WIC program in jeopardy after shutdown

[Geosurface]

As always, nehalem256 has been making some great, solid points in this thread.

I want to also particularly salute werepossum for, as always, actually responding to controversial and unpopular points in a reasoned and calm fashion.

Too many are taking the easier route of just unthinkingly pointing and screaming "monster!" at nehalem without actually considering the truth of what he's saying.

What he's saying can sound very harsh if you only think about things at level 1 depth. This is the problem with modern liberal ideology. It doesn't consider long term consequences of policy, only the immediate warm fuzzy feeling you get by being able to slap a sticker on your chest saying "I helped the downtrodden" - but what impacts does your policy have on society over time?

Are they sustainable? Do they promote a healthy and moral culture, or do they increase the frequency of bad, problem behaviors?

It's the easiest thing in the world to take the shortcut to feeling morally "nice" by supporting any random liberal program or policy. You will instantly get a lot of pats on the back, and you will feel great about yourself. Very little resistance, especially these days, will be met. The few who push back, will be easily dismissed and demonized as heartless, horrible people.

One only needs to look at the trends in our society since the 60's in terms of births out of wedlock, and problems associated with that, to realize that the liberal way of "solving" these issues doesn't work. The reason that civilization hasn't yet completely collapsed as a result, is mainly momentum from before we started thinking and acting like this. That, and borrowing from societies which aren't yet as corrupted by this mindset as we are.

We pile up more and more debt, to keep applying band-aids to these deep, social rot problems.

Short term consequence of supporting WIC is you get to feel like a good person. Long term consequence is the eventual collapse of civilization (not just from WIC, from dozens of similar programs and from the entire mindset toward running a society which they represent.)

Why do I say that?

Firstly, something nehalem hasn't mentioned. Something he may not agree with.

Genetics is absolutely king. EVERYTHING is heritable to one degree or another, and this includes behaviors. If you set up a system that drains money from the responsible and siphons it to those who have a tendency to live a life which includes more children than they can feed, you not only encourage the propagation of unsustainable genetics which code for irresponsible behavior, you reinforce it by propagating societal values which AMPLIFY those genetics, AND you also trigger fewer births and a smaller genetic marketshare for the genes which code for greater responsibility in child-bearing. The people who are more responsible are discouraged from having as many kids, because of the onerous tax burden and the societal message that their ways aren't valued or rewarded anymore.

This also leads to increasingly dangerous streets and cities. The link between out of wedlock birth and all manner of social ills, like the kids resulting from those situations being criminals at a much higher rate, is well established and has been discussed before.

It would be hard to devise a more effective and complete strategy for tearing down a civilization than the suite of liberal social policies we have in place, now. Even if they were wonderful policy, they aren't sustainable financially indefinitely. They are part of why we are having to talk about raising the debt ceiling again and again.

And all so you can feel like you're nice. So you can pat yourself on the back and reassure yourself "Oh I'm not a meany scrooge like that nehalem guy!"

but much like refusing to spay and neuter animals, because you like the cute kittens and puppies... you are conveniently ignoring the end result. You may not be around to see it... but your grandchildren, perhaps, will have to see the horrible results of these social policies when they play out long enough.

Your concern for starving children would be better placed in the future, where it is entirely possible that EVERYONE will be starving because the entire system ceases to function when makers are preyed upon and takers are encouraged to breed.

I hope I'm wrong. I realize the way I'm framing it may sound overly dramatic. I'm just concerned about where our society is headed and I think these feel good social programs are unsustainable. Perhaps I'm just being too pessimistic, but I think it's at least worth putting some thought behind whether these concerns have merit.

Perhaps nehalem needs to temper his views with more compassion, but I feel confident in saying the rest of you need to temper your compassion with a bit more cynical realism. You could use a lot more Scrooge than he could use compassion.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

As always, nehalem256 has been making some great, solid points in this thread.

I want to also particularly salute werepossum for, as always, actually responding to controversial and unpopular points in a reasoned and calm fashion.

Too many are taking the easier route of just unthinkingly pointing and screaming "monster!" at nehalem without actually considering the truth of what he's saying.

What he's saying can sound very harsh if you only think about things at level 1 depth. This is the problem with modern liberal ideology. It doesn't consider long term consequences of policy, only the immediate warm fuzzy feeling you get by being able to slap a sticker on your chest saying "I helped the downtrodden" - but what impacts does your policy have on society over time?

