Government fails Oher, Rich Christian family saves him

[McBell]

No, I think you are posing a silly question that impossible to find out on an epistemological level. That is why I posted the poverty rates. Poverty is something we can measure. Finding out who has been 'helped' and 'not helped' by our current welfare system is question close to impossible to quantify.

Yet you still make the claim that the system is failing enough people to do away with it.
Even now after finally admitting you cannot know it.....

So we can easily see that you are the one being dishonest.

This is why Smoke and I are going into the actual meat and potatoes of actual policies. Something it looks like you don't want to do.

Good for you.
You diverted Smokes attention away from your blatant dishonesty.


Sadly for you, I didn't divert.

Go ahead and claim victory. But your unwillingness to discuss specifics is pretty telling.

I claim no victory.
That is a nice try though.

I see that honest discussion with you just will not happen.

 

[Quagmire]

Hi Quagmire,



You would be wrong. I believe there is nothing wrong with self-interest. You are the one who took the cheap shot and got personal as we were discussing the effectiveness or lack thereof of our welfare system.

You couldn't or wouldn't discuss the merits and demerits of our current welfare system and accused me of making my argument for personal monetary enrichment. Can't say that I am that surprised.

That's what happens when you make an OP with an ambiguous point: people go with the most likely or obvious interpretation.

Although I realize the purpose of doing so; if you're vague about the point you're trying to make it excuses you from having to defend it if it turns out to be indefensible (you can always say you meant something else).

LOL! In a discussion about how well the government reduces poverty a question about the size of our welfare system is off-topic.

Oh is that what this is about (now)? From your OP I thought it was about how, now that one Christian family helped out one poor kid, we don't even need welfare anymore (that's another great thing about creating a thread with an ambiguous OP; you can change the topic at any time and claim it's what we were talking about all along).

That's creative. But it's good to see we have found common ground here. We both believe we should reduce the size of our welfare system.

If we found some way of increasing efficiency, size reduction (of the bureaucracy
)would just naturally follow.

This is a very good point. We have found two ways that governments don't help the poor: the federal government takes a large share of the responsibility and giving them bus tickets (or plane tickets for Bloomberg in NYC).

I do know that when Tommy Thompson was governor of Wisconsin he implemented some reforms of welfare and I believe some of his principles were put to work in the 1996 Welfare Reform bill. I wish other states would have been more proactive in embracing these reforms (I don't recall a massive influx of poor into Wisconsin either).

It looks like it comes down to the political will of each community in dealing with poverty.



Like I said before when Wisconsin was reforming its welfare system I don't recall the poor coming here in droves.

It's cold as hell in Wisconsin.

Seriously Joe, if it were up to me I'd do away with the system, tell all the bureaucrats to go get real jobs, and set up some kind of automatic dispersal via the IRS or the Social Security admin. to anyone living below the poverty level.

Yeah i know, this is socialism, but if it came with the right conditions and incentives I think it would actually reduce the problem (unlike the present system which is really just one huge, inept, and expensive token gesture).

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi Mestemia,

Yet you still make the claim that the system is failing enough people to do away with it.
Even now after finally admitting you cannot know it.....

So we can easily see that you are the one being dishonest.

Now you are grasping at straws. I quoted specific evidence of the actual poverty rates over the past 50 years to illustrate how poverty hasn't been reduced in any significant way with the advent of our billion dollar welfare system. Then I pointed out specific places (inner cities) where the intensity of failure is impossible to miss. Thus, making the rather simple point that our welfare system has failed millions of people.

You pose the insane question of exactly how many people the welfare system has helped and not helped. When I call this the bogus question that it is you go on the personal attack once again.

Good for you.
You diverted Smokes attention away from your blatant dishonesty.


Sadly for you, I didn't divert.

Tell me how discussing policies of certain administrations Smoke argued did a good or better job at reducing poverty than Republican administrations diverts from the questions of what are the best policies at reducing poverty (which he made by color coding the poverty table)?

I don't think you can discuss the specifics and that is why you shy away from them. Smoke was willing to get specific like a grown-up, Quagmire is willing to get specific like a grown-up but somehow you can't join the big boys table. The seat's open. You are always welcome.

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi Quagmire,

That's what happens when you make an OP with an ambiguous point: people go with the most likely or obvious interpretation.

Although I realize the purpose of doing so; if you're vague about the point you're trying to make it excuses you from having to defend it if it turns out to be indefensible (you can always say you meant something else).

