(Sorry, that $200 Housing Benefit would be spread over a month, not per week!)
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Cite? I haven’t known any lefties to laugh at the concept of working out of poverty.
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The earned income tax credit, formerly favored by Milton Friedman but currently favored by the left, is an example of a government program that gives a hand up to the working poor. I seem to recall that it was thought to be “too generous” by certain House Republicans.
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Job training programs were supported by liberals and ended by Reagan… because they didn’t work particularly well.
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(OTOH, job search programs have been shown to be somewhat effective, IIRC).
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The small business administration has been a target of conservatives for years.
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Support for education will, of course, provide a route out of poverty.
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The Wall Street Journal, in their infamous “Lucky Ducky” column, thought that the poor paid too little in taxes. Conveniently they focussed on the income tax while ignoring payroll taxes and sales taxes, the latter of which are regression.
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Recall that the Republicans have a lock on political power in Washington. They control all 3 branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial – the latter owing to their refusal to approve Clinton-era judgeships. Antipoverty initiatives receive more attention when the Dems are in power - although I hasten to concede that this issue has rarely been at the top of the policy agenda, conservative grumbling notwithstanding.
Beagle:
The constituency of the Congressman is certainly important. A couple of years ago, I downloaded voting records from VoteSmart and gave each vote a weight indicating my position and the intensity of my belief. Each Congressperson received a score.
After cross-referencing the results with the American Political Almanac, I realized that my so-called political heroes all resided in the same sort of Congressional district. (Urban high-tech districts tend to be for free trade, socially liberal and anti-pork). I confess that it was a sobering exercise.
However…
The Republican party really is ideological (in Washington at least). Translation: for a number of reasons, they have greater party discipline than Democrats do.
No Republican voted for the Clinton tax hike on millionaires (and those with incomes above $300,000(?) in 1993 dollars). This is to their shame, as it paved the way for the prosperity of the 1990s.
All Republicans voted for the Bush deficit-producing tax hikes.
Now, eventually the Republicans will learn to govern, as opposed to being the party of opposition. Then things will revert back to normal. I would argue, however, that conservative policy is very well defined at the moment.*
Liberal policy, OTOH, is divided between New Democrats and Old Democrats; the latter have been trending downwards for quite a while.
- Just to reiterate: Republicans have not always moved in lockstep. They formerly had a strong moderate wing: Javitz, Fenwick, Keating and Weiker are 4 examples. No longer.
“in the long run.”
I’m more of a centrist, just so you know, and I agree with a lot of things you’ve said thus far. The above though…I don’t know why having large corporations stay in business is a negative, or why we should slavishly adhere to free market any more than pro-worker concepts. But both camps are still out in full-force, which means roughly that it makes a lot of sense for a corporation to vacate the US if possible. They’re competing alright - with other companies that import!
I do see conservatives in the press complaining about occasional nods to protectionism and I think it’s terminally farsighted. So he gives the steel industry a bone, with a time limit to become more competitive (IIRC), which probably saves x number of local jobs. A fair compromise imo when faced with overall job hemorrhaging. Doesn’t that make sense?
This is long, just bear with me.
I do not want to begin quote people, I just debunk myths.
My history, so that nobody will not think that I do not know anything about this:
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both my (separated) parents found firms by their own.
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I also. I thought “that everyone that look for a job, will find it, handouts are for disabled people, etc.”, as I had been told. Told even at school.
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Got later an education in digital tech. (1975) Age 25 years.
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Later divorced, unemployed, no home, sleeping secretly in a cellar. In this order. Hard times for three years. And I knew that I had been totally screwed by the believes that “everyone makes his own future.”
It was also very hard to re-estimate all my thoughts, my sacred beliefs. -
Emigrated to Sweden. Got work, better positions, made a firm by myself in Finland. Made “lot of money.”
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1991 Finland went bankrupt. So did 25 - 30 % of the small businesses and I. House, car, everything went. + debts about 400.000 USD stayed. Struggled some years, just for food, wife left.
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1996 emigrated to Russia.
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2000 - 2001 had a work in a Russian jail, teaching sawing of birch and prefabricating material for western furniture companies, teaching European standards. Fixed jobs for the inmates when they got freed. (My most satisfying job ever.)
