Brainsurfing...
Mar. 27th, 2008 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsTo evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize.Oh, but what does Pastor Dean Snyder know anyway?
In a world where people who make bad decisions are spared the full consequences, only one thing is certain. We've encouraged more people to make more bad decisions in the future. The real price to be paid isn't the dollar costs of any bail out, but the encouragement of recklessness and irresponsibility. That will make all of us poorer down the road.The one thing he didn't point out is that invention is one of the seeds of growth, and invention requires both regulatory freedom and the chance to fail.
The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said.Uh, hello? Their sister just died because their parents believe insane things about the way reality does and does not work. She died of a completely manageable form of diabetes, and her mother continues to insist that her daughter might still be resurrected! If this isn't the most horrible form of child abuse-- a reckless course of action that results in a slow, lingering, painful death-- what the fuck is?
"They are still in the home," he said. "There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."
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Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-28 01:54 am (UTC)Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-28 06:40 am (UTC)What's worse is that the specific purpose of social programs is to generate this kind of dependency. Although most people believe social spending is designed to help people, the politicians who actually enact it are doing it to create a self-perpetuating class of voters who have no choice but to demand even more public support.
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Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-29 02:52 am (UTC)I'm self-righteous because I believe some of my opinions are better than those of other people. Well, I can't argue with that. Of course, you should understand that I don't discuss all of my opinions because I'm not so confident about some of them.
I'm pompous because I write in complete, grammatical sentences? I'm just guessing on that one. If that's it, I'm guilty.
I'm close-minded because I won't reconsider my conclusions? Oh, not guilty. I do that all the time, whenever I become aware of new data. I rarely get presented with new data during casual conversations, but I'm always open to it. Alas, you're not offering any.
I'm a twit? I can't even guess what you mean by that.
I have no concept of what I'm talking about? I think if that were the case I'd have no ability to offend you. In this case I'm expressing fundamental elements of economic theories that have earned Nobel Prizes for multiple economists. Do you accuse them of ignorance because they expressed beliefs you don't agree with? I hope not.
Perhaps you're reacting like this because you're experiencing a conflict between what you want to be true and what you know is true. You appear to feel that it can't be wrong to help people. In many cases, that's true. But you may also recognize the obvious fact that too much help, or the wrong kind of help, leads to dependency that can be worse than the original problem.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into what you've said, and if so, I apologize.
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Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-29 10:00 pm (UTC)I have a problem with theories. Can you site any of these theorists who've had actual experience with welfare? Do they involve the human equation or just look at numbers? I don't think anyone can make generalizations with any real accuracy. I'd like to see them get into the trenches as it were.
Yes, there's a pervading sense of hopelessness and giving up among those on welfare. But I maintain that it's not because of the system itself. It's like trying to treat a chronically ill patient for depression and ignoring the disease (and it's reduction to quality of life) that's causing the depression.
Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-29 09:53 pm (UTC)Do you have any idea what it takes to even qualify for welfare? In Washington State, which is one of the more generous states, you have to be earning little to nothing to qualify and even then you’re not getting much. It’s not like people can really live off of it.
Example: in 2003 when I applied I had to be earning $879 or less per month. Gross. That’s a take home of about $700 per month. At the time, my space rent and mobile home payment came to $750, never mind all the rest of the bills. The apartments around me were costing from $800-$1200 per month. I was living in a halfway decent lower to middle class neighborhood, not the slums, but not exactly what you think of as the Eastside either. I did qualify for a few months. What that got me was the state found a charity to pay my medical insurance premium (which meant I had medical if I could come up with the co-pays) and I was given $141 per month in food stamps. How did I survive? I didn’t. I was eating 1 meal a day (and developed diabetes because of it) and I lost my home. Luckily for me I had friends willing to take me in so I didn’t end up in Tent City. I didn’t qualify for more because by that point I was working part time and earning about $1200 per month. Unfortunately it was too little too late.
