Replace all welfare and benefits programs with single stipend?

[BoberFett]

So you're saying it makes them participating members of the economy?

:hmm:

Economies are based supply and demand. If you want everyone on the demand side and nobody on the supply side, I wish you luck with that.

 

[Moonbeam]

There is no point in discussion welfare reform with conservatives. That is one of many subjects they know nothing about but think they know everything. What point can be made to programmed brain dead idiots. When you are up to your eyeballs in shit, nothing more can go in. You might as well drop a quarter in a fortune telling machine. You will just get a formula reply.

 

[Moonbeam]

Economies are based supply and demand. If you want everyone on the demand side and nobody on the supply side, I wish you luck with that.

I thought if everybody was on the demand side the supply side would self generate. What you are saying is that markets don't work.

 

[BoberFett]

I thought if everybody was on the demand side the supply side would self generate. What you are saying is that markets don't work.

You can put your hand on one side of a scale to make a sinngle feather weigh 10 lbs.

Does that mean scales don't work?

 

[zinfamous]

No I think he's saying he doesn't want to subsidize other people's drug, booze and gambling habits so that someone else can snarkily pretend that's the same as participating in the economy by carrying one's own weight in it.

That's my problem with the idea too. Too many people (especially spoiled pricks in this country) are just shamelessly ruthless exploiters to a level that most people can't quite grasp.

Economies are based supply and demand. If you want everyone on the demand side and nobody on the supply side, I wish you luck with that.

So their money feeds the hungry drug dealers, though, who then go and get a mcdouble, which keeps the McDonald's welfare-recipient casheer employed.

Or it goes to those flashy new rims, which keep the entrepreneurs at the local detail shops employed, which allows them to pay for their kids' education.

how is that only part of the demand side?

 

[MagickMan]

This isn't a fixable situation, society as we know it needs to collapse before it can get better.

 

[Zaap]

^ahh yes, the ages old "baseball bat/smashed windsheilds" theory of economic growth.

Congrats, you're the first to ever come up with it.

So sure, by going around with a baseball bat and smashing out windshields I stiumulate the economy by keeping glass repair businesses humming along.

And there's absolutely no downside to this at all.

Just call my baseball bat the "value adder" to the economy, and be sure to thank me for doing so when the wind is in your face driving to the glass repair shop.

 

[Moonbeam]

You can put your hand on one side of a scale to make a sinngle feather weigh 10 lbs.

Does that mean scales don't work?

Supply follows demand. With high demand supply increases. That is what a market means. You seem to be implying that demand doesn't drive supply or that there will be nobody who will want to profit from increased demand. If you put ten dollars of demand on one end of the scale, somebody will put ten dollars of supply on the other. Putting your hand on one end of a scale that balances requires weight on the other end. We aren't measuring feathers.

 

[alcoholbob]

As Herbert Spencer once said "The consequence of subsidizing fools is to populate the world with fools."

The state being the father, guaranteeing child care and divorce benefits has resulted in subsidizing women so they no longer have to decide between a "boring guy" who brings home the bacon and instead go out with whoever excites them, because government has priced out the risk in the market--who cares if the government mafia will collect child support for me anyway? Which is probably why so many American men are going to Eastern Europe to find wives who haven't be subsidized into this madness and lost all their senses.

Just like the government has priced out risk in the mortgage businesses by underwriting all home loans, resulted in banks loaning recklessly.

Just like the government pricing out risk of student loans by writing off student debt, now anyone can go to college whether they have a hope of ever paying back their loan or not.

Everything government touches turns turd.

 

[unokitty]

As Herbert Spencer once said "The consequence of subsidizing fools is to populate the world with fools."...
Everything government touches turns turd.

Entitlement Mentality: The federal government wants more Americans using food stamps. To what end? Washington has been fighting a war on poverty since 1964 and has gotten nowhere with it.

Unless of course establishing a culture of dependency is the goal. If that's the federal government's real objective, then it's doing a fine job.

