Exactly. “You’re poor because you’re bad and deserve to be poor. Stop being bad and you’ll not be poor any more. But we’re not going to subsidize your badness.”
A century ago, this was driven by certain malignant strains of Calvinism, which went like “If you’re a good God-fearing person, God will prosper you. If you don’t prosper, it’s because you’re not good or God-fearing.”
Now just peel the religious trappings off and you get what we’re describing.
So you don’t think poor people should have children? I assume, then, that you ardently support public funding of widely-available, no-cost family planning and contraceptive services. As a bonus, poor young women who have better control over whether and when to have children are more likely to finish their education, obtain better-paying jobs, and move out of poverty, so it’s a win-win for everyone.
Then don’t individualize it. Is it plausible that a better social safety net for a *neighborhood *of poor people will lead to a lower percentage of those poor people resorting to crime to survive? If so, compare the costs/benefits of that safety net vs. the costs/benefits of law enforcement and imprisonment.
Conservatives aren’t suggesting we shift the focus on addressing poverty. They want to shut down the programs that are helping poor people now and they want to shut down the programs that will help people avoid becoming poor in the future. And I’ll assume they’re bitter about how there isn’t some way they can reach into the past and take money from poor people back then as well.
I have been advocating exactly this for years. Along with free abortions (presented in non-judgemental manner as a choice as worthy of respect and honor as giving birth) and large cash incentives for sterilization.
Which, of course, has since been inferred to be reflexive: “If you prosper, it is because you are good/looked upon favorably by god.” How convenient.
Thanks, everyone, for your replies. Curlcoat, you seem to be the very model of a Tea Party Republican, so you are my target audience.
Someone had posted about people living in circumstances that they could not change. Does having most of your town’s factories pull up stakes and move to Mexico or China or Thailand qualify? That happened in the next town over, and it affected the job market over at least our whole county. It’s all very well to say, “Well, work at whatever part-time fast-food job you can get,” but people with even one child end up paying hideous amounts for child care…oh, and child-care places charge overtime if you’re late to pick up your children!
Go to college? Great idea. Only, a single credit hour can wipe out even a full-time paycheck, even at a (supposedly) cheaper state university. A loan might help…but then you’re even more in debt, and not even guaranteed a job in your major field when you’re done! BTW, the nearest trade school is in our nearest large city - tough luck if you don’t drive.
If you try to eat healthy, you can get some serious sticker shock at the grocery store, where in my area certain fruits and veggies disappear for the winter. And yes, eggs do go up in January! Best I can do is blanch and freeze when produce is plentiful, but my fridge is a smaller one–from Sears on sale, paid off by eating shit for seven months–so storage is a problem.
Full disclosure here. My profile doesn’t show it, but I do work, full time, but I ‘float’ at my job, so I don’t have a real job title…but as I have learned to do more things, I have not received more money for those abilities. So in constant dollars, my income has actually fallen over the years. And there are a lot of folks out here just like me, struggling to get by in a distressed area with a recession piled on! A little help sometimes would be a great thing, but we would rather see the factories come back, and better and cheaper options for an education. And it would definitely be nice to be able to go to the doctor’s office without wondering how we’re going to pay for it. (More full disclosure: my work does offer insurance, but in the years I have worked there, costs have gone way up, even before the ACA, so now we will have to pay in if we want the same level of care.)
One last thing. The complaints made about the poor who get help are never made about corporate welfare like subsidized mergers, CEO salary write-offs, and the like. And they cost us taxpayers more than SNAP.
Not with you on the “large cash incentives for sterilization” thing. Unless you are going to use this incentive on everybody, with the aim of decreasing the general country-wide birthrate, it smacks a bit of a certain something.
I think abortions would be subsumed under the family planning proposal.
No problem - we just increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and you get a raise, if you keep your job. Of course, since labor costs make up a much larger percentage of the overhead of running a child care center, all of that raise will go to child care, but you will still get a raise.
You’re welcome.
Regards,
Shodan
so Curlcoat what did you do to get out of poverty, and is it something that 45 million people could do with a near 100% success rate provided they had sufficient moral character.
I was very briefly on TANF (welfare) when I had a bit of a mental breakdown (long story spelled out here years ago). I know the rules. If you’re able-bodied you have to prove you work at least 30 hours a week every week. That means part-time jobs with varying hours doesn’t cut it, so you will need two jobs if one is like that. You have to work those hours, but up to ten can be used for job training or education. No more than ten will count. You have to sign a responsibility contract. If you don’t keep your end of the contract you will lose your benefits immediately. I know because this happened to me. I was on five medications, hallucinating, my vision was too blurry to drive or operate machinery and I had a doctor and a mental health professional sign a waiver request but I was STILL turned down, considered work-ready, and kicked off TANF the next month when I didn’t prove I had a job. They did set me up at a community service non-paying position; that’s what they do if you don’t have a job within two weeks after you apply. I worked in a church charity folding clothes, but because I couldn’t get there and I was regularly seeing spiders on the wall I struggled with getting the work done. I did not qualify for disability, I did not qualify for Tenncare, and I immediately lost TANF. I still qualified for 147 dollars in food stamps for my daughter. Thankfully I have an adult daughter who has helped me out of that hole. We moved to someplace more affordable (I rent an attic for 300 a month and it covers lights/water/internet). I’m not on any programs anymore although my 12 year old is on Tenncare. I don’t know if it’s just easier for children or if it’s because she’s autistic. I just know she qualified back when I applied for TANF and it’s not been cancelled in the past five years. Oh also at the time I qualified for an “Obamaphone” and they haven’t shut it off so I guess I still qualify. It’s a little block phone, no internet access, and it has texting but they don’t show up half the time. But I love that damned phone because it’s all I have.
