Not true, ufortunately. If it were true, then al o our problems would be solved. (Well, all of mine, at least. ;))
FreakFreely,
You started out with a half way decent rant, but them went on to show pure communist and socialist tendancies. I suggest to you, that although you have the absolute right to discuss this here, there already exists a substantial amount of discussion in the http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=28364 thread, ‘Ask the Commie Bastard’
To put this in just a few words, you have really reached out to much of the world in these few posts, and demonstrated your compassion, AND your complete lack of understanding in economics, our system of government, market place, etc. There are many threads (too many to link to) in the message boards already, please feel free to browse. Hopefully, you will retain your enthusiasm, but havea more realistic view of how things work.
Communism does not equal compassion, or solving hunger and poverty
Republicans are not heartless as a group, just the same percentage of heartless people as any other group.
Democracts are just as much (if not more) tied to special interests, and most Democracts in power don’t give a rats ass if you eat or starve - they have their election issues and the republicans have theirs, it’s all a big game, with a few idealists who still try to change things. If you can’t see this, please open eyes a little wider.
Welfare is not a solution to poverty. Damn it man, it;s a method of allowing people to live through poverty. You will not better yourself receiving welfare, you will just be able to eat! I’m not arguing against it, per se, just saying that we need a better approach, like teach someone a trade at the same time, and get them off their dependence on welfare.
Just takea look through GD, there are many threads about feeding the hungry, different systems of government, etc.
Have fun, keep up dem rants.
Put your money where your mouth is, big guy. I want you to prove that the federal government gave more money in corporate welfare to Lockheed last year than was spent on the bloated welfare system. You made the claim, the burden of proof is yours. I’ll even let you define corporate welfare.
Me, unsympathetic? How’s this for welfare benefits?
There ya go. We’ve got so much welfare, poverty doesn’t even have to exist.
Now, you’re gonna say my statictics are flawed because they came from a biased source. Tough shit. At least I’ve got sources to back my opinions. You have nothing except unsupported allegations. Put up or shut up.
Okay, I grant that you were merely ranting rather than looking for serious debate, so I’m gonna just drop the useless generalizations concerning the broad range of views within the political parties. You may continue with them if you choose, but don’t be surprised when I call you on it. I suppose your gripe is more concerned with conservatism rather than Republicanism anyway. At least I made that allegation earlier and you didn’t refute it. Of course, that could just be your stupidity or lack of a coherent train of thought.
On to the Robin allusion. “He stands for liberty and the rights of the people against unjust laws and the tyranny of the nobles.” Let me explain this in the simple terms an idiot, even one so stupid to believe the welfare state is a good thing, can understand. The liberals in the Democratic Party want to, and are working to, curtail the liberties and rights of the citizens of the U.S.A that are delineated in the constitution. That’s where my analogy fits this debate. It is not any kind of ad hominem attack. I guess that should teach me to allow the clueless to draw their own conclusion.
Upper class: Umm, of course people in the upper class hold jobs that pay more. The very definition of upper class states that members of it make more money than those of other classes. Posting circular a argument, even if true, is inane. Now, I’d like you to prove yet another unsupported claim you’ve made. I want you to show me how a job that “pays more requires less work.” I suspect your confusing physical labor with mental labor and responsibility. As for garbage men vs. “paper-pushers”, what the hell is a “paper-pusher”? I have yet to see a job description for a “paper-pusher.” And the garbage men, at least in my hometown are fairly well paid city employees, they’re solidly in the middle class and make nearly as much as I do. They are certainly not welfare recipients.
This is a stupid analogy. The body can do nothing useful without the brain to direct it’s efforts either.
Alas, Johnny m’boy, not you too!
Yeah right, if minimum wage were raised to ten dollars you wouldn’t have to pay ten dollars for a happy meal. Mcdonalds would more likely compensate by raising the price fifty cents and take some money out of advertising. Exaggeration is one thing, but what you just said makes bullshit smell good.
Sorry, but if that’s what it takes for everyone to get their bare necessities, then so be it. But I think once again that you may be exaggerating a bit.
Besides, I may be wrong about this, but I think that raising the minumum wage would greatly help the economy. If people have more money, they’re gonna spend it.
The feeling is mutual.
Look, if you have that much money, you can stand to give some of it away. You think Bill Gates needs all the money he has? Would he be hurt if he had a few less personal jets? We need to make the taxes high enough that everyone gets what they need, but low enough for it to still be profitable to put in that extra effort.
And I’m not saying that rich people are by nature evil. You said that. I’m just saying that they could stand to give a little. And some of them do, I applaud them for that.
The fact is that most people on welfare are hardworking people. Granted, some of them are taking advantage of the system. But not many. I would say maybe five percent. And if one bad guy gets away while nineteen families are saved, I’d still call that successful.
Besides, when a poor man takes advantage of the system, it gets him maybe one thousand dollars a month. When a rich man takes advantage of the system, we’re talking about a scale of millions.
Jesus, when the hell are you going to support some of your insipid conclusions. Throw a source in there, any source. I’m even willing to listen to a what I’d probably call a biased source. Still all you have is your own unsupported words. It’s awful hard to take someone seriously when they won’t even do a little research to back their opinions.
And I can’t believe I left this out of my previous post.
I said:
And you replied:
Now I have to ask, huh? How did you arrive at the conclusion that I thought buildings are more important than people from that? I’m merely trying to show you how many of our tax dollars have been frittered away on the welfare that we supposedly don’t have. Check your parser, I think it’s malfunctioning.
I think we’ve both been a bit confused here. For one thing, I thought you meant we should just get rid of welfare. You seem to think I meant we should put more money into welfare. I don’t. I’m just supporting it’s existence. And saying it’s ridiculous that we put more money into killing people than we do into helping them.
As far as offering statistics for the things I’ve said, I’ll have to get back to you on that. I have, and do read constantly about this subject. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t have the shit right on hand. Let me look it up, and I’ll post something to back me up. Though I honestly don’t see how that would help any. As Mark Twain said: “There’s lies. Damn lies. And then there’s statistics.” I could make any dumbass statement and find solid irrefutable statistics to back me up. Then I could jump over to the other side of the same issue, and still find irrefutable statistics to back me up. If you show me a bunch of statistics, all it proves to me is that you can read.
Also may I mention that this is the fucking BBQ pit not the great debates! This is a rant, not C-Span! For chrissakes people!
“Nazis suck!”
“You got something to back you up on that?”
No you can’t. Don’t waste yer time for me though. I’m goin’ on vacation.
How ‘bout if we make a commitment to continue this some day in Great Debates? Then I can quit callin’ you a foolish asshole and just call your ideas foolish.
Sounds good. You name the day, I’ll be there. And I’ll study up in advance.
I don’t see how it’s at all like communism to say that everybody should be well fed. And what the hells wrong with a little bit of socialism? Sweden is doing fucking great. They don’t have a lower class.
I just don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
We already have that. But sometimes, and here’s a real shocker, sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes, the person still needs money. Sometimes, he’s already working too hard and too many hours to go in and do training on top of that.
All I’m saying is, you have to either keep welfare, or raise the minimum wage. And even if you do raise the minimum wage there will still be people who can’t work.
This was never intended to be a debate, it just sorta turned out that way.
Oh, don’t worry. You’ll see plenty of rants from me.