Ok. What process do you propose by which to decide the curriculum?
To teach them about ‘delayed gratification’ or ‘the value of earning what they receive’?
I said a worker should make a living wage and get health insurance. If that is making them well off, so be it. Exploiting the low classes is bad form.
Appear to be typos in here. Are you asking me how to teach these things? Or do you think they are mutually exclusive?
They don’t.
BUT when you have an ecnomy where MANY people cannot afford :housing (ever read Nickle and Dimed? Not too many people could afford to easily pay rent on a minimum wage job,) health insurance ( HELLO even middle class people cannnot easily afford health insurance premiums!!) or even FOOD (during the recent recession, MANY " middle class" families were signing up for food stamps) It’s basicly an unfortunate side effect of capitalism)
you need to try to make stuff more affordable for those who are at the bottom of the income heap. Hell…I can’t work right now b/c I REALLY need health insurance especially health insurance which covers hearing aids. (and private insurances generally do not cover those) I have multiple issues due to a genetic condition. Under my parent’s insurance my co-pay for a drug is $20. Under my state’s health plan it’s $2. Hearing aids (which I need to function in day to day life) aren’t covered by my parents (or generally most insurances) Yet under the state’s insurance they are FREE!!! I would love to be off of disabilty, and working at a job that pays decent wages and decent benifits. But when even a lot of my very healthy and decent wage earning friends are having difficulty with procuring decent health insuranc and trying to wrangle a decent rent…there is something messed up there! One of my friends has ADD and is going without adderall b/c she can’t afford health insurance!
Ask yourself. Would YOU like to be poor? Most people bashing the system just have NO freakin clue what it’s like to actually BE POOR.
Yes there are people who scam the system…there are people who scam the system at ALL levels of income!!! It’s not just poor people…and overall you’re paying poor people a very tiny amount compared to what you pay for defense or corparate welfare or whatever.
And, research has indicated that most of those poor people are on it as a stopgap measure rather then on it for life.
Yes, we need to somehow fix the system to prevent “Ewell” (as in the To Kill A Mockingbird) families from taking root. But denying them benifits isn’t going to do anything!
Why don’t those who are so inclined to pay more, simply write a check to the US Treasury, then? Instead, they want to use the coercive force of government to make other people give away more of their property. Assholes, they are.
Governments are no more coercive to citizens than employers are to employees. If an employee doesn’t like the conditions of employment, he is free to find another job. Likewise, if a citizen doesn’t like the social contract legislated by the majority, no one is forcing him to stay in this country. He can move to any libertarian paradise he wishes. Don’t like it here? Nobody’s got a gun to your head.
Sorry, that’s not how it works. A job is not the same as a birthright.
Fair enough. I said:
The trouble with the poor is their mishandling of the concepts of ‘delayed gratification’ and ‘the value of earning what they receive’. So. The poor ought to be taught this in the public schools. That ain’t going to happen without a curriculum. Curriculums aren’t created without processes. So: What is your process for creating the public school curriculum which teaches ‘delayed gratification’ and ‘the value of earning what they receive’? You know, in order to reduce the ranks of the poor in the future.
No one is forcing you to exercise your birthright. If you don’t like the will of the majority, you can leave. No coercion.
I bet that’s only your philosophy when you are in the majority. I’m sure you wouldn’t have told Blacks dueing Jim Crow to just leave if they didn’t like it.
Jim Crow was found to be unconstitutional. Income taxes have been consistently upheld. The system works.
OK, fine. Are you telling me I won’t find one post from you compalining about Republican policies when they controlled Congress and the Presidency? You were just fine sitting back and accepting the will of the majority?
You are seriously asking me to plan school curriculum?
That’s not what we were disageeing about. I complain more than most about GOP policies and legislation, but I never claimed they didn’t have the constitutional right to make law as they saw fit. CS is claiming that the ability to tax and spend without his permission is somehow coersive, and therefore bad. My point was that taxing and spending are settled constitutional law, so moaning about coersion now is pointless, and you might as look elsewhere because that is not going to change.
That’s the whole problem with populism. The majority believe they are entitled to what the elite have simply because there are more of them. Just because 50 million people believe in a bad idea does not make it a good one.
All I’m saying is our country is $11 trillion dollars in debt. Who’s going to pay for all this crap?
It isn’t a tangent to discuss housing, food and medical care in regard to “welfare reform” (which has already been done, repeatedly) because welfare isn’t any one thing, first of all. There are cash payments, TANF, which represent only a portion of the entitlement programs that the poorest in our society benefit from. And even if there were only one, or even in the cases of families that only avail themselves of one program, when you put aid into a family’s situation, you improve the entirety of their situation. There are no Chinese Walls in family budgets. If you assist in the burden of paying high healthcare costs, they can afford better housing. If you assist them in purchasing food, they can afford high quality and higher quantities of food. When safe and accessible childcare is subsidized, parents are able to cultivate better work histories (no more missed days because the babysitter didn’t show) and advance to better positions. It all works together.
You’re the one suggesting that people should not be able to receive benefits because of the shortcomings of the generation(s) before them. So I’m asking again, would you be willing to not receive the benefits that you live on based upon the contributions to the system that your parents did (or did not) make? Why is your situation different?
