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A question. (For those on the right.)

legacyfan

legacyfan

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Why is the party for "family values" so opposed to helping the poor? Why wouldn't you want to align yourselves WITH the poor? Combine welfare with education, health care, and jobs. Pour money into programs that will shore up the poverty line. If some can't make it... so what? You would take so many off the welfare rolls that the few who are truly incapable would not be a drain on society. Ending entitlements is a fine idea as long as you don't have to watch the poorest of the poor die... but you believe in family values. Flip the script.
 
jhmd batsignal

Give him the Cliff's Notes on the conspiracy by the left to create a voting bloc by putting the poor in perpetual dependence mode and not believing in them, and how the right is actually the family values party by wanting to pull the aid and allow the poor to realize how to be self sufficient and whatnot.
 
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Why is the party that supports less government in the lives of Americans constantly wanting to pass laws telling people what they can't do?
 
By "family values," I assume you mean the religious right. The RR are big donors to private and religious organizations/charity.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Trusting their money to be spent more wisely with private charity than a government program?
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Or getting tax credits by donating to a not-for-profit organization that doesn't pay taxes...
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Trusting their money to be spent more wisely with private charity than a government program?
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This is the correct answer.

I live in a largely industrial town with a few wealthy business owners and a large number of low-income laborers. The middle-class is limited to basically government employees. As a result, there is a lot of charitable giving by the wealthier business owners just out of necessity.

In addition to the food pantries, homeless shelters / safe houses, and Salvation Army, most business owners also donate to needy individuals directly. Sometimes, someone will learn of an exceptional need (such as unexpected illness) and contact all the business owners in town to give. Sometimes, we will just give money directly to the people who ask. I realize that I already support these people through my taxes and my donations to the various faith-based charities, but I still feel an obligation to give because I've been blessed with the ability to do so. In the past year, I've tried to regularly help out two guys who I personally know because they've done odd jobs for me in the past. Unfortunately, they're both hooked on meth right now. In that situation, I don't feel right giving them cash so I'll deposit money on their account at the electric company whenever they tell me they desperately need money. One of the guys, despite his addiction, is very grateful each time I give, and has sincerely offered to do any work I need free of charge. The other guy tended to call me only when he was high, and on one occasion called me repeatedly and showed up at my office agressively demanding cash, and I finally had to tell him to never call or come by my office again. Having had one good experience and one bad experience doesn't change the obligation I feel to help these guys out.

It would be easy to talk myself out of giving. For one thing, they receive a living wage through disability, EBT, and various other government programs. They could make it if they prioritized their spending and got off drugs. For another, when they come to me it means that they've maxed out the monthly allotment of money they receive from the Salvation Army, the food pantry, and the other faith-based charities that I also support. For another, they both have smart phones (and probably other status items) than you wouldn't associate with poverty. But despite all that, the benefit of having me and other individuals in town believing in them to go straight and get back on their feet (rather than a government bureaucrat or a food pantry volunteer) is of enough benefit that I believe I have an obligation to continue doing it.

I oppose having even more of my taxes paid to the poor. With the guy who became demanding and tried to intimidate me into giving him more cash, I was free to tell him to leave and never come back to my office. It was a voluntary charity that I put an end to. But with the government, I don't have the luxury of telling them no. Also, with the government, these guys would have nobody to talk to to encorage them to get back on their feet, because it would suddenly stop being a "charity" and would start becoming a "right".
 
RicoSuave said:
This is the correct answer.

I live in a largely industrial town with a few wealthy business owners and a large number of low-income laborers. The middle-class is limited to basically government employees. As a result, there is a lot of charitable giving by the wealthier business owners just out of necessity.

In addition to the food pantries, homeless shelters / safe houses, and Salvation Army, most business owners also donate to needy individuals directly. Sometimes, someone will learn of an exceptional need (such as unexpected illness) and contact all the business owners in town to give. Sometimes, we will just give money directly to the people who ask. I realize that I already support these people through my taxes and my donations to the various faith-based charities, but I still feel an obligation to give because I've been blessed with the ability to do so. In the past year, I've tried to regularly help out two guys who I personally know because they've done odd jobs for me in the past. Unfortunately, they're both hooked on meth right now. In that situation, I don't feel right giving them cash so I'll deposit money on their account at the electric company whenever they tell me they desperately need money. One of the guys, despite his addiction, is very grateful each time I give, and has sincerely offered to do any work I need free of charge. The other guy tended to call me only when he was high, and on one occasion called me repeatedly and showed up at my office agressively demanding cash, and I finally had to tell him to never call or come by my office again. Having had one good experience and one bad experience doesn't change the obligation I feel to help these guys out.

It would be easy to talk myself out of giving. For one thing, they receive a living wage through disability, EBT, and various other government programs. They could make it if they prioritized their spending and got off drugs. For another, when they come to me it means that they've maxed out the monthly allotment of money they receive from the Salvation Army, the food pantry, and the other faith-based charities that I also support. For another, they both have smart phones (and probably other status items) than you wouldn't associate with poverty. But despite all that, the benefit of having me and other individuals in town believing in them to go straight and get back on their feet (rather than a government bureaucrat or a food pantry volunteer) is of enough benefit that I believe I have an obligation to continue doing it.

