What if there was no safety net? No welfare/food stamps/section 8 housing/etc

[Spungo]

I bet people older than 70 also knew a time when they didn't need to compete with China and Mexico for factory jobs.

Do you think we just discovered those countries a few years ago? I can assure you that China has been infested with humans for several thousand years. We've been competing against China for as long as America has existed.
Back a couple generations ago, America was a very competitive country, but today's business climate is designed to create monopolies and crush small business. A giant company like IBM has full time professionals to understand the laws, and they can hire and fire people at will. A small business has no idea how to comply with laws, so they do everything possible to avoid hiring people.
Casually ask if an employee has a girlfriend or a boyfriend = lawsuit.
Ask a woman if she ever wants to have children = lawsuit.
Say something that offends anyone = lawsuit.
Joke about your own ethnicity = lawsuit.
Celebrate the ethnicity of others = lawsuit ("cultural appropriation" in SJW speak).
Don't celebrate the ethnicity of others = lawsuit.
All of your employees happen to be the same race = lawsuit.
Not hiring enough women = lawsuit.

I know quite a few people who own their own business, and none of them have ever hired anyone. They don't know where to begin. You can get serious jail time just for hiring someone and paying them $100 cash for the day.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Bonzai is in full hack mode today. What happened?

What happened?! What happened?! It's been happening for years!

I've got the newsfeeds coming in 24/7, taking occasional relief in some HBO movie or an L&O episode.

I suppose I come here to vent. But then -- who doesn't?

And . . . . what is "full hack mode?" I'm an old guy, and I'm having more and more trouble with this . . . Newspeak.

"In the criminal justice system, crimes of a sechs-ural nature are considered especially anus.. . . "

And so is contemporary politics. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

Anyone ever have an experience wherein completely vomiting your stomach contents was actually a refreshing sensation?

 

[glenn1]

What if there was no safety net? No welfare/food stamps/section 8 housing/etc

Answer: We'd have a lot fewer poor people. Whether that's because they died off or decided to change their behaviors enough so they wouldn't die is their choice. They'd almost certainly never be rich, but they wouldn't die either.

Supply basic food, water, electricity, healthcare and basic shelter.

We already do, it's called jail. It's been the primary tool for the last 20-30 years in how we deal with those who cannot or will not support themselves.

People will always want clothes, holidays, shiny gadgets, pets, families, private schooling, university education, video games, software, concert tickets, musical instruments, etc. And for that, they have to work.

Never mind getting better food, tasty beverages and more-than-a-cement-box housing; they'll have to work for that too.

It's easy, really. Support people so that they won't die of disease nor hunger, provide them safety and education. Don't support their consumerist habits, for which they shall have to make do themselves.

Agreed, the rich/middle class appreciates having a small but visible amount of desperately poor and miserable people to show to our children as an object lesson, "here's what will happen to you if you continue to fuck off, get pregnant as a teen, or drop out of school."

 

[Zorkorist]

All the more reason for less Government, BonzaiDuck.

The young kids today don't realize they are voting for more and more Government, when we used to be free.

Your sickness is because you are no longer free, and are being assaulted by Government.

-John

 

[Zorkorist]

Answer: We'd have a lot fewer poor people. Whether that's because they died off or decided to change their behaviors enough so they wouldn't die is their choice. They'd almost certainly never be rich, but they wouldn't die either.



We already do, it's called jail. It's been the primary tool for the last 20-30 years in how we deal with those who cannot or will not support themselves.



Agreed, the rich/middle class appreciates having a small but visible amount of desperately poor and miserable people to show to our children as an object lesson, "here's what will happen to you if you continue to fuck off, get pregnant as a teen, or drop out of school."

Wow, no.

People can be poor, and happy, unless it is in a world that penalizes freedom.

-John

 

[BonzaiDuck]

All the more reason for less Government, BonzaiDuck.

The young kids today don't realize they are voting for more and more Government, when we used to be free.

