It’s ironic that you want to characterize this as an insubstantial matter (a “dick measuring contest”) while at the same time pointedly ignoring the substance (overall health, dental care, happiness, violent crime and dangerousness, poor driving, education) in preference to your personal issues with one other poster.
It’s easy to say that there are no real substantial issues if you ignore the substantial issues.
I’m talking about the OP, not the issues. There’s a difference.
I care about the issues, but I think msmith547 is an idiot. I don’t think you’re an idiot, but I wonder why you’re having a hard time getting that the reason I am posting is I that I think he is one. If you let him do his own arguing, you will come to the same conclusion.
Perhaps it is because I don’t give a shit about your regard for msmith547, but I do care whether there are substantial state-based differences across broad indicators of wellness, and whether these systematically vary by categories of governance.
I will give you one thing, you have done a hell of a lot better than he could.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
Perhaps it is because I don’t give a shit about your regard for msmith547,
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msmith537 also doesn’t give a shit about armedmonkey’s regard for msmith537. (Why would I? Notice how I can’t even be bothered to respond to him directly. )
Although I do hear the children of unwed teenage mothers grow with all sorts of emotional problems. Maybe armedmonkey was raised in one of these states?
*Voted Democrat in 2012
**Voted Republican in 2012
Also I went with Red/Blue map by current governor,not by how they voted in the 2012 election. I feel it better reflects actual state policies.
I feel this data is a bit more revealing than the dumb Forbes “List of Best Places to Live” list based on some unknown scoring algorithm of some arbitrary data metrics mishmashed together.
No, I was just saying that I’ve only heard one other reason for a retiree leaving other than getting away from the taxes.
Personal anecdotes make poor evidence, but there are many folks in here making statements about people being supported by the government who have never had the experience of living with them, so I fail to see why their opinions can possibly be valid.
Re a significant fall in the poverty level since Great Society programs were enacted, you’ll need to be more specific since you are talking decades ago. Do you mean fewer people living in poverty?
Not at all, since doing so just means we end up with more illegals.
That’s just Medicare. What about MediCal, DentiCal, food stamps, housing, etc?
State programs, here?
There is a huge difference between “not exactly wealthy” (which is where we are now) and living below the poverty line.
I am not one to make generalizations about other states, particularly not ones that I haven’t live in. Nor am I discussing education or anything else here other than what happens when the government keeps giving people things for free. There are all kinds of reasons why those things might be happening that have nothing to do with red or blue.
[QUOTE=curlcoat;16746931
Personal anecdotes make poor evidence, but there are many folks in here making statements about people being supported by the government who have never had the experience of living with them, so I fail to see why their opinions can possibly be valid.[/QUOTE]
What makes one so sure, that they were never poor or had contact with them?
Yes, speaking percentage-wise.
Not really. Illegal immigration rates are already dropping off and programs like EVerify can help contain the problem.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for most of those programs.
Considering California’s budget problems, they aren’t intact either. That said I’m
Perhaps I should have clarified by saying at the borderline of poverty.
[Quote=msmith537]
I feel this data is a bit more revealing than the dumb Forbes “List of Best Places to Live” list based on some unknown scoring algorithm of some arbitrary data metrics mishmashed together.
[/quote]
Well, they’re not arbitrary metrics. Things like low taxes and business-favorable climates may be part of the reason that some states rank so poorly on other indicators of quality of life. It’s the real question when it comes to the red state/blue state thing for me. It isn’t just dick measuring. It isn’t partisanship. People are fucking stupid because they think comparisons like this are about my team versus your team.
These are the kind of things that should help you decide what team to be on in the first place, or what kind of things your team should be doing. So yeah, seeing that a construct that includes lower taxes ends up not looking as bad for red states as all the other indicators shouldn’t be surprising.
As others have already pointed out this is just completely wrong.
Have you never shopped for a house? How much are the taxes? That’s the second or third question people ask when looking at a town.
People are leaving CA in droves for AZ. People are leaving MA in droves for NC. Cary, a near Research Triangle Park is called the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.
I live in NH. You better believe that I’m not moving south of the MA border ever so I can give them 5%.
It’s very telling that you actually think taxes don’t matter. It reads like a parody of liberal naivete.
The worst part is that the State Board of Education (the group that makes textbook and other educational decisions) is publicly elected.
In other words, those benighted knuckleheads agitating for creationism and intelligent design are people that the population voted into office.
If anything would make me think that some sort of poll tax or limitation on voting rights was a good idea, it’s the very presence of these fools on the Board of Education. There’s no reasonable, non-ignorant way that these people should ever have been elected in the first place, much less mucking things up about the education of Texas students.