If I was being so ambiguous then why was everyone accusing me of wanting to scrap the entire welfare system? Quagmire, you are better than this. The reality is I wasn't being ambiguous at all. I was using Michael's story to demonstrate the catastrophic failure of our welfare system. And everyone got that point which is why they accused me of wanting to scrap the whole thing. Let's not play dumb.

It's cold as hell in Wisconsin.

LOL! Just from November to April.

Seriously Joe, if it were up to me I'd do away with the system, tell all the bureaucrats to go get real jobs, and set up some kind of automatic dispersal via the IRS or the Social Security admin. to anyone living below the poverty level.

Yeah i know, this is socialism, but if it came with the right conditions and incentives I think it would actually reduce the problem (unlike the present system which is really just one huge, inept, and expensive token gesture).

Now we are getting somewhere. But how would that system be any smaller than the present one? And I think the possibility of fraud would go through the roof with many reporting they are under the poverty level when they are not just to get a check.

 

[Reverend Rick]

I want to scrap the whole system and start soup kitchens and shelters for all that seek help. If you want more than a hot and a cot, get a hair cut and get a real job!

http://video.google.com/videosearch...+get+a+real+job+song&vid=-2373745896385683550

 

[Magic Man]

Hi mball,
I think this is an understatement. For millions the welfare system isn't flawed it is useless and completely ineffective.

And for tens of millions more it works well and is very useful and effective. That's the point. My phone doesn't work all the time. There are times when it drops calls and does weird things. There are also many more times when it does work right.

You may think it's an understatement, but you have yet to prove that's true. All you've shown is that it doesn't work for some people. You haven't shown how often it doesn't work as opposed to how often it does work.

No, I'm pointing you to places where the system is useless and completely ineffective. It is not just flawed in these locales, it is failing. And your response (like others here) is to shrug your shoulders and say that the system is flawed. It is not flawed, it is broken. In places where it is needed the most it is broken.

I'm not sure how to get this through to you. Yes, the system doesn't always work. No system always works. We need to make improvements to help more people. I agree there.

However, it also does work for many more people. That's the part you're ignoring, which was the reason for this response from me. I don't care that we can go to an area near you and see the system failing a bunch of people. We can go to many others and see the system helping a lot of people. One instance of it not working doesn't negate all the instances of it working.

LOL! The graph itself is not silly.

Oh, no! Of course not! I mean, you posted it, so how could it be silly?

The ploy of color-coding it in a completely partisan fashion was the silly part.

Of course it was, because that part was done by someone else. It's also not a "completely partisan fashion" when it's just pointing out who was in office when.

What's the one thing I can do if I find out that a charity I'm donating to is wasting my money and not serving the poor? I can stop giving my money to them. I can't stop giving my money to a welfare system that fails its most vulnerable members. I can punish bad charities. I cannot punish a failed welfare system.

So, anyway, those charities you're donating to could be worse than the system you're railing against, and you don't even know it.

 

[Magic Man]

I want to scrap the whole system and start soup kitchens and shelters for all that seek help. If you want more than a hot and a cot, get a hair cut and get a real job!

get a haircut and get a real job song - Google Videos

You never disappoint, Rick.

 

[Smoke]

I would say that Kennedy's tax cuts had a more beneficial impact at alleviating poverty than LBJ's billion (and now trillion) dollar entitlement programs of the Great Society. After the Kennedy tax cut was passed the economy grew and unemployment fell. I would say that is reducing poverty. And it was done by government getting out of the way instead of 'solving' our poverty problem. That market-thing actually did work.

I know you'd say it, but you don't give any evidence that it's true. You don't explain the mechanism, and you don't show causation. And sadly, the economy can grow and unemployment can fall without reducing poverty at all. The question is, what kind of economic growth, and what kind of jobs?

Well, creating the most prosperous society the world has ever seen. That is pretty good evidence.

Assuming you mean the U.S., we didn't create it with free markets. We created it with labor laws, labor unions, regulation and socialism. What we got from free markets was a privileged class famous almost solely for excess, strip mining, unsafe railways, unsafe working conditions, unsafe drinking water, out-of-control air and water pollution, the urban working classes working 16 hours a day before they coughed up their lungs at 40 or 50, the rural working classes living without electricity or telephone service, and most of our old people living in desperate poverty.

It's what is called the 'crowding out' factor in libertarian political thought. The billions of dollars spent on our welfare bureaucracy displace the resources of private charities.

How does that work, exactly, Joe? The problem I notice with libertarian thinking is that it's mostly magical thinking, short on evidence.

