Put Me In Charge

[Yosarian2]

Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese, and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza ..... get a job.

Same if you want fruits, vegetables, or anything else with actual nutritional value that's necessary for your continued living without massive health problems. My pleas to bring back scurvy are finally being listened to!

Are you arguing that steak, pizza, Ding Dongs, and Ho Ho's are more necessary to health than rice, beans, cheese, and milk?

YOu do know that right now, people on food stamps can't use them to get fresh fruits or vegitables, right? You also don't get enough money to survive, period. Most people on food stamps end up basically going without food for the last week of every month so they can continue to feed their children.

That's the real problem with the system, is that people on it are basically suffering from slow starvation and malnutrition. And honestly, guys like this, who can look at someone who's basically starving and decide that the problem is that they have too much frozen pizza, really do piss me off.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings .... get a job.

This is just deeply offensive, and borderline facist. "You're poor and want medical care? Ok, but we now own your body. You're not allowed to ever have children again now."

The fundimental problem with medicare is that it's the only way poor people can currently get medical care; if you're poor, and your child has diabetes, you have a choice; you can either stay unemployed and stay on medicare (and try to get by on food stamps, which like we said is basically impossible), or you can get a minimum wage job, lose medicare, and now your kid can't get insulin and probably dies.

The solution is to create some kind of way where working poor people can get medical treatement, and therefore allow people to work and still get medical coverage. Obamacare isn't perfect, but once it goes into effect in 2014, it should hopefully do that.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime, and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360 .... get a job and your own place.

This is just an orwellian police-state nightmare. And, by the way, many people in government funded housing actually DO work, they just don't earn enough to pay for rent in the city they live in, and government-supported housing helps keep some of them from having to live on the streets. But heaven forbid we actually help people who need it, I guess.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Hey, so you want to bring back the WPA, do what we did when FDR was president during the great depression and have the government hire a ton of people. Great. Of course, the Republicans have opposed anything like that, calling it "stimulus". Also, i don't get why the guy has to be such a dick about it.

Do conservatives really think that most people on welfare have "plasma TV's and shiny rims"? This sounds like that "welfare queen" myth that was never actually true. You have any idea how small welfare checks actually are, or how hard it is to live on them? For that matter, you do realize that these days you already only get welfare for a couple of years during your entire life, right? People haven't been getting welfare forever since Clinton changed the rules back in the 1990's.

[Yosarian2]

RC: Before we get into any specifics, let me just say that the reason the article you posted got everyone so upset is that it sounds like the guy who wrote it really, really hates poor people. He thinks they are poor because they blow their welfare checks on rims and xboxes, he thinks they should have manditory government sterilization, be subject to random warentless searches, be forced into totalitarian work camps, and basically lose all of their fundamental rights as human beings. To be honest, I wouldn't have been surprised to see him end the article with a suggestion that all poor people be put into concentration camps as step one of a "final solution" to the problem. The guy you quoted is full of hatred in a really, really scary way, and the article was frankly pretty disturbing to read.

Most people on food stamps end up basically going without food for the last week of every month so they can continue to feed their children.

Source, please.

Ask anyone who works at a food bank. They always know to stock up towards the end of the month, because the food stamps just don't last the whole month for most people on them.

Right now, the nationwide average a person gets from food stamps is about $90 a month, so about $3 a day. In most parts of the country, you can't really live on that; and, of course, food is actually a lot more expensive in the poor urban areas and in the poor rural areas, since people living in those places really don't have access to large supermarkets. (The call the areas "food deserts"; the economy is so bad in many poor urban areas, that there are no big grocery stores, the only places to buy food are small corner stores, and it's actually a lot more expensive because of that.)

In our country, a study done in 2010 showed that 15% of all families in the country suffers from hunger. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02930.htmlThat's 17 million households. "Food stamps are too generous" is really not in the list of problems our country has right now.

Guys like this, who can look at someone who's basically starving and decide that the problem is that they have too much frozen pizza, really do piss me off.

You're right. That wouldn't make any sense at all. Which somehow makes me think you were missing the point. Again, not to say that I agree with the quote in the OP in its entirety, but it does raise some pretty interesting points.

Well, he was attacking poor people for buying frozen pizza with food stamps, basically saying that they were horrible people for doing so. He clearly wasn't thinking about things from anyone's point of view but his own.

