Your posts do that. If 99% of your posts weren't right out of the RW playbook, I wouldn't say it.
Immigrants and Medicare
- Thread starter 61raddeac
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Your posts do that. If 99% of your posts weren't right out of the RW playbook, I wouldn't say it.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
OGBDeacon07
Well-known member
99.999% of your posts project your misperception on to other posters.
Tell us, how many languages do you speak?
19deac92
You are a meathead.
Where is this RW playbook? Is it available on Amazon?
sailordeac
Well-known member
You really don't understand the difference between working for welare benefits and workhouses?
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Not really. Do you understand the similarities?
sailordeac
Well-known member
923, don't you think living at home is a lot better than living in common in a public dormitory?
Under similarity do you mean having to work for a benefit?
Under similarity do you mean having to work for a benefit?
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
List of similarities:
1. The underlying idea of both concepts is to punish the poor and deter them from seeking relief.
2. Neither concept will result in benefits from the work that outweigh the operating costs of supervising it.
3. Neither concept will result in the "reform" of the shirkers you think you are targeting.
4. Both involve unpaid labor in exchange for basic subsistence. That went out of style in this country in 1865.
5. Both target a pool of people (namely, able-bodied shirkers) that are pretty rare in reality. "Historian Simon Fowler has argued that workhouses were "largely designed for a pool of able-bodied idlers and shirkers ... However this group hardly existed outside the imagination of a generation of political economists"."
6. Working in exchange for a government handout is not the same as working for a wage. Poor people need real jobs, not punishment.
You go ahead and tell me more about the differences.
sailordeac
Well-known member
Sorry that it took so long to get back to your post 923 but I had some work to do. You certainly know how to engage in irrelevant and faulty speculations about other people's motivations and the consequences of some policies. Some of your points may have something to do with workhouses, or they may not. They have little to do with what I have suggested.
1. Work for benefits is punishment? Sounds like the view of some self-indulgent teenager, who doesn't want to wash the dishes or clean up their room. Since in a modern economy people who work also work for benefits, by your standard everyone who works is being punished. No one is trying to deter anyone from seeking relief. It's real simple though, if you want a benefit, you have to work for it. The same as everyone else.
2. As opposed welfare with no work requirement, which is obviously more cost effective. Even better! It probably pays for itself by your accounting.
3. No one is targeting shirkers but those who can work have to work for their benefts. The same as everyone else. Once the program of work for benefits is implemented, and you tell me who the supposed shirkers are, I'll let you know after a while, which of the shirkers have been reformed.
4. You are confused. They are being paid for work and receiving benefits, just like all workers are.
5. Interesting speculations by the historian, which may perhaps apply to workhouses. His speculative explanation has nothing to do with the concept of working for benefits. No one is being targeted. The principle of working for benefits is being applied to all.
6. Working for money and benefits is the same, whether you are working in the private or public sphere. The only way one can favor not working for money and benefits over working for money and benefits is by believing that idleness is superior to work. I hope you don't want to believe that.
I think poor people are the same as any other people and desreve to be treated with the same respect as everyone else. And just like everyone else they need to work for money and benefits.
There's another factor about "working for benefits". If you add a few million people to the public work roles at minimum wage or close to it, you drag millions more down in earnings as employers can use the wages as comps. The last thing we need in 21st century America is drive down earnings of the lower middle class even more.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Sailor, your response is interesting but it does not highlight any differences between "work for benefits" and the workhouse. All of your responses are pretty much the exact same policy reasons that were put forward for the workhouse in the 1700s and 1800s. Maybe you're right, maybe we should try it again here. The Brits found that it wasn't a good idea but maybe with modern technology we can make it work better. Perhaps some nice satellite tracked anklets or something.
Now of course what you are also ignoring the fact that American citizens do, in fact, already work for benefits. Let's list the major programs: Earned Income Tax Credit - obviously, only available to those with earned income. Unemployment insurance which you only get after holding a job and being fired without cause, and which is time-limited. Food stamps which in NC at least are only available to the able bodied if they are looking for work and taking work training classes. Welfare which was reformed in the 90s and now has strict work requirements and strict time limitations.
