the welfare section 8 ECT

psalms 91

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People who abuse the system are taking money intended to help the poor, no? One way to help the poor is to make sure funding reaches those who are actually poor rather than those who figured out how to game the system.
The problem is that this is a typical Republican line for cuts but the reality is that those that get hurt the most are the truly poor and needy. Yes, some abuse the system but most do not.
 

tango

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The problem is that this is a typical Republican line for cuts but the reality is that those that get hurt the most are the truly poor and needy. Yes, some abuse the system but most do not.

It doesn't really help to bring politics into it like this, as if Republicans want to step over the bodies of the poor while the Democrats offer a land of milk and honey.
 

MoreCoffee

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It doesn't really help to bring politics into it like this, as if Republicans want to step over the bodies of the poor while the Democrats offer a land of milk and honey.

Why is it unhelpful to name the political institutions that promote inequality?
 

tango

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Why is it unhelpful to name the political institutions that promote inequality?

If it were as simple as one party promoting inequality and the other party promoting the land of milk and honey it wouldn't be such an issue. But where one side tends to err on the side of withdrawing help from those who need it the other side tends to err on the side of throwing money around like candy and enabling all sorts of unhelpful situations.

Josiah already touched on the whole "give a man a fish / teach a man to fish" issue. Sometimes a need exists that is immediate and urgent such that the only sensible option is to give a man a fish to feed him for today. But unless that man learns to fish he will become endlessly dependent on being given free fish. He might not be in a fit state to learn to fish right now but unless there is some reason why he cannot fish for himself it is unhelpful to simply continue to hand him fish.

Another problem with centrally funded and managed welfare systems is that they are typically hugely inefficient. I'm sure most of us have seen people load up a shopping cart with junk and pay for it with food stamps or similar. Others have seen people loading up with prime cuts of meat, paid for by the taxpayer. For good measure we see people who are unable to afford things being taxed so the money can be handed out so someone else can afford those very same things (whether the things in question are food products, housing, whatever, it's clearly wrong for those who work to be unable to afford the things handed to those who do not, while a part of the reason they can't afford to have them is because of the tax burden).

Locally managed charity maintains a link between the giver and the recipient. If my next door neighbor falls on hard times and I help him out, he is unlikely to repay my kindness by hosting late night parties or vandalising my car. As soon as government gets into the middle and declares that my neighbor has an inalienable right to that help, there is no reason for my neighbor to care about me - I have no choice but to hand over the money that funds his beer-fuelled parties late into the night. Another advantage of locally managed welfare is that it can make provision that actually meets the needs, where centrally managed welfare can do little more than define a need in terms of how many dollars and cents are needed, then hand over the precise amount.

If someone struggles to manage a budget (increasingly common, since home economics doesn't seem to be taught any more) throwing more money at them doesn't necessarily help them - it's better to teach them to budget and understand the ways to make their money go further. Increasing the amount of welfare they receive simply means they are more likely to waste more money and still won't learn anything about budgeting. If someone lives in accommodation that is badly insulated it makes more sense to fund insulation than to give them ever-more money to cover the costs of heating it in the winter. And sometimes people have needs that aren't met by simply handing over dollars and cents - perhaps they need to learn how to prepare a meal rather than thinking they can only cope by buying ready made meals.

For good measure if someone remains on a government-funded scheme for long enough they will resist efforts to change it, effectively becoming institutionalised and unable to see much option beyond continuing to take the free money. Along the way people lose hope, they lose self-respect, they lose purpose. If you compare an inner city ghetto in the west to the slums in the developing world you might initially be shocked at seeing people scavenging to feed their families, and in many ways it is a good thing that we look to avoid that situation in the west. The flipside is that the people who scavenge to feed their families are unlikely to see their communities ravaged by drugs as people desperately try to numb the pain of a pointless existence - you can't afford to sit around getting high when you've got a family that needs to eat.

I don't see any problem with pointing out flaws in particular political approaches to specific problems but merely acting as if one party is exclusively responsible for problems is, in my opinion, unhelpful. After all, if it were merely a Republican issue then one would have thought that eight years of having a Democrat in the White House would have seen these problems all but vanish, no?
 

psalms 91

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It doesn't really help to bring politics into it like this, as if Republicans want to step over the bodies of the poor while the Democrats offer a land of milk and honey.
Their legislative history speaks for itself, it is truth, not politics
 

Josiah

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If it were as simple as one party promoting inequality and the other party promoting the land of milk and honey it wouldn't be such an issue. But where one side tends to err on the side of withdrawing help from those who need it the other side tends to err on the side of throwing money around like candy and enabling all sorts of unhelpful situations.