The idea that women are sitting on their asses collecting checks is a lie that needs to end, but when it’s brought up all I see are more insults. The OP says stop assuming we’re all lazy bums, and the topic almost immediately changed to whether these social programs help. Listen. We are trying. We are not lazy, we are not addicted to drugs as we’ve seen from the several states that decided we needed testing. We are working (or can’t!). We’re not spending our big guvment checks on smart phones and hair weaves and cigarettes. The stereotype needs to die, but there are so many who insist on perpetuating the stereotype or ignoring it’s existence in order to turn the attention to politics fights and “I know a welfare queen who spends all her money on…” stories.
When that man said we should consider our health care over an iphone that was a fine example. The assumption that we’re all too cheap to get health care but we blow our money on electronics shows how clueless he is.
Oh, she’s in a class all her own. They all revile government assistance, of course, but it takes a special kind of person to wag her finger at the moochers when she’s on the dole herself.
You should shake her hand.
You’re right. It would be cheaper to just give them welfare.
Believing that bad consequences inherently come from bad actions is. Believing that poor people deserve to be poor through their own actions is.
You go on about personal responsibility, but you also claim to be a Christian. Did Jesus say “only give to the poor people you think deserve it”? No. Did Jesus say “poor people are poor because of their life choices and should take responsibility”? No.
He said that only those who give to the poor will go to heaven. He said the poor are better than the rich. He said that the rich will find it much, much harder to go to heaven.
The only concept close to personal responsibility is when there were people quitting their jobs because they thought the resurrection was imminent. In that context, Paul said “He who does not work shall not eat.” People who INTENTIONALLY made themselves poor were told to get back to work.
But nothing about personal responsibility. The Bible is about forgiveness. It says we often get what we don’t deserve in this life, but that our reward will be in heaven.
So neither the objective reality nor the Bible support you. But you keep on with this twisted belief.
When I was poor I had just left my abusive alcoholic husband, had a small child and no car. I got AFDC, food stamps, and Medicaid for my son. I wasn’t eligible for the last thing, went to Planned Parenthood for my medical needs. I got a BEOG and a Pell grant and a work-study job and free child care so I could get my AAS in electronics, then worked my way out of poverty and paid it all back in taxes since then.
I think these opportunities should be available for everyone as an infrastructure investment, but these days people are a lot meaner and good jobs that pay well are a lot harder to get. Why people are so short-sighted that they can’t see that an investment in our brothers and sisters is an investment in our own future I just don’t understand.
I’ve parsed your post to make it easier to read, but I agree with it in its entirety OO. Particularly the last paragraph (that I have bolded) because people (especially curlcoat) tend to forget that there’s all sorts of welfare out there, and most of it is directed towards those of the higher income brackets. They just don’t call it welfare though…
Oh, and OsageOrange, if you really want to get by, then get onto a social security payment like our curlcoat. It’s not even means-tested FFS, so her husband might be raking in the millions, but she’s still entitled to her payment that SHE paid for, dammit. And fuck everyone else. Especially kids…they should have all been aborted at birth if the parents weren’t millionaires on SS.
I am not talking about Canada, nor am I talking about removing children just because someone thinks their being First Nation is a some sort of problem. I have no idea why you think this applies to anything I said.
Nope. I don’t think anyone who cannot raise a child in decent surroundings should be having a baby, or anyone on drugs, or anyone who isn’t financially capable. I’ve never understood why those who claim to love children have no problem with people having children who have no business doing so.
Yup. I depended on Planned Parenthood when I was living below the poverty level and think the Cheeto In Charge needs a good swift kick to the nads for trying to defund them.
What does any of this have to do with what I said?
Ah, of course, the good 'ol curlcoat ‘I DIDN’T SAY THAT’ response. It must be a day ending in Y again.
Worked two and three jobs. Got training that led to a job that paid enough to get me into lower middle class. And the big one - I never bought anything on credit and never had anything that I wouldn’t be able to afford going forward. Like having kids, buying new cars, owning a cell phone, having internet and all that other crap. I didn’t even have cable TV until I moved to CA. I did what people just don’t seem to want to do these days, across all income levels - I lived within my means. I still do.
Near 100% success rate is a strawman.
Dragging in things that are not the subject of the current thread is a sign of a weak argument.
So is making shit up to make the person you don’t agree with look like some kind of criminal.
You are welcome to find proof that I said things that I didn’t. While you are at it, you can explain why you demand that I prove that I earned my SSDI (which of course isn’t welfare), yet you are happy to give that money to people who have proved nothing and done nothing to earn their handouts.