About the only benefit programs I can think of that don't have a significant work component are housing assistance (Section 8) and of course the various disability programs and programs for seniors. Perhaps you want to put the disabled and Grandma to work to earn their benefits?
I appreciate your engaging in this conversation, I just think you may not be very well-versed in how poor relief is delivered in this country. There is no free lunch, and there aren't any "welfare queens".
Now of course what you are also ignoring the fact that American citizens do, in fact, already work for benefits. Let's list the major programs: Earned Income Tax Credit - obviously, only available to those with earned income. Unemployment insurance which you only get after holding a job and being fired without cause, and which is time-limited. Food stamps which in NC at least are only available to the able bodied if they are looking for work and taking work training classes. Welfare which was reformed in the 90s and now has strict work requirements and strict time limitations.
About the only benefit programs I can think of that don't have a significant work component are housing assistance (Section 8) and of course the various disability programs and programs for seniors. Perhaps you want to put the disabled and Grandma to work to earn their benefits?
I appreciate your engaging in this conversation, I just think you may not be very well-versed in how poor relief is delivered in this country. There is no free lunch, and there aren't any "welfare queens".
19deac92
You are a meathead.
You are correct. We are much better off paying money to "a few million people" while they do relatively little to nothing constructive to benefit society as a whole.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Feel free to list the programs that are paying no-strings-attached money to able-bodied people who have done little to nothing constructive to benefit society as a whole. Go.
Oh wait, I have one - it's called prison, where we feed and house hundreds of thousands of able-bodied young men during the prime of their lives, because they got caught with weed.
It's a minor percentage of these people versus bringing down the economy as whole.
The reality is the world isn't perfect. In a nation of 330,000,000 some will fall through the cracks and some who can work won't. It's just the way it is.
19deac92
You are a meathead.
I'm glad that you and I both agree that folks who receive public assistance should be expected to do something (if they are able to do so) to contribute to society in exchange for the receipt of such assistance.
As for your comment regarding prison, like you, I disagree with the way that many drug offenses are prosecuted and with the mandatory and draconian sentences often handed down for such offenses. There are far too many people in prison.
PhDeac
PM a mod to cement your internet status forever
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To be fair, Republicans would probably add public education to this list.
2&2 Slider To Leyritz
Well-known member
You conveniently left out the largest one. EITC "costs" the government approximately $50 billion annually (recognize a lot of it isn't actually costing the government anything, it is letting people keep more of what was already theirs until they hit $0 tax liability, and then it starts to actually cost something); unemployment costs approximately $100 billion annually, a large portion of which is subsidized by private employers. By contrast, Medicaid legitimately costs the government about $400 billion annually. Granted, a lot of people on Medicaid do work, but a large portion do not.
As for Welfare work requirements, they are minimal at best, and Obama attempted to remove even those minimal requirements last summer.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
i guess minimal is in the eye of the beholder, but the fact is that a person just can't not work and draw welfare for life. If you're not looking for work, you get nothing, and even if you're looking for work there are time limits and once they're over, you're done. Those time limits are measured in months, not years.
The Obama comment is simply factually wrong. The federal government offered more flexibility to states to alter their rules for use of federal funds, states could choose to change work requirements but they could also choose to do nothing. To say that "Obama attempted to remove" work requirements is flat out wrong. Sorry.
You don't get Medicaid just for being poor. You also have to fall into one of the other eligibility groups, such as being disabled, old, a child, or pregnant. An able-bodied non-pregnant young person can't just go sign up for Medicaid. They can get their kids on Medicaid.
Look, I am all for improving and reforming poor relief in this country but to reform something you have to understand it. Your posts, and sailor's, indicate a belief that current poor relief programs are giving lots of handouts to able-bodied people who should be working. If that were true, I would agree with you that we need to stop those handouts or at least tie them to participation in job training programs or other efforts designed to get the recipients into a job. I think a lot of people on the conservative side of the spectrum have this sincerely held belief that there are a bunch of slackers out there drawing a government check, which belief logically leads to the conclusion that we ought to cut the programs and kick these slackers off the dole.
But the fact is that there just aren't any big handouts to able-bodied people just for being poor.
Except prison.
OGBDeacon07
Well-known member
Where did you get 330 million from? We're 314 million. That's a significant difference and not a rounding error.