Bored Druid ThreadFollow

Was it GI Joe sized? Barbie sized? Cabbage Patch Kid sized ...?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.

The problem is, as soon as the government starts providing people with the necessities, many people will stop trying to provide for themselves or will spend their entire income on wants instead of needs. You'd be amazed at the number of people at my kids school who turn in the vouchers for free or reduced price meals, walk out into the parking lot, and get into an SUV less than 5 years old. There's also the single mothers of three (or four, or five) that continue popping out kids every 3 to 4 years to avoid having their free checks from the government cut off.

When I take my daughter to the pediatrician, I see kids in there all the time that I wouldn't have even kept home from school. But because the care is free, there's literally no reason not to take a child to the doctor for every runny nose. In addition to the log jam in getting to see a doctor for an actual emergency (like an inexplicable rash that suddenly covered all my daughter's extremities), there's also the issue of over-prescribed antibiotics leading to the creation of bacteria more and more resistant the aforementioned antibiotics.

Any poverty-level statistic involving the US is pretty misleading, anyway. The federal poverty level for a family of 4 is income less than $1863 a month. That is by no means wealthy, but with tat kind of monthly income, you can afford a 2 bedroom apartment ($500), utilities ($100), groceries ($500), a modest car payment and insurance ($125), cable and high-speed internet ($75), gas to commute to school/work ($100), a $300 per person annual clothing allowance ($100 per month), and still leave almost $400 each month for entertainment and other expenses. That doesn't count the cash value of government programs that the house is eligible for, like Medicaid, Food stamps, rent and housing assistance, utility assistance, and so on. There are legitimately destitute people living in America, but quoting statistics about the number of people with $400 (plus government benefits) in disposable income doesn't help them.

Estimates on the cost of the war are equally misleading. The official report is currently $1.2 trillion spent over 10 years, an average of $120 billion per year, about 9% of the current US annual budget deficit, or just 4% of the annual federal budget. Interest on the national debt is currently over $240 billion per year, or twice the cost of the war. Higher projections include domestic defense spending with agencies such as the Dept of Homeland Defense, as well as yet unpaid benefits to soldiers. Benefits paid will certainly be higher as a result of the war, but many of the soldiers serving would be entitled to Veterans Benefits anyway.

The system is used and abused, and any effort to reform it is met with cries of "think of the children!", and misleading stories about a poor family that just couldn't make it without a certain social program. Almost no one wants to completely eliminate entitlement spending, but Liberals love to paint Conservatives with the same "hard-line extreme Christian right" paint brush. There are fiscal Conservatives that are socially Liberal or rank social policy as insignificant next to fiscal policy.

It's also worth noting that about 48% of American households pay no federal income tax. Of those 48%, most are net tax consumers, meaning they take in more in social programs than they pay in payroll and embedded taxes.

Politics are for =4 or =28. Please keep it there.

You'd think, but not really. I mean, I obviously can't speak for wherever you live, but it's not the case here. Maybe because we don't want to just have the absolute necessities for the rest of our lives.



I don't know how to explain that. Either people in your area are generally unfamiliar with runny noses, or suffer from hypochondria.

I've been to the doctor a fair amount of times because of a sinus infection and some issues with a pilonidal cyst, but I've never seen anyone there with anything less than a case of high fever (to check if it's the flu or not).

If you've got an emergency need for medical assistance then you go to the emergency room, as the name would imply. At least, that's how we do it.



And off-topic threads are for =28, but what's that got to do with this thread? If you don't like the topic then derail it. That's how we've done it for the last 250 pages.

[EDIT] Long post because I was somewhat bored. :P It's largely a commentary on historical trends in closed social groups due to oppression and economic inequality.

A massive part of why America who has people content to just live on the bare necessities is because they literally don't have a better option. We've created a system where the vast majority of people can't get ahead (it's a fundamental aspect of free trade capitalism. You can't have the filthy rich without the filthy poor). Someone who has grown up in an environment where they've been told (from their family, their culture, and the rest of the world) that they aren't going to amount to anything is obviously going to end up in a state where they aren't going to try to change that. Humans are very easily broken, when you get down to it.