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2003 came back to Finland, unemployed.
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Now: Still unemployed, but I have a 10 hours work in fighting idiotic laws and regulations around the “believes of how unemployment should be handled.”
So here I begin:
Many people thinks that unemployment fees, or tax-money that firms get in different ways, is different from welfare, so called “handouts”.
It is bull-shit. It is exactly the same money, tax-money.
The far right, usually uneducated people, does not even recognize that firms gets money, “welfare help”, from government. They get it in every industrialized country.
If people really tries, they will find a work!
Crap!
If there is 100.000 new workers needed next month, and there is 2 million without work, the result is that there is still 1,9 million without work.
If it would be simple, I would be a millionaire. Take any country, the government would pay easily 1.000 USD for every work-place that I could show/create. Multiply this with some 10 millions without work in e.g. Europe.
Welfare costs too much!
Any family that needs help, costs less if they are helped through the hard times, than if they have too feed their children as well as they can, with what ever means
- If my children is without food, I do not care how I get the money for food. Legal or illegal.
I think that it was quite usual some 30 - 40 years ago, that the father, before killing himself, killed his family. Pure desperation. I remember such cases.
If someone is interested to see how it works, go to Russia. The “wolf-capitalism” there is really Libertian = nobody pays ‘anything’ to the government, and the government pays e.g. to a pensioner about 4 - 8 US dollars per month. (Remember that the pensioners of today, has built up almost everything there is.)
There everyone is fighting for himself, the pensioners can’t.
[President Gorbatschov got a monthly pension, 100 rubles, equal to 3 USD, but he could sell books he had written].
Everyone should get a higher education, but without help from government.
Not very patriotic thinking.
Facts:
- Half of the population is more gifted, than the other half.
- The same about the poor/rich; half under, half above the average.
Assumptions:
- Only the rich half can get higher education, half of them are more gifted and the other half is less gifted.
- The poor, how ever gifted they are, “will sweep the floors”.
- The rich, the other half, how ever ‘less gifted’, has a chance to get an education.
Corrections:
- Some of the poor can in any country get a higher education.
- Some of the less talented rich will fail to get the education. (But can many times anyhow get a good job through connections).
The result [very assumed]:
10 % of the poor, but talented, gets an higher education. As a result of this: 90% of the talented, but poor, are wasted. Any country[man] that waste its resources, acts unpatriotic.
Near 100 % of the poor, less talented, gets no higher education.
Near 100 % of the rich talented gets an higher education. (Good!)
70% of the less talented, but rich gets an education. (As a result, gets a position, tells the others what floors to sweep).
So, logically:
- Because there is many untalented (but rich) studying, the average demands for getting through the studies are lower.
- 90% of the gifted, but poor, goes down the drain. (Spoiled resources)
Result [factual]:
- We get a lot of not talented people educated => if the free-market companies does not want them, there is still the governmental “good jobs”, where the not so talented but well educated can work.
Thus these spoon-fed idiots gets too much power. [Which I am nowadays fighting. Further reading: Sir Peter’s Law].
The JFK question was not: “Do not ask what kind of help the gifted should get, the question is what kind of morons you should give to the government!”
But the result is.
A better system is to see all tax-money as a instrument with which You build up Your country:
- Help to all that are gifted to study as far as they can and that they then pay back to the government in form of paid taxes. They pay more taxes because of higher income, and on the other hand, because they through their knowledge create many new working opportunities.
- Or the other way round: “How many guys like Jean Sibelius [put here You own educated national hero ______________________] has not been spoiled, digging ditches, because they did not have a piano in their hut?” Obviously there was no “free education for the poor, but talented” at the villages.
But there should be.
There are naturally many great guys that has not a very high education: Einstein, Bill Gates etc., but why they did not have, is not a reason why Joe’s 3rd daughter should not get one if she is gifted!
There is too many educated already!
Yes, maybe lawyers, that tries to find a case, suing someone when granny is dazzled by the sun and can’t read the morning paper properly.
Ask any firm that needs qualified labour, (the almost only work we will have left in a decade or so), will they need unqualified or qualified people when they hire more people next time?