Many people have a default position that our generous safety net programs will catch the poor as they fall. But they don't.

And who will catch them when we eliminate the social safety net? The churches, who can't catch them even now, with substantial help from the government? I think the same people will catch them who caught them before we had a social safety net: Nobody.

Of which you can point to zero.

I don't know enough about economics and economic history to say for sure, and I'm trying to avoid making faith-based claims like yours.

One criteria is more jobs (As VP Biden would say, it's about that three letter word JOBS). The more jobs we create the less the unemployment rate is. As the unemployment rate is reduced most likely poverty is reduced.

You're just speculating based on what you want to believe. Take away one great job and replace it with two lousy jobs, and your formula calls that a win.

And let us not forget you are the one who highlighted the Clinton presidency as a one where poverty was reduced.

Let's not forget that what I did was to color-code a chart to show when the party in power changed. As far as what I actually said, I specifically highlighted LBJ as more successful than Clinton or the Republicans.

It looks like NAFTA played a pretty big role. I mean, after its implementation our unemployment rate continued to go down, Canada's unemployment rate want down and Mexico added jobs (of course they have other problems). You seem sure there are negative economic consequences of NAFTA, but you cannot come up with any.

We lost a lot of well-paid jobs with good benefits. I come from a hillbilly family. NAFTA brought economic desperation to Appalachia that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. All our manufacturing jobs left. In my grandfather's hometown, the biggest employers now are the mine and and the county -- and the county's going bust because the tax base is drying up. People my age and younger, whose families lived in the county a hundred years before it was a county are facing the facts: Our kids are going to have to move off. If the mine ever closes, we'll have to move off, too.

My cousin, having worked at a manufacturing job for over 20 years, was making good money and had good benefits. He got caught in the massive manufacturing layoffs. Now he works as a janitor for eight dollars an hour. He could actually make more money on unemployment that he makes at his new job, but he's too proud to go on unemployment. By your reckoning, my cousin hasn't taken a step back. He had a job, and he's got a job. Even Steven. Except he did have a good job, and now he's got a lousy job.

There are tens of thousands of people just like that, and more who can't even find a job as a janitor.

With NAFTA, the government -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- sold out the working class. It hasn't benefited workers in the U.S. or in Mexico. It hasn't benefited consumers, either. When Levi Strauss quit manufacturing blue jeans in America and started having them manufactured abroad for a fraction of the cost, did the cost to consumers go down? Please. NAFTA was a gold mine for rich; the rest of us got the shaft.

Things are not as simple as you make out. They never are as simple as free-market believers make out.

 

[Quagmire]

Hi Quagmire,



If I was being so ambiguous then why was everyone accusing me of wanting to scrap the entire welfare system? Quagmire, you are better than this. The reality is I wasn't being ambiguous at all. I was using Michael's story to demonstrate the catastrophic failure of our welfare system. And everyone got that point which is why they accused me of wanting to scrap the whole thing. Let's not play dumb.



LOL! Just from November to April.



Now we are getting somewhere. But how would that system be any smaller than the present one? And I think the possibility of fraud would go through the roof with many reporting they are under the poverty level when they are not just to get a check.

Hi Joe, sorry to put you on hold but things got busy all of a sudden.

I'll try to get back to this thread when I get a chance.

 

[Sunstone]

I want to scrap the whole system...

If you want to scrap the whole system, vote Republican. They seem to have done quite a good job destroying the middle class since Reagan took office.

 

[Reverend Rick]

You never disappoint, Rick.

Hey, it's a good song!

 

[Reverend Rick]

If you want to scrap the whole system, vote Republican. They seem to have done quite a good job destroying the middle class since Reagan took office.

Quite a few middle class folks climbed the social ladder as well. Most people have to reinvent themselves several times during their career. Gone are the days of working one place all your life.

Yes, Reagan killed many union jobs. Clinton signing NAFTA killed all kinds of jobs too. I don't think either party has any bragging rights.

 

[Sunstone]

Quite a few middle class folks climbed the social ladder as well.

No where nearly as many people have risen as have fallen.

Yes, Reagan killed many union jobs. Clinton signing NAFTA killed all kinds of jobs too. I don't think either party has any bragging rights.

Granted.

 

[Reverend Rick]

No where nearly as many people have risen as have fallen.

You got me there. You have to admit, it sounded good on the surface. :sorry1:

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi mball,

However, it also does work for many more people. That's the part you're ignoring, which was the reason for this response from me. I don't care that we can go to an area near you and see the system failing a bunch of people. We can go to many others and see the system helping a lot of people. One instance of it not working doesn't negate all the instances of it working.