For one thing, people who are struggling just to get the 2000 or so calories that you need a day to live aren't going to be able to eat healthy food. A frozen pizza is about 1 dollar. It's not healthy, but if you're trying to put some kind of food on your table, that's not really your priority.

A lot of the poor kids in the school district I work in live in the motels. A lot of working poor people do; for one thing, if you don't have the down payment for an apartment, a motel might be your only option; for another, people with kids want to live in a middle class school district, because school districts in poor areas are terrible (partly because of the incredibly stupid way we fund schools in this country.) But if you're living in a motel for 6 months or 9 months, you don't have a kitchen at all. Every hot meal you make has to come out of the microwave. So, yeah, if you're in that situation, you're probably buying a lot of frozen pizza.

In general, when poor people with very limited budget are trying to get enough food to survive and not feel painfully hungry, they're going to eat things that are cheap and high in calories and fat. And, of course, convenience is also a factor; a working single parent just doesn't have enough time in the day to spend a few hours cooking dinner every night. Something always has to give in tough situations like that, and I hate it when people act like it's a moral failing that someone in that situation just can't do everything.

You are right about Medicare having problems, especially if anyone has to make a choice like that. There is something fundamentally wrong with America's welfare and healthcare systems if it's better to NOT get a job than it is to GET a job. But free handouts without any kind of return develop dependency and laziness in very many people, and those are the people that need to be getting audited.]/quote]

Well, we do need to create a way out of poverty for a lot of rural poor and urban poor. It's not going to be as easy as slashing welfare, though; a good anti-poverty program will probably mean helping people more then we do now and will probably, in the short run, cost more money then what we're doing now.

The government was not built to sustain the nation. That's what families and friends are for. There is a fundamental problem with the way things in this country work, which stems from a root of entitlement. More on this, if you're interested.

Well, a social support network of family and friends is very important, that's true. But there are always going to be people without that support network, and when there's a big recession, like there is now, there are whole groups of families and friends that are all suffering and have very limited ability to help each other at all.

One of the basic rules of capilitilsm is that there are always winners and losers. It's probably unavoidable in a capatilist system, and it's not necessarally a matter of personal failure or fault; there are too many random factors to make it that simple. So we have a choice; we can either have a safety net, some way to cushon the fall and help people get back on their feet, or we can let people starve in the street. The truth is, having a safety net is actually cheaper in the long run then not having one.

Hey, so you want to bring back the WPA, do what we did when FDR was president during the great depression and

have the government hire a ton of people.

Great. Of course, the Republicans have opposed anything like that, calling it "stimulus". Also, i don't get why the guy has to be such a dick about it.

Nonononono. They are

already

getting paid for and supported by the government, but the government is getting no return from it. This guy is suggesting that they do at least SOME work for the money they get from Uncle Sam, not to mention Joe Taxpayer. And I agree with that.

Don't tie it to welfare then. If, instead of giving people a welfare check, you think the government should hire poor people and pay them for their work, at least for people who can work, that's quite reasonable. Probably more expensive then welfare, to be honest, but possibly better for the society as a whole. But "Here's your check, now go do this busy work we made for you" is a terrible idea.

For that matter, you do realize that these days you already only get welfare for a couple of years during your entire life, right? People haven't been getting welfare forever since Clinton changed the rules back in the 1990's.

Source, please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_R ... tunity_Act

There is no longer the ability to just get welfare checks forever. You can get welfare for at most 2 years, then you have to go to work; and you get get only up to 5 years of welfare over your entire life. This has been true since 1995.

Do conservatives really think that most people on welfare have "plasma TV's and shiny rims"? This sounds like that "welfare queen" myth that was never actually true. You have any idea how small welfare checks actually are, or how hard it is to live on them?

Why only conservatives? A lot of people think that. And yes, welfare should be hard to live on. As an incentive to get off your butt and get some work of your own instead of sitting back and getting fat off somebody else's dime.

I say "conservatives" because the "welfare queen" myth is really one that was invented by Ronald Reagen for political gain. There was really never any truth to it; even before the welfare reform, a person just didn't get that much money from welfare. The idea that people were living it up on welfare was always basically a political lie.

Granted, there are a FEW people who legitimately need serious help. But nothing close to the number of people that receive welfare.

Source, please.

