OT: Great article by Glenn Beck

[movingon]

yes, let's force the poor out of poverty, good idea!

Can you make clear for me exactly what this guy is trying to say? That we stop welfare then the poor will lift themselves out of poverty? Dude, if I saw you on the street I'd jack your wallet for taking food out of poeples' mouths. You should be ashamed for posting reactionary garbage like this. Don't you have a soul? Have you never known any poor people in your life or are you just an incredibly callous individual. Do you read "Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844" and yearn for the good old days?

I'm just going to let you know I'm a heartless bastard. But if you eliminate huge portions of welfare system and simply return the tax dollars a lot of the working poor would actually be in condition to save money and potential rise up if they're smart and hardworking. Now the jobless poor you'd think would be hit harder but even that wouldn't happen as a lot of the middle class would have more excess money and this country has a healthy feeling of guilt for the poor so you'd think a lot of these middle class people would donate to charities which would be much more efficient and useful than the government's current system. I know I have no heart and must never have even seen a homeless guy so my opinion is going to be worthless, but you might want to know my family are first generation immigrant and when we first came here my parents were making less than 20k a year so I haven't exactly grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

yeah, good for you. Practically everyone on here is the child of an immigrant. Welcome to NY. You a crab in a barrel.

[cgf]

I'm just going to let you know I'm a heartless bastard. But if you eliminate huge portions of welfare system and simply return the tax dollars a lot of the working poor would actually be in condition to save money and potential rise up if they're smart and hardworking. Now the jobless poor you'd think would be hit harder but even that wouldn't happen as a lot of the middle class would have more excess money and this country has a healthy feeling of guilt for the poor so you'd think a lot of these middle class people would donate to charities which would be much more efficient and useful than the government's current system. I know I have no heart and must never have even seen a homeless guy so my opinion is going to be worthless, but you might want to know my family are first generation immigrant and when we first came here my parents were making less than 20k a year so I haven't exactly grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

Sorry, but we tried that before, and it didn't work. If you tried it again, you would get an insurrection. Meanwhile, the children of the idle rich, like Dubya, still get every advantage, and still are able to spend most of their life drinking, drugging, and screwing around, before using their family advantages to rise to a position that they are utterly unqualified to hold.

See, that's why Dubya has been great for America - because his rise demonstrates just how utterly unfair the system is to real Americans, versus the children of idle rich.

Well what's the point of earning an ish load of money if you can't leave make life easier and more pleasant for your kids as well as for yourself? Being rich surely gives your children major advantages, isn't that part of the point of getting rich?

[duetta]

Well what's the point of earning an ish load of money if you can't leave make life easier and more pleasant for your kids as well as for yourself? Being rich surely gives your children major advantages, isn't that part of the point of getting rich?

There comes a point where a reliance on privilege no longer serves the good of a society. Societies based on economic privilege or hereditary aristocracy, rather than meritocracy, are societies than cannot compete in the modern world. The best interests of society demands that the best of us be given the opportunity to rise as high as native talents can take us. When a loser and slacker like Bush is allowed to ride his father's reputation and grandfather's money to a position like the Presidency...well, we all see what happens.

This is why men like Bill Gates Sr and Warren Buffet support an inheritance tax.

[Luv those Knicks]

yes, let's force the poor out of poverty, good idea!

Can you make clear for me exactly what this guy is trying to say? That we stop welfare then the poor will lift themselves out of poverty? Dude, if I saw you on the street I'd jack your wallet for taking food out of poeples' mouths. You should be ashamed for posting reactionary garbage like this. Don't you have a soul? Have you never known any poor people in your life or are you just an incredibly callous individual. Do you read "Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844" and yearn for the good old days?

I'm just going to let you know I'm a heartless bastard. But if you eliminate huge portions of welfare system and simply return the tax dollars a lot of the working poor would actually be in condition to save money and potential rise up if they're smart and hardworking. Now the jobless poor you'd think would be hit harder but even that wouldn't happen as a lot of the middle class would have more excess money and this country has a healthy feeling of guilt for the poor so you'd think a lot of these middle class people would donate to charities which would be much more efficient and useful than the government's current system. I know I have no heart and must never have even seen a homeless guy so my opinion is going to be worthless, but you might want to know my family are first generation immigrant and when we first came here my parents were making less than 20k a year so I haven't exactly grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

I get that you believe this, and that you want other people to believe it, and you believe that the Democratic/Liberal system is a model of inefficiency, but I don't think the truth is nearly so cut and dried.

First, a significant portion of welfare is social security and you can't just stop that. Most of the people on social security depend on it. The 2nd largest piece of what you call Welfare is medical, and that's a monster in and of itself, and as it stands, 90% of hospital patients don't pay their bills - it's a crazy system, but if you start closing down hospitals for everyone who can't play, you'd have a lot of sick people on your hands.

and even you probably realize that if preventative healthcare was more affordable, then national medical spending would go down.