And this is the crux of the issue. What would you propose we do to help the welfare system that fails millions of people on a daily basis?

Would you make the broken system even bigger?

I see little in this discussion about what liberals (or whatever you call yourselves these days) actually will do to improve the system. I see only defense of the status quo and some special pleading that the welfare system actually helps a lot of people.

Of course it was, because that part was done by someone else. It's also not a "completely partisan fashion" when it's just pointing out who was in office when.

It was followed by the claim that only Democratic administrations reduced poverty. I followed by citing specifics like the Kennedy tax cuts and NAFTA. Then Smoke claimed he hated both parties. It was a pretty convenient evasion.

So, anyway, those charities you're donating to could be worse than the system you're railing against, and you don't even know it.

How long will it take to get it through your head that I am free to donate money to a charity and if I believe a charity is not serving the poor I can stop donating money to it. When I see the failed welfare system in Milwaukee I don't have the choice to withhold my wasted money and use it in a more effective manner.

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi Smoke,

I know you'd say it, but you don't give any evidence that it's true. You don't explain the mechanism, and you don't show causation. And sadly, the economy can grow and unemployment can fall without reducing poverty at all. The question is, what kind of economic growth, and what kind of jobs?

Yeah, no proof. The economy stumbles along. LBJ in a nod to the deceased Kennedy passes his tax cut package and the economy grows like gangbusters and this just happens to coincide with a slight reduction of poverty. Keep your head in the sand. Smoke, you are way too smart to play dumb on this one.

Assuming you mean the U.S., we didn't create it with free markets. We created it with labor laws, labor unions, regulation and socialism. What we got from free markets was a privileged class famous almost solely for excess, strip mining, unsafe railways, unsafe working conditions, unsafe drinking water, out-of-control air and water pollution, the urban working classes working 16 hours a day before they coughed up their lungs at 40 or 50, the rural working classes living without electricity or telephone service, and most of our old people living in desperate poverty.

Please, let's have a debate on the efficacy of labor unions versus the free market. It is no coincidence that during the U.S. greatest economic boom (1982-2007) union membership dropped like a stone. Even now only about 12% of the U.S. workforce is unionized. And how labor unions destroyed our domestic auto industry and have ruined our public education system I am wondering why people still believe these fraudulent organizations 'save' jobs and bring us prolonged prosperity. So, yes let's have the union debate.

How does that work, exactly, Joe? The problem I notice with libertarian thinking is that it's mostly magical thinking, short on evidence.

It's pretty simple really. If billions of dollars are taken from the private economy and devoted to a failed welfare system, then that means those billions of dollars displace the impact that actual successful charities can have.

And who will catch them when we eliminate the social safety net? The churches, who can't catch them even now, with substantial help from the government? I think the same people will catch them who caught them before we had a social safety net: Nobody.

What is your point here? Millions fall through the safety net and your point is that without the safety net millions wouldn't be helped. But nothing changes. With a safety net millions are failed and without the safety net millions probably would be failed as well. It looks like if we scrap the failed aspects of the safety net, possibly the same of people would be poor. But billions would be put to a better use.

I don't know enough about economics and economic history to say for sure, and I'm trying to avoid making faith-based claims like yours.

Well, we do see that unemployment dropped or continued to drop after the passage of NAFTA. And according to the poverty rate table poverty slightly decreased. Where is the faith-based claims, this is actual empirical evidence.

You're just speculating based on what you want to believe. Take away one great job and replace it with two lousy jobs, and your formula calls that a win.

Once again, the poverty rate table proves you wrong. There was a slight decrease in poverty and this just happened to coincide with NAFTA's passage and a falling unemployment rate.

Let's not forget that what I did was to color-code a chart to show when the party in power changed. As far as what I actually said, I specifically highlighted LBJ as more successful than Clinton or the Republicans.

And you ignored LBJ's passage of Kennedy's tax cuts and their effect on the economy.

We lost a lot of well-paid jobs with good benefits. I come from a hillbilly family. NAFTA brought economic desperation to Appalachia that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. All our manufacturing jobs left. In my grandfather's hometown, the biggest employers now are the mine and and the county -- and the county's going bust because the tax base is drying up. People my age and younger, whose families lived in the county a hundred years before it was a county are facing the facts: Our kids are going to have to move off. If the mine ever closes, we'll have to move off, too.

