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On one hand I totally understand where you're coming from and I've proposed similar ideas for the sake of discussion.
Frankly, I'm appalled at the number of readers who are attributing things to you which are in direct contradiction to the things you've actually said.
However, there's a point to be made from that, and frankly that point is THIS is precisely representative of the populace from which you'd be drawing either support for your idea or contention were it possible to put such a thing into effect. Half of them flat-out don't get the idea, a quarter of them are blatantly opposed to it whether through social or political agenda (many who preach against communism or socialism have NO idea how either system is supposed to operate) and the remaining quarter are pointing out relatively reasonable factors regarding why it can't or won't work.
The unfortunate fact is that there IS no perfect system. For every solution you can offer someone can offer a countering problem which either you solution fails to answer OR which actually crops up because of your solution's enactment.
Every system -- industrial, political or social -- operates well enough on a small scale wherein it's kept pure. View the Kibbutz, for example. However, once anything grows large enough to require either photographic identification or some form of voting representation there's already too much elbow room for corruption.
People are too distant from their rural roots to still grasp the meaning of community and fostered teamwork, simple goals, long-term views -- let alone the taste of crow.
A good idea in theory but in order for it to work in reality people would have to be both smarter and more moral -- and I'm not holding my breath on either of those.
You do have a couple of misconceptions on your side regarding the Welfare system. It's not the "free money" people think it is, there are a million and one hoops to jump through.
HOWEVER, for every person who ends up on the welfare dole for a while as they recover their footing, who has to jump through those flaming hoops while dancing on a tightrope, there's another who grew up in that system and knows how to work it. So while the perception of the welfare system feeding crack-who*** who do nothing except smoke and drink and neglect their children is NOT the truth of the programs, it's not entirely untrue either.
Habitat for Humanity is one of the programs closest to the kind of thing you're talking about. Sure, there are many volunteers who simply dedicate time and effort BUT in order to qualify for a domicile built by Habitat participants in the program have to actually show up and WORK on building sites for a certain number of jobs and hours. This helps them earn their home WHILE learning at least some modicum of trade if they're diligent.
However, it's NOT an easy thing to start.
My church gathered and, with lumber donations from several local lumberyards, organized an event wherein a few hundred volunteers (we're a large church) showed up and built the frameworks for what totalled 115 houses -- in a single 8-hour day. The frames were loaded onto trucks for transportation and were hauled down to residential areas devastated by Katrina. There they were assembled by other crews in no time at all and 115 families had housing.
I tried to organize a similar thing when this struck me as a good idea, but mine was centered more around the notion of the Amish who gather for a house- and barn-raising. A community gathers, the women cook or help with labor, the men and boys work to construct, and within a weekend a family has a house and a barn on their plot.
My idea was that couples desiring a new home could select from a provided variety of frames (a plan book), could invest in BARE land (typically much cheaper than land with a home), and then a deal could be worked out with local lumber companies for the purchase of quantity discount.
How much could a family save on labor and building a home without a middleman, if a community gathered even once a month to do such a thing? With a hefty pool of volunteer labor and even a FEW skilled people directing efforts, time and costs for a new home could be surprisingly low and really put folks on their way to a new life.
My plan had NO takers when I proposed it.
People think things look great on paper, until any given project bites into their time or their wallet. Like the old Alan Parsons lyric: We believe in Freedom and Charity, as long as I get mine!
That's just people; and that's what you'd be working with for the most part. It's just a lot easier to shoot an idea down than it is to make it work.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed) 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
They should send all the homeless to kaho'olawe island and let them eke out a living there. We could do helicopter drops of grain like in those UNICEF commercials. Give them some fishing poles and shovels. We could also do some kind of reality show of this and air it on OC16. Now that is what I call a solution! Oh BTW the show could be called "SURVIVOR KAHO'OLAWE" . All the Ad revenue could be used to pay for the helicopter and food.
OR ...
We can buy them and when I say "them" I mean all of them a free ticket to some unpopulated island in the pacific somewhere. We do have the Compact of Free Association with Micronesia. Send all those micros back home. Let's take care of the KAMA'AINA first. We can't even do this. I mean how does these "homeless" micros get public housing ahead of Kama'aina in need of public housing.
there are not many homeless people in comparison to nonhomeless. it's unrealistic to not expect some homeless people, it's just the way it is.
homeless people don't have public housing or are not utilizing it, hence they are 'homeless'.
i've never heard of free public housing for life and if exists, then it's government's fault. i know there is low income housing according to income.
We have a lot of homeless people in my area.....possibly due to the milder weather.
There are some who have fallen on hard times and need a break to get ahead.
There are others you could give $1000, a car and a job and they would be right back on the road panhandling within a month.
So, it is hard to make blanket judgments or statements.
Each situation has it's own story, merits and possible end result.
"Maybe we should state an Adopt a Homeless Human movement?"
Just don't adopt me.
I'm in that situation, say what y'all want, but I've been fighting tooth and nail for a job, the employers all looked at me and said "f--- you!"