Inner city cultural stagnation is largely part of this. I've done extensive research into the effects of low income ghettos on culture, and it's actually somewhat terrifying. My work has been dominantly with African American and gay communities, but it's a widely scene phenomenon. To put it REALLY simply:

1. You are socially stigmatized, which severely limits your opportunities in the world. For outed gay peoples, this meant actually having the FBI blacklist you, so your sexuality became a huge factor in your inability to work. Most people were outed for cruising (which was, before the internet, the only way for closeted gay men to find sex) or through FBI investigations. And both would guarantee that you were driven out of your hometown, usually into a gay ghetto. For African Americans, the problem they faced by stigmatization was even greater and more obvious.

2. You end up in a socially distinct group that's almost universally characterized by low income. In this subculture, you come to reject white middle-class culture that has already rejected you. You want to know why inner city blacks have no faith in the American dream? It's because the American dream kicked them for two hundred years, so they don't have any real desire to engage with it.

3. Because of this low-income scenario, and the fact that you are already on the fringes of law by your very existence, you come to reject law as something valuable. Gay men had no qualms about hustling or selling drugs in the 50s or 60s because, seriously, what else could they do? Because of their sexuality, they weren't employable. It was actually ILLEGAL in many states to hire them. And there was such heavy cultural resistance against hiring African Americans well into the 70s. And that resistance is still far more healthy today than we want to acknowledge.

Once you are forced into this world, where law exists only to subjugate you and where the values of the world outside your community seem to universally despise you, you actively come to hate and reject them as a defense mechanism. To believe in a white, middle-class American dream is (in the minds of MANY people) a betrayal of your very sense of self. You can't put faith in order or law or a real future because, quite literally, those aren't things that you can understand in your own realm of cultural experience. And these are the heritages of people that have left enclosed ghettos. Moving away from the ghetto doesn't free you from its stigma, because a huge portion of how you define yourself comes from your home experiences.

My brother teaches in a charter school, and nearly 95% of his students are inner-city black kids. None of them even consider him "White" because they so strongly associate that idea with someone who is out to actively oppress them. He teaches ELEMENTARY school, and these are the kids who had parents who put enough value in their education to actually keep them out of the public schools they would have gone to. They see my brother as "Spanish" (he's a Spanish teacher) because it makes no sense to them whatsoever that anyone white could be interested in helping or teaching them. And, unfortunately, they have good reason to think that given their circumstances.

Blaming people who milk the system is blaming a symptom, not a cause. If we don't want people who tolerate mere subsistence, then we need to create a world where they have a realistic chance to obtain something more (and an environment where they can be free to want it, which means freeing them from the fear of oppression). And this is a huge project, but there is NO other alternative.

Edited, Jan 12th 2012 12:38am by idiggory

Wow, that's a very interesting post Digg. I'm actually one of those weird white people that wants to help educate inner city kids. The achievement gap pisses me off something fierce, and I want to help reduce/eliminate it. I want to help these kids learn to appreciate learning, and to know that they CAN be something more than what society has told them. People will probably call me a bleeding heart liberal for it, but oh well.

You can take solace from the fact that over here, we call our right wing the filthy liberals.

That's what people keep telling them so yeah, that's what they'll believe.
And I was sort of surprised to not see an option of "yes I'll vote for more taxes assuming that they're used well" or something similar. The most positive thing you could vote for is a maybe.

Edit: and liberal isn't a filthy word here, I have nothing against the right side of the government (aside from the fact that they want to make all my student financing a loan, they can go **** themselves for that). The bad word here is populist because of the one retarded party we have, the party for freedom, ironically the one party that wants to reduce freedom for everyone Islamic or otherwise not "real Dutch people". There's an uncanny likeness with the American right in that aspect but it's all purely based off of gut feeling and fear mongering that will get him (it's basically a party of 1 with lots of slaves running after him who aren't allowed to say a word without his permission) the most votes. The scary thing is that he's a really, really good politician and debater but he only uses it to gain power and not to actually achieve anything.

Edited, Jan 12th 2012 11:29am by Aethien

Same ****.

And now for something else.

Really it's mostly Japanese...

Oh shut it.