Obama's team whines too muchFollow

And if that is the case, however dubious it is, than so what? Are people supposed to be grateful that they aren't dying, usually, on the streets of starvation and that means that we are a great country?

Dude, you have the lowest standards. I can't even believe with that mentality that you still call yourself a Christian. Jesus said alot more about the sin of greed keeping people impoverished than he talked about sodomites and abortionists.

The richest 1% in the US have more wealth than the majority of the country and anyone who knows about democracy knows that you can't have an effective democratic system when there is a oligarchy, economically based, that increasingly becomes more and more powerful, especially with a middle class that is diminishing both in size and in terms of collective wealth and influence.




Edited, Aug 11th 2008 4:35pm by Annabella

That post sound soooo ******* familiar. Is it copy pasta from one of your old posts?

Teach him to fish but only give him access to the river into which you're dumping mercury and you've killed him with full deniability.

Teach a man to fish and he'll sit by a river drinking beer all day.

Beyond a bare minimum for those in desperate need, yes, they often do cause more harm then good. How you ask? Well, that's not a simple answer. It's one part liberalist philosophy, one part economics, and one part psychology. But since you asked... :)

The first part is the core of the argument, and is really the source of disagreement between Liberals and Conservatives on this issue. Classical Liberalist theory asserts that individual freedom is most expressed when individuals are least interfered with by government (seems obvious really). In other words, the state should do the minimum it must to ensure the protection of our liberties and nothing else. Liberty is measured by the degree to which the people have control over their own lives and property. At a very simple level, when you collect taxes from people (regardless of whether you think they deserve to be taxed or not!) you are infringing on their liberty. Always. So any tax needs to be assessed in terms of the benefit provided in relation to the liberty infringed.

The economic component is about that relative good. On top of the liberty infringement, how much economic benefit is gained here? In the larger picture, do we benefit our economic outlook by taking that money away from those who had it or letting them keep it? This is infinitely debatable of course, but as a conservative I can't help but feel that it makes much more sense to leave money in the hands of those who earned it than to give it to those who didn't. This is sensible even if just from a "which is more productive?" point of view.

Finally, the psychological aspect. What are we doing when we provide "free" services for the poor? You can look at it very simplistically and say that we're helping them. But are we really? If I'm the government and I want to encourage people to do something (like say buy hybrid cars), what would I do? I would create a program to provide some incentive for people to buy hybrid cars. Like say a cash rebate, for example. If I want people to get married, I might create some other state funded benefits for people who get married. Perhaps even a tax break. In a broad sense, you use funding for those things to encourage people to meet whatever criteria you've set. Those who meet the criteria get the benefit (whatever it is). So, what are we doing when we create programs to provide benefits to the poor? Aren't we creating an incentive for people to meet the criteria? Yup. Absolutely. And while we can certainly argue that no one would *choose* to be poor just to get some benefits, that tends to only work on an individual level. When you look at large groups of people, we can say with some certainty that the percentage of the population who'll end up in some condition, whether good or bad, will increase if you provide funding to those who are in said condition. Also, remember that most people start out "poor". When you were a teenager and didn't have a job, you were technically "poor". You had to make a choice to go out and work and earn a living. You were provided for by your parents, but at least for most of us there was a pretty strong understanding that they'd not support you forever. There's no such assumption with a government program though. If someone chooses not to work and simply shifts from being supported by his parents to being supported by the state, he's not going to feel that as a loss of status at all.


Worse. The reverse is also in effect. We can also say that if the government doesn't want you to do something, it might choose to tax that behavior more then others, right? Just as we apply higher taxes to cigarettes and alcohol, anything we apply higher taxes to acts as a deterrent to that behavior. So. What are we doing when we tax people more based on how successful they are and less the less successful they are? In a way, we're discouraging success. This is a lesser factor of course, since the overall benefit of making more money will always outweigh the higher taxes, but everything else being equal, there's less benefit to success if you raise taxes then if you don't. And since you must raise taxes to pay for those programs for the poor, it's an additive effect, especially to those already "close" to being poor in the first place.


So what we end up with is a process in which we discourage success, encourage poverty, and infringe our liberties in order to do it. To me, that does not meet the test of infringement (ie: something that's worth giving up some liberty for). Now, you could argue that the benefit to the individual poor person is worth it. But is it really? IMO, it's not. In cases where the alternative is starvation? Sure. But we're talking about programs going well beyond that. The combination of the above factors results in a situation where we don't actually make people less poor. We make everyone who's paying the extra taxes *more* poor, and we only make the poor people more comfortable. But that's not really a great goal, as much as it may ease our own sense of equity or something but doesn't actually improve the person's condition.