Are they sustainable? Do they promote a healthy and moral culture, or do they increase the frequency of bad, problem behaviors?

It's the easiest thing in the world to take the shortcut to feeling morally "nice" by supporting any random liberal program or policy. You will instantly get a lot of pats on the back, and you will feel great about yourself. Very little resistance, especially these days, will be met. The few who push back, will be easily dismissed and demonized as heartless, horrible people.

One only needs to look at the trends in our society since the 60's in terms of births out of wedlock, and problems associated with that, to realize that the liberal way of "solving" these issues doesn't work. The reason that civilization hasn't yet completely collapsed as a result, is mainly momentum from before we started thinking and acting like this. That, and borrowing from societies which aren't yet as corrupted by this mindset as we are.

We pile up more and more debt, to keep applying band-aids to these deep, social rot problems.

Short term consequence of supporting WIC is you get to feel like a good person. Long term consequence is the eventual collapse of civilization (not just from WIC, from dozens of similar programs and from the entire mindset toward running a society which they represent.)

Why do I say that?

Firstly, something nehalem hasn't mentioned. Something he may not agree with.

Genetics is absolutely king. EVERYTHING is heritable to one degree or another, and this includes behaviors. If you set up a system that drains money from the responsible and siphons it to those who have a tendency to live a life which includes more children than they can feed, you not only encourage the propagation of unsustainable genetics which code for irresponsible behavior, you reinforce it by propagating societal values which AMPLIFY those genetics, AND you also trigger fewer births and a smaller genetic marketshare for the genes which code for greater responsibility in child-bearing. The people who are more responsible are discouraged from having as many kids, because of the onerous tax burden and the societal message that their ways aren't valued or rewarded anymore.

This also leads to increasingly dangerous streets and cities. The link between out of wedlock birth and all manner of social ills, like the kids resulting from those situations being criminals at a much higher rate, is well established and has been discussed before.

It would be hard to devise a more effective and complete strategy for tearing down a civilization than the suite of liberal social policies we have in place, now. Even if they were wonderful policy, they aren't sustainable financially indefinitely. They are part of why we are having to talk about raising the debt ceiling again and again.

And all so you can feel like you're nice. So you can pat yourself on the back and reassure yourself "Oh I'm not a meany scrooge like that nehalem guy!"

but much like refusing to spay and neuter animals, because you like the cute kittens and puppies... you are conveniently ignoring the end result. You may not be around to see it... but your grandchildren, perhaps, will have to see the horrible results of these social policies when they play out long enough.

Your concern for starving children would be better placed in the future, where it is entirely possible that EVERYONE will be starving because the entire system ceases to function when makers are preyed upon and takers are encouraged to breed.

I hope I'm wrong. I realize the way I'm framing it may sound overly dramatic. I'm just concerned about where our society is headed and I think these feel good social programs are unsustainable. Perhaps I'm just being too pessimistic, but I think it's at least worth putting some thought behind whether these concerns have merit.

Perhaps nehalem needs to temper his views with more compassion, but I feel confident in saying the rest of you need to temper your compassion with a bit more cynical realism. You could use a lot more Scrooge than he could use compassion.

How cute, Nehalem found a fellow Neanderthal friend!

But way to take it one step further! Eugenics! YAY!

 

[cubby1223]

As always, nehalem256 has been making some great, solid points in this thread.

I'll use the Darkman analogy. He kept focusing on a single issue every time on the forum, occasionally made some good points, useful and informative in keeping the threads updated with the latest news. But after a while it became solidly clear he was extremely racist and was himself an example of bad behavior we definitely do not want to encourage.

nehalem256 is another single issue person.

There are a lot of things I don't like regarding liberal social programs rewarding bad behaviors. But rewarding nehalem256 is also a situation of encouraging bad behavior.

 

[Geosurface]

I'll use the Darkman analogy. He kept focusing on a single issue every time on the forum, occasionally made some good points, useful and informative in keeping the threads updated with the latest news. But after a while it became solidly clear he was extremely racist

I think I missed that. I remember him from the main Trayvon thread, but did he start posting in other threads where this meltdown occurred? Or whatever you'd call it?

I had my issues with his posting style, but I didn't get the impression he was extremely racist. Then again, according to most I am extremely racist, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

[SheHateMe]

That's cute. He's pretending like he doesn't read P&N.