So, I'm working on starting my own business, trying to figure out any loophole. I don't even think about asking or begging, I'd rather starve to death than beg. (I am kinda suicidal, so I guess I'm mentally ill as well.)
I try to stay out of everyone's way.
So not all of us homeless people are out to live off of others.
I don't steal either, in fact I get robbed more often than I steal.
compare 10+ items stolen from me with 0 items that I stole.
Wouldn't it be nice if those sitting around collecting welfare really DID want jobs, but just couldn't find them?
I'd like to see people forced to do SOMETHING to collect the checks. Let's start small. Maybe those collecting welfare could "volunteer" at a soup kitchen 8 hours a week. Those with small children could be grouped together - 4 parents go in, 3 work at the soup kitchen, 1 sits in a room and watches the children.
But of course, that's probably too much to ask too.
Not everyone collecting welfare has an inability to work. Many just have the "icantwanttos" - similarly to my 7 year old. Of course, even she is capable of wiping off a table, washing dishes and keeping small children entertained for a few hours.
Many collecting welfare aren't aware that there is a better way out there and they CAN do it. FORCING them to be educated is a good option too - they should be required to take classes to collect the checks. The amounts weren't reduced by Welfare Reform, btw. But they don't get a raise every time they have another child.
The homeless are a separate problem and many can't be helped, except by brute force and heavy sedatives. But the places that employed those standards years ago were usually worse than the streets.
There is a small section of society that can be helped, but almost always falls through the cracks. They are people who either didn't have good parents or became orphans between the ages of 16-19. There are very few programs out there for them. If they don't have good friends or they didn't grow up in a neighborhood where people know how to work a government program, there's nothing out there for them and they are given very little help. They end up living on the streets, learning THAT way of life, drug addicted. But they need to be caught EARLY to be able to accept help successfully. The problem is that it's hard to tell those that truly need help from the scam artists that pervade our society and just want a handout. I "lived there" for 2 1/2 years. At one point, a welfare counselor advised me to get pregnant so that I could become eligible for help. My half brother turned to drugs - there are even fewer programs for young men.
I was lucky. I found my bio father and he was more than willing to give me a hand up - by then I was eking out a living and had signed up for a 2 year tech school. Still, my life has been immeasurably different since I finally got a good parent.
I don't have any solutions though for these people. I've tried to help several on my own, but they've all turned out to be scam artists, theives, not young folks looking for a hand up. Or maybe I just found them all too late.
I like that idea that idea you would just have to create something for people to do.
So while I was driving along today at work, I got this crazy idea.
People are upset that their tax dollars are being spent on people who don't do anything. Welfare cases, people who have been on unemployment for over a year, homeless people, illegal immigrants, you name it.
What if we gave the people who can't afford to make it on their own, and option?
You could live in a government labor city, and have all of your needs meet for you. Notice, I did not say wants, I said needs. 3 squares a day, education for your children, a roof over your head, thats it. You would work 8 hours a day, in whatever capacity the government saw fit, building roads, building dams, factory work of whatever kind is needed, things of that nature.
You would get no money for your 8 hours. You would get your needs meet, thats it. No steak dinners either, bologna, veggies, and fruit in there, but only enough to meet your families biological needs. TV, try free TV, no cable.
If you want to get out of the labor city, you can choose to work 12 hours a day. Then, the government would compensate you for your extra 4 hours a day, in which you can buy your own home outside, and work in whatever job you choose.
This program wouldn't be mandatory, and I think the number of people who would apply for it would be quite small. You would be free to come and go as you please, on a bicycle, because we aren't giving you a car.
How would this benefit everyone else. Well, it would consolidate and control the amount of welfare tax payments, and where they are going to. It would give us an exact number. It would also guarantee that you are getting some kind of public good for your tax dollars. I think it would actually lower our tax burden. It would also create a low wage labor program, that could be used to compete with outside sources of labor (Mexico, Asia, etc), as companies could bid to contract out the labor.
Now don't think this is a radical idea. Its been done before. The created job programs, with federal money, to put low income and out of placed workers in jobs. If you ask people who lived during the depression, these civil jobs gave men hope, and a sense of worth. We could do the same thing today. I know some people would see this is some kind of slave labor. However, we are giving them all their needs, and they can get out of the system if they want. If anything, it would be some kind of indentured servitude.
Also, if you don't want to be in the system, then all welfare payments, would cease for you. No SSI if you didn't work in the system either. No publicly funded healthcare either.
So you can wonder the country, with no money, and no help from the government, or you could work to establish yourself, and make a better life for you and your family.
Just an idea, thought it was kind of interesting. I didn't think it through a lot, just a quick thought.
So, what do y'all think?
I've always thought of ideas like this. You could set up camps in the woods and do re-foresting of area that have been timbered. Or perhaps, set up an operation at various city dumps where the stream of transh goes by them on a conveyer belt and they pull out the recyclables. Their pay would be based on the amounts of recyclables recovered.
On one hand I totally understand where you're coming from and I've proposed similar ideas for the sake of discussion.
