(Slight) Cut to food stamps on Nov 1, 2013 but still $600+/month for family of 4

[Zaap]

In today's economy, driving one person off welfare and into work is likely to merely put another person there.

That's a really good point.

I just think there's a chicken/egg effect that eventually comes around on itself, especially with a political class that is hostile toward business. That is, if you just keep trying to cover up the foul economy with the bandaid of increased public assistance, you quickly get to the point where that very effort is just causing even more harm to the economy (and therefore more need for public assistance) in the first place. For statists, money just comes from thin air, so as the government you just fire up the press, print whatever you need, and float everyone with endless green. But of course that's also how third world shithole governments do things, and eventually you get a situation where you can wallpaper your mud hut with the worthless currency.

In reality- whatever money you're giving as assistance has to come from somewhere, attached to something of value, which is in fact, people's time and labor. So taking more and more and more from the private sector to feed assistance programs just ends up costing the very people that are supposedly being helped more than they're getting trickled back to them through government assistance. (It's funny to me how statists don't believe in trickle down in the private sector, but a red-tape lade government leviathon that routinely blows trillions of dollars into a debt-black hole trickling down piddly amounts extracted out of the very same private sector its trickling back into, is supposedly *THE* most efficient use of money ever devised.

Eventually, we're just going to have to face some hard facts in this country- if we really want prosperity for as many people as possible, then we're going to have to have a system that's made much less hostile to the businesses that create that prosperity.

To idiot statists, they think that only means letting billionares do whatever they want. In reality, it means that if you, just an average Joe start a business, the climate that exists will allow you to grow and thrive at it, rather than be so hostile you're more likely to fail. If you can then hire others, that should be sustainable, not that you suddenly are treated like Uncle Scrooge just because you were able to hire someone, and therefore leaned on and squeezed for every dollar possible until you're no longer able to keep people on. The climate that statists love, will treat you (and anyone else) like a robber baron for starting a business, lean on and squeeze you as though you're IBM or something just for running a modest operation that may not even be making you anything. In a political climate that's actually logical, you should be rewarded for starting a business and employing your fellow man, not heaped scorn and red tape upon by jealous regressive busibodies.

Currently, the later is more the system we have, and we have a national mentality of defeat and acceptance of a lesser way of life (the current National Pity Party as I call it) so until we break out of that and get back to unleashing our ideas, creativity, inventiveness, resourcefulness, and not only get back in the game but own the game once again, we'll sit here in a rut debating weather we can allow a bloated, hopelessly in debt govt to enslave enough of our fellow citizens that work into prosperity for those that don't/can't.

And of course it's an impossible goal, (you can't actually tax and spend to prosperity) but then impossible goals have never stopped statist regimes from embarking on decades long campaigns into absolute economic ruin, and it won't stop our own if we allow it.

 

[nehalem256]

Well said, sir. I think the welfare queen talk is probably necessary to motivate people to tighten the system, but it certainly obscures the fact that many if not most people on government welfare programs are there against their wills and preferences, from well-meaning but bad decisions or simply through bad luck. Very few people have the resources to protect themselves from every possible disaster that can befall a free creature. Accidents will happen, strokes and heart attacks will happen, medical procedures and treatment will have bad side affects. Always have, always will.

The father of her eldest child, 10-year-old Isaiah, is serving 30 years in federal prison for armed robbery.

"He's met my son one time, when he was a baby. And he decided that he didn't want him," she says.

Stepp's middle child, 8-year-old Shyanne, usually sees her father every other weekend. But the father of her younger son is also in prison. Stepp says he's been behind bars for selling cocaine since she was pregnant. He has never met 1-year-old Makai.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593/to-beat-odds-poor-single-moms-need-wide-safety-net

Well meaning? What part of having a 3rd bastard child. with a 3rd baby dady, who is a cocaine dealer is "welling meaning?

Or consider the previously qoute:

Her adult daughters who live with her aren't in a position to work -- one is a new mom, and another is due to give birth soon.

Again... well meaning?

 

[werepossum]

That's a really good point.

I just think there's a chicken/egg effect that eventually comes around on itself, especially with a political class that is hostile toward business. That is, if you just keep trying to cover up the foul economy with the bandaid of increased public assistance, you quickly get to the point where that very effort is just causing even more harm to the economy (and therefore more need for public assistance) in the first place. For statists, money just comes from thin air, so as the government you just fire up the press, print whatever you need, and float everyone with endless green. But of course that's also how third world shithole governments do things, and eventually you get a situation where you can wallpaper your mud hut with the worthless currency.

In reality- whatever money you're giving as assistance has to come from somewhere, attached to something of value, which is in fact, people's time and labor. So taking more and more and more from the private sector to feed assistance programs just ends up costing the very people that are supposedly being helped more than they're getting trickled back to them through government assistance. (It's funny to me how statists don't believe in trickle down in the private sector, but a red-tape lade government leviathon that routinely blows trillions of dollars into a debt-black hole trickling down piddly amounts extracted out of the very same private sector its trickling back into, is supposedly *THE* most efficient use of money ever devised.

Eventually, we're just going to have to face some hard facts in this country- if we really want prosperity for as many people as possible, then we're going to have to have a system that's made much less hostile to the businesses that create that prosperity.

To idiot statists, they think that only means letting billionares do whatever they want. In reality, it means that if you, just an average Joe start a business, the climate that exists will allow you to grow and thrive at it, rather than be so hostile you're more likely to fail. If you can then hire others, that should be sustainable, not that you suddenly are treated like Uncle Scrooge just because you were able to hire someone, and therefore leaned on and squeezed for every dollar possible until you're no longer able to keep people on. The climate that statists love, will treat you (and anyone else) like a robber baron for starting a business, lean on and squeeze you as though you're IBM or something just for running a modest operation that may not even be making you anything. In a political climate that's actually logical, you should be rewarded for starting a business and employing your fellow man, not heaped scorn and red tape upon by jealous regressive busibodies.

Currently, the later is more the system we have, and we have a national mentality of defeat and acceptance of a lesser way of life (the current National Pity Party as I call it) so until we break out of that and get back to unleashing our ideas, creativity, inventiveness, resourcefulness, and not only get back in the game but own the game once again, we'll sit here in a rut debating weather we can allow a bloated, hopelessly in debt govt to enslave enough of our fellow citizens that work into prosperity for those that don't/can't.

And of course it's an impossible goal, (you can't actually tax and spend to prosperity) but then impossible goals have never stopped statist regimes from embarking on decades long campaigns into absolute economic ruin, and it won't stop our own if we allow it.

Very well said. I think this boils down to making more wealth than we consume and limiting immigration (especially illegal immigration) to what the economy actually needs. Artificially inflating the value of labor simply makes wealth production and free market wealth distribution less practical, but factors which devalue labor (increased labor supply, decrease in skilled labor, off-shoring, automation) make it difficult to move people off the welfare system without making worse their lives or the lives of those remaining recipients who honestly need the program.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593/to-beat-odds-poor-single-moms-need-wide-safety-net

Well meaning? What part of having a 3rd bastard child. with a 3rd baby dady, who is a cocaine dealer is "welling meaning?

Or consider the previously qoute:


Again... well meaning?

I have absolutely no sympathy for the first woman and little for the second group. I do however have sympathy for their minor children.