And that brings us full circle back to liberty. If you are earning your own keep, you don't owe anyone for your prosperity. It's "yours". In theory at least, it can't be taken away and it's not subject to manipulation. But if you are poor and being kept comfortable as a result of government spending programs, you are beholden to whomever is managing that program. You have to make sure it keeps running. What happens is that you livelihood ceases to be about your own ability to provide for yourself and becomes about the degree to which you support the political agendas that keep your own benefits flowing. This ends up being a trap. You can't vote against those who provide the benefits for fear of them being reduced or eliminated. And as long as that's all they do, you're fine, right? But if a sufficient percentage of the population were to be in that state, it would give that party significant power. Power not earned by having better ideas and goals, but essentially extorted from the masses who owe their livelihood to them. That's scary on a number of levels, but most importantly represents a reduction of liberty, not only for those who are paying for the programs but *also* those who are recipients.


There's also another aspect of this that is often forgotten. And it comes from the core question: "is a poor person really better off in the long run from these sorts of programs?". Again. If we're talking about a bare minimum, leaving the person in an uncomfortable state, but not dying, absolutely. But as soon as we start providing sufficient amounts for people to live out full lives on, we get into problems. What happens is that generational poverty appears on a large scale. If poverty is comfortable enough (or not uncomfortable enough), some people will live their entire lives that way. And their children will be born into that environment and not think it's a problem. They'll most likely *also* live their entire lives in that condition. This continues eternally, with whole generations being born into lives where their odds of success are virtually nil. Not purely because they can't succeed, but because the combination of economic and sociological pressures make it incredibly hard for them to rise out of their current situation.


Prior to the institution of many of these programs (early 60s for most), generational poverty just wansn't that big of a problem in this country. Sure, your odds of "success" were higher if you were born to a family with money, but the rate at which children born of poor parents remained poor themselves wasn't that terrible. More to the point, the specific demographics in terms of who was poor at any given time changed over time. There was an ebb and flow. Children of very poor families were most likely to *not* be supported by their parents in anyway and were more likely to start work earlier and learn a trade and work their butts off not to be poor. They knew first hand how uncomfortable it was and didn't want that for their children. This created a strong incentive to make something of themselves. When you grow up comfortably even though your parents are not working, you're much more likely to be instilled with a sense that work isn't important. You didn't suffer, so your children wont if you follow in your parents footsteps. Sure. You'd rather be rich, but statistically not enough for most people to do anything about it. Thus, generational poverty grows. And in the case of the US, it grows proportionally to those groups who were most poor at the time period when these programs were first introduced. That's why there's such a massively higher poverty rate among African Americans in this country. They went right from being poor because of legally allowed racial discrimination and segregation to being kept poor eternally via this entitlement process.



So yeah. As a conservative republican, I'm very very cautious about programs to "provide for the poor". I believe that historically those programs have caused more harm to those receiving them, and especially to their children and grandchildren. They give them a livelihood today, but the cost is their opportunity for success tomorrow.


You may disagree with my points, but please accept that those are my reasons. I don't hold my position because I don't like poor people and want them to suffer or some other silly strawman. I honestly believe that we do them a disservice by creating these programs. Some minimum is fine, but we should never make poverty cease to be something that every single person needs to work to get out of.

Not that I'm Christian, but the hypocrisy is nothing short of hilarity.

Yes. How dare someone give a complete and thoughtful explanation of his position on an important political issue. We should all pick our positions based on which side can crack the better joke about the other side... ;)

/shrug. She asked why Republicans believe that entitlement programs do more harm then good. I answered her. The point is that she was questioning our motivation. I'm perfectly happy to have a debate about the issue itself, but it's a bit hard to do that when the other person wont even accept my own stated reasons and insists on arguing against why they think I hold the position(s) I do.


I'm not demanding that you accept my reasons. In fact, I invite debate on the issue. But it seems like usually when this subject comes up, no matter how many times I'll present the point I made above, the thread will still fill up with counterarguments that assume that my motivations aren't what I say they are.




Lol. If only you knew! Just recently I caused a whole group of people to fall on the floor in hysterics with a single monumentally brilliant application of the phrase "Burkha's and Barry White". Oh yeah!

Basically taxes. It is Christian to shut the fuck up and pay your taxes. You're talking about a religion (like many others) that rewards the impoverished and faithful and forsakes the wealthy and greedy. Material possessions in scripture are worthless (even abhorrent at times) and should readily be given to those less fortunate, and other sources, namely the Church.


EDIT:


Just for completion, I'll include the whole conversation in scripture.



Edited, Aug 12th 2008 6:18pm by NaughtyWord

I just find it funny that I, an atheist, who are allegedly a greedy and selfish people, have no problem with the government helping those less fortunate than I, yet Varass, a self-proclaimed devout Christian, has a huge fucking problem with helping the impoverished.

He probably feels that his manditory 10-20% of gross donation to get into heaven is enough help.


Edit:
This was replay 100 and 10:00pm. That's a very clean looking post time and number.

Edited, Aug 12th 2008 9:59pm by TirithRR