Everyone has witnessed Darkman's behavior. His very last post here was about MLK's "Farce" on Washington.

 

[Geosurface]

That's cute. He's pretending like he doesn't read P&N.

Everyone has witnessed Darkman's behavior. His very last post here was about MLK's "Farce" on Washington.

Ah here you go again with your standard "I disagree with _______ and dislike ______ personally, therefore every single thing ______ says is a lie!" to borrow your phrase, that's cute.

I haven't been keeping up with P&N much for a while, or with these boards in general, and I was keeping up with them even less around the time this stuff with Darkman was likely going on. To the extent I've been using it, it's been mostly restricted to a couple of Zimmerman related threads.

I am completely unfamiliar with the MLK thread you mention unless my memory completely fails me.

By all means, feel free to link it or quote his most egregious post. I am no great lover of Darkman, so I'm not opposed to embracing a more negative view of him.

I'm also all too aware of how incredibly low the bar is for calling someone racist, around here. So I am a bit dubious.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

That's cute. He's pretending like he doesn't read P&N.

Everyone has witnessed Darkman's behavior. His very last post here was about MLK's "Farce" on Washington.

Actually he posted (sorta like retweeting) another person's article which was titled "MLK's "Farce" on Washington". His mistake was not commenting on the article in the OP as it made it appear that he was in agreement with the article.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2337708

 

[nehalem256]

My preference for this would be workfare - if you want a free ride, you have to show up and work. Some welfare recipients could take care of children, others could clean up parks and city streets, salvage abandoned buildings, and similar tasks that make the world a better place but do not require a lot of training or book smarts. But this is a lot more expensive and we've maxed out our credit cards, so in order to fund this something else has to be cut and that's not an easy decision.

But this is rather far afield from WIC, as if memory serves most WIC mothers are working mothers rather than welfare mothers.

Due to the shear number of WIC mothers (something like 53% of mothers of infants if I recall correctly) I would not be surprised if most WIC mothers are working mothers.

But that really just goes to show how flawed the obsession with working as the salvation of the poor is.

Working hard alone will not get you ahead in life. You have to work hard AND MAKE GOOD CHOICES. But the problem is the left doesn't really think there is any such thing as a bad life choice.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593/to-beat-odds-poor-single-moms-need-wide-safety-net
Take the woman profiled in the NPR article. Nothing in the article suggests she is lazy. She has just made repeatedly terrible life choices that doom her family to life of charity/poverty.

 

[nehalem256]

What he's saying can sound very harsh if you only think about things at level 1 depth. This is the problem with modern liberal ideology. It doesn't consider long term consequences of policy, only the immediate warm fuzzy feeling you get by being able to slap a sticker on your chest saying "I helped the downtrodden" - but what impacts does your policy have on society over time?

Are they sustainable? Do they promote a healthy and moral culture, or do they increase the frequency of bad, problem behaviors?.

I think the real problem is that modern liberals would answer this question either with "yes"(a moral culture being one that allows people to do whatever they want), a blank stare(because the concept of a "moral culture" doesn't make sense), or by calling you a bigot.

 

[nehalem256]

Perhaps nehalem needs to temper his views with more compassion, but I feel confident in saying the rest of you need to temper your compassion with a bit more cynical realism. You could use a lot more Scrooge than he could use compassion.

Compassion is more sensible when we are talking about a few "wayward souls" rather than an entire culture of degeneracy.

 

[SheHateMe]

Actually he posted (sorta like retweeting) another person's article which was titled "MLK's "Farce" on Washington". His mistake was not commenting on the article in the OP as it made it appear that he was in agreement with the article.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2337708

That wasn't the only reason he got a time-out....

He spammed the forums for weeks with posts like that where he was obviously copy/pasting from other sites without comment. He was doing it deliberately. He did not feel the need to comment sense these articles "spoke" for him.

It was pretty clear that there was an agenda with the type of stuff he was "posting" and the fact that he wasn't intending on giving a comment on anything.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

That wasn't the only reason he got a time-out....

He spammed the forums for weeks with posts like that where he was obviously copy/pasting from other sites without comment. He was doing it deliberately. He did not feel the need to comment sense these articles "spoke" for him.

It was pretty clear that there was an agenda with the type of stuff he was "posting" and the fact that he wasn't intending on giving a comment on anything.

Never said it was the reason.