Btw. I herd the argument of “too many students at the universities”, in 1975, in our parliament. The speaking idiot was an ex-professor!
Note that qualified labour is the main tax-payers within 10 years. The rest of the jobs has been exported to India, Russia, China and so on. Naturally the hamburger flippers are still around, speaking some other lingua than our mother language.
Maybe we find our children or grand-children as managers there, with a funny hat, trying to explain their own children that they are
“self-made-(wo)men”, a complete success!
I would go much further in this:
1) In connection to every library there should be computers with learning-programs for Joe Doe:
- Teaching all usual programs: Word, Excel, different publishing-programs, etc.
- Teaching languages [there are very good CDs on the market]
- Teaching through Internet whatever.
It would not cost very much per student.
But are You ready, like it is today, to buy a program for 200 USD and up, just to learn it?
To pay for it, before You even know if it is a good program? While You are unemployed?
The answer is no, even if it might help You finding a job.
2) The unemployment administration, when they help You, when You are unemployed, should make a plan, a studying-program together with You:
a) What are ‘the gaps’ in Your education/qualifications/experience, in order to get a job so that You can begin to pay as high taxes as possible = high salary.
b) Your, maybe 6 - 12 month plan of obligatory additional learning/studies (in order that You will get the social help = unemployment money].
c) The government should help You with starting a business by Your own, if You are that type. = courses about legal matters, how to manage your book-keeping, taxation etc., so that You can more freely concentrate on Your business. (It is not Your fault if there is zillions of laws and regulations that You should know about). When Your business grows, You can afford to give all these questions to outside firms. But still You need the education so that You do understand what they speak about.
d) The government should have offices, where guys like me and You, who has put up a business, can ask for advice in all question that has to do with our new business. Free advise or against a small payment.
Only mental wankers think that an unemployed guy can afford to take a lawyer when he puts up the small business by his own.
(And if everyone would be a born “ready and able to make an own business”, we could all go Libertian, the most egoistic politics I know).
Yes, where does the money come from for all this?
All this has only one purpose: To make You a tax-payer! So You fly now, and pay later.
What’s wrong with that?
Just look at all the help You get, as an insurance that You already has paid, (if You have worked = paid taxes for, let’s say, 10 years), or You will pay in the future (when You again will be a tax-payer).
This insurance is also an insurance for Your children, they will also be helped to put up a firm, if something would happen to You, or if You can’t hire them.
You should take any job You are offered!
Yes and no!
- If You have a firm and You need to employ a driver for distribution of something, do You take a guy that is over-qualified? No, You do not, and neither do ‘they’.
- A driver knows completely his routines after 3 - 6 months working in a firm. If the new guy is qualified as a dentist, why take him, when (s)he will leave Your firm as soon as possible?
- On the other hand, the community has pushed a lot of money (maybe the first 12 years or more, up to 18-20 years in my country,) to educate this guy, who has (maybe) also put a lot of (loaned) money in his own education.
So, should he flip hamburgers?
Of course not, he should concentrate on finding a job and give the gain of his education to the community, get a higher salary = pay more taxes.
Everyone who is against governmental help in higher education, is not thinking of the best for his country!
These unpatriotic whiners are often found at the right of the political map!
Yes, and what are the whiners on the left? Those fucking whiners puts the community, before the individual! As JFK, [who I admire], did!
It is terrible that the patriots are pinkos !
The right wing solution:
- No taxes, the rich can afford to have very good schools for their children, as it was some 100 years ago.
- When all “normal” industry jobs has been exported, the low-educated can wash the other guys shirts.
- Half of the rest becomes guards, gets nice uniforms, lots of tech to carry = they will feel secure, they will feel their importance. And these, ‘the protechs’, will guard the other half, the constantly unemployed, ‘the proles’. => Populists like Le Pen in France, will point at the non-white, as the guilty ones, as responsible: “The ethnic minorities are washing the shirts for a too low price and we the whities can’t compete! These lazy coloured are stealing all the jobs!” (How logical that is, You should ask Le Pen).
