Yes, they are. That is the problem: They’re working and making so little that they still need public assistance. Do you not understand the concept of “working poor”? No, don’t answer. That was a rhetorical question. We all know you don’t. Answering it would only make you look even more ignorant.
Second, people don’t choose to be unemployed. Unemployment isn’t fun. It’s a long string of bullshit Federal and state paperwork suffused with the warm, fuzzy glow of total financial insecurity, compounded by the fact you still have no guarantee of healthcare beyond immediate stabilization. The fact this lack of universal healthcare greatly balloons healthcare costs for all of us is another fact I am sure you’re greatly offended by and will refuse to understand. You PC Police are all the same.
People become unemployed mainly through bad luck. That can happen to anyone. Lose a limb? Lose a job. Get on the wrong side of someone’s bad day? Boom, you’re outta there. You think it can’t happen to you? You think you’re special? You’d have to be delusional to imagine you’re immune.
Why should we obey a Bronze Age book of attempted morality? More to the point, why should we obey that Bronze Age book of attempted morality? Don’t say America is a Christian nation. We’re not, and you whining about it and being offended won’t change that. Thomas Jefferson himself said that America is in no sense founded on the Christian faith, and you finding that Politically Incorrect won’t change that fact in the slightest.
If more Conservatives realized the power of randomness and stopped imagining that they were special little snowflakes who can never fail due to simple misfortune the world would be a much better place.
In fairness, that was a quote from John Smith. Of course, Jamestown in 1609 had quite different issues from those we face today. HawaiianBeachBoy 1959 is attempting to shoehorn Smith’s problems with gold-seekers and gentlemen into today’s problems, and it’s not a match.
Smith was quoting Paul the Apostle, specifically his second letter to the Thessalonians.
It’s interesting that, by using the quote, our beachy friend is also quoting Lenin. Of course, Lenin was more interested in punishing the idle rich than the idle poor, which means HawaiianBeachBoy 1959 is his natural sworn enemy.
One, Jefferson never said that. The document you’re thinking of is the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was rendered null and void at the onset of the First Barbary War in 1801 which was newly-inaugurated President Jefferson’s first real test of leadership. (He sent in the USMC and they curb-stomped the Barbary Pirates.)
Two, labor force participation is the lowest it has ever been in America since 1978 thanks to (you guessed it!) the welfare state which is COMPLETELY and UTTERLY unsustainable. The system should be ONLY for those who TRULY need it, and if you can’t find a job, you’re clearly not trying.
Three, Lenin stole this concept to justify what is effectively state-backed organized crime. He and his bogus ideology created more poor people than any other ideology on Earth, and BILLIONS are still feeling the disastrous after-effects.
Honest mistake. Jefferson coined the phrase “separation of church and state” (technically “a wall of separation between church and state”), which amounts to the same thing: We are not a Christian country.
First, if welfare states are so unsustainable, how is it that multiple countries have been able to sustain them for decades?
Second, a big reason the labor force participation rate is so low is the Boomers aging out of the job market. This is going to get worse before it gets better, and, guess what, cutting the welfare state (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and so on) isn’t going to be politically feasible due directly to this trend. The AARP Votes. It’s practically an axiom. Get used to it. (This article contains a lot of good cites.)
OK, I agree with you about this. I hate Lenin as much as you do. I just thought it was an interesting little twist.
Well, what Jefferson meant by “wall of separation” is that the State can’t compel people to join a church or follow a certain religion. He knew full well that getting rid of all religious influence in government was ridiculous. Think: “Thou shalt not kill.” Plenty of countries have the death penalty for murder. (Something I totally agree with.)
Welfare states are only sustainable in smaller European countries with a steady population flow. (Even with that, there’s a population crisis there.) The old guys retire, the new guys come in. The problem here is as the old guys are retiring, there aren’t any new guys coming in. There’s an old saying, “The world needs chiefs and Indians.” That mentality is strong in Europe. Here, though, every parent thinks their baby boy or baby girl is going to get to be a chief and anyone who DARES suggest their special little boy/girl is an Indian gets to suffer the wrath of an angry mom. It’s sort of irritating that everyone thinks they can be a chief and that the world owes them the position of chief.
