I think I’ll begin my response by restoring the parts of my post which you deleted:
WinePusher wrote:cnorman18 wrote:
I think making statements about a "welfare-entitlement culture" is a bit of partisan polemic distortion in itself.
I don't know of ANYONE who advocates dependence on welfare. I don't care for the term "entitlements," either, as if programs like Social Security and Medicare were unjustified or somehow "gifts" to people who don't "deserve" them.
Actually, I don't think most people would consider Social Security or Medicare to be 'entitlements.' But, any honest person would admit that both these programs are unsustainable and have huge long term problems that need to be dealt with.
I’m an honest person, and I won’t "admit" that, because
it isn’t true. Remove the $110,000 income cap on Social Security contributions and let EVERYONE contribute according to his income; problem permanently solved. Medicare should be extended to everyone in a single-payer healthcare system, as in Canada and most of the industrialized world. Other nations seem to be doing just fine with it.
When I created the topic, I had in minds things like
this. People who are demanding a free income regardless of employment, and a free education, and immediate debt forgiveness.
Wait a minute. You are alluding to a COMMENT on the article linked, not the article itself.
I see nothing wrong with the original list of proposed demands from Occupy Wall Street; nothing at all. And I see no comment from you on THOSE.
You want to claim that some extremist nut’s remarks are typical of a whole movement or "culture"? That’s blatantly inaccurate, unjustified by the link, and intellectually dishonest. It's called "false stereotyping" and it's also called "partisan polemic distortion" -- words I've used before in relation to your initial post.
And then of course there's the attitude presented in the topic, where apparently some people think it's ok to blow off personal expensese and even feel good about it afterwards. All of this is part of the hidious welfare-entitlement culture was referring to.
So you know of ONE person who did this? Maybe you need to look around a little. In very many cases, “blowing off� a personal debt --
not the same as a "personal expense," as we’ll see in a moment -- is more a result of predatory debt-collecting practices that are, in fact, already illegal, and not evidence of personal irresponsibility.
I had some credit-card debt that I accumulated during and shortly after my divorce almost 20 years ago. I was current with my payments until I lost my job, and was unemployed for a mere 6 months. During that time, my efforts to negotiate new terms for my debt were stalled, delayed, and dragged out -- while additional fees and charges grew higher and higher, apparently the point of the stalling. My account was turned over to a collection agency. I made a large payment to that agency toward my balance on their assurance that the total of my debt would be reduced; it was not, and upon questioning, they denied that any such agreement had been reached. I was asked for another payment, and they gave their assurance again; I asked to have that agreement sent to me in writing, and that was refused. By the time we had reached this point, my debt was more than three times as large as when I first fell behind in my payments.
I, too, "blew it off." Now you know TWO people -- and you know the reason. No one would deal with me honestly, and after some years, the debt is no longer on my record. It no longer exists. I don't "feel good" about that -- it never should have happened -- but I’m absolutely OK with it. If the company, or the collection agency, had dealt with me with honesty and with integrity, the debt would have been paid. Period, full stop.
By the way, I note that you have distorted JohnMarc’s quote. He never said that he felt good about
blowing off the debt; he said that he felt good about outscoring his wife in that one thing. The difference is not trivial.
I’ll say no more about your selective quoting, as in this and the link you gave. It speaks for itself.
Now, I see that you have deleted ALL of the following without response of any kind:
cnorman18 wrote:
I, for one, advocate a COMPASSIONATE culture, where we humans take care of each other when we OUGHT to, when others NEED it. The facts of the case are on the record: longterm welfare ended with the Clinton administration; virtually all people on welfare are off it within two years, the majority after only a few months; the overwhelming majority of people on food stamps are children or the elderly; and so on. The myth of the "Welfare Queen" seems to have long legs, even though that stereotype is false and always has been.
No comment on all that? Really? Most illuminating, I think.
So you've heard a story or two about someone buying lobster with food stamps. Do you REALLY think that that is true of ALL food stamp recipients? Do you REALLY believe that there are no single parents, or disabled people, or old people, who NEED that extra help? Do you REALLY support cutting those benefits to the poor and hungry -- and cutting off unemployment to those who can't find work in this economy (there are currently three people seeking work for every one job available) -- and at CHRISTMAS?