And here the ‘protechs’ and the ‘proles’ will find each other, cry with joy because of the reunion, march together, wave the flags…
The populists, the right wing, totally forgets to tell, that they have created the system where the “shirt-washing, hamburger-flipping” salaries should compete “freely” at the market. => The uneducated mob, whatever the working status is, will follow The Leader, and so on. Those who are criticizing “The Fatherland”-administration are automatically labeled to be “unpatriotic pinkos”.
And the rich, paying 0,1 % of taxes at Bahamas, is just smiling, smiling until even they can’t anymore handle the situation.
Later, much later, we can begin again from square one.
Yes, I know, I am nowadays one of these pinkos.
If I had written this above, four years ago, most of You would have laughed, and laughed.
But today, most of the smiles are crocked, and the audible laugh is short.
I myself, have a few options:
1) to plan/make ergonomical work-stations for E-work, for people that works at home. The drawings are ready, and I can E-mail them to any of You, just E-mail me. Maybe someone else can also make a business of it? Where ever he lives.
I will be away for a week, leaving the nearest day(s), but I promise, I will send You the plans and some pics, and later the actual drawings and photos.
(A friend from USA that I “met” at the Internet some year ago is coming to see me in May.
We are both working in the wooden business).
2) to make a Finnish-language-video-dictionary for foreigners that emigrates/has emigrated to Finland.
My problem:
- Because I get unemployment money, I am not supposed to work (for myself, creating a firm, a job, for me and thus later also for others). That is looked as I would steal something from the government. Taking advantages, using the help wrongly. Steal from the tax-payers.
I have tried to explain, that I will do everything with open cards, just become a tax-payer, etc…, but the administration says they have no law for that!
So why am I for more help from the government?
Because those bureaucrats could do something creative, not just watch “if someone is using the system wrong!”
We should have the bureaucrats at the same pressure we others have: ”Results or out!
There are 10.000 (wo)men, outside the door, that wants Your job! Produce, provide or vanish!”
Btw.
Sir Peters law:
- An administration is like a pyramid, where everyone begins at the bottom.
- A person that has abilities, will get a better work, will rise up to a higher position in this pyramid.
- He will rise up, until he comes to a position where he is not anymore able to handle his work.
There he is stopped. - After awhile, the whole pyramid is filled with persons that has reached the peak of their abilities, the point where they can’t handle their new responsibilities.
- The administration has reached its highest level and nobody can or want, do anything in order to change the status quo.
And everyone that wants a change, is a pinko rebel .
Or a Libertian, who wants to pull down everything, and is whining, if there is no educated labour available for his firm. That is, if he has been able to create one.
Has anyone that has been unemployed, ever been asked by a bureaucrat, a very simple question:
“What do You, think should be done so that we could create working-places for You and other unemployed people?” No? No questions?
So now You know where those “not so talented, not so creative” people ended.
P.S. Next summer I will mason grills of bricks for veterans that fought against Stalin. Work for free!
And the bureaucrats will come and tell me that I will not get “handouts” because I work.
Because their fucking paragraphs says it is forbidden!
It will look nice in television and the press. Then the bureaucrats can explain to the media that the veterans should not be helped by the unemployed!
Welcome all to the pinko-barricades!
Henry
It makes sense for Bush, but not for the country. Steel is an input: the benefits to steel workers are overwhelmed by losses by those in manufacturing.
However, the job losers in the steel industry are a) easily identifiable and b) concentrated in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Those who lose their jobs from high steel prices will also be facing other factors such as falling demand. Those on the margin – those extra workers who would have remained employed if only Pennsylvania was solidly Republican or Democratic – will never be able to demonstrate what hit them.
Finally, I must note that Bush Co’s policies in this regard differ from those of Reagan, Bush I and Clinton. True, Reagan was happy to arrange so-called “voluntary” restraint on car imports from Japan. However, there was a firm rule that all protectionist actions had to be “GATT compliant” - they would not contradict the trade agreements signed with other countries.
The thinking was, “If the US doesn’t honor its trade agreements, who will?” Alas, Bush Co. does not share the scrupulousness of past administrations.
There is also the question of whether the deal actually addressed steel’s underlying problems, which IIRC are overhanging pension costs. But I would prefer not to get sidetracked too much.