Your sickness is because you are no longer free, and are being assaulted by Government.

-John

I think you're flipping a political symbol with that word, and it could use some exploration.

We have a freedom to succeed, and a freedom to fail. Some people have the freedom to throw a dart over their shoulder at a world map so they can spend the weekend in the Gobi Desert, although I don't know what advantage that provides. But physical mobility and the resources to just hop on a plane anytime anywhere is a dimension of freedom not provided in the Bill of Rights. I can write what I want, think what I want, spend my money the way I want.

I'm also free at present from drinking water contaminated by hexavalent chromium, and I can breathe air a lot cleaner than it was here 45 years ago when you could taste it -- unable to see the time on the clock-tower a few blocks away.

And I think you have this simplistic idea of how things work, which infects your idea of how they should work, to which end you'll deprive me of the freedoms I value.

Ultimately, though, it's an exercise in cultural narcissism. If life is a zero sum game, I don't see how that in its entirety provides any social cohesion or collective purpose, but only the indulgence of the self.

 

[Zorkorist]

My beliefs are pretty simple, and that is that the less Government fucks with me, the more free I am.

-John

 

[nickqt]

Obama has had seven years of power to fix your perceived injustice, Sportage. Meanwhile he prefers to spend into debt, and socialize medicine, making it more expensive, and less personal, to perform healthcare for the aged.

-John

Of course, reality is exactly the opposite of your delusions, lunatic.

Medicine wasn't "socialized", private industry-provided insurance is now mandated...and it's the young who are subsidizing insurance costs for the aged, rather than making it more expensive for them.

My beliefs are pretty simple, and that is that the less Government fucks with me, the more free I am.

-John

Your beliefs, belief system, and mind are very, very simple. Totally agreed, for once.

 

[Zorkorist]

LOL, nickqt.

Medicine was socialized, where Socialism is when Government owns Medicine.

Obama told everyone to "fuck off" I got this.

That's socialism.

-John

 

[BonzaiDuck]

My beliefs are pretty simple, and that is that the less Government fucks with me, the more free I am.

-John

And how much freedom should an individual in a crowded world have? There was a time when my father could come home from work, pick up his 22 target rifle, and pop off a few rounds at the stump in the back yard. Most comparable suburban areas or incorporated neighborhoods can't do that today. Why? Because if you kill someone accidentally, you're going to fuck with their freedom to live.

Maybe I'm blind. I can't see black helicopters watching my every move from the patio. The IRS only wants me to file an honest tax return. I don't get any "free stuff." What Social Security benefits I get -- I worked for and paid for. I still pay Medicare premiums.

So instead of "simple" and "belief," maybe look at these issues from a different lens.

There are public goods and private goods. The Private ones don't have collective aspects. And you won't make it to Las Vegas if I sell you a chunk of cement and call it your own highway.

I like the way Colin Powell put it. The American People should have those things provided publicly that they want provided that way.

There is private property and there is collective and public property, like the air you breathe.

There is also "freedom," and there is "license." How licentious do you want to be?

I think government could be smaller. I also think it could be just as effective and smaller. You don't want it to be effective. I do.

 

[Zorkorist]

You've heard of America, the land of the free?

-John

 

[rudder]

how would the landscape look today?
(both social-economic and political)

or just look at how the poor currently live in Republican controlled southern states???

Well how do the poor live in "republican controlled" southern states. You don't really give us much information. I can chime in on how it would look in Tennessee (which although there is a Republican governor he was preceded by a two term democratic governor but my assessment would be the same).

The folks in the blue counties (cities like Nashville and Memphis) well these folks would starve. The poorer people in the more rural counties (I would classified as leaning red) would be able to put food on their plate.

But at any rate what is the point of the thread? Who is proclaiming with doing away with safety nets? I consider myself a conservative.... But I would keep social safety nets but would work to void people who make welfare lifestyle.

