Just as a matter of interest, and by extension from the OP’s premise, how long is a piece of American string?
(I know what Donald Trump’s answer might be).
Like others here, I dispute the premise, but I’ll put that to one side since that’s been discussed a lot already.
I just want to say I take exception to the term “useless” because of the contempt it shows, and how final it sounds.
There is no way to know if a person is “useless” and does not have an aptitude or attribute that would extremely useful if we could find it and help get that person in the right position. It’s happened in my life ,and I’ve seen it happen in other people’s: the no-talent average Joe finding there’s something he’s really good at.
It’s human nature to look down on people at a lower social level as inherently inferior but we have to resist that nature.
Plus of course I doubt many people are rubbing their hands with glee with the thought of claiming welfare in the US; it’s not an enviable quality of life.
A useless zombie thread (5yrs old).
NM - zombie thread and I repeated myself.
When this thread was started, I was a “useless” person. I had suffered a job loss, situation depression, and a serious fracture of my wrist making my left hand pretty much useless.
I got rental assistance, food stamps and free food from the government. I almost ended up homeless. What would the OP have me do?
It took me two frigging years to find a temporary, part-time job as a holiday store cashier. One break was all I needed–I turned it into a permanent full-time job.
But let me tell all of you, it could happen to you. Yes, some people are just smooching off the government. And that takes more time and effort than holding down a job does. But most of the people living off the government have had bad breaks, and just need one good one to get back on their feet.
And, as other people have said, what would you do with the people living permanently on the government’s dime?
Boy, back when I was single, I sure coulda used a government entitlement program to cover THAT…
Incentives and opportunity.
Education is the answer, everything else is a band aid.
- Too many? Not by choice. With our regulatory environment such as minimum wage laws, lax borders, and very competitive foreign labor costs many people who would otherwise not be “useless” with regards to economic production are priced out of the market through only partial fault. Voting for political elites who counter-productively enact and lobby for wage floors is where they share culpability.
But many would work at a real market wage if it were legal to do so.
-
Don’t know. But the number in the US will probably grow as the left side of our bell curve isn’t intrinsically more valuable than China’s. And China has 700 million that can and does do the work that those in the US who couldn’t be a neurosurgeon or nuclear engineer used to do. Add growing capabilities from AI and robotics and you have even more pressure on wages. And with a wage floor that’s a real squeeze. Of course politicians will obfuscate but the logic is unassailable.
-
What to do? As president I’d do the following:
a. Destigmatize the poor and unfortunate. In the modern world success and failure is not strictly correlated with morality and behavior. There is a great deal of luck involved.
b. Inform the nation that we don’t live in a nation that lacks resources. That’s not the source of poverty in the US. It’s more of an issue of distribution. So, we got the stuff. And we have idle capability. We could produce VASTLY more stuff if people could buy it. If the demand was present.
c. Lobby strongly to eliminate minimum wage laws nationally no state or city ones either. 10th amendment being dead and all that. Lobby strongly to implement a basic income. Work very hard to ensure we had a robust need based safety net.
d. Not touch anyone’s benefits who paid into SS or Medicare. Those are paid entitlements and should be strictly honored. But take a very close look to see if the programs could be handled in a better fashion.
e. Subsidize adult education. Just like having dams, canals, and railroads facilitates commerce and productivity an educated workforce pays dividends. Therefore, take advantage of the fact that the adult mind that has matured and is living with daily incentives to improve can indeed be improved with a bit of aid.
So all “true” liberals have a homogeneous hive mind. You must have never heard Bill Clinton talk about poverty.
There *was *a problem with able-bodied people living off welfare for all their life. This ended in 1996, with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act - that ended welfare as most people think of it. That was two decades ago.
Ok, so we have Soc Sec, and unemployment. Both where you pay in and then get back. So, those are not “taking money from the state and providing nothing in return”. Same with workers comp.
Then we have disability- do you begrudge the pittance disabled people get? Ayn Rand would.
Food stamps- very small benefit.
We then have various programs for women with babies- would you have them starve?
But the classic 'welfare queen" idea is over and has been over for 20 fucking years.
Do you have any solid evidence that minimum wage laws lead to unemployment?
This has been argued back and forth, and in general leading economists say Minimum wage laws help not hurt.
*A Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour got the backing Tuesday of 75 leading economists.
The group includes seven Nobel laureates, among them Joseph Stiglitz and Peter Diamond, and several former Obama and Clinton administration economists.
They lent their support to legislation known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, introduced in the House by Rep. George Miller and in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin.
“The vast majority of employees who would benefit are adults in working families, disproportionately women, who work at least 20 hours a week and depend on these earnings to make ends meet,” the group wrote in a letter to congressional leaders and to President Obama, who backs the Miller-Harkin proposal.
*
I just wanna say that when you have *seven fucking Nobel laureates *backing it, it’s pretty hard to beat that.
https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster
*Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.
Not true: In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders urging a minimum wage increase, more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, “In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front.”*
There is also the fact that not everyone disabled has been disabled all their life, or so disabled as to be completely unable to work, so a lot of people on disability right now actually DID contribute to the system when they were able to do so.
Again, most people are not on food stamps for life, for most it’s just a couple years, sometimes less. Outside of that they are, in fact, paying into the system.
I know people who work hard then claim they would NEVER apply for food stamps. I think those people are fucking morons. You’ve paid into the system, you’d be stupid not to collect when you actually need help. If you have car insurance and you get into an accident what, you would refuse a check from the insurance company? You pay taxes for you local fire department but if you house caught fire you’d refuse their help? It’s the same stupid “reasoning”.
