the deadbeats become deadbeats?  Did they become deadbeats because they choose not to work under any condition or because a system exists that allows them to get by while being a deadbeat?  Being lazy and being stupid aren't necessarily connected.  Some of the schemes to defraud the system require a bit of effort and resourcefulness.  I suspect that if given the option of finding a job or starving to death, many of those people would find work.

Would some become criminals--sure.  Would some opt for the life of a destitute--I suppose.  But I suspect that many more than we think would opt for a life of some sort of self-reliance.

It's like the old adage that you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach the man to fish and feed him for life.  If the system is set up such that I catch the fish, the gov't takes it and gives it to the man, why does the man have any incentive to learn to fish on his own?

Max talks about the inequalities of the school system.  I'd much rather my social security contributions be put toward the educational system than supporting a bunch of deadbeats.  As Max said, help those who truly need help, but make the process truly unappealing so that people have an incentive to move off the system and into a system of self-reliance.  With the money we save not handing out money to those with the ability to work, we improve the structure of educating future generations.  Maybe then we could break the cycle of dependence. 

I just don't think there's a short or long term benefit to society by accepting that some people who are capable of being self-sufficient will elect not to be and that the rest of us have to support that person.

forsberg_us wrote:

I'd much rather my social security contributions be put toward the educational system than supporting a bunch of deadbeats.

FWIW, I think you are conflating two things in the statement above, although maybe they are the same in your mind.

(1) able bodied people who choose not to work when work is available.

(2) people over the retirement age of 65.

Your social security funds the latter, but not the former.

APRTW wrote:

I was basing my statements off of facts and what I have seen first hand.  Not someone elses opinion.

facts and quantitative data, at least in the form that scientists use it, are not the same thing.

it is akin to H and BA.  I guy can have more H and a lower BA.  it is a fact that the 4-5 guys i worked with were jew-bashers, but that tells me nothing of the prevalence of jew-bashing among midwestern blue collar workers.