Government medical spending pays for jobs as well as providing a service and government social security pays for basic survival of the elderly, who put the money back into the system. You can't significantly reduce either program without causing major problems.


I'm not saying that both programs are efficent and 100% right, but to blindly assume that to remove welfare spending would increase american prosperity seems more like wishful thinking than rational thought.


I'll give you an example when Reagan took office. Back then, a person I know's mother had a car service pick her up every week for medical treatment. I don't know, she may have had diabetes, or something and she was a little absent minded, but she was able to get to the hospital and get her needed checkup. Today, we've replaced that kind of service with visiting Nurses, but under Reagan, as part of a cost saving plan, Cars were replaced by vouchers for busfair - now, if you've ever lived in Miami, you know the buses aren't very good, and imagine what they were like 25 years ago. So, she basically died a couple months later cause she stopped going to the hospital. She didn't like the bus, it may have been a bad neighborhood and too far to walk, and that was the brilliant reagan plan - save 8 bucks a week (might be closer to 25 bucks a week now) and let the poor and elderly take the bus.

There have been numerous reports that what Reaganomics did was make it better for the Rich and Worse for the Poor. He closed down many programs that had benefit, including Libraries and museums.


I get that you believe the Republican sales pitch, but I think you should try to keep an open mind and not believe everything you hear.

[cgf]

I get that you believe this, and that you want other people to believe it, and you believe that the Democratic/Liberal system is a model of inefficiency, but I don't think the truth is nearly so cut and dried.

First, a significant portion of welfare is social security and you can't just stop that. Most of the people on social security depend on it. The 2nd largest piece of what you call Welfare is medical, and that's a monster in and of itself, and as it stands, 90% of hospital patients don't pay their bills - it's a crazy system, but if you start closing down hospitals for everyone who can't play, you'd have a lot of sick people on your hands.

and even you probably realize that if preventative healthcare was more affordable, then national medical spending would go down.

Government medical spending pays for jobs as well as providing a service and government social security pays for basic survival of the elderly, who put the money back into the system. You can't significantly reduce either program without causing major problems.


I'm not saying that both programs are efficent and 100% right, but to blindly assume that to remove welfare spending would increase american prosperity seems more like wishful thinking than rational thought.


I'll give you an example when Reagan took office. Back then, a person I know's mother had a car service pick her up every week for medical treatment. I don't know, she may have had diabetes, or something and she was a little absent minded, but she was able to get to the hospital and get her needed checkup. Today, we've replaced that kind of service with visiting Nurses, but under Reagan, as part of a cost saving plan, Cars were replaced by vouchers for busfair - now, if you've ever lived in Miami, you know the buses aren't very good, and imagine what they were like 25 years ago. So, she basically died a couple months later cause she stopped going to the hospital. She didn't like the bus, it may have been a bad neighborhood and too far to walk, and that was the brilliant reagan plan - save 8 bucks a week (might be closer to 25 bucks a week now) and let the poor and elderly take the bus.

There have been numerous reports that what Reaganomics did was make it better for the Rich and Worse for the Poor. He closed down many programs that had benefit, including Libraries and museums.


I get that you believe the Republican sales pitch, but I think you should try to keep an open mind and not believe everything you hear.

First of all one of the biggest reasons medicine and medical treatment aren't more affordable is government interference. First medicine is made more expensive by more than a magnitude due to the wonderful FDA and then with the government support of the annual cap on MDs prevents many talented individuals from becoming practicing physicians which would then raise the supply of trained doctors, they're by lower the value of their time, and transitively the cost to patients of medical service. So if your case for Medicare is that medicine is too expensive my counter-argument would be that we should eliminate the FDA and stop supporting the limitations on the number of MD students annually by the Doctors union. These would certainly drive down the cost of medicine and most likely also improve the quality of our medical care.

As for the government spending creates jobs argument I have serious issues with that because so would a serious reduction in the government. And that would accomplish this with significantly less waste and cost inflation.

I understand there's a huge dependence on a lot of government programs, but many of these voids would be filled by private companies which offered better service for cheaper, and if people had greater control of their money you'd find more private companies willing to take formerly government held tasks.

I'm not a republican, if you wanted to categorize my most idealistic views I'd be an anarcho-capitalist, however even that's not true because I realize people have forgotten what a heavy responsibility freedom is and so it would take a few generations for people to actually be ready to think and work for themselves without a safety net that perpetuates incompetence. I'm going to recommend you read David Friedman's book The Machinery of Freedom if you want a great explanation for my most idealistic views.