I oppose having even more of my taxes paid to the poor. With the guy who became demanding and tried to intimidate me into giving him more cash, I was free to tell him to leave and never come back to my office. It was a voluntary charity that I put an end to. But with the government, I don't have the luxury of telling them no. Also, with the government, these guys would have nobody to talk to to encorage them to get back on their feet, because it would suddenly stop being a "charity" and would start becoming a "right".
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Great post.
 
Great post. This country is fortunate to still have a few people who can actually help others instead of just trying to force "the rich" to fork over their paychecks to the 'crats and 'pubs.
 
ONW said:
Or getting tax credits by donating to a not-for-profit organization that doesn't pay taxes...
Click to expand...

Meh, giving cash to charities is still disadvantageous to one's personal cash flow.
 
Including local, state, and federal, America spends roughly $1 trillion per year fighting poverty. That's about $20,600 per poor person. The federal government alone spends over $600 billion on about 125 programs. We've spent over $15 trillion since President Johnson declared "War on Poverty" in 1964. And today there are roughly 46 million Americans living in poverty, making the overall poverty rate pretty close to what it was at Johnson's 1964 declaration.

I am not against helping the poor. I'm against spending money on something that doesn't work.
 
people realize that non-profit aid for the poor is functionally different from government structures like welfare, unemployment, and medicaid, right? if medicaid goes away, the private non-profit market could never fill that gap.

that's like saying we could go back to privately funded fire departments
 
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legacyfan said:
Pour money into programs that will shore up the poverty line.
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What exactly do you mean by "shore up the poverty line"? We define poverty as someone below a "minimum acceptable lifestyle" which is entirely arbitrary and always moves up, even as costs drop. We give households in poverty the equivalent of $25-30k each of assistance, meaning the family just below the poverty line can live above an average US household of ~$51k of income. Is that it? That just doesn't seem right to me. Don't we have to understand that before we can attain the goal? What is your minimum acceptable lifestyle?

I can't even tell if the "War on Poverty" worked or not, can you? 57% of kids born in the lowest quintile of income grow up and out of it and we intentionally import a lot of poor people which increases the poverty problem....but all these efforts are called a failure by the progressives and we need more money...because they claim it's all a stagnant group of downtrodden people, victims of our cold capitalist society that doesn't help. I don't get that. There are absolutely problems with stagnant poverty, but do we actually address it? I can't tell.

So there are issues with the poor, but I think we all need to better understand what it all means. Helping a poor family at subsistence living (World Bank poverty line = income <$2,000) is a heck of a lot different than addressing the needs of families at our poverty line (US fam of 4 poverty line = <$24,000). That difference in definition shocked me. I think everyone wants to help the former. I don't think everyone agrees on if and how to help the latter via government and where the line between help and less help should be.
 
pourdeac said:
What exactly do you mean by "shore up the poverty line"? We define poverty as someone below a "minimum acceptable lifestyle" which is entirely arbitrary and always moves up, even as costs drop. We give households in poverty the equivalent of $25-30k each of assistance, meaning the family just below the poverty line can live above an average US household of ~$51k of income. Is that it? That just doesn't seem right to me. Don't we have to understand that before we can attain the goal? What is your minimum acceptable lifestyle?

I can't even tell if the "War on Poverty" worked or not, can you? 57% of kids born in the lowest quintile of income grow up and out of it and we intentionally import a lot of poor people which increases the poverty problem....but all these efforts are called a failure by the progressives and we need more money...because they claim it's all a stagnant group of downtrodden people, victims of our cold capitalist society that doesn't help. I don't get that. There are absolutely problems with stagnant poverty, but do we actually address it? I can't tell.

So there are issues with the poor, but I think we all need to better understand what it all means. Helping a poor family at subsistence living (World Bank poverty line = income <$2,000) is a heck of a lot different than addressing the needs of families at our poverty line (US fam of 4 poverty line = <$24,000). That difference in definition shocked me. I think everyone wants to help the former. I don't think everyone agrees on if and how to help the latter via government and where the line between help and less help should be.
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I'd like to see a link to this 57% bootstrapping figure. And thinking we intentionally import poor people is right up there with dumbest statements ever on here. Congratulations!
 
ONW said:
I'd like to see a link to this 57% bootstrapping figure. And thinking we intentionally import poor people is right up there with dumbest statements ever on here. Congratulations!
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Thanks for proving my point.

A recent study on socioeconomic mobility by the Pew group...which is pretty progressive BTW....put up those stats. The link to the PDF is on the wiki site. You should read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States

According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[15] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile remain in that bottom quintile as adults

We absolutely have an immigration policy that fosters the immigration of low income families doing work people here don't want to do. Many work under the table. They send about half their income back home making the problem here worse. We can't really "fix" the problem of existing poverty if we keep importing people that are considered in poverty or takes jobs away from those trying to get out of poverty can we? Is that something you can't admit happens?
 
pourdeac said:
Thanks for proving my point.

A recent study on socioeconomic mobility by the Pew group...which is pretty progressive BTW....put up those stats. The link to the PDF is on the wiki site. You should read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States

According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[15] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile remain in that bottom quintile as adults

We absolutely have an immigration policy that fosters the immigration of low income families doing work people here don't want to do. Many work under the table. They send about half their income back home making the problem here worse. We can't really "fix" the problem of existing poverty if we keep importing people that are considered in poverty or takes jobs away from those trying to get out of poverty can we? Is that something you can't admit happens?
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean 57% of them get out of poverty.

And I prefer not to think of people as cargo being imported.
 
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