Welfare

From iGeek
Revision as of 16:16, 1 August 2019 by Ari (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Johnson's "War on Poverty" had welfare as the front line. Welfare paid people to not work, not get married, and have/keep kids out of wedlock -- and it punished people that tried to get off of it. Shocker of shockers, you get what you incentivize, and welfare got more people to not work, have kids out of wedlock, and it hurt the kids, families, and society at large. Once trapped in programs hard to get out of, the dependency class resented the masses for not giving more, and the masses resented them back for being irresponsible: it drove the wedge between the classes far deeper and divided us more than ever before. Poverty, single parenthood, gangs and crime went UP tearing the fabric of society, despite trillions of dollars poured into it. But the important part is the left won the votes of the gullible (like Chickens voting for Colonel Sanders).


Having done social work, it was not uncommon to hear teenage girls talking about how they were going to get knocked up to get that govt. paycheck and get out of the house from irresponsible mom's and their abusive boyfriends. Of course the Mom's had stopped rating their partners by their ability and willingness to provide and create a stable home: they already had the check from Uncle Sam. All those that bought into the idea that they could have a free ride, if they just had kids they can't pay for, learned too late that the lure was better than the reality, and the programs made it hard (impossible) to get out of.

More: 10 items


Bill Clinton and Welfare - Bill Clinton fought the Republican Congress's plans to reform Welfare (including means testing, and time limits). Leftist sources predicted blight and ruination for all the poor souls dependent on welfare. Instead, many got off, and things got better. So Obama did his best to reverse the gains and increase the dependency class.

Income inequality, vanishing middle class, and other scams -
OneIncome.png
There’s a bunch of meme’s and soundbites going around where politicians love to point out the disappearing middle class (income inequality), and how we need them to fix it. There’s only a few problems with that:
  1. It’s a lie that plays to people’s ignorance and greed
  2. History always looks better from a distance (and if you don’t look too closely)
  3. It’s prestidigitation to distract you while they pick your pockets

This article details why this is a fraud, and how they give ammo to the frauds and flimflam the gullible.


Military industrial complex -
IronTriangle.png
50 years ago Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) warned us about an iron triangle (government conspiring with politicians and special interests to work against the public), and coined the term "the Military Industrial Complex". Since then the military has fallen to 1/4th the spending it was, and the Poverty Industrial Complex (Social Spending) has become 8x larger, and far surpassed military spending. The warning still applies, just what the bigger threat is has changed.

New Jersey and the Economist -
Nj-economics.png
The Economist ran an oft quoted FakeNews story that any first year economics student should call bullshit on. It was that red states get a surplus of tax benefits, because of subsidies by blue states. The truth is that for each $1.00 New Jersey gets back from the fed, they have to give the fed $1.64 in taxes, they have to pay $.18 in compliance costs, and the government borrows about $.81 of that dollar, and sticks New Jersey with the debt obligation. On top of that, federal work-rules and controls means that dollar is actually only about as effective as $.60 would be if it was under local or private hiring practices. Progressives see the $.60 of real value as a net win. Anyone else, can see that you paid about $2.63 to get it. This isn't as dramatic for some red states, but the only states that come out ahead are West Virginia, Mississippi, New Mexico and Puerto Rico (and D.C.). So if any publication repeats the lie of the Red states mooching off the Blue ones, you know they don't have fact checkers, or are just partisan shills.

Poverty - We have the richest poor in the world. Having done a fair amount of social work (and being in many "poor people's" homes on cases). Many of our poor struggle over issues like whether they should drop their cable TV or go out a few times a week less. While much of the rest of the world's poor is struggling with buying shoes or getting up to 2 meals a day.