Because you aren’t magical nor God nor the Queen of Earth, and therefore, like everyone else on the planet, your kid would be just as susceptible to having a series of finance-destroying events as anyone else.
And here is the question you repeatedly refuse to answer: what is the alternative? If we take away these people’s benefits, what happens to them next?
Yes, because you have no answer to the question: what happens to children if you take away the benefits that are keeping them housed, clothed, fed and medically cared for? It is not “emotional blackmail” to point out that children cannot care for themselves and to ask what the answer is to making sure that those who cannot do for themselves are taken care of. You’d just rather ignore the question because your philosophy of sink or swim self-reliance cannot logically include children, was never designed to include children, and because you yourself do not care for children, it’s beyond your ability to form a reasonable response.
You know what? This one demands a cite. First of all, to prove that there is a quantifiable portion of benefits recipients in this country who are “abusers” and second to show that they are perpetually complaining about the benefits they are abusing. Show some proof.
Do you really have to ask this in this country in this economy? Should we start with the fact that there aren’t jobs? That the job market is contracting, has been for quite some time, that we’re getting damned close to double digit unemployment and will probably hit it by October, at the latest?
On a more granular level, how about poor education, a significant barrier to meaningful employment when a high school diploma isn’t enough for even low-skill employment. How about poor access to where jobs are, a particular issue for those in exurban areas or in small cities with poor public transit. Poor health, which plagues the lowest income amongst us, which can be sufficient to bar many low-skill jobs (janitorial, fast food, retail, etc.) without being sufficient to qualify for disability programs. Do you need more?
Because low-skill jobs don’t have an “up” to move to. There is no upward mobility for laborers. There can only be one head of janitorial services or the mail room. You can’t become a retail keyholder or manager if your have poor credit scores, another perpetual albatross around the neck of the working poor. What kind of advancement do you really think is possible in low-paying positions?
False dichotomy. Hugely false dichotomy. There is nothing that says that we can’t assist people by making sure that their basic needs are met and deal with the reasns why they’re chronically poor at the same time. I can promise you that no one is perpetually stuck in crap jobs and living in bad neighborhoods because they love food stamps too much to apply themselves.
I do not. However, looking at it logically, considering that courts determine child support amounts based upon a percentage of the income of the noncustodial parent (not necessarily the father, don’t be biased) and the emphasis child support enforcement agencies place on locating the non-custodial parent and/or their source of income, it seems that a significant amount of the arrearage must be put down to those who could pay at least a portion of their monthly obligation, but choose to pay nothing at all, and either hide themselves or their work from the custodial parent. (Otherwise, location would not be such a high agency emphasis, enforcement would be.) So you tell me.
Okay, here we go. Name three such movies or TV shows. Go back to 1999, even. Name three. That’s all I ask.
And contemplate this while you’re looking: the role of “abstinence-only” or “abstinence plus” sex “education” in public schools in the newly reversed teenage pregnancy rates.
Further supplemental teaching moment: what percentage of teen mothers avail themselves of any entitlement program other than Medicaid? (Specifically exempted because of the number of insurers that do not cover obstetric care.) What percentage of single mothers overall avail themselves of such programs?
Why are you allowed to keep your teeth?
That’s the first sensible question you’ve asked. Even if it is taught, what effect does that have on the children who would still be born, if there are no benefits available to them as you repeatedly suggest should be the case?
First of all, you clearly don’t know what the phrase “baby daddy” means and using it makes you look like a fool, so stop. Secondly, where did I say I’m not interested in it? As far as I’m concerned, anyone who owes child support (regardless of gender) should face confiscation and auction of their personal goods to discharge the standing debt (as occurs for IRS debts), mandated direct debit to ensure prompt payment and the threat of work-release incarceration/house arrest if another arrearage should occur.
[quote[Oh good lord - that is the birth rate for everyone! You know, the responsible folks as well as the irresponsible?[/quote]
So you’re contending that the existence of the safety net has led to births that wouldn’t otherwise occur. Cite that the birth rate for the lowest income citizens has stabilized or trended upward in converse to the overall rate because of the existence of entitlement programs. It’s your contention, prove it.
Yes. You say that the problem with the poor is their mis-understanding or non-use of concepts of ‘delayed gratification’ and ‘the value of earning what they receive’. How else are we going to get the message out? Maybe you have some other solution, like e-mail or TV shows. I’m ready to hear it. Your solution I mean.
But let’s step back. I don’t think I need to make any other point in this thread other than that the basis of positions like yours, Rand’s and msmith’s is a supremacist attitude of condescending contempt for the poor.
If you are interested in solutions for the problem of poverty besides “fuck 'em”, then I’m wrong. Doesn’t look like I’m getting a lot of traction drawing solutions out of you though.
Keep them damn minrorities down boys…Survival of the fittest you know!
Curlcoat, you yourself gave me the idea. In #219, you replied to this:
with this
Ok. But how?
I regret that I never responded directly to this:
It has everything to do with finance, business and accounting. I was lucky to be born big and strong, and so I can focus more volume of contribution to society per minute than a lot of other, less lucky folks. It hinges on how you do it of course. I seem to have figured it out.
Anyway, a big part of my success is dumb luck. I don’t think it follows that our nation ought to take a supremacist attitude of condescending contempt for the poor.