No comment on any of this either? None? Hmmm...
I ask those who are for reducing or eliminating these government benefits to the poor that same question that Abraham asked God, to his face: "Far be it from You, O Lord, far be it from you to act in this way! Will You punish the innocent along with the guilty? Shall the Judge of all the earth act unjustly?"
And no comment on THIS? Seems wholly on point and relevant to me. Or do you hold that your religion has no relevance to the issue of how the society we live in treats the poor and needy? Jesus would be very surprised at that, I think....
Now back to the material you DO choose to quote:
cnorman18 wrote:
In the meantime, those who complain about "welfare" and "entitlements" seem to have no problem with enormous tax breaks and even outright subsidies to multibillion-dollar businesses that already rake in money by the megatruckload. A person with a $50K income pays about $36 a year for the food stamp program -- but pays over $4,000 a year for corporate subsidies and tax breaks. About 36% of the income to the Federal treasury was from corporations just a few decades ago; today, it's less than 10%. The Dow Industrial Average is at an all-time record high as we speak; so are CEO salaries and bonuses -- while the minimum wage remains at below-poverty levels, more and more people are forced to accept part-time and temporary work without benefits (80% of jobs at the nation's largest private employer, Wal-Mart) -- and so on.
WHO, one might well ask, are the REAL freeloaders in our society?
The people who are demanding free education, free money, and total debt forgiveness...
The PERSON, you mean. It’s illegitimate to address the “demands� of one nutcase as if they represent and replace the concerns of millions about the purpose-designed unfairness of a system that promotes inequality to an obscene degree.
...and the people who think it's ok to blow off their expenses whenever they want to....
As if that’s common and generally practiced and is never justified by the predatory practices of corporations. False stereotyping and partisan polemic distortion again.
...And let's be honest here, a CEO does far more to grow the economy and increase the standard of living for the middle/poor class than people who are living on food stamps and welfare.
Really? The most highly paid CEOs are
hedge fund managers who are paid in eight and nine figures, and produce NO jobs for ANYONE. They merely manipulate other people’s money in a broken and slanted system. The owners of Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the United States, are four of the ten wealthiest people in this country -- and they depend on the government to supplement their employees’ incomes, since they refuse to pay a living wage to 80% of them. Many CEOs are changing their companies’ policies to use more and more part-time and temporary workers in order to avoid providing benefits; and if you haven’t read Ellen E. Schultz’s
Retirement Heist, you should. CEOs all across the nation have been engaging in a premeditated theft of their employees’ pensions for decades, complete with “consultants� who teach them to “package� their “restructuring� of once-secure pensions and deceive their employees into believing that these changes are for THEIR benefit.
And let’s not forget that those same “job-creating� CEOs are the very ones shipping American jobs overseas and closing factories HERE. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
A CEO does not require other people's money in order to survive.
Really? Who buys the products that they have manufactured overseas and sell at outrageous markups? Who pays for the government assistance that compensates for their refusal to pay living wages to their employees? Why do they get enormous bonuses for “performance� even in years when their corporations LOSE money -- and where does THAT money come from? The PUBLIC’S money has nothing to do with all this? What about the enormous subsidies and tax breaks these megacorporations get from the government, which have to be paid for by the PEOPLE? Do you know that 26 of the 30 largest corporations in the United States paid NO INCOME TAX AT ALL in 2012, and in fact received government SUBSIDIES which gave them an effective tax rate as high as a
negative -18% (General Electric)? If not, why not? If so, how can you make this outrageous claim?
ALL of CEOs' money comes from "other people," i.e. the public -- either from payments for the products and services they sell, or from the taxpayers who subsidize their businesses!
Corporate executives and other people who are in the top 1% spend their money on either consumption related purposes or investment related purposes. I can understand why liberals would want to tax a rich person when he/she is going out to buy a new yacht or a new corvette because the money is being spent on personal consumption and will only benefit the rich person. But, much of the money in the top 1% is circulated throughout the economy in the form of investments and loans. This benefits the poor and middle classes because it expands and grows the economy. Economic growth comes primarily from an abudnance of savings (a large supply of loanable funds) and the rich supply most of the savings and investments in the economy. And all the stuff you said about the minimum wage as been refuted ad naseum. It seems like you're only looking at the surface of all these issues; you're not digging deeper and looking at what the unintended consequences of all your propositions are.