Again, a lot of women on WIC either worked before they were pregnant/new mothers, or even while they are still working. So, again, they are contributing to the system.
In addition, men can collect WIC on behalf of their young children if the mother is no longer around, and typically these men are not only raising kids on their own but also working — so, they are definitely putting into the system, and might well be doing so after a personal tragedy such as the death of their wife/girlfriend.
But beyond that - ensuring proper nutrition from prenatal to toddlerhood increase the likelihood of young children maximizing their potential health and intelligence, making them less likely to be disabled or at a disadvantage. In other words, it ups the odds that the children won’t be collecting benefits for life. Which should be applauded by conservatives who are all about pulling one’s own weight.
Like economists can’t be political shills? And you are trusting the politicians who run the government to be unbiased? C’mon man.
Tell you what, when you and every other American buys goods and services solely from those making a “living wage” or at least the legal minimum wage I’ll concede the point. Until then actions speak larger than politically motivated words.
Since you don’t, I don’t, and I know the rest of America doesn’t than that means those who are producing goods and services overseas are doing it at the expense of workers here. The reason they can, mostly, has to do with wages.
Joseph Stiglitz is not a politician, he is a a professor at Columbia University.
Peter Diamond is not a politician, he is a Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
and so forth.
I have no idea of what you’re babbling about. Of course I buy my goods from merchants who pay minimum wage.
I find the notion that all the unemployed bums would be happy to work for $4.00 an hour if only it were legal to be laughable. It really is laughable.
We’re talking marginally employable people here. If they are so marginally employable that they don’t qualify for a minimum wage job, how exactly are the supposed to be productive at half that?
You honestly think that if it were legal to pay people $3.00 an hour that there would be a rush of factory jobs back to America from China? And all the unemployed people would flock to those jobs, so they could make $25 a day?
The average wage for a worker in China is something like $5000 a year. So if only the unemployed bum sitting on his ass had that opportunity to work his ass off in a sweatshop for $5000 a year, he’d jump at the chance. Goodbye crime! Goodbye unemployment! That $5000 a year was all that was standing between that lazy bum and his future. Now he’s on the productive track, contributing rather than taking! Yep, he’s contributing a whole $5000 worth of value each and every year! Goodbye budget deficit! With all that new economic productivity rolling in, we can finally get Donald Trump and Bill Gates that tax cut they’ve been wanting.
These “welfare” discussions seem to usually hinge on how narrowly or broadly you define “welfare”. Is it only cash assistance programs, or do you consider other means-tested programs to be welfare as well? The answer to that question probably goes a long ways towards determining which camp you’re in on the welfare debate.
As for me personally, I’m still pretty convinced there are a good number of people largely / entirely living on the government dole, but it’d be nice to be convinced that the ‘welfare queens’ of the early 90’s are now all / mostly gainfully employed and no longer sucking my tax dollars to sit around and watch daytime TV (or insert whatever offensive stereotype of the ‘useless’ class you want here)
Reading is difficult?
You buy goods and services from those who provide such goods and services from those who pay far less than minimum wage. Nice attempt at trying to deflect it into an issue of buying from a merchant though. Lol.
Globalism and the fact that labor is a global commodity is not “babble.” It’s a fact. It seems to me that you believe that labor is one of the very few commodities in the world that doesn’t have a demand curve or a supply curve as a function of price.
You think there is a large discontinuity where the supply and demand for legal labor is absolutely 0 coincidentally placed where the price is equivalent to a fiat minimum wage? Seems mighty unlikely. Therefore there is supply and demand for labor below minimum wage. Which means people are displaced from work due to a wage floor! And who fills in the gap foreign, illegal, and gray market labor.
What makes the adjective American with regards to labor anything special in a global economy? Nothing.
Ah, you mean that i buy from a merchant who buys from a wholesaler that buys from a jobber who buys from a factory somewhere in the 3rd world which pays low wages.
Suuuuure buddy.:rolleyes: Now perhaps get back to the topic?
If you would do some math you’d find that the scenario of minimum wage pricing the unskilled out of the market you have the following.
Person producing 0 and maybe even living in a more counterproductive way due to idleness. Person receiving earned, official income of 0. Person needing 100% aid.
vs.
octopusonomics where there is no stupid ass minimum wage but there is a basic income and need based aid. It seems like conjunctions in sentences are perplexing.
Person producing something. Person receiving earned, official income > 0. Person needing 100%-earned income(after tax) aid.
Let’s use the power of inequalities to see which scenario is objectively better.
Productivity of something is > productivity of nothing.
Earned income of >0 is by definition >0.
And being productive is not a function of wages. That’s just a fallacy. Right now, well, in 2 minutes with this post I’m going to be productive for 0 wages. I’m going to clean and maintain my house. That’s productivity.
I’d mow my lawn if it were summer. That’s productivity. I’ll cook dinner later tonight. That’s value added. That’s productivity. I’ll pay my kids a dollar to rake. That’s productivity. They are working for a $1!!! Again, American labor has no special value in a global market.
The next 10-20 years is going to be exceedingly disruptive. Free and global trade and automation/ai is going to crush the unskilled and many of the skilled. Better start rethinking wealth distribution and stop clinging to failed but politically popular policy.
That is the topic. The topic is what to do with economically worthless people. I know you don’t have a solution.
You believe everyone can be a middleman for someone else’s production? Wal-Mart and Amazon say “hi!”