Josiah already touched on the whole "give a man a fish / teach a man to fish" issue. Sometimes a need exists that is immediate and urgent such that the only sensible option is to give a man a fish to feed him for today. But unless that man learns to fish he will become endlessly dependent on being given free fish. He might not be in a fit state to learn to fish right now but unless there is some reason why he cannot fish for himself it is unhelpful to simply continue to hand him fish.

Another problem with centrally funded and managed welfare systems is that they are typically hugely inefficient. I'm sure most of us have seen people load up a shopping cart with junk and pay for it with food stamps or similar. Others have seen people loading up with prime cuts of meat, paid for by the taxpayer. For good measure we see people who are unable to afford things being taxed so the money can be handed out so someone else can afford those very same things (whether the things in question are food products, housing, whatever, it's clearly wrong for those who work to be unable to afford the things handed to those who do not, while a part of the reason they can't afford to have them is because of the tax burden).

Locally managed charity maintains a link between the giver and the recipient. If my next door neighbor falls on hard times and I help him out, he is unlikely to repay my kindness by hosting late night parties or vandalising my car. As soon as government gets into the middle and declares that my neighbor has an inalienable right to that help, there is no reason for my neighbor to care about me - I have no choice but to hand over the money that funds his beer-fuelled parties late into the night. Another advantage of locally managed welfare is that it can make provision that actually meets the needs, where centrally managed welfare can do little more than define a need in terms of how many dollars and cents are needed, then hand over the precise amount.

If someone struggles to manage a budget (increasingly common, since home economics doesn't seem to be taught any more) throwing more money at them doesn't necessarily help them - it's better to teach them to budget and understand the ways to make their money go further. Increasing the amount of welfare they receive simply means they are more likely to waste more money and still won't learn anything about budgeting. If someone lives in accommodation that is badly insulated it makes more sense to fund insulation than to give them ever-more money to cover the costs of heating it in the winter. And sometimes people have needs that aren't met by simply handing over dollars and cents - perhaps they need to learn how to prepare a meal rather than thinking they can only cope by buying ready made meals.

For good measure if someone remains on a government-funded scheme for long enough they will resist efforts to change it, effectively becoming institutionalised and unable to see much option beyond continuing to take the free money. Along the way people lose hope, they lose self-respect, they lose purpose. If you compare an inner city ghetto in the west to the slums in the developing world you might initially be shocked at seeing people scavenging to feed their families, and in many ways it is a good thing that we look to avoid that situation in the west. The flipside is that the people who scavenge to feed their families are unlikely to see their communities ravaged by drugs as people desperately try to numb the pain of a pointless existence - you can't afford to sit around getting high when you've got a family that needs to eat.

I don't see any problem with pointing out flaws in particular political approaches to specific problems but merely acting as if one party is exclusively responsible for problems is, in my opinion, unhelpful. After all, if it were merely a Republican issue then one would have thought that eight years of having a Democrat in the White House would have seen these problems all but vanish, no?


I agree....


This has NOTHING to do with "Republican vs. Democrat" although the Democrats have been TRYING for 80 years to suggest that Republicans are stupid, selfish, mean people (and with the help of the press, have succeeded with some). BOTH parties are part of the problem: The Government assuming that Government knows best who needs help and what is truly helpful, and that if they just throw a lot of money government doesn't have on the problem, it will go away. Hasn't worked in 80 years but both parties insist it's because goverment has not taken enough money from people and not gone enough in debt so hasn't thrown enough money at the problem. (Doing the same thing but expecting different results is the definition of insanity). I addressed in an earlier post what I think is fundamentally the mistake government makes. Some suggest that Democrats actually do this ON PURPOSE in order to keep massive numbers of voters "down and out" and thanking the Democrats for the money it gives them cuz Democrats care and will keep them on welfare for generations but Republicans are mean and stupid and selfish (old, fat and ugly, too). It's just politics. It's just politicans thinking if it throws enough money it doesn't have at a problem, it will go away and the party who gets the credit gets the votes.



Pax Christi



- Josiah
 

psalms 91

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I agree....