Watch Fox News much? Here are some facts of which you are apparently unaware, from
here:
The Associated Press wrote:
The growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else isn't bad just for individuals. It's hurting the U.S. economy.
So says a majority of more than three dozen economists surveyed last week by The Associated Press. Their concerns tap into a debate that's intensified as middle-class pay has stagnated while wealthier households have thrived.
A key source of the economists' concern: Higher pay and outsize stock market gains are flowing mainly to affluent Americans. Yet these households spend less of their money than do low- and middle-income consumers who make up most of the population but whose pay is barely rising.
And
here:
The New York Times wrote:
...economists’ thinking has changed sharply in recent years. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development this year warned about the “negative consequences� of the country’s high levels of pay inequality, and suggested an aggressive series of changes to tax and spending programs to tackle it.
The I.M.F. has cautioned the United States, too. “Some dismiss inequality and focus instead on overall growth — arguing, in effect, that a rising tide lifts all boats,� a commentary by fund economists said. “When a handful of yachts become ocean liners while the rest remain lowly canoes, something is seriously amiss.�
The concentration of income in the hands of the rich might not just mean a more unequal society, economists believe. It might mean less stable economic expansions and sluggish growth.
That is the conclusion drawn by two economists at the fund, Mr. Ostry and Andrew G. Berg. They found that in rich countries and poor, inequality strongly correlated with shorter spells of economic expansion and thus less growth over time.
And inequality seems to have a stronger effect on growth than several other factors, including foreign investment, trade openness, exchange rate competitiveness and the strength of political institutions.
And one more thing;
One hundred percent of poor people’s money is spent on “consumption� -- you know, things like rent, food, clothing, fuel and electricity. ALL of their income goes back into the economy. ALL of it. The wealthy's "investments?" You mean in money markets, trading on currency exchanges? Gambling in the stock market? Investment in huge overseas companies? How does any of THAT help the economy, never mind the plight of the un- and under-employed?
As for “loans� -- well, we’ve seen how THOSE help the poor and middle-class. People all over the country have lost their homes to predatory banks and mortgage companies -- which were bailed out at TAXPAYER expense, whose CEOs and executives got six-and seven-figure bonuses for indisputably CRIMINAL behavior -- all while the billions provided for relief went into their pockets and practically none of it went to actually relieve the cheated homeowners. Are you sure you want to talk about “loans�?
For the record; most people on the Left were OUTRAGED at the government bailouts of the banks -- if not before the fact, certainly AFTER, when it turned out that nothing changed, no one went to jail, and the banks made more profits after the bailouts than before.
cnorman18 wrote:It always amazes me that people who profess to be "religious" and even "Christian" so often buy into the LIE that the poor deserve their poverty and the rich deserve their wealth -- even though that LIE is older than the Bible and is very often denounced and disproven in its pages. Consult Amos, Ezekiel, and Isaiah for starters -- and don't neglect the Gospels. Jesus had quite a lot to say about this issue.
Some do deserve it, some don't. I don't know why you're bringing up this non-issue though because it is NOT about what people do and do not deserve. This isn't a perfect world, not everybody gets exactly what he/she deserves. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people. That much should be clear by now. The real issue has to do with what can be done to alleviate poverty and increase the living standards for the masses.
Precisely. You only seem concerned with maintaining living standards for the rich, subscribing to that tired old “trickle-down� theory that has been thoroughly disproven and discredited over the last few decades. We’ve had tax breaks for the wealthy since Reagan; if “trickle-down� was a valid theory, we’d be up to our butts in jobs and economic growth by now.
We’re not.
If you were to look at a third world country and you were tasked to develop a policy/plan that would bring the country out of poverty, most economists would agree that the creation of wealth and income and employment is the first thing that must be done. The government cannot redistribute income and wealth if there isn't any income and wealth that yet exists. And as everybody already knows, wealth and income is created by entreprenuers and business people.