 

[werepossum]

Due to the shear number of WIC mothers (something like 53% of mothers of infants if I recall correctly) I would not be surprised if most WIC mothers are working mothers.

But that really just goes to show how flawed the obsession with working as the salvation of the poor is.

Working hard alone will not get you ahead in life. You have to work hard AND MAKE GOOD CHOICES. But the problem is the left doesn't really think there is any such thing as a bad life choice.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593/to-beat-odds-poor-single-moms-need-wide-safety-net
Take the woman profiled in the NPR article. Nothing in the article suggests she is lazy. She has just made repeatedly terrible life choices that doom her family to life of charity/poverty.

I agree with all that, but as Classy pointed out, WIC is also about teaching mothers to make good choices for their children, in one very specific area. I completely agree that people need to be taught to make good life choices, and that needs to be emphasized in churches, schools and living rooms across the country. America is still a country with opportunity; if you graduate high school, don't get pregnant/get a girl pregnant, don't get hooked on drugs, and work hard, you'll do okay. If you do all that and get a marketable degree or learn a trade in demand, you'll prosper. American kids need to have that hammered in. But having their children be hungry and/or malnourished is NOT a good way to do that, if only because the children haven't made any bad life decisions. By ensuring that these kids have good nutrition during their formative years we'll hopefully make it less likely that they will make bad life decisions when they grow up.

A federal (or state) program which teaches people how to make good choices across the board would be very time-intensive and very probably an expensive failure. What we have here is a limited program designed to do two things well, making sure that children have proper nutrition and making sure that mothers know how what is proper nutrition (in both selection and preparation.) I think two things is about all any government program can hope to do and do well.

 

[SheHateMe]

Never said it was the reason.

I never said you said that was the reason. However, that last post was one of many reasons why the admins decided to disable his account for a while.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

from pew research:



just thought i'd add a few facts here.

Uno

libs hate facts

 

[nehalem256]

From Pew Research:

The truly sad thing is you are slightly better off finishing high school and getting married than trying to go alone as a single mom with a college degree...

 

[Geosurface]

The truly sad thing is you are slightly better off finishing high school and getting married than trying to go alone as a single mom with a college degree...

The truly frightening thing is that even the American Psychological Association puts IQ heritability at .75 (75% heritable) and if your society has a trend where the most intelligent men (and especially women) start putting their careers and education (particularly if both genders are doing it at the same time) ahead of reproducing... either delaying it, reducing their number of offspring, or forgoing reproduction entirely...

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize what the result of that will be, over time. PARTICULARLY if that same society has a whole host of government programs to allow the irresponsible at the other end of the spectrum to have more children, and for those children to survive, than would otherwise be possible.

If we had deliberately set out to create a society which had the goal of destroying the gene pool, we could scarcely have done a better job.

 

[dank69]

The truly frightening thing is that even the American Psychological Association puts IQ heritability at .75 (75% heritable) and if your society has a trend where the most intelligent men (and especially women) start putting their careers and education (particularly if both genders are doing it at the same time) ahead of reproducing... either delaying it, reducing their number of offspring, or forgoing reproduction entirely...

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize what the result of that will be, over time. PARTICULARLY if that same society has a whole host of government programs to allow the irresponsible at the other end of the spectrum to have more children, and for those children to survive, than would otherwise be possible.

If we had deliberately set out to create a society which had the goal of destroying the gene pool, we could scarcely have done a better job.

I dunno about that. You and your ilk are still here.

 

[werepossum]

The truly frightening thing is that even the American Psychological Association puts IQ heritability at .75 (75% heritable) and if your society has a trend where the most intelligent men (and especially women) start putting their careers and education (particularly if both genders are doing it at the same time) ahead of reproducing... either delaying it, reducing their number of offspring, or forgoing reproduction entirely...

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize what the result of that will be, over time. PARTICULARLY if that same society has a whole host of government programs to allow the irresponsible at the other end of the spectrum to have more children, and for those children to survive, than would otherwise be possible.

If we had deliberately set out to create a society which had the goal of destroying the gene pool, we could scarcely have done a better job.

There is a basic struggle between the Darwinian survival of the fittest struggle and humanity. Evolution suggests that offspring of the least fit should die off, whereas the offspring of the most fit should prosper. Humanity requires that offspring of the least fit should not die off if they can be saved. A society where children of the poor die off might be recognizably smarter in a hundred years, but it would not be recognizably human.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All men. Not "the smartest men." It took us damned near two hundred years to live up to that simple truth; let us not be in a hurry to discard it.