The basic problem we have right now is that there aren't nearly enough jobs for people who want to work. 9.8% unemployment means that out of every 10 Americans who want to work, who have worked all their lives, who are trying to find a job, 1 of them can't get one, no matter what they do, generally though no fault of their own. Even in good economic times, unemployment still tends to be at 5% or so.

There are always going to be a lot of people who need help. Kicking them while they are down is not a solution.

[Yosarian2]

In our country, a study done in 2010 showed that 15% of all families in the country suffers from hunger. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02930.htmlThat's 17 million households. "Food stamps are too generous" is really not in the list of problems our country has right now.

http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/

For one thing, people who are struggling just to get the 2000 or so calories that you need a day to live aren't going to be able to eat healthy food. A frozen pizza is about 1 dollar. It's not healthy, but if you're trying to put some kind of food on your table, that's not really your priority.

A lot of the poor kids in the school district I work in live in the motels. A lot of working poor people do; for one thing, if you don't have the down payment for an apartment, a motel might be your only option; for another, people with kids want to live in a middle class school district, because school districts in poor areas are terrible (partly because of the incredibly stupid way we fund schools in this country.) But if you're living in a motel for 6 months or 9 months, you don't have a kitchen at all. Every hot meal you make has to come out of the microwave. So, yeah, if you're in that situation, you're probably buying a lot of frozen pizza.

In general, when poor people with very limited budget are trying to get enough food to survive and not feel painfully hungry, they're going to eat things that are cheap and high in calories and fat. And, of course, convenience is also a factor; a working single parent just doesn't have enough time in the day to spend a few hours cooking dinner every night. Something always has to give in tough situations like that, and I hate it when people act like it's a moral failing that someone in that situation just can't do everything.

Let me point you again to that article I posted above.

Actually, those problems are related. There's a direct connection in our country between poverty and obesity, because it's a lot cheaper to get enough food through very unhealthy foods then through healthy foods. In fact, the first time I read about how so many people on food stamps basically eat almost nothing for the last week of every month was in an article about obesity and the poor. As far as a healthy weight goes, one of the WORST things you can do is starve for a week and then gorge yourself on unhealthy foods, you tend to gain a lot of weight that way, but that's exactally what happens with food stamps. And in general, if you don't know where your next meal is coming from, but you've got a lot of food available in front of you right now, you're much more likely to overeat; it's a natural instinct.

Which is cheaper; getting 2000 calories a day of McDonalds, or getting 2000 calories a day of healthy fruits and vegetables? McDonalds is actually cheaper, which is a big cause of the problem.


One of the solutions to this problem is that, if we're going to keep giving farm subsidies, we should give farm subsidies to people who grow fruit and vegetables as well, not just people who grow corn and grain. Overly cheap corn is one reason that beef is so cheap (beef is mostly corn fed), and the reason that, for the first time in history, beef is actually cheaper then fruits and vegetables, on a per-calorie basis. Right now, people who grow fruits aren't given any farm subsidies at all. Also, the "food desert" problem i was talking about before means that in poor areas, there might not be any fresh fruits or vegetables to be had.

What we’re not fine with is those who stay on the system as long as possible because they’re too lazy to work, those who

make

that choice to

not

get a job so they can stay on unemployment, or like Fate said earlier, those who work the system, basically getting free money from the fed because they don’t use it all and use the extra $200 they’re not spending on food to barter and create a whole new economy based around government-provided resources. And that is something the government cannot control.

All the evidence I've seen, all the studies I've seen, is that the majority of people on welfare would rather be working and making a decent living if they felt they had the option.

One could effectively argue that it’s the exact same thing. Which makes the whole argument moot unless we can agree about whether or not

working for what you get

is a good incentive to do something like that. Also, it maintains a good work ethic in somebody who has been without another job for a while. I’m not sure how many of you have been affected by the economy as much as I have, but I was unemployed for a number of months. After a while, even

without

getting any unemployment benefits from the government, I was feelin’ pretty good about not having to go back to work and working every day. The attitude of laziness becomes ever more pervasive, and some people can just

turn off

their conscience and ignore the voice in their mind telling them that it’s wrong to be lazy and take other people’s money to pay for laziness. Which is why I don’t do unemployment, because I don’t feel alright with doing it. Also, because it lessens my resolve to find a new job

right away

, which is another problem entirely. Malingering in unemployment is a huge drain on everyone else, yes?