We’re not talking about a third-world country. You aren’t addressing the problem of wealth and income being CONCENTRATED in the hands of the 1% or the 5%. And that IS a problem, though you keep trying to say that it ISN’T.
cnorman18 wrote:Tell me again how "religious" you are, if you support those cruel cuts to government aid for the needy -- ithout a word to say about the billions in tax credits and subsidies to the very corporations that are shipping American jobs overseas in search of ultra-cheap labor in corrupt nations with no safety regulations.
Have you ever asked why corporations outsource jobs overseas?
No comment about the RELIGIOUS aspects of your preferred policies again, I see....
Let me be sure I understand you here. You think that American corporations should be able to pay their employees
thirty-four cents per hour, as they do in Indonesia? Or perhaps
thirteen cents per hour, as in Bangladesh? You think that safety regulations in factories should be
abolished, as in the aforementioned Bangladesh, where a fire at a factory killed 111 people making clothes for Wal-Mart (and note that Wal-Mart chose NOT to help with factory upgrades that could have prevented the fire)? And you're OKAY with all that, and think abolishing all these laws and regulations would make American corporations more competitive, and would be good for the country?
Let me guess. Libertarian dogma, right? Let corporations do WHATEVER THEY CHOOSE, without ANY GOVERNMENT REGULATION WHATEVER, and let the market decide. Child labor, 60-hour weeks, no overtime, no sick pay, no benefits, no pensions -- and since the corporations all work together to maximize their profits and suppress wages and benefits, we’ll end up with even GREATER inequality and injustice than before?
You must have loved
A Christmas Carol, and been shocked when Ebenezer Scrooge lost his fine Libertarian principles and became a sucker for the moocher classes in good old Victorian London.
Have you ever asked why many politicians, including Obama, don't support high corporate income taxes?
Sure. Maybe it’s because campaign costs have soared into the billions (free market, right?} and politicians are beholden to the wealthy corporations and the tycoons who run them for financing.
Have you ever asked why there needs to be cuts in government welfare/entitlement spending? Oh, lemme guess, your answers are gonna be something like this right?
Corporations hate workers. The government is in league with the corporations. Republicans hate poor people.
That’s not debating: that’s putting words in your opponent’s mouth and pretending that’s his position. Much easier than actually addressing what he says.
My ACTUAL answer is:
There DON’T need to be cuts in government “welfare/entitlement spending.� It should be INCREASED, and government subsidies and tax breaks to CORPORATIONS should be cut -- which would, incidentally, amount to HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS more in actual savings.
Our social safety net is already the thinnest and least adequate in the industrialized world; this remains the ONLY nation in the First World where people fear their medical bills, and where people go bankrupt -- literally lose everything -- over those bills. And the MAJORITY of people who go bankrupt in the US do it because of their medical bills. It’s better to be sick or poor in Turkey or Spain than in the US. Economic mobility -- that is, the ability to improve one’s economic lot -- is lower in the US than in
any European nation except Britain, lower than Canada, lower than Australia, and so on. It’s harder for the poor to escape poverty in the US than in virtually any other nation in the First World.
I don't think that Republican "hate" poor people; I think they frankly don't give a rat's behind about them, as you yourself apparently don't. You've not betrayed a scintilla of concern about those in our society who are poor and needy; you have not so much as mentioned their legitimate concerns at all. Most poor Americans are WORKING poor; they HAVE JOBS, but those jobs do not pay a wage adequate to support a family. The old LIE that the poor are merely "lazy" and should just "get a job" has been proven a lie for a LONG time now, but some still worship it as the truth. I see no indication that you think otherwise.
I note, throughout this exchange, that you have uttered not one word about the relationship between these ideas and these policies and religion -- most especially the Christian religion. Tell me; do you think the teachings of the religion one follows are ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to the national public policies that one chooses to support? If so -- WHY? "This isn't a perfect world, not everybody gets exactly what he/she deserves. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people" is just a way of saying "Tough cookies." Doesn't your Bible have something to say about JUSTICE? Mine does. The forum title is
"Politics and Religion," you know.
My final remarks remain unanswered as well:
"Welfare entitlement culture," indeed. That would best be sought in corporate boardrooms, penthouses, and country clubs in this nation, not in its tenements, ghettos, and slums.
"WWJD," indeed.
Phffft.