 

[nehalem256]

There is a basic struggle between the Darwinian survival of the fittest struggle and humanity. Evolution suggests that offspring of the least fit should die off, whereas the offspring of the most fit should prosper. Humanity requires that offspring of the least fit should not die off if they can be saved. A society where children of the poor die off might be recognizably smarter in a hundred years, but it would not be recognizably human.

For large amounts of human history it was common for people to die in childhood.

The expectation of children making it to adulthood is an aberration.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All men. Not "the smartest men." It took us damned near two hundred years to live up to that simple truth; let us not be in a hurry to discard it.

Where do bailouts for poor life choices fit?

Also, if you read many of the comments it appears that many of the WIC supports actually believe that founding fathers were wrong about "all men are created equal". Not that this should be surprising given that they wrote that statement in a time well before knowledge of genetics or evolution.

I am also not sure how using "the smartest men" as virtual slaves for "dumb people", who lack any obligation to live their life in a moral way, fits in with any rational definition of equality.

 

[werepossum]

For large amounts of human history it was common for people to die in childhood.

The expectation of children making it to adulthood is an aberration.

Where do bailouts for poor life choices fit?

Also, if you read many of the comments it appears that many of the WIC supports actually believe that founding fathers were wrong about "all men are created equal". Not that this should be surprising given that they wrote that statement in a time well before knowledge of genetics or evolution.

I am also not sure how using "the smartest men" as virtual slaves for "dumb people", who lack any obligation to live their life in a moral way, fits in with any rational definition of equality.

True, and in many countries without suficient economic freedom and/or resources that is still the case. Perhaps instead of humanity, I should say that the movement of both Western Liberalism and virtually all religions has been toward the goal of keeping people alive, particularly poor people. (Since rich people by definition have the means to keep themselves alive.) Therefore a society where children of the poor die off might be recognizably smarter in a hundred years, but it would not be recognizably human as humanity is recognized both by Abrahamic religions and by secular Western Liberalism.

For the other part, I assure you that the Founding Fathers dealt with both smart and dumb people. It's bad enough that they agreed to ignore their own defining principle to tolerate slavery based on accident of birth; let us all be glad they did not further profane it by attempting to decide who is worthy of being equal.

You have a point about us being virtual slaves, or at least vaguely approaching that general condition, but let's not forget that more tax money still finds its way to rich people than to poor people. If you live somewhere that government in the aggregate takes more than half your income, probably little of that is going to poor people.

 

[buckshot24]

If you're a baby and you want to survive, don't have a mother that is irresponsible and lacks good income. It's really that simple.

:biggrin::biggrin::awe:

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

From Pew Research:



Just thought I'd add a few facts here.

Uno

libs hate facts

The truly sad thing is you are slightly better off finishing high school and getting married than trying to go alone as a single mom with a college degree...

I see your chart, and raise you some data:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat37.htm

 

[raildogg]

You can't help other people. That is all. It sounds cold hearted, mean, indifferent or whatever else you want to call it. Taxing people to give money to other people with the desire to help them is to create dependency and weakness.

If you want to help somebody, try to go deeper into the issues with him. If you see somebody in need, talk to him and offer a way. Lead him to find the way himself - just give him a slight push. If you think he is genuine, give him something he can use - whatever it is. Help somebody by spending your energy on him.

In this society, we have people coming up with all sorts of programs and agencies with the purpose of helping others. Yet, these problems never get better even with these programs. They tend to get worse or remain the same.

In the end, try to be independent and help others be independent as well. Whether it's your children or your relatives or your friends.

 

[Geosurface]

I liked werepossum's thoughtful reply and I liked nehalem's response...

ultimately, to ensure that everyone survives and has the bare necessities (which inevitably grow and grow over time) has to come at the expense of someone else, at least currently. Maybe once we have robot workers it will be different...

but as it stands now, that productivity which is channeled to helping them, has to have been generated somewhere. And as nehalem said, making those with more fit genetics into tax slaves for those who just pump out huge litters of kids, is not morally right or societally viable long term.

The worst thing about it is that one of the desirable genetic traits of those with higher intelligence (which is somewhat of a byproduct of that intelligence) is to go into "oh shit, better not reproduce, conditions aren't ideal for it" mode when they're taxed heavily.