 

[Moonbeam]

My beliefs are pretty simple, and that is that the less Government fucks with me, the more free I am.

-John

I don't see how you consider yourself to be free. You're a prisoner of this imbecilic Ann Rand ideology. You are as trapped by doctrine as any religious person. You're free to blather notions you acquired from a stupid book.

 

[Zorkorist]

Ayn Rand, and Objectivism, which I learned was what her philosophy was called, is a great influence on my life. Here is a person that says how important an individual is and how unimportant the state.

-John

 

[nickqt]

LOL, nickqt.

Medicine was socialized, where Socialism is when Government owns Medicine.

Obama told everyone to "fuck off" I got this.

That's socialism.

-John

Yes, government now owns medicine. Doctors are now effectively slaves and no longer make any money. Nurses, sheesh, they're simply concubines for Fedrul Gub'mint bureaucrats.

Please, keep spouting your delusional nonsense. Perhaps someday we'll be able to classify your delusions in the DSM-VI, to help people that aren't totally lost.

Thanks in advance, lunatic!

 

[Zorkorist]

You appear to be going for it... nurses fucking you, because you Govern them?!

-John

 

[nickqt]

You appear to be going for it... nurses fucking you, because you Govern them?!

-John

Please, keep spouting your delusional nonsense, bigot.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Ayn Rand, and Objectivism, which I learned was what her philosophy was called, is a great influence on my life. Here is a person that says how important an individual is and how unimportant the state.

-John

Ha-ha! "Phil-o-so-phy." Doesn't make your internal combustion engine work, does it? Objectivism: some hodge podge, contrived by an atheist, from an education of Plato and Aristotle -- and Friedrich Nietzsche -- Hitler's favorite, also.

The woman was a charlatan. And a disturbed one, when you study her life and filmed appearances.

I tell people that if they're going to read the Federalist Papers and John Locke, they should also read Marx -- excluding the Manifesto, which was a disaster and contributed nothing. If you're going to read Marx, then you should also read Adam Smith, especially since "Capital" was an argument in answer to "Wealth of Nations."

So if you're going to read Randian prolix drivel, you might also take a look at Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But seeking a political philosophy simply by probing a single author of fiction? Not exactly a sufficient basis for anything . . .

 

[Zorkorist]

I've read the Federalist Papers, and John Locke and they both allow, or even promote, Federalism, which is what is killing us today. The Federal Government is spending and regulating into debt.

Socialism, and Communism, are now in play.

-John

 

[Jhhnn]

Answer: We'd have a lot fewer poor people. Whether that's because they died off or decided to change their behaviors enough so they wouldn't die is their choice. They'd almost certainly never be rich, but they wouldn't die either.



We already do, it's called jail. It's been the primary tool for the last 20-30 years in how we deal with those who cannot or will not support themselves.



Agreed, the rich/middle class appreciates having a small but visible amount of desperately poor and miserable people to show to our children as an object lesson, "here's what will happen to you if you continue to fuck off, get pregnant as a teen, or drop out of school."

It's remarkable how Righties morph good luck into self righteousness.

You simply ignore the fact that working people are subject to forces beyond their control, the forces of the financial roller coaster that the elite loves to ride. It's not like the Great Depression or the Great recession happened because the people adversely affected weren't doing their jobs before it all fell apart for them or as if there were some other job just waiting.

Me? I'm mostly lucky to do as well as I have. Yeh, sure, I did my part but a lot of people work a lot harder than I ever have only to receive the shaft time & time again. Hosed in the 1980 recession. Fought their way back to get hosed again in the S&L crisis. Recovered only to arrive at the tech bust of 2000. Had trouble finding work because they were overqualified, finally settled for something where they were way overqualified only to be hammered again in 2009.

Meawhile, the Elite rides those waves of misery to even greater glory, getting richer on the upstroke & the downstroke.

