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Addendum to my reply to H.Loser: re your observation that there is no alternative to welfare, there actually could be, and I already mentioned it several times.
Sure, there could -- and should -- be: Universal Basic Income.
But there are -- present-tense -- none.
I'm sorry if you'd meant the subjunctive mood; looked indicative to me.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
A system of insurance where 100% of adult population pays into various types of insurance would cover all accidents for a cheap premium, if everybody paid into the system, and if there were no chance of abusing payments from the system (ie, if there were strict measures in place to determine that only true victims of accidents - in which I include illness and disability - are collecting the insurance payments).
Mmm...I prefer Universal Basic Income simply to get rid of as many "administrative layers" as possible.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
If free schooling is offered to the entire population, there should also be a financial penalty for dropping out of high school.
Well, insofar as the economy will still be money-based, there will be natural financial penalties enough for a dropout.
Though..."high school"...?? That's so 19th Century!
Also please do not say that I and HomelessLoser think alike, because we don't at all (not all "white people" are alike, for your info). I have never been homeless or collected any public benefit, which is the first major difference between him and me.
I would recommend it, frankly -- even if only as a "civic exercise" of sorts to acquaint yourself with "how the other half lives"....
Personally (since you'd asked before and such details seem most pertinent now to divulge, given the topic), I was living paycheck-to-paycheck like many, on a financial treadmill, and I realized, hey, wait a minute, what about that fabled all-inclusive welfare of the most feverish Republican fantasies?? Why don't I get some of that??
After all, I was newly divorced again, out of a job again, and had officially entered middle age without formal credentials or any really marketable qualifications...sounds like a moron who needs welfare, no??
Been working since 14, paying taxes, had served in Army infantry, stayed out of trouble, helped a lost old man home once without compensation among other very good deeds...so why don't I get me some of that storied welfare, too??
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
We also completely disagree about the subject of welfare, in case you haven't noticed.
Of course not -- so much encouragement of "expressing yourself" but none of listening to the other side.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
I did say that some people are indeed morons (as in not intellectually gifted), and they can be found in all ethnic or racial groups. My position is that they should be integrated into the society by training them for tasks that are appropriate to their IQ, and impress on them that they can't have kids if they do not have mental or financial resources to raise them.
Indeed, we have much to learn from Singapore's experiments in this!
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
I do support universal minimum income, but (per calculations taking into account the current, already very high, tax base) the society could afford an UBI of only $750 per month per person. Sorry, that is all the money available, and if one couldn't live on it, one would be free to seek a job and earn more.
Yeah, I'm not sure which study you have in mind but so far nothing looks good for Universal Basic Income's financial prospects -- though I do believe these few investigations only look at things as-is, whereas Universal Basic Income will obviously require wholesale tinkering (for example, Bernie Sanders' proposed penny-tax on every Wall Street transaction; a penny on the average eight to twelve billion trades a day in NYC...think about it: a hundred million dollars a day [yes, yes, there may very well be economic consequences to such a levy and I'm most interested in exploring them])....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Who am I to make judgements? I am the same as you, a citizen of this country (you being born into the citizenship without any of your own effort, and I having earned the citizenship by my own efforts), and we are both free to arrive at our own judgements and conclusions. You can't forbid anybody to have their own opinion. I don't think your opinion is fair or constructive, but I am not forbidding you to have an opinion (or as you call it a judgement), and am not asking who you are to make YOUR judgements.
LOL
When the intellectually weak (morons) have no arguments, they resort to "who are you to judge" and "did a black guy schtumpf your girl"....
Precisely, their situation is up for them to deal with, NOT MINE. I do not have to pay for their situation, just as nobody ever paid for mine. I am a truly happy woman who does not attack other women for having families (I am very happy for women who have families and means of supporting them), I just do not want to pay to raise other people's kids. If you have a kid, you are making a statement that you have reached the level of maturity (psychologically and financially) where you can raise a kid. Raising a kid is the job of the kid's parents. Fortunately, a great majority of people have means of raising them (not well off people, but also average off people who can afford to raise their kids at an average level of well-being). Those who can't raise them shouldn't have them, not ask other people to raise them. That is the talk I talk and the walk I walk. You can oppose my opinions as much as you want with your own arguments, but please stop psychoanalyzing me (very incorrectly, as you are apparently very unfamiliar with a type of woman like me) and making insulting personal comments because I am a champion insulter and will insult you back if you keep asking for it.
Just a quick aside:
You're being trolled.
It may feel personally satisfying to answer your accusers, but like the Inquisition, they are not interested in the truth of the matter.
Yes, I do actually read posts, which in your case might be easier if you worked on your written English. I did not anywhere say that you called Afroamericans morons -
You suggested as much.