Mostly the things they say, as if poor people are saints and just need a little help to move up. Also when I said that those who had never lived below the poverty line should quit making statements, they all shut up.
You have a cite for that? I’m not sure exactly what it is that you are saying here, or what it might be based on.
I’m not sure how anyone can know anything about the rate of illegal immigration, since there aren’t too many folks that are going to admit they are here illegally.
EVerify could help, but it appears voluntary so I doubt the big employers of illegals are going to use it. And it won’t stop anchor babies.
It doesn’t mean they aren’t getting them. The government is a big stupid machine, and it is quite easy to get things from it that you aren’t eligible for, if you are willing to risk being found out. If illegals are paying into Medicare, it shouldn’t be much of a jump for you to believe they are involved in other government programs.
You didn’t finish this.
Um, OK. How do you define that?
What percentage of the total population of a state leaves for another state due to taxes? What is “droves” in terms of actual numbers?
For all of that, the Republic will endure. And NH will endure. And you will not.
Yes, the SBOE is elected. The Governor nominates the Chair; one was so bad that the Lege finally objected:
The Texas Freedom Network page includes sickening details about the more extremist SBOE members (past & present) and the well funded organizations (not all Texas-based) that have been using our schools to fight the Culture Wars. For years.
The problem is that too many voters just don’t pay attention to those names at the end of the ballot. They may not have kids; I don’t, but am opposed to ignorance, in general. The nightly TV news rarely spends time on these elections; you have to seek out details on your own or pay attention to the fine folks at the TFN to know what’s at stake. The word does get out to the Forces of Ignorance & they vote.
Because of redistricting, all the SBOE was up for election last year. Results here. The struggle is still on.
Check out the TFN site for tons of information on How Texas Got That Way & What We Can Do About It…
Very few people have said that. On the contrary, we’re saying that “cut everything except military spending!” simply increases poverty and inequality while those with far more robust welfare states than ours such as Germany have produced both very successful economic results along with far greater equality than the United States.
Or maybe this thread is just winding down.
Here for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society#The_Legacies_of_the_Great_Society
This is true especially among the elderly who were the beneficiaries of many of the strongest Great Society programs.
In other words you don’t trust the experts. Simple logic would indicate that illegal immigration would be less popular considering the Recession.
In that case, it ought to be made mandatory, with penalties for employers who don’t use the EVerify system. I believe the current immigration bill includes them.
So what? There’s always some cheating in the entitlement and welfare programs (much as there is in corporate lobbying and subsidies except in the latter we’re cheated of far more money). And as I’ve said its outweighted by the fact that illegals pay taxes such as sales taxes.
I was going to say I’d prefer the federal government to totally federalize welfare payments and only adjust them for cost of living so that there are no wide inequalities in welfare coverage.
If you must know, 21k for a family of three.
I haven’t talked to anyone that has said “cut everything except military spending!”, nor would I agree with that. And I doubt that Germany has such a high percentage of entitled irresponsible citizens as we do. Welfare only works if those getting it are working hard to get off of it.
It wasn’t in this thread. (I think - hard to remember any more.)
I imagine many things have changed since the 60’s.
What experts? Has someone come up with a way to count people who are doing their best to not be found?
Perhaps. OTOH, things are still better here than down there, so maybe not. Like I said, I don’t know how anyone can know for sure since I don’t know how anyone can get anything close to an accurate count.
OK. Apparently there are others who think that stopping the flow of bodies over the border is a good idea.
I cannot imagine that poor illegals are buying enough of anything to pay enough sales taxes to cover what they take out of MediCal, DentiCal, WIC, etc.
You want the Feds to pay out all of the welfare programs, not the states?
What is the poverty level these days?
"You do not understand Freedom. Number #1, #2 and #3 is Guns, guns, guns. If we don’t have the right to shoot to kill a suspected trespasser, we might as well be living in the Soviet Union.
"And what about the Freedom to tell women what they may or may not do with their bodies? Hunh?
“And shut your trap about Freedom of Religion! You can worship the Baby Jesus anyway you want in Dixie. We have both kinds of religion here, Baptist and Methodist. Heck, we even have some Presbyterian friends.”
A right-winger posted a fact with no cite and you Wikipedia’d it? :smack: Did you know there’s no “gullible” in Webster’s Dictionary?
But thanks for this anyway: it was worth the price of admission to learn, after the rejoinder, that the guy couldn’t even find Massachusetts on the map! 
