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You are getting pretty personal, asking me who I voted for, how old I am, and why I am still working, and on top of that basically calling me a liar. Pretty rude behavior. Here's my answer: None of your business. How's that? And since you have boasted you and your wife are making six figures a year, I'm assuming you have no personal experience with obtaining state aid.
You have no idea what the guidelines were in the state I was living in at the time I needed any type of assistance. Since it is my experience, not yours, it is safe to assume that I know what happened more than you.
I have to agree. Pknopp, you are getting pretty personal here and definitely seem a bit more edgy than usual.
It's easy. Don't demean single working women with stupid stereotypes and I won't address them.
Hmmm well I don't believe that she did, and as a one-time single mother myself, I wasn't at all offended. Seeing as you're a married male, it's just a wee bit odd that you chose this micro-issue to tackle with such personal ferocity.
Oh well. Civility has to start somewhere, and aquietpath has been very civil with you IMO.
Right, they can all sit in their 400sq. ft. rental and eat their State provided bread.
Good riddance to them, and don't let the door hit you in the azz!
Why would they sit in a 400 sq ft rental if they don't want to?
I work with lots of single mothers. They all have the money for their nails, weaves, new outfits weekly, belong to expensive shoe clubs, go for regular waxing and threading, and usually have a ton of professionally done tattoos. Always going to concerts or partying on the weekend. During tax season most of them came away with 5-6K due to earned income credit. I scratch my head trying to figure out how they can afford all these 'extras' in their lives, since we all make about the same amount of money, and I'm barely scraping by paycheck to paycheck. Answer - food stamps, rental assistance, free daycare, free medical, free school lunches for their kids, etc.
One girl, in particular, has 11 assorted family members living together. According to her "We all have food stamps, so everyone's eating good".
It's a small wonder that people look at many of these social programs and are doubtful they are genuinely helping, or simply freeing up more money for discretionary spending.
As your experience attests, we are spending ourselves into penury in our effort to help the less fortunate, many of whom have now come to believe they have first call on the earnings of others, and who also have abandoned any notion that they themselves owe a debt to the social collective that sustains them in such a comfortable manner.
Legitimate public works such as roads, sewage systems, police and fire protection, etc., which aren't even federal prerogatives in the first place, but which are financed, constructed and maintained at the local level, are certainly not what's killing us on the federal level.
In FY 2016, 64% of the federal budget was spent on individual transfer payments of one stripe or another.
On the federal level, we are being financially strangled by our own generosity toward the less fortunate.
From which you, yourself, benefit. Check how your pension fund is invested. Now what?
Good question.
The short answer is arguing about social programs is actually just one more distraction (that I've willingly participated in) from a much more important issue. The real issue is the whole debt based money system is set up as a means of power and control. If you want to upend the standard way of doing business on the planet, you do business outside the money system. Of course, that is hard, which is why not many want to do it. Bottom line is upending the standard way of doing business requires large numbers of people (although not necessarily the majority) to move way outside the standard way of doing things.
If things like roads, schools, and police are worth the coercion, why isn't affordable healthcare?
Excludability & externalities.
Roads & polices aren't realistically excludable -- police at all, roads it would be absurdly inefficient & expensive.
Schools provide tremendous externalities because the existence of a non-negligible population of illiterate & innumerate individuals would gum up & harm society in a really big way. If we leave it to individuals, we will invest less in (especially early) education than would be best for us as a group.
Health care spending, with an exclusion for infectious disease and ER, which are together a small proportion of total spending, is both easily excludable and doesn't generate large positive externalities.
The short answer is arguing about social programs is actually just one more distraction (that I've willingly participated in) from a much more important issue. The real issue is the whole debt based money system is set up as a means of power and control. If you want to upend the standard way of doing business on the planet, you do business outside the money system. Of course, that is hard, which is why not many want to do it. Bottom line is upending the standard way of doing business requires large numbers of people (although not necessarily the majority) to move way outside the standard way of doing things.
Many voted to upend that system. I believe many who voted for Trump were tired of the system. Unfortunately Trump isn't the answer and I believe many that voted for him realized that but it was still a message to the system.
They've had better choices in the past to upend the system but didn't avail themselves of it unfortunately.
Hopefully they go even more extreme next time on both sides.
Roads & polices aren't realistically excludable -- police at all, roads it would be absurdly inefficient & expensive.
Schools provide tremendous externalities because the existence of a non-negligible population of illiterate & innumerate individuals would gum up & harm society in a really big way. If we leave it to individuals, we will invest less in (especially early) education than would be best for us as a group.
Health care spending, with an exclusion for infectious disease and ER, which are together a small proportion of total spending, is both easily excludable and doesn't generate large positive externalities.
Having a population of people who are able to manage their health as needed also generates positive externalities, in that it allows people to remain as productive as possible. People who are unable to properly treat/manage their chronic health issues also tend to require more day-to-day assistance and accommodation.
You think going to the DMV or even just boarding a plane takes forever now, just imagine if you had a bunch of blind or otherwise disabled diabetics ahead of you in line, all needing extra time to be assisted with everything. A population of improperly treated sick people would also gum up society, and time is money.
It is a fact that many receive more from the government than they pay in.
This is true.
But taxes are still taken out of people's checks during the year. That money is used by the government.
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