If you think that emulating them & their values will get you anything but screwed yourself you're a much firmer believer in luck than you'll ever appreciate. You imagine yourself to be better than poor people because it's the only way you can feel secure.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've read the Federalist Papers, and John Locke and they both allow, or even promote, Federalism, which is what is killing us today. The Federal Government is spending and regulating into debt.

Socialism, and Communism, are now in play.

-John

We've lived in the "Mixed Economy" since the Depression. Communism is a form of Totalitarianism. Socialist thinking attempted to provide various solutions or approaches to problems that emerged with the Industrial Revolution.

If you really think the Mixed Economy has been a disaster over so many decades, I think you're making a departure from reality.

And if the debt is such a disaster, remembering that we had balanced budgets through Gramm-Rudman during the Clinton years, who exactly caused it? Someone, perhaps, who decided to lower taxes twice while waging two wars -- one of them almost a complete Waterloo of a mistake?

And if the goal is to "starve it in a bathtub," that's vacant. Like hell, you're going to waste my tax dollars by controverting law, statute, regulation that I want.

Basically, you seem like a person who wants someone else to provide them with a belief-system that serves all needs. But none of them do that. And that type of quest is a form of intellectual laziness.

 

[Zorkorist]

Meawhile, the Elite rides those waves of misery to even greater glory, getting richer on the upstroke & the downstroke.

You mean like Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders?

-John

 

[Zorkorist]

We've lived in the "Mixed Economy" since the Depression. Communism is a form of Totalitarianism. Socialist thinking attempted to provide various solutions or approaches to problems that emerged with the Industrial Revolution.

If you really think the Mixed Economy has been a disaster over so many decades, I think you're making a departure from reality.

And if the debt is such a disaster, remembering that we had balanced budgets through Gramm-Rudman during the Clinton years, who exactly caused it? Someone, perhaps, who decided to lower taxes twice while waging two wars -- one of them almost a complete Waterloo of a mistake?

And if the goal is to "starve it in a bathtub," that's vacant. Like hell, you're going to waste my tax dollars by controverting law, statute, regulation that I want.

Basically, you seem like a person who wants someone else to provide them with a belief-system that serves all needs. But none of them do that. And that type of quest is a form of intellectual laziness.

I'm quite confident in a belief system based on Ayn Rand's books and ideas. The individual is what is important, and not Government.

-John

 

[MrPickins]

We already do, it's called jail. It's been the primary tool for the last 20-30 years in how we deal with those who cannot or will not support themselves.

Ho-leey shit. Are you seriously advocating jail for people who find themselves unable to make ends meet?

 

[glenn1]

It's remarkable how Righties morph good luck into self righteousness.

You simply ignore the fact that working people are subject to forces beyond their control, the forces of the financial roller coaster that the elite loves to ride. It's not like the Great Depression or the Great recession happened because the people adversely affected weren't doing their jobs before it all fell apart for them or as if there were some other job just waiting.

Me? I'm mostly lucky to do as well as I have. Yeh, sure, I did my part but a lot of people work a lot harder than I ever have only to receive the shaft time & time again. Hosed in the 1980 recession. Fought their way back to get hosed again in the S&L crisis. Recovered only to arrive at the tech bust of 2000. Had trouble finding work because they were overqualified, finally settled for something where they were way overqualified only to be hammered again in 2009.

Meawhile, the Elite rides those waves of misery to even greater glory, getting richer on the upstroke & the downstroke.

If you think that emulating them & their values will get you anything but screwed yourself you're a much firmer believer in luck than you'll ever appreciate. You imagine yourself to be better than poor people because it's the only way you can feel secure.

Yeah, so I should vote Dem for that $15/hour minimum wage you'll get while the rest of us left it behind a year or two into our professional career. Or the 99 weeks of unemployment that dead-enders like you are probably getting so you can hope vainly that your semi-skilled UAW job will come back (it won't). Those soooooooooooooo help us middle class people out there. Hell, there's barely a fucking thing in the left wing platform that helps the middle class one whit, not that Republicans have much better.