To contrast pullin, I’m a life long liberal. Some would says bordering on socialist with respect to my positions on public policies like socialized education and medicare. That aside, I too can be considered affluent by most North American standards. I too have put a lot of sweat equity into my success. I too teach my children that their success depends directly on their efforts and sweat equity. I too teach my children to not depend on “gov’t money” or hand outs. I too put my family’s welfare first and foremost. I too dislike having to write large sums of money to the IRS during tax season.
But here’s the thing, regardless of where you “choose to draw the line”, it does not change the fact that you are just as much a part of society as I am. We benefit to pretty much the same extent from a stable and healthy society and associated social infrastructure. So you may draw the line anywhere you wish, but it doesn’t change reality. And while thinking in a less empathic way ultimately means nothing (except maybe give you some personal satisfaction in voicing your disaproval of taxes, the poor, socialism, etc…); Being actively less empathic by voting to cut essential services to the MUCH less fortunate is actively denying that you’re part of this society and ignoring the fact that you benefit directly because of the general stability of the society we live in. And isn’t that also what you’re teaching your kids?
I’d say that if your empathy extends only to your immediate family, you have little or none of it – just the genetic urge to protect your mate and offspring. You have all the empathy of a strand of DNA.
From that very article, “Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.”
Do you have a link to any raw data? Because that article, but its own admission, to an attempt to get ‘liberals’ to contribute to more charities, and it appears to refer to totals, not percentage of income.
A bit O.T., but why work when someone is paying you not to work? This certainly applies to my family members who have been on unemployment for years. The last thing they want is a job. They know the system extremely well; the irony is that they work hard at getting out of work.
I’ve worked with poor people and I’ve seen both entire families that exploit the system and entire families that wanted to find a way, any way, to better their situation.
You have to assume that there will always be some abuse of programs of any kind. A construction company will inflate the costs associated with repairs of a government office parking lot versus a KFC parking lot. Some people will abuse and memorize the benefits they can get to maximize them.
But how can we both help those that need help (even long term help) and keep people from being on benefits that are abusing the system? There hasn’t yet been an effective system I’ve seen proposed that would be able to effectively distinguish between the two.
The majority of people I’ve known who were on SNAP, SSDI, welfare, housing & utility subsidizes, free school lunches, etc. were definitely abusing the system. So I can’t help but be skeptical of the official stats.
Assuming your anecdotal observations are statistically valid for a large population, which seems unlikely, what do you suggest? It seems to me that a social safety net is foundational to any civilized society, which is willing to tolerate some level of abuse of social welfare in return for a more humane and more stable society – one where freedom from hunger, basic health care, and a viable future for children is part of the social contract. And that last point isn’t a philosophical abstraction but a pragmatic reality.
On the OP question, I too dislike broad-brush generalizations, yet in this case I think there’s much truth in Thudlow Boink’s quote of William Poundstone. Republicans are emphatic about “personal responsibility” to the extreme that seems to presuppose that everyone is responsible for their circumstances – that there’s really no such thing as “luck” or “fate”. A Democrat is more likely to look at the unfortunate poor and say “there, but for the grace of God, go I” while a Republican is more likely to say “it’s their own damn fault.”
I think a Democrat may say this, but I think they are also more likely to think, “A hungry mob is an angry mob.” Or a criminal mob. Or a dysfunctional mob. And I don’t want any of these mobs coming after me."
I support social welfare spending not just because I feel empathy towards the poor, but because I believe poverty fucks up society. And I live and work in “society”. In other words, because I care about myself, I feel obligated to care about the poor. Altruistic, I am not.
Seems to me “We’re all in this together” is a liberal notion. It’s different from empathy, though one helps the other.
Yes, that was exactly my point in saying that the expression of empathy “isn’t a philosophical abstraction but a pragmatic reality”. It’s hard to dissociate empathy from enlightened self-interest. At its worst, the conservative extreme seems to be to possess neither, and when things get bad, to fortify and arm themselves. The problem is that this has limited scope of action; it only works up to a point, and not when social stability or the economy disintegrates on a large scale.
Again, I was speaking of extending benefits in situations like now, where there simply aren’t enough jobs. If there is no reasonable barrier to people working, and jobs actually exist for people to do, I agree benefits should not be extended.
And also again, it’s unfortunate there are people gaming the system like your deadbeat family members, but does that justify cutting off people who are genuinely looking for work, many of which have children to support?
I personally think supporting deadbeats is bad, but not quite as bad not helping people (and their families) who want nothing more than to work but cannot because of the economy.
And that’s what it comes down to, innit? We’re faced with the decision between helping the (for lack of a better term) moochers on the system along with those in honest need, and cutting off the needy along with the moochers.
If I saw some real numbers, beyond merely anecdotes and talking points, that there were more moochers than needy, I might have to seriously consider whether supporting the needy was worthwhile. As it is, I have not seen those numbers, and am unwilling to consider cutting off the needy for some nebulous number of moochers. Honestly even if the deliberate freeloaders outnumbered the needy, I’m not convinced cutting the needy off is the right choice.
From everything I’ve seen, the persistent Reagan-era idea of the “welfare mom” is a shibboleth with insufficient real-world incidence to make eliminating social support the right thing to do.
Please summarize that link for us. Is is simply providing an example showing that welfare abuse exists? Not a single person in this thread has doubted that.