And her English is better than that of many of these morons'...you should complain about the liberal City Council considering (if they haven't already passed it) a bill to not require an English test of licensed cabbies anymore (not that the current/previous one was hard at all).
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
you and your buddy HomelessLoser
Don't try to attack her through an association with me.
We seem to disagree much more, but we realize we disagree over ideas -- patterns of electro-chemical signals --unlike the intellectually bereft whose own signals grow epileptic in response to a simple internet conversation.
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
called a large swath of the population other than yourselves morons.
Not true -- I've been very honest all along, starting with my User Name.
But keep lying -- it will help me to ignore you.
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
No race was indicated. Several people writing to me here keep saying I favor minorities but I find they insert the minorities into the conversation where I have not. I do stand by the fact that minorities are treated separate and unequal in the US.
Well thank you for admitting that -- however inadvertently.
I do find it often the case that people exhibit all the enthusiasm of the newly converted when given the chance to prove their non-racist bona fides by scapegoating someone else accused, wrongly, of just the same -- like the witches of Salem fingering another, one after the other.
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
Thank you for the heads up on white people. What color am I in your imagination?
If you are going to make judgments, you should first learn to spell the word correctly, you being so superior and all. And I do find in reading your writing that you have a very superior attitude - in fact, you're a better American than I am because you worked for it while I was just born to it. How lazy am I? I guess citizens like you deserve more rights. I may judge you based on the things you write, but I don't judge, en masse, or in particular, people I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about. I don't condemn them as morons who deserve to flip burgers.
Yeah, the ol' "you're cheap but I'm thrifty"....
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
You and your solutions are starting to remind me of other historical figures who had solutions.
Who, Plato, whose tripartite division of his ideal republic articulates the understanding of elites throughout time and space?
Nahhh...knowing you, it's probably that red-caped guy with the pitchfork.
And, I have to say, reading certain posters say the same stuff repeatedly, starts to spell another thing. RACIAL BIAS. I mean my golly, some people are obsessed with talking about "ghetto" people, and criminals. I don't think they realize, their just racists. And worse is when "though protest too much." Then you really know the deal. They might not admit it to themselves... or their not well versed in actual psychology. I mean you don't have to be a schizophrenic to be mentally ill. And that's what people don't understand about intergenerational dysfunction. Almost all of it has to do with mental health. We could all use cognitive behavior therapy...... the world would be a much better place.
I totally agree -- I'd already suggested in the other thread that African-Americans should agitate for mental health instead of burning down their own neighborhoods fighting for muggers and other miscreants.
And I take issue with this whole "racist" business...the word has lost its meaning thanks to "the usual suspects" constantly trotting it out for every little thing -- The-Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf Syndrome....
Here's some ancient Chinese wisdom that will blow your mind (surely a 5,000 year-old civilization has seen it all before, don't you think?):
If you would fight theft, stop praising wealth.
I'm paraphrasing but it's an incredible idea if you think about it.
You can substitute "racism" and "political correctness" and you'll see the easy answer right there....
That line comes from the Tao Te Ching -- I don't understand 99% of it but that one line stood out to me as so true...and Taoism in general, in how the universe is deeply dynamic (i.e., constantly changing) and thus everything contains its own opposite within itself....
Anyway, yeah, cognitive behavior therapy and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) meditation...I think minorities should get that for free instead of "40 acres and a mule."
People I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about... please don't get me going. I was far more compassionate until I started meeting the welfare population en masse in the course of my work. After I was able to observe their situations and attitudes, I became dismayed, appalled, and disgusted - because I was very much in their situations, but I never had their attitudes.
Like the ol' '60s or '70s quip, "a conservative is a liberal who got mugged."
I'm a homeless loser and still consider myself a Sanders man but I gotta say in all honesty that the stereotypes are true.
Still.
After forty years of no-justice-no-peace and media garbage about how tough it is being black when no one pays any attention to Native-Americans who are the only ones still screwed over.
So I went looking for answers...what does racism/slavery/Jim Crowe have to do with minorities not bathing when soap and hot water are free?
Etc.
I keep saying to my fellow homeless, "Just because we're homeless doesn't mean we have to be bums."
Maybe I'll write a best-selling exposé one day...but it's like that Bronx V.A. scene from "Born on The Fourth of July"...suffice it to say, while racism is a necessary factor in explaining the still-poor (though very much improved) state of Minority America, it's not a sufficient factor in explaining the plethora of fantastic phenomena encountered....
Not having financial resources lasted for me from the age 0 to the age 40,
Hopefully in my case it will only be from 0 to 45 or 46 now that I'm getting a clue!
But congratulations to you...I understand how hard it is for the self-made to imagine social responsibilities not afforded to them -- but it does take a village, ultimately, and honestly there's a pleasure in doing good.