War on Poverty

Fails at getting people out of poverty.

Succeeds at making people dependent on government handouts.

War on poverty only a failure if you thought that it was meant to do anything other than create more people dependent on government aid.

Uno

 

[fskimospy]

War on Poverty

Fails at getting people out of poverty.

Succeeds at making people dependent on government handouts.

War on poverty only a failure if you thought that it was meant to do anything other than create more people dependent on government aid.

Uno

Lol. Same dishonest stats.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Obama made it abundantly clear that he would run the handout train at 100%

How do you think he got the unemployment rate down?? Add millions to the handout train instead of doing min wage jobs and voila everything looks great, to his voting bloc anyway.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

War on Poverty

Fails at getting people out of poverty.

Succeeds at making people dependent on government handouts.

War on poverty only a failure if you thought that it was meant to do anything other than create more people dependent on government aid.

Uno

This has been the modern progressive goal for quite some time... They want the supposed "rich america" (middle class) to support those who don't want to work.

 

[fskimospy]

My favorite part is how Cato complains about trillions spent to reduce poverty and then in the same chart uses a metric of poverty that doesn't include the effects of those dollars. The rubes still swallow it every time though, so I guess they have found out that it doesn't really matter what crap they shovel out.

 

[glenn1]

This sounds like a sort of guaranteed national income the likes of which Switzerland recently put forth. I'm for it.

Ok, if you're down for swapping all social welfare programs for a single cash stipend, at what amount are you willing for the stipend to top out? And how are you going to resist jumping back in with checkbook in hand when someone fucks up and uses their stipend on hookers and blow rather than rent and utilities? This plan only works if you're willing to literally let people who make bad choices despite government assistance starve to set the paradigm. If you can't let them starve the plan is completely unworkable otherwise.

 

[fskimospy]

Ok, if you're down for swapping all social welfare programs for a single cash stipend, at what amount are you willing for the stipend to top out? And how are you going to resist jumping back in with checkbook in hand when someone fucks up and uses their stipend on hookers and blow rather than rent and utilities? This plan only works if you're willing to literally let people who make bad choices despite government assistance starve to set the paradigm. If you can't let them starve the plan is completely unworkable otherwise.

I would have to get back to you on the number. Probably a few grand a month.

As for letting them starve that's fine (and something that could be handled by private charities anyway). If someone endangers their kids with that behavior, take their kids away.

 

[BoberFett]

I would have to get back to you on the number. Probably a few grand a month.

As for letting them starve that's fine (and something that could be handled by private charities anyway). If someone endangers their kids with that behavior, take their kids away.

You say that now, but if you're honest with yourself you know that bleeding hearts would never let that happen.

 

[unokitty]

Facts can be stubborn things.

Uno

 

[fskimospy]

You say that now, but if you're honest with yourself you know that bleeding hearts would never let that happen.

I think they would (and again there is always private charity) but there's no way to know I guess.

 

[Incorruptible]

Welfare needs to be phased out and later abolished. Too many people use it as a way to live off the taxpayer and not work.

 

[positivedoppler]

This is an awesome idea

 

[marincounty]

replace all of the payments with a stipend. either in the form of a job, or a bullet to the head.

Ted Kennedy proposed a guaranteed job for everyone in exchange for ending welfare, but of course Republicans wouldn't do it.
What would Republicans complain about if there was no welfare?

 

[Subyman]

Oh boy, give some of the people I see a straight check instead of the specific benefits and they will buy booze, McDonalds, and live in their $55k chevy 4x4.

 

[Veliko]

Welfare needs to be phased out and later abolished. Too many people use it as a way to live off the taxpayer and not work.

How many?

 

[BoberFett]

Ted Kennedy proposed a guaranteed job for everyone in exchange for ending welfare, but of course Republicans wouldn't do it.
What would Republicans complain about if there was no welfare?

I'd be up for debating that. At least we'd get something for the trillions we spend. Even if it's highway duty.