:dubious: It’s the Republicans who want every Indian to think he/she can become a rich entrepreneur if the nanny state would just get out of the way. If instead the right-wing makes the admission you just did, that their goal is to empower the elite, it’s no wonder you want voter tests to limit participation by the lower classes.
The Ten Commandments were backed up by more specific provisions also found in Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. Hmm, basic law backed up by more specific provisions…where else have I seen this…?
The Commandments are just proverbial icing on the cake.
Sorry, a LOT got lost in editing before I posted. Sen. Rubio said recently that there’s a societal stigma to blue collar labor in the States. That doesn’t exist in Europe. They see the blue collar workers as doing something important.
(They do in any part of the world, but America is the only nation that stigmatized it.)
The problem is, there’s not exactly a lot of folks lining up to do the dirty jobs that, you gotta admit, are super-important. Also, another part that got edited out is that welfare is paid for by taxes. The European nations can afford their welfare state because there’s a consistent working population and, by extension, a somewhat consistent stream of tax revenue. Here in the States, though, that’s gonna backfire badly as the Baby Boomers get older and costs get astronomically higher. There’s too small a working population in the US to support all those people. The last part about chiefs and Indians is: The world needs guys like electricians, plumbers, welders, things of that sort. We can’t all be “chiefs.” Some of us gotta be “Indians.”
The labor participation rate is low because we have nearly twice as many retirees in America as we did during the Carter Administration. Twice as many old people + 65% more adults = labor participation rate is going to go down.
This has nothing to do with welfare. It’s about the Baby Boomers enjoying time with their grandchildren.
Holy fuck, you really shouldn’t be demanding a test on public policy before allowing voting rights.
I’m not disputing that religious injunctions against murder exist. What I said was that people can also oppose murder without any religious motivation.
What evidence is there of “a societal stigma to blue collar labor in the States”?
Hell, what evidence is there of blue collar work in the U.S.?
What “dirty jobs” are employers having difficulty filling, and, most importantly, how much do they pay?
You have brought up retiring baby boomers and “the welfare state” together a couple of times now. Do you consider social security, into which these retirees have paid their entire working lives, a form of welfare?
The question wasn’t directed at me, but I’ll try to give an answer…
If by “social security” you mean
[SPOILER]the system where money is stolen at gunpoint from hard-working Americans and spent on hookers and blow for our “President”'s Secret Service detail when they go on expensive junkets, so that even more money has to be stolen from hard-working Americans and Job Creators to provide just enough money for Grannie to live in a ghetto with people who can’t even speak English and don’t worship the Christian God,
then I condemn that European-style “Social Security” with all my heart and compare it to the worst forms of Lenin-Stalinest Gulag-style “welfare state.”[/SPOILER]
But if by “social security” you mean
[SPOILER]a system where hard-working Americans can voluntarily put savings into private investments, far from the grasping hands of the IRS and the corrupt guvmint gun-grabbers who suckle at the IRS’s teats,
and spend their own money as they see fit, even if that means buying large soft drinks or historic flags of which the nanny state disapproves; and can keep their profits in the Cayman Islands so the IRS can’t steal it and spend it on child prostitutes for the lazy ne’er-do-well teat-sucklers;
and where Americans who are too unfortunate to have savings, probably because the guvmint confiscated their property, forced them to kill their babies, vaccinate their children and spend what little extra money they had on the filthy communist BarackHusseinacare, will nevertheless enjoy retirement in a community with other Christian English-speaking Americans due to the benevolence of Churches and the patriotic Job Creators who pay tithes,
then I applaud this privatised True American “Social Security” with all my heart.
Surely the Lord God will send his Angels to the Land of the Free and say “These are my chosen people of whom I am so proud.”[/SPOILER]
Does this help?
So what? Practically every currency has lost value during that period. It doesn’t matter, we still have a thriving economy – there are a lot of things wrong with it, but those things have nothing to do with currency inflation. What matters is what the Fed is for.