Poverty cause - There's of course no single contributor to what causes poverty, but there are a few really strong ones that cause most of it. Some are easily fixable. Including:
  • Single Parenthood - Single-parent families, especially in minorities.
  • Welfare - When you pay people to not work and have kids out of wedlock (single parent homes), more people will not work and have kids without fathers. This robs the child of more than half his attention, and more than than in earnings-based opportunities, you hurt kids and families.
  • The failure of schools. For example, communication skills. Speaking ghetto or never learning English might make you cool with your friends, but it's going to dampen your opportunities for life. Certainly some jobs can tolerate it, but many will never be able to -- so it's a limiting factor.
  • The failure of culture: there's a reason that black immigrants, black kids raised by whites, black rural kids and Asian immigrants that come here with less than our black urban poor, can all outperform American inner-city blacks -- and it isn't race. It's that the others have a culture that values hard work and education -- whereas ghetto culture teaches black kids that try to get an education that they're being "white" and selling out to the man... and with the help of liberal cities, in liberal states, and liberal teachers, that their lack of performance is all someone else's fault. That's a serious problem that has nothing to do with White Privilege, and has everything to do with the failure of inner city leftist culture.

SNAP Challenge - Since Obama was the Food Stamps President, getting more on it than any other President in history. The next step is claiming how sub-par the system is. So the left tried to get people to take the challenge and live on that budget ($132/month). This of course ignores that people on it regularly are pros and hunting out deals, or that there are many state, local and other federal programs to augment it, as well as private charities (like School lunch programs, Food banks, etc), and it wasn't supposed to be 100% of your diet just supplemental. Still a couple people not only did the challenge, but surpassed it, and in the most expensive cities, and buying at most expensive stores like WholeFoods, decimating the left's arguments. Of course the Press ignored the successes, and celebrated the failures in the name of sympathy (for the moochers, not the taxpayers).

There are no American Poor - When you compare the U.S.'s poor to the rest of the world, they're middle class or rich:
  • The global median per person income is $2,920 (or $9K/household). A full time minimum wage worker would be nearly 5 times that amount ($14,500) and less than 2% of American workers are full time minimum wage, assuming you only have one worker per family. Now throw in benefits and subsidies (≈$30K in benefits per family we spend on "the poor" that jumps to $44,500 or 15x what the global average is). 4/5ths of the world doesn't make $20K/year.
  • Our poor eat more meat (and calories), larger living spaces (sq ft per person), higher car and TV ownership, and so on.
  • Our poor don't look as rich, because we give them most of their "compensation" in non-cash, or cash equivalents (handouts that aren't cash). But when you adjust for cost of living, and purchasing power, they are better off than the middle class in most of the rest of the world. (Seriously).
  • Our poor and middle americans ARE the top 2%'ers, a fact that escapes most of them. Mostly because they're programmed with polarizing dogma so they can be used as pawns in political game. But imagine if they recognized how much opportunity they had, and how many more would climb harder?

Welfare destroyed the Black Family - Since Johnson's "war on poverty", black babies born to single mom's rose from 24% to 72% (it also tripled for whites from 3% to 10%). Single moms are 90% of TANF recipients, 81% of homeless families are single mom's, only 40% have full time jobs. Income for single mother families is only one third the median for married couple families. (20% receive welfare and 40% receive food at the federal level, more at the state and local). Paying Women to help raise their kids encouraged more women to have more kids without husbands and live as dependents on the state. And we got more poverty, crime, and morally rudderless humans as a result.

Welfare trap - One of the problems is that there's traps to hold folks down. For example, a single mom is better off with a $29K a year job than a $69K a year one, And they know it. The system as designed by the left rewards failure, and punishes trying to climb out. It makes dependents for life. Either that's gross incompetence, or it's intentional malice -- but there's a lesson there. When people learn it, they can't be a good liberal Democrat any more they must choose party (and towing the line) or ethics (helping the poor). Thus there are no informed liberal Democrats on this issue, only fools or liars.


Poverty

We have the richest poor in the world. Having done a fair amount of social work (and being in many "poor people's" homes on cases). Many of our poor struggle over issues like whether they should drop their cable TV or go out a few times a week less. While much of the rest of the world's poor is struggling with buying shoes or getting up to 2 meals a day. more...

GeekPirate.small.png

📚 References