This has NOTHING to do with "Republican vs. Democrat" although the Democrats have been TRYING for 80 years to suggest that Republicans are stupid, selfish, mean people (and with the help of the press, have succeeded with some). BOTH parties are part of the problem: The Government assuming that Government knows best who needs help and what is truly helpful, and that if they just throw a lot of money government doesn't have on the problem, it will go away. Hasn't worked in 80 years but both parties insist it's because goverment has not taken enough money from people and not gone enough in debt so hasn't thrown enough money at the problem. (Doing the same thing but expecting different results is the definition of insanity). I addressed in an earlier post what I think is fundamentally the mistake government makes. Some suggest that Democrats actually do this ON PURPOSE in order to keep massive numbers of voters "down and out" and thanking the Democrats for the money it gives them cuz Democrats care and will keep them on welfare for generations but Republicans are mean and stupid and selfish (old, fat and ugly, too). It's just politics. It's just politicans thinking if it throws enough money it doesn't have at a problem, it will go away and the party who gets the credit gets the votes.



Pax Christi



- Josiah
I actually agree with you on many things but taking a sledge hammer to the problem in suggesting across the board budget cuts to social programs is also not the answeer as we have seen numerous times and it is always the people that really need it that get hurt. If someone would propose a sensible way to deal with the issue of people abusing the system then I am all for it but across the board cuts only hurt those who need it.
 

tango

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I actually agree with you on many things but taking a sledge hammer to the problem in suggesting across the board budget cuts to social programs is also not the answeer as we have seen numerous times and it is always the people that really need it that get hurt. If someone would propose a sensible way to deal with the issue of people abusing the system then I am all for it but across the board cuts only hurt those who need it.

What would you propose?

It's easy to say that across-the-board cuts can be harmful (and I'd agree that taking a sledgehammer to social programs is likely to hurt the most vulnerable) but the alternatives often proposed by those on the left of the political spectrum often seem to do little more than throw more money at the problem without considering whether that's doing anything to help or merely entrenching dependency on the programs.

In an ideal world social programs would be dissolved because they aren't needed any more. With politics at it stands it seems one side wants to get rid of them while they are still needed while the other side wants to preserve them and never get people to come off them. Somewhere in the middle there has to be a happy medium, and the happy medium has to involve both provision for those who are in genuine need paired with a requirement that those who are able to support themselves actually do so.

Of course another flip side to it all is ending corporate welfare, which often seems to do little more than hand out money to corporations and protect them from the competition that a free market economy supposedly cherishes.
 

tango

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Of course yet another facet to it is the use of government statistics to solve problems while actually not solving any problems.

When poverty is defined in relative terms it will never be eliminated, short of introducing a Cuban style of economy where the government manages everything and decides what people need. Trying to solve poverty when poverty is defined in terms of percentage of median income is absurd, and little more than a passport for those who manage such programs to secure their job for life.

In the UK "poverty" is defined as something along the lines of "70% or less of median income". Obviously with large populations "median income" is much more stable than with small populations, but let's look at a theoretical example involving the three of us (me, psalms91 and Josiah, since we're the active ones here). Let's say Psalms is making $20k, Josiah is making $50k and I'm making $14k. Based on "70% of median income" I'm on the poverty line, and if Psalms gets a pay raise to $20.5k then I fall into poverty despite making exactly the same as I was before. If the government were to provide me with $350/year through some social program it would "lift me out of poverty", but it's hard to see how that $7/week would make much difference. Conversely if Psalms could be pushed back down to $20k or lower then I'd miraculously be lifted out of poverty despite not getting a penny extra. Yet all the while Josiah can get as big a pay raise as he wants without making any difference to me. In a closed system of just the three of us (again acknowledging that large populations change the dynamic and this is to illustrate the principle), if Josiah's income rose from $50k to $1m he could buy the resources that Psalms and I needed such that neither of us could afford to live, while government statistics would show there was no poverty.

Statistics based on income alone also lead to some silly anomalies. A while back I knew a guy who technically lived in poverty because the UK median income was about GBP25,000 and he was typically making an annual income that barely scraped five figures. Not an impressive income however you look at it. But he was doing OK - he had spend years working for a hedge fund and had a mountain of investments, and was simply slowing down his pace of life. He could probably have lived the rest of his life without working another day but he wanted something to do and turned a hobby into a business. Yet despite his substantial investment portfolio his income meant he was living in poverty and, had he been so inclined, he could have claimed all sorts of public money due to his low income.
 
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