Well, I think we're getting to the core of the matter here. If you're giving advice to one person who's poor on how to pull himself out of poverty, then yes, work ethic, savings, careful use of resources, ect, is all good advice. But when you're dealing with millions of people in long-term poverty, then I don't think you can just say that the root of the problem is that they're all lazy. Do you think that more Americans are lazy then Europeons? We have a lot more people trapped in long-term poverty in America then is true in Europe, or Japan, or actually in most countries that have similar levels of wealth that the United States does. I don't think that's because Americans are lazy, and I don't think that's because there's a govenrment safety net in the United States (since Europe and Japan also have welfare and a safety net, and it's actually a much stronger one.)

Whenever you deal with millions of people, yes, you're going to have some that are smart, some that are dumb, some that are lazy, some that are hard workers, ect. But I don't think long term poverty in this country is

primarily

caused by personality traits, I think it's caused by systematic problems, and I think if we fix some of the systematic problems in our country the long-term poverty rate will go way down.

Let me put it another way. There are school systems in this country that are just horrible; high dropout rates, and even people who graduate from those schools very often don't have the basic skills a person needs to survive, let alone go to collage. You might say that a really smart, hard-working, lucky person can go to one of those schools, manage to get a decent education anyway, and point to a few that managed to graduate from the school and go to college, and say that the rest of the kids in that school should do the same. One one level, you're right. But on another, more important level, there's no reason that those schools shouldn't have a much higher success rate then they do; it's quite possible to create an environment where a much higher percentage of them would succeed. And I think that's a metaphor for poverty in our country in general; yes, some people can start in poverty and pull themselves up by hard work and good luck and intelligence, and they should be commended for that. But with the system set up as it is now, a very high percentage of people do and will stay trapped in poverty and will not manage improve their lives, and I think we can make changes so more people succeed.

And we are not talking about why welfare is an effective form of economic stimulus. Because it's clearly not.

Actually, without a doubt, the most efficient and effective way to stimulate the economy is to give money to poor people.

Why? Because if you give a billionaire a million dollar tax cut, it's going to have very little impact on his spending; he might spend a little bit of it, but he'll probably just save 95% of it; it's just not going to change his spending habits, since he can already pretty much buy whatever he wants whenever he wants to.

On the other extreme, if you take the same million dollars and give 10,000 poor people 100 dollars each, it will all get spent very quickly, mostly on basic necessities like food, clothing, rent, electricity, ect. Someone near or below the poverty line tends to spend basically everything they get as soon as they get it, just in order to get by; because of that, the money will all go right back into the economy pretty much right away, and will end up creating a lot more wealth and stimulating the economy a lot more and a lot faster.

[Yosarian2]

What happened to the days where parents paid for their children's education out of their own pockets? Do you know how much money is tied up in student loans? $850 billion. Yep. Keep in mind:

that exceeds the national credit card debt.

I'll tell you what happened. The price of college went up, waayy up, and the amount of grants and scholarships available went down. The govenrment started giving out a lot less scholarships, and giving a lot more college loans instead.

Parents aren't putting less money in to college education then they used to be. Just the opposite. On the other hand, the government is putting less money into college education then it used to, while taxing the rich a lot less then it used to. That's really the biggest difference.

[Yosarian2]

I don't think "tax the shit out of the rich" is the answer either.

For one, if they've earned their money by putting in the effort, then fair play, they're then entitled to do whatever they want with it. If they wish to give it to their children so the kids don't ever have to work... well fair enough, they're entitled to do so. Of course they should also understand that the kids are likely to grow up to feel like they're entitled to have everything given to them. Which is why they should be made to earn the money. But not a reason to tax them more.

But what should happen is that all classes are taxed the same percentage.

Well, there's a fundamental problem with this. It's called exponential growth.

Money that you invest, or that you earn interest on, grows at an exponential rate. That's one of the basic rules of capitalism. The more you start with, the faster it grows. So what that means is that if you have two people, and person A starts with a little bit more capital then person B, then over time, person A's wealth will grow faster then person B's. Not because person A is working harder, or is smarter, or is a better person; that's just how capitalism works. The person with more capital to invest gets more money, faster, and thus ends up with even more capital to invest.