Oh my. I debunk this here every year or so, and the liars shut their traps for a few months. But here we go again. I give up.
Amusing that he mentioned “2003.” I wonder if he even knows 2003 and 2004 set records for largest deficit in absolute terms?
(The record is now held by 2009. Think he’s stupid enough to claim that one’s Obama’s fault?)
Oh. I thought I clicked in BBQ Pit and wondered why the Idiots were getting such calm responses to their lunacies. 
Forget it, Qin. These guys just see a “(D)” by the name. That’s the extent of their “thinking.”
You’re just engaging in America’s national pastime of self-reproach, which I believe comes down to us from the English Separatists who founded the first European settlements here. I doubt if your claim is true.
In 2005 Germany did reduce the length of time one could take public assistance, and at the same time combined unemployment benefits with other kinds of cash assistance, suggesting that there was perceived to be some level of abuse of the system prior to that time. However, it’s pretty hard to compare the relative cost of such programs in the two countries. In many areas, such as healthcare, a higher level of support from the government is standard, and American conservatives might criticize this arrangement as welfare. By that metric, many more Germans must be taking “welfare”, as our conservatives might call it, but the percentage of people actually receiving cash assistance from the welfare authorities must be far less. One reason may be German employment law, which makes it much harder to fire people. By common wisdom, this makes employers much more reluctant to hire new people, yet currently the overall result is that the German unemployment rate is currently but a fraction of the American rate. And this pretty much flies in the face of conservative reasoning, by which greater regulation of the private sector is a job killer.
That would be virtually the entire Republican party these days with the exception of a few pragmatics such as Huntsman and some libertarians.
What makes you suggest America’s poor is more “irresponsible” then Germany’s? Americans generally work longer than Germans do for example.
Including the existence of good social programs to help the poor although admittedly this has been outweighed in many cases by growing income inequality since the 1980s.
Methodology is discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigrant_population_of_the_United_States
And things like EVerify along with relaxing immigration laws is the best way to counter further illegal immigration rather than building a Berlin Wall on the border.
No because while virtually illegal immigrants will buy something that pays sales taxes, very few manage to sneak themselves into a social support program. Even if they do, the costs are probably less overall then if they had no health coverage and ended up in the emergency room.
In the sense of the Feds forming a general fund, yes, so that states do not have a race to the bottom to slash welfare and thus slash taxes to attract low-wage businesses.
What is the poverty level these days?
[/QUOTE]
Not me - I’m not an entitled fuckwit that expects the government to support me and my family.
Then, Germany is not a “far more robust welfare state” as Qin Shi Huangdi said? I really have no idea either way, since I don’t feel there is any way one can compare success or failure in one country to what is going on in a second country. There are simply too many variables.
Or they might criticize it as I do - a really bad idea. I worked with the government doing Medicaid and Medicare payments and the level of stupid, incompetence and fraud there could never even be approached by any insurance company.
That seems scary, given the US equivalent - civil service.
Well, of course their employment rate is lower, if it’s hard to fire them.
I wouldn’t know - I’m not a Republican, nor do I follow what any of the talking heads are saying.
Because it’s cause=effect for me, due to having lived for years among, and as, a very poor person. Shoot, if nothing else, these days one can make more on the dole than working an entry level job, but I also saw a whole generation of people grow up with the attitude that they were owed whatever they wanted, and that they should have it when they wanted it. Granted, that was decades ago in another state, but even here and living middle class, I still see people who have things that I can’t afford buying their groceries and fast food with EBT. People running up debt and then just defaulting. People who state that their safety net is the government. These are not people who feel they need to be responsible for themselves.
Yup, the middle class is slowly being choked to death.
So essentially, they are admitting they don’t know.
Uh no. The best way to counter further immigration is to figure out some way to get Mexico to not be a third world country. Progress has been made in Tijuana, but the people themselves need education and birth control for a start.
As we cannot know how many illegals are actually here, neither can we know how many have forged papers so they can get welfare and other handouts. Even if they don’t have MediCal, if they end up in the emergency room, they are still going to cost less than if MediCal pays to birth and raise all of their children and DentiCal pays to take care of their teeth.
This business of people without insurance ending up costing us so much by using the ER seems to be a red herring anyway. I’ve lately ended up sitting in ERs and only saw maybe 15% of the people who came get anything more than an exam and some drugs. Far far cheaper than paying for well visits, allergy shots, physical therapy, eye doctors and on and on - all of the things that regular insurance covers and people, especially those with young children, tend to use.
Why would states want to attract low-wage businesses?
