Is It Time To End Public Assistance As We Know It? (healthcare, how much)
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Don't get me wrong, for the most part I have no problem with paying into the system for those in need. I'm just playing devil's advocate, that's all. Although I do get annoyed anytime I see an able bodied man use food stamps at the store, only to go out and get into his brand new Escalade in the parking lot. Something ain't right there!
Able-bodied adults have limited food stamps, only three months of food stamps every (?) 12 or 18 or 24 months I think.
So I'm guessing the men you see using food stamps might not be as able-bodied as you think, or (equally likely) they might be really good at scamming.
I support the opposite: Don't build anything, but DO NOT HINDER the private sector from building tiny crappy homes if that is what people want and can afford.
If you like some like to do, conveniently define welfare to be "TANF" only, which is the ONLY welfare program with any limits on it and the only welfare program that was supposedly reformed by Clinton, then you would have to say that welfare queens are 100% of the welfare recipients. TANF is the cash giveaway -- and it's not given to the infants and toddlers, it's given to the mothers -- so they can have nice spending money to shop at the mall, or whatever.
And this helps explain why some TANF recipients have children by different fathers. In cases (many) where the fathers are economically marginal, they cannot be depended on regularly for adequate support, but can often be leaned on in a pinch, in which times two (or more) fathers are better (financially) than one. This month Johnny needs new shoes, next month Jane needs a dress.
mom taught me to save for your retirement as if social security did not exist. then if it is there you will have extra money. I hope to retire in 6 years at age 55.
How much would you be saving if you earned minimum wage?
They don't pay payroll taxes. How could they - they're not working, they're not hiring anyone, they also don't pay into social security. People on welfare don't pay any taxes - and also low income people get any taxes paid in refunded to them because they are below the cut-off, and many actually get more given back in the form of an income tax refund check because of that EITC welfare program.
They do pay. They're obliged (SS, SSDI, welfare & unemployment benefits) to file taxes. They're also taxed at point of sale by local, state, and federal depending on what they're buying (phone lines, for instance). They're additionally taxed by corporations elevating prices to feather their nests. But it's not called a tax because the <alleged> free market levies that tax. When the very same <alleged> free market charges a steeply reduced price for prescription drugs abroad (even among wealthy industrial nations) than it does in America, there goes that mythical unicorns existence theory. Free market is a misnomer for free to exploit all others around you for personal gain. There is no cap limit on exploitation or gain. That is, until you've killed all your customers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iamme73
Free housing? I question if people are getting free housing. I think something is paid but their rents are subsidized by the government....
I'd like to comment about troubles I've seen with subsidized housing, because free housing doesn't exist save for shelters or nursing facilities for elderly indigent. Much of it is decent & goes to those most needful of it, but there are landlords who exist to prey on government programs by inflating real estate & rents to maximize their returns, doing little to nothing in property maint. In my state there's a huge consortium of lawyers who own vast quantities of properties for the sole purpose of garnering HUD incomes. They don't rent to an open market because prevailing wages can't support their ideal price points.
They essentially live on the courthouse steps to snap up foreclosures as the highest bidders, and turn them into rentals with bare minimum work, often just cosmetic. Renting with the option to buy is always marked up sharply, and the blanket as-is legal clause applied to the terms of the sale. Rental rates in this state should be much less than what they are considering the poverty rate & overabundance of minimum wage employment, but they have in effect artificially inflated a perpetually soft market through the HUD program.
In other regions where real estate was inflated to astronomical levels, available HUD housing went nearly extinct and poor were effectively driven out of even the most modest housing through gentrification tactics. Hovels selling for 200k because speculators said so made neighborhoods disaster areas. Developers gone wild made McMansion graveyards pricing normal people who were begging for modest housing for decades out of existence. If a consortium of illegals gathered to buy that McMansion and hot rack 40 people to cover the note, is that the point of building all these McMansions for fictitious customers who could never afford to live there? Or should this McMansion neighborhood with restrictive covenants be the exclusive domain of the regions top drug dealers who can well afford to pay cash for them? Gentrification... my oh my, you had it coming!
If she has to work, she will be more appeciative of those that do work and of what "her" money buys.
If she has to work at some crappy menial job where she can never get ahead and never buy a house, she just might get tired and discouraged or angry or otherwise dysfunctional.
I support the opposite: Don't build anything, but DO NOT HINDER the private sector from building tiny crappy homes if that is what people want and can afford.
Can't be done when speculators decide that 1/4 acre lots in your town USA ought to be 60k. No house on them. Just the land. Then other speculators in the commodities market decide how much the market can bear on OSB, sheet rock, and vinyl siding. There's a very long line of people with their hand out wanting their 'fair share' of pie, but they'd rather not serve the minimum wage pie. Not enough meat on those bones to be bothered.
Construction should have long ago retooled to service repairs of existing housing. Instead, they sought out the rare exotic customer, the lifestyles of the rich and famous couple. Instead of retooling at the downturn of housing, they preferred to close up shop. How much sympathy should any of us have for this industry ignoring the real needs of the majority of their would be real life customers?
If she has to work at some crappy menial job where she can never get ahead and never buy a house, she just might get tired and discouraged or angry or otherwise dysfunctional.
Habitat for Humanity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2% foreclosure rate. Economic downturn in specific regions will likely change that statistic, but allowing people to put sweat equity into their homes and making it clear the terms of mortgages having slippery slopes-- it works more often than not. How well anyone resigned to minimum wage can maintain a habitat for humanity home over the long haul is another story. Upward mobility needs to be a goal for poor folks no matter if they're renting or in a habitat home, but when others have a goal that they remain frozen in minimum wage to preserve cheap labor supply... why does their agenda get the lions share of representation in government policies & smarmy economic plans?
I am not saying our system is perfect or even good, but I do think we need a proactive safety net to prevent any form of shanty town. And I would almost bet that the shanty towns before the government assisted programs were much worse than anything we have seen today. There are some great history books about that and a book that was released back in the day that documented the poverty in the tenement buildings in NYC, it was extremely depressing to read that book and see those pictures and know it was from the country we live in.
Chicago too. It was once upon a time long vast city blocks of shanty shacks, tin roofs, tuberculosis & typhoid running rampant, and Chicago's version of 'little italy' was in far worse shape than urban blacks were in with Cabrini greens even at it's worst hour. http://tigger.uic.edu/depts/hist/hul...agohousing.PDF.
Which precipitated the help from Frances Cabrini, but what people did with that help was a cat of another stripe. Similarly, if what people did with a habitat for humanity house became a platform for gang violence and drug cartels... why blame Carter, Cabrini, the structures themselves, or any program for what really amounts to
1. property mgmt shenanigans
2. the profound psychological problems of the residents. or...
3. a cluster combination of 1&2?
actually, the government hasn't done much shedding of jobs:
Some federal workers more likely to die than lose jobs
By Dennis Cauchon, USA
Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.
I wonder how this same argument would apply to military who've stayed on the job for 20 odd years and 'failed to be fired'. Perhaps the trouble children were weeded out long ago? Perhaps staying committed to the same 'company' isn't the criminal enterprise you've made it out to be?
I vote to fire you for your poor citizenship. Leave my country immediately. I can't stand the sight of your incompetence. Take Dennis Cauchon with you when you leave.
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