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No body is saying cut off Food stamps. No body is saying those receiving benefits are lazy. What we are saying is.... It doesn't stimulate the economy! It isn't in our best interest for everyone to receive them? What about the statement "everyone needs to be on food stamps" in the original post is so hard to understand?
has anyone actually agreed that "everyone needs to be on food stamps"? i'd love some proof that someone actually said those words, but that's besides the point.
anyways...food stamps are a safety net, and in a downturn, yes, it is "stimulus" spending. that's the entire design of the program. unemployment as well.
instead of someone losing their job and having no money to spend, the government hands that someone a paultry sum of money to keep up with basic living expenses for a period of time. that's stimulus spending. it's not long term economic policy, it's short term.
Mark Thompson on XM Radio stated it as "fact" and then went crazy on a caller who said that maybe everyone should be on Food Stamps.
nancy pelosi also stated that food stamps were "stimulative".
I mean, really!
To follow this assertion to its logical conclusion, wouldn't everyone being on food stamps be even better?
I hope you all see my sarcasm.
This is why liberalism is a mental disorder.
That would be the manic state of a bipolar disorder with the other pole being conservatives who are in general, raving lunatics. I am all for avoiding the expansions of the welfare state. What I cannot understand is why the fit for an asylum conservatives don't do anything about corn and soy subsidies as just one example.
That is why liberalism and conservatism is a mental disorder.
Conservatives don't like it when the government gives money to 100 poor people. However they do like giving the same amount of money a liberal would give 100 poor people and make one person rich. I guess because they can afford to bathe and afford nice clothes, being so stinking rich in windfall fashion, it just does not scare them.
i think that left is not a mental disorder but pseudo economics of magic money, u can debt your way out of debt, is a cancer killing my country, but that disease is nationwide, anybody that has a ongoing visa bill balance is part of that cancer. dave ramsey for president.
No... it's not stimulating anything. It's holding the status quo perhaps... and every last person going on just hurts that much more. Nothing stimulating about that.
I really want to meet this magical mystery money fairy that the left keeps telling me about. That somehow, taking my job away and putting me on food stamps or giving me Section 8 is somehow going to make the governments account balances grow bigger? That somehow money ACTUALLY does grow on trees. That subtraction is actually better than addition? That somehow the government putting its hand in my pocket and taking till it hurts becomes in some warped way a pleasure? I guess I failed to do enough drugs when I was younger... because I just don't get it...
Perhaps we really do need a third political party. The practical party. One who realizes that while yes, we do need these social safety nets, yet who realize that the fairy just doesn't exist......
a job is preferable. no one is saying to take your job away and give you food stamps and section 8. you're stuck in the forest in this conversation.
what stimulates the economy more:
1. money someone earned and put in a savings account
2. money given to someone that will immediately be spent on a good?
just put aside partisan views for a second, and ask yourself some basic economic questions.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bradykp
just put aside partisan views for a second, and ask yourself some basic economic questions.
I do keep asking myself those questions... and I still can't come up with any answer other than the fact that the left thinks the right has an inexhaustible amount of cash to be put towards their ideals... While the ideals, while noble in theory, when put to the balance sheet don't balance. You still have to have somebody else paying for those lofty goals, and every person you take off the paying side (whether Dem or Rep.) and put on the "we'll worry how to pay for it later" side just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper....
Hypothetically... you are now in charge of the whole food stamp budget. Honestly...tell me.. how do you propose to actually pay for more and more on food stamps? Borrow it? Raise taxes? Cut spending somewhere else? And tell me how by doing those things it will stimulate the economy as a whole?
a job is preferable. no one is saying to take your job away and give you food stamps and section 8. you're stuck in the forest in this conversation.
what stimulates the economy more:
1. money someone earned and put in a savings account
2. money given to someone that will immediately be spent on a good?
just put aside partisan views for a second, and ask yourself some basic economic questions.
You acknowledged in an earlier post that the money we're talking about is a "paltry sum."
So what logic are you using to determine that a "paltry sum" is a net stimulus to the economy? In order to have a net stimulus to the economy, those paltry sums would need to be more than what that person was contributing to the economy before he/she became unemployed. If unemployement and other safety nets are more than a person's income, we have major problems.
The bottom line is that spending is stimulative....but the fewer dollars being given to those who need welfare does NOT equal to a stimulus to the economy. It merely reduces the amount of loss to the economy.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC
You acknowledged in an earlier post that the money we're talking about is a "paltry sum."
So what logic are you using to determine that a "paltry sum" is a net stimulus to the economy? In order to have a net stimulus to the economy, those paltry sums would need to be more than what that person was contributing to the economy before he/she became unemployed. If unemployement and other safety nets are more than a person's income, we have major problems.
The bottom line is that spending is stimulative....but the fewer dollars being given to those who need welfare does NOT equal to a stimulus to the economy. It merely reduces the amount of loss to the economy.
See the difference?
Yep... I see this whole problem as a scale...
Joe Blow is the government - he's in the middle holding both arms out holding:
Me - on the right - paying 5.00 every month to Joe Blow.
My liberal neighbor on the left - getting 5.00 every month to feed his family from Joe Blow. I don't have a problem with that... He's hungry.
Scales balanced... But no way is that "stimulating" anything. All that is happening is that the same 5.00 is being passed from one side of the scale to the other to keep things in balance. The problem is, we've now got more on the left side than the right. And yes.. it is a problem, it's something we all should be concerned about... but to keep adding to the left isn't going to solve anything nor stimulating in the farthest sense of the imagination. It sounds rather simplistic... but I think most people don't get that it's probably the most simplistic things we need to do to get us out of these problems. We've got to balance these scales before we can ever hope to actually figure out how to cure what's throwing them off in the first place........
Joe Blow is the government - he's in the middle holding both arms out holding:
Me - on the right - paying 5.00 every month to Joe Blow.
My liberal neighbor on the left - getting 5.00 every month to feed his family from Joe Blow. I don't have a problem with that... He's hungry.
Scales balanced... But no way is that "stimulating" anything.
It sort of is, actually.
Taking my family as an example - we're middle-class working schmoes, and if our taxes went down in an amount matching that of the maximