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I NEVER understood the self-righteous and indignation some people have towards those who are on public assistance. "You shouldn't get handouts from the government!!!" Oh really?! Do you say that when you're paying a mortgage? What was the gov thinking with the GI Bill? How about public school education? I mean, after all you can pull yourself by your bootstraps and homeschool your kids! Do you say this to students who can afford college through financial aid? By the way, what the h*ll we need Social Security for?! I mean, all you gotta do is save your money and you'll get by. Business loans?! FOH! You gotta be thorough and DIY!
The GI Bill is a really bad example to use to prove your point (whatever that is.). Enlisted members do contribute money towards it and it hinges on them completing a certain numbers of years working in the military. I am surprised you didn't call pensions welfare too, which would have been equally offbase.
People pay taxes that support public schools that most of them send their kids to anyway. Another bad example. And mortgages are loans you take out with the agreement that you are going to pay it back. None of these "examples" equate to any sort of welfare. And businesses employ people, it works to the greater good to allow them loans to keep them afloat.
I am not saying that welfare is wrong. I am saying you came up with some really odd, inappropriate comparisons.
You can blame the government for that. They currently have nothing in place to stop the abuse.
Aside from the five year lifetime limit on cash assistance? The periodic means checks while you are taking assistance? Having been on welfare for about a year, I found that it doesn't take much, even if you are doing everything RIGHT, for them to decide to remove you from the rolls..it happened a couple of times to me and I had to write to a Congressman in another borough (as Gregory Meeks is tiotally useless) to get help with it.
The people who are abusing and exploiting welfare are REALLY working at staying on it and calculating ways to game the system. Because playing by the state's rules and still staying in the system when you actually need to, is not easy.
The GI Bill is a really bad example to use to prove your point (whatever that is.). Enlisted members do contribute money towards it and it hinges on them completing a certain numbers of years working in the military. I am surprised you didn't call pensions welfare too, which would have been equally offbase.
People pay taxes that support public schools that most of them send their kids to anyway. Another bad example. And mortgages are loans you take out with the agreement that you are going to pay it back. None of these "examples" equate to any sort of welfare. And businesses employ people, it works to the greater good to allow them loans to keep them afloat.
I am not saying that welfare is wrong. I am saying you came up with some really odd, inappropriate comparisons.
Those are not odd or inappropriate comparisons by the least. The point that you happen to miss is that all of the things I listed are provided by government and yet people are so adament about the "pull yourself by your bootstraps" when it comes to poor folks being on welfare. In my humble opinion, if you're going to abide by that philosophy, be consistent with it instead of picking & choosing programs that happen to benefit those at the bottom. Every example I gave was valid: why should people who do not have kids or send their kids to private schools pay for public school? If you don't have a sufficient amount of cash, why should you be given a loan to buy a home? Starting a business is very risky as 9 out of 10 business fail within two years, so what makes you so special that banks would take a risk on YOUR new business?
I am not against any of the examples I listed. I believe they're all necessary to have a functioning society. I'm just saying why is one devalued below the rest?! The big picture of my post is that every program is equated to each other in that it's there to lift citizens up and keep them from reaching the very bottom. "How in the world is welfare lifting people up?" Well, talk to somebody who without that assistance would go hungry or wouldn't be able to pay their next rent and become homeless. I know some of you are gonna say "those on welfare are not contributing to society": can you absolutely know that it's true? What if I told you there are many working people who are on welfare?! I'm not saying that there aren't people who abuse the system (which happens in EVERY system in one way or another), it's just completely unfair and demeaning to paint a group of people with one brush because of a few bad apples.
No, of course not. My thing is that when it comes to welfare, all recipients are painted with the same brush and this is inaccurate. As much as people abuse the system, the govt is not doing a good job of policing it. You have people on here that will talk trash about anybody in the projects in a minute but God forbid they become disabled or some crazy event happens in their lives that they might have to go on public assistance. We cant get around paying our taxes anyway. The most you can do is adjust your w4. so maybe thats why i don't sweat it as much.
In a wild and crazy way, I actually think the powers-that-be want this chaos to continue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gpsma
No argument that the banks are at some fault,along with the government forcing them to give unqualified people mortgages. So your answer to that is to let them fail and send send us directly into a depression we wouldnt be able to get out of for decades? Economics 101 would teach you that even the most anti-business liberal government would never allow that to happen.
No reason for the govt to bail out failing businesses but banks are an entirely different issue.
The GI Bill is a really bad example to use to prove your point (whatever that is.). Enlisted members do contribute money towards it and it hinges on them completing a certain numbers of years working in the military. I am surprised you didn't call pensions welfare too, which would have been equally offbase.
People pay taxes that support public schools that most of them send their kids to anyway. Another bad example. And mortgages are loans you take out with the agreement that you are going to pay it back. None of these "examples" equate to any sort of welfare. And businesses employ people, it works to the greater good to allow them loans to keep them afloat.
I am not saying that welfare is wrong. I am saying you came up with some really odd, inappropriate comparisons.
Also don't forget social security is welfare too, sadly to many stupid Americans and even New Yorkers don't see it as such.
The irony is the stereotype of the American welfare case is actually Reba-Lynn Smith, not Latoya. But nothing is ever bad or a problem, until the blacks and browns are involved. Low-income neighborhoods like Hells Kitchen (please ignore the name), LES, Southern Bronx, etc were all wonderful places of hardworking, god fearing, caring people, until those brown's and blacks showed up and "ruined it". Welfare is horrible, not because the bulk of recipients are white and outside of NYC, but because of the image perpetuated of "Latoya and her 5 kids." Crime is a new phenomenon which hit NYC around 1960s apparently, when the blacks and browns showed up and "ruined the city." Before that it was "a wonderful place to raise a family." Everyone "earned" their way to every job they ever had, and we lived in a perfect meritocracy, that is until the 60s when 'we were forced to hire blacks and browns.' They ruined it and dumbed down everything, so now the imagined meritocracy has disappeared.
See a trend here? It is suprising that people don't see the totality of this blame game, and the sheer suspension of reality, logic, reason, and history to actually believe this garbage. And yet, in 2012, it's just the same old story. At the end of the day, every problem in NYC and the country comes down to the same thing: those browns and blacks. Problem with crime? It's the blacks/browns. Education? They let in the blacks and browns. Bad neighborhoods? Blacks and browns. Can't get a job? It's cuz they are forced to hire blacks and browns. Bad economy? It's Latoya and her 5 kids sucking us dry. Litter on the streets? Those blacks and browns. Kids hanging out and being hooligans...I mean "hoodlums"? Those black and brown kids are the problem. And on and on..it's truly amazing.
Meanwhile, the banks and those in power have just stripped the equity from your home, devalued your retirement accounts, sunk the economy causing your company to close and now you have no job, cut social services which you actually need now, while they are living it up in one of their many homes across the globe. But yeah...keep your eye on that black and brown guy..they are the real problem here.
[quote=njnyckid;25402607]Those are not odd or inappropriate comparisons by the least. The point that you happen to miss is that all of the things I listed are provided by government and yet people are so adament about the "pull yourself by your bootstraps" when it comes to poor folks being on welfare.
Just because they are provided by the government does NOT make those programs welfare. With welfare, you make NO financial contributions and you are not expected to pay any of them back. It's like saying sharks are the same as orangutans simply because they exist in the same zoo.
Everyone is looking for someone to blame as long as it isn't THEIR group. Everyone is ridiculous.
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