People do not get rich off of welfare. Those who have it as their sole-support (and there’s not as many in that category as the media would like us to believe) are barely subsisting. Most of the folks on welfare are what’s considered the “working poor”. Yah they’ve got all kinds of programs like rent assistance and things like that, but that’s usually taken up by the families (and the primary drive there is to see to the needs of the children, not the parents) before single people can get any aid. And if the money runs out tough. The children come first. And it’s not like they get much anyway.
Some more examples: 1) a co-worker was earning little enough that she qualified for the rental assistance. She had to get approved at one of a few specific apartment complexes (and while decent they are no means luxury) and the assistance she got was maybe a couple hundred per month reduction in the rent. It was enough for her, but she didn’t have money for luxuries like movies or books. 2) A friend, a single mother at the time with 3 children (deadbeat father who couldn’t stay employed long enough to garnish him for the child support). She was able to get her children’s medical covered, some assistance for school supplies, food stamps (yes, with kids you get more like $300 per month), and some rental assistance. She however was not covered for medical, in spite of having diabetes, because it was deemed she was already getting enough assistance via the kids. How is it helping the kids if the mother isn’t healthy? 3) Then there’s my 22 year old cousin who has crohn’s disease who can’t get medical assistance. DSHS told her when she turned 18 that they can’t help her anymore. And being over 21 her parents’ insurance won’t cover her either. Yah at her age she still has the option of living with her parents (and has recently moved back in) but her health doesn’t allow her the work opportunities that most people have and employers get tired of her suddenly getting sick for days at a time.
These are the kinds of situations that welfare was meant for. It assists those who, through no fault of their own I might add, need help with basic living. And, as my examples show, it is by no means a free ride. Living on welfare living isn’t a desired state. Welfare does not make people give up. People are on welfare because they’ve exhausted any other venue, have often lost damn near everything, and it’s their last fucking chance.
Re: Hmm
Date: 2008-03-29 11:54 pm (UTC)There are certainly people who have problems for no fault of their own, people who can get themselves out of trouble with a certain amount of help rather than becoming dependent on the help. It's always worthwhile to offer help to these people. In a very real sense, there is no social cost to this kind of assistance; not helping is more expensive than helping.
There's also a social value to a certain level of protection against long-term disabilities and other problems that won't ever allow a full recovery. But there have to be pretty well-defined limits to this kind of coverage to create appropriate incentives for people to take care of their own health to the extent they can.
Generally, I'm fully behind any social program that can truly show that its social benefit is greater than its social cost.
But we are way, way beyond all that. Federal, state, and local spending for social programs is in the range of a few trillion dollars a year, several times higher than it ought to be.
This level of spending is a huge drag on the economy. It eliminates the very job opportunities that people need to get themselves out of poverty. It dramatically increases the prices of basic goods and services. It diminishes the variety and resources of private charities, which used to used to play a much larger role in assisting the poor. And much of the spending doesn't even go to needy people-- if we accounted for government programs the way we account for private charities, you'd be horrified by how much money goes to bureaucrats, consultants, contractors, and their flunkies.
And it's all done to expand the power and influence of the politicians who promote these programs. It doesn't matter to them that many of these programs are at best inefficient, more likely ineffective, and often counterproductive-- they insist that diverting more money will solve the problem. It never does, though. And let someone suggest that spending ought to be cut, and suddenly that person is called a heartless monster.
The monsters here are the socialists who use the power of government to steal money from some people and then use it to hurt other people.
The bottom line here is that most of today's social programs have failed to achieve their goals. We solved the big problems of infant mortality, adult life expectancy, literacy, etc. long ago, and we should have stopped there. Instead, we have gone on to enact more and more ambitious programs that never had a chance of succeeding and never will because they're actually worse than doing nothing.
The only thing that really improves society in the long run is prosperity, which requires liberty. Instead of diverting such a large fraction of our productivity into useless social programs and massive bureaucracies to manage them, we ought to let people keep a larger share of what they have legitimately earned. Individuals spend and invest their money much more wisely than the government ever could, and that's the surest path to a better life for all of us.
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