Frankly, I'm appalled at the number of readers who are attributing things to you which are in direct contradiction to the things you've actually said.
However, there's a point to be made from that, and frankly that point is THIS is precisely representative of the populace from which you'd be drawing either support for your idea or contention were it possible to put such a thing into effect. Half of them flat-out don't get the idea, a quarter of them are blatantly opposed to it whether through social or political agenda (many who preach against communism or socialism have NO idea how either system is supposed to operate) and the remaining quarter are pointing out relatively reasonable factors regarding why it can't or won't work.
The unfortunate fact is that there IS no perfect system. For every solution you can offer someone can offer a countering problem which either you solution fails to answer OR which actually crops up because of your solution's enactment.
Every system -- industrial, political or social -- operates well enough on a small scale wherein it's kept pure. View the Kibbutz, for example. However, once anything grows large enough to require either photographic identification or some form of voting representation there's already too much elbow room for corruption.
People are too distant from their rural roots to still grasp the meaning of community and fostered teamwork, simple goals, long-term views -- let alone the taste of crow.
A good idea in theory but in order for it to work in reality people would have to be both smarter and more moral -- and I'm not holding my breath on either of those.
You do have a couple of misconceptions on your side regarding the Welfare system. It's not the "free money" people think it is, there are a million and one hoops to jump through.
HOWEVER, for every person who ends up on the welfare dole for a while as they recover their footing, who has to jump through those flaming hoops while dancing on a tightrope, there's another who grew up in that system and knows how to work it. So while the perception of the welfare system feeding crack-who*** who do nothing except smoke and drink and neglect their children is NOT the truth of the programs, it's not entirely untrue either.
Habitat for Humanity is one of the programs closest to the kind of thing you're talking about. Sure, there are many volunteers who simply dedicate time and effort BUT in order to qualify for a domicile built by Habitat participants in the program have to actually show up and WORK on building sites for a certain number of jobs and hours. This helps them earn their home WHILE learning at least some modicum of trade if they're diligent.
However, it's NOT an easy thing to start.
My church gathered and, with lumber donations from several local lumberyards, organized an event wherein a few hundred volunteers (we're a large church) showed up and built the frameworks for what totalled 115 houses -- in a single 8-hour day. The frames were loaded onto trucks for transportation and were hauled down to residential areas devastated by Katrina. There they were assembled by other crews in no time at all and 115 families had housing.
I tried to organize a similar thing when this struck me as a good idea, but mine was centered more around the notion of the Amish who gather for a house- and barn-raising. A community gathers, the women cook or help with labor, the men and boys work to construct, and within a weekend a family has a house and a barn on their plot.
My idea was that couples desiring a new home could select from a provided variety of frames (a plan book), could invest in BARE land (typically much cheaper than land with a home), and then a deal could be worked out with local lumber companies for the purchase of quantity discount.
How much could a family save on labor and building a home without a middleman, if a community gathered even once a month to do such a thing? With a hefty pool of volunteer labor and even a FEW skilled people directing efforts, time and costs for a new home could be surprisingly low and really put folks on their way to a new life.
My plan had NO takers when I proposed it.
People think things look great on paper, until any given project bites into their time or their wallet. Like the old Alan Parsons lyric: We believe in Freedom and Charity, as long as I get mine!
That's just people; and that's what you'd be working with for the most part. It's just a lot easier to shoot an idea down than it is to make it work.
I understand what you're saying, and I agree about the corruption of the system.
And, for the record, I don't care if someone thinks I'm a bigot, or have no heart. Its their understanding of what I read, and it rolls off like water on a duck.
I just feel that something needs to be done about our current system. There are people who are living on welfare. There are parents out there who have children, just to stay on welfare, and to continue to sell drugs to support themselves outside of that system.
(I say that, I use Marijuana, but I'm more concerned about crack, meth, and other illicit, truly harmful substances)
I just think society should get something, for the money they are spending. Perhaps that "something" is to keep people off of the streets, who would otherwise be criminals and violent offenders. Maybe that "something" is giving a hand up to people in a time of need, in which they will more than pay back in taxes over the rest of their fruitful lifetime.
I've always thought of ideas like this. You could set up camps in the woods and do re-foresting of area that have been timbered. Or perhaps, set up an operation at various city dumps where the stream of transh goes by them on a conveyer belt and they pull out the recyclables. Their pay would be based on the amounts of recyclables recovered.
Because you would need to transport the workers to the place where the job could be done, or house them there, separated from their families, and feed them, which would incur a cost in excess of the monetary benefit gained. As well as tools and suitable clothing and equipment, and medical care for people who are injured on what would be, as you described them, hazardous jobs. And provide child care for the single parents assigned to such tasks, and for moms whose husbands have been sent off to your forced labor camps. And armed guards and dogs and searchlights and razor wire fences to keep the workers from escaping.
If such enterprise would be cost effective, the private sector would already be doing it. And if not, how would you pay the workers, except by taxing the same tax whiners on whom you're trying to relieve the burden.
Last edited by jtur88; 03-28-2010 at 11:58 PM..
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