I know that government, especially in the form of bovine bureaucrats such as play on their phones while ostensibly helping someone (such as at the Orwellianly-named "Job Centers" of NYC's welfare system which do not have jobs and do nothing but process paperwork by hand in order to keep these DC-37 morons off welfare themselves), makes you wince but it's the best we got for distributing goods and services of a purely social benefit....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Sorry, I do believe in cooperative individualism, and I admit to my self-interests (rather than present my actual self-interests as compassion... compassion for whom except one's own group, in this case mothers raising children on limited means?).
And I applaud you for your intellectual honesty in so stating this openly.
Though I still would encourage you to explore the sheer pleasure of doing good, however modest the effort.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
The world would be incomparably happier and easier to manage if the world population were 1 billion rather than 7.5 billion. There is nothing inhumane in wishing for such a world.
Indeed -- but note this: like a winning lottery ticket with "worse-than-2X-lightning odds," it may well be that such a huge population is actually necessary for the next stage of human evolution and civilization...perhaps we could have never achieved our present world without such seeming overpopulation...!
Not having financial resources lasted for me from the age 0 to the age 40, so in my case lack of financial resources (combined with high standards of what I would want for my kids) was strong enough reason to do what I did, and it worked out great for me. Sorry, I do believe in cooperative individualism, and I admit to my self-interests (rather than present my actual self-interests as compassion... compassion for whom except one's own group, in this case mothers raising children on limited means?). There is nothing inhumane in wishing for a society in which all parents can adequately take care of their kids (or not have kids if they cannot care for them). In fact, we routinely spare animals of the inhumanity of having an animal overpopulation. The world would be incomparably happier and easier to manage if the world population were 1 billion rather than 7.5 billion. There is nothing inhumane in wishing for such a world.
Great answer. Would you like to address the mental health part?
- Kids that grow up with parents who have alcohol (or other additiona) issues often become one too.
- Kids who's parent yell at each other, often yell as adult.
- Kids who's parents are musicians, end up being musicians.
- Kids who's parents don't keep books in the house, often grow up to not read as well.
- Kids who's parents are engineers, often grow up to work in STEM fields.
- Kids who's father were wife beaters tend to marry men who beat them.
- Kids of divorced parents are often tend to get divorced too.
- Kids of families who exercise tend to exercise.
You fail to understand that normal is not normal. It's only normal for a particular family and brain patterns and things that are put into a child are not as simple to wield out as determination and sheer will power. It often takes YEARS of therapy for a person to understand why they do what they do, or don't do certain things, IF they are even able to recognize things as see things as they are. Cognitive dissonance is a huge role in human faility.
This is why people say, "I know this is bad for me" and continue to do things. They are literally UNABLE to stop because it's not a cognitive thing. It is further down the root, the mammalian brain. Your family relationships are the MOST important factor of your future. This is why they say the first two years are vital, the first five are important, and by the time one is 18, things are cemented.
Economic theories fail because economist lack this human insight to what motivates behavior.
This is why people say, "I know this is bad for me" and continue to do things. They are literally UNABLE to stop because it's not a cognitive thing. It is further down the root, the mammalian brain.
I gotta say that this is precisely why I advocate dealing directly with that reptilian brain (I'm sure you mean "reptilian"): if they don't change, they get shot and recycled as glue or soap or donor organs or bio-fuel (whatever).
People think I'm being "mean" or something, the morons, but this is actually the most cost-effective way ("cost" meaning not just money but time and so forth, too) to solve the problem -- when combined with easily accessible and financially meaningful pathways to upward social mobility.
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Originally Posted by roseba
Economic theories fail because economist lack this human insight to what motivates behavior.
Well, actually, it's been mainstream economics to account for human (i.e., "irrational") motivations several years now -- one of the pioneers finally got a Nobel Prize recently.
Block Parties used to be big but now since all the white people with kids have taken over they barely have them. Calling police because of noise was never the norm until gentrification started happening. Look at Fort Greene park. House music events have to shut down early because the people don't like the noise. Also the gentrifiers have been trying to get Afropunk shut down for a while etc. Gentrification sucked the life out of the gay village. I remember watching Paris is burning and how the pier was a huge gathering spot for LGBT now you cant gather there.
This is why there needs to be more "central planning" than "free market" when it comes to urban planning....
People who don't mind House/Afropunk/LGBTQWXYZ events should have them in their own neighborhoods -- zoning laws should be updated to reflect not simply the traditional industrial/residential distinction but also personal preferences...this way, noisy people can have that noise coming into their own apartments, since they don't mind, and everyone is happy.
Seriously!
People who think zombies ambling around is just part of the local color should have drugs legalized there and only there (if we can't get these zombies simply shot and recycled)...people who think "mild" sexual assault of females is fine should be in neighborhoods where that's perfectly acceptable (kinda like how the Puerto Rican Day Parade's main attraction is sexual assault)...etc.
Why can't we be sensible about things??
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