So over time, if you let everyone keep their money, or tax everyone at the same rate, and let wealth accumulate in rich families for generation after generation, the gap between the rich and the poor just keeps getting bigger. Eventually, you end up with a small super-powerful oligarchy that owns basically everything, and everyone else is, relitive to them, poor. That's just a function of how the numbers work.

In order to prevent that, in order to keep some kind of fair and democratic society, instead of a permanent caste system, you need some kind of mechanism to redistribute wealth. This isn't to punish anyone, or anything like that. If person A wants to work harder then person B in order to spend more money, that's fine, that's a matter of personal choice. But huge accumulations of wealth, billions of dollars in the hands of private individuals that just keep growing and growing at ever faster rates, are bad in the long run, unless a significant part of the profits are pulled off by the government and used for the common good, to help everyone in the country.

[Yosarian2]

You appear to be of the assumption I'm saying that the rich should pay less tax. I'm saying that the percentage of their earnings that they pay in tax is less than the middle class and working class, and it should be changed so that all three classes pay the same percentage in tax.

For example, if the working class and middle class pay 15% tax (as an example), why should the rich say... pay only 12%? It should be a flat percentage clean across the board, no favouritism shown to one class or another.

Honestly, that's not enough. If the middle class earns 50k and pays 15% of it (keeping 42.5k), and the rich earn 2 million dollars a year and pay 15% of it (keeping; 1.7 million) yes, the rich are paying more money, but they're still getting 40 times as much money every year.

Even that wouldn't be too bad in and of itself, but if the rich keep all that money and keep investing it, they end up thousands of times richer then the middle class. Over the long run, that kind of wealth disparity basically destroys the middle class, and you end up with just a few rich and everyone else poor, with the rich owning and running basically everything.

So, along with the rich paying their fair share for the operation of government, you also need some additional mechanism for redistributing some part of their wealth before it grows completely out of control. Just taxing them at the same rate as the middle class really isn't enough.

[Yosarian2]

Otherwise you're saying "Hey, you've chosen to work in a better paying job, so we're going to fuck you over for trying to better yourself".

That's not how income taxes in the United States work.

Let me put it this way. There's a 25% tax bracket for everyone who earns under $82,400, and a 28% one for over over $82,400. So does that mean that a person who earns more then $82,400 is getting "fucked over" for earning more money? Not at all. If you earn $100,000 a year, you only pay the 28% on everything you earn OVER $82,400; that is, you pay 28% on the last $17,600, while you pay the lower rate on the rest of your earnings.

You always bring more money home if you have a bigger paycheck. You might pay a higher rate on the last few dollars you earn, but you're still always better off earning them then you would be not earning them.

[Yosarian2]

Okay then, let's just pretend that your idea is even slightly good.

Tax bracket A goes from 0-£10,000 a year. In that bracket you don't pay any tax.

Tax bracket B goes from £10,001-£20,000 a year. In that bracket you pay 15% tax

Tax bracket B goes from £20,001 and up a year. In that bracket you pay 25% tax (We're not talking realistic numbers but simple ones to understand for this exercise, as it would work regardless of money involved)

Someone earns £19,500 a year, and is therefore paying £2925 tax per year. Leaving a net profit of £16,575

They get a pay rise of £1000, to £21,500 a year. They now pay £5375 tax each year. They now have a net profit of £16,125

Meaning they get a pay rise of £100 and actually lose £450 out of it.

According to you, this would be fair.

I just explained, in my very last post, that that's not at all how graduated income taxes work. You should probably go back and read my post, rather then me wasting time explaining this again.

Edit: Ok, he did say that didn't read my post before making his, fair enough.

[Yosarian2]

Sure, making prisoners volunteer works. I just figured it would be logistically difficult to put prisoners in volunteer work. (they have to be supervised and whatnot. I'm sure there's lots of red tape and rules).

I'm just not happy if the honest poor are working harder than prisoners. It's not good for incentives and work is in all likelihood good for their rehabilitation (or whatever you call it, convincing them not to be repeat offenders and to straighten their act).

Oh, having prisoners work (usually called "prison industries") isn't a bad thing, and if handled well, can be good.

There are some problems with it. For one, work safety and fair treatment can be a real problem, especally since prisoners can't exactly complain or unionize. For another, I find it a little disturbing when for-profit companies come into prisons and use prisoners as basically free labor, and then keep all the profits for themselves.

That being said, some prisoners can learn useful skills by working, and just being in the habit of going to work every day is a good thing.