My cousin, having worked at a manufacturing job for over 20 years, was making good money and had good benefits. He got caught in the massive manufacturing layoffs. Now he works as a janitor for eight dollars an hour. He could actually make more money on unemployment that he makes at his new job, but he's too proud to go on unemployment. By your reckoning, my cousin hasn't taken a step back. He had a job, and he's got a job. Even Steven. Except he did have a good job, and now he's got a lousy job.

There are tens of thousands of people just like that, and more who can't even find a job as a janitor.

With NAFTA, the government -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- sold out the working class. It hasn't benefited workers in the U.S. or in Mexico. It hasn't benefited consumers, either. When Levi Strauss quit manufacturing blue jeans in America and started having them manufactured abroad for a fraction of the cost, did the cost to consumers go down? Please. NAFTA was a gold mine for rich; the rest of us got the shaft.

Things are not as simple as you make out. They never are as simple as free-market believers make out.

This is a classic example of economic ignorance. A manufacturing plant lays off people or goes out of business and this is proof the free market has failed. Contrary to the devotees of protectionism and labor unions a company's sole purpose is to provide a product or service, not provide good paying jobs with great benefits. That will be the byproduct of providing products people want.

The plant that went out of business in your town deserved to go out of business because the company clearly couldn’t provide products that people would buy.

But it is hard to persuade people that see businesses failing as proof that the free market doesn't work. Failed businesses are proof that the market is working.

You say NAFTA failed and cannot cite any economic data to prove your point except some anecdotes from your town. I can cite the poverty table, the dropping unemployment rate after the passage of NAFTA, and the real economic growth in the 1990's.

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi Quagmire,

Hi Joe, sorry to put you on hold but things got busy all of a sudden.

I'll try to get back to this thread when I get a chance.

No problem.

Take your time.

 

[Sunstone]

It is no coincidence that during the U.S. greatest economic boom (1982-2007) union membership dropped like a stone.

And real wages for the middle class remained flat. In the absence of unions, gains in productivity went to the top of the economic ladder, while the middle and lower classes saw little or no gain in real income.

 

[Smoke]

It's pretty simple really. If billions of dollars are taken from the private economy and devoted to a failed welfare system, then that means those billions of dollars displace the impact that actual successful charities can have.

So you're assuming that if we eliminated social welfare, the taxes that now support it would go to private charities instead?

IWhat is your point here? Millions fall through the safety net and your point is that without the safety net millions wouldn't be helped. But nothing changes. With a safety net millions are failed and without the safety net millions probably would be failed as well. It looks like if we scrap the failed aspects of the safety net, possibly the same of people would be poor. But billions would be put to a better use.

Millions are helped. Eliminate the programs, and they won't be.

This is a classic example of economic ignorance. A manufacturing plant lays off people or goes out of business and this is proof the free market has failed. Contrary to the devotees of protectionism and labor unions a company's sole purpose is to provide a product or service, not provide good paying jobs with great benefits. That will be the byproduct of providing products people want.

The plant that went out of business in your town deserved to go out of business because the company clearly couldn’t provide products that people would buy.

But it is hard to persuade people that see businesses failing as proof that the free market doesn't work. Failed businesses are proof that the market is working.

This is a classic example of missing the point and seeing what you want to see.

I gave the example of my cousin to make the point that your standards of economic "success" are bogus. And who said anything about any business failing? The business he worked for didn't fail. It exported the manufacturing jobs abroad to increase profits. The business is doing fine. It's the American workers who were screwed. The business is making bigger profits than ever, and my cousin had a job before and he has a job now, so by your way of measuring, this is a great success story.

If we're making the rich richer and the middle class poor, I don't consider that a success for this country. You obviously do. That's where we disagree.

 

[Joe_Stocks]

Hi Smoke,

So you're assuming that if we eliminated social welfare, the taxes that now support it would go to private charities instead?

Some would, some would go to businesses that could hire some of these people.

I gave the example of my cousin to make the point that your standards of economic "success" are bogus. And who said anything about any business failing? The business he worked for didn't fail. It exported the manufacturing jobs abroad to increase profits. The business is doing fine. It's the American workers who were screwed. The business is making bigger profits than ever, and my cousin had a job before and he has a job now, so by your way of measuring, this is a great success story.

This proves my point. The company is in business to produce a quality product not to provide Americans with good jobs and benefits.

Are you advocating the business make purposeful stupid business decisions to please your sense of compassion for your cousin?

If we're making the rich richer and the middle class poor

This is such a silly talking point without a shred of empirical evidence behind it. But I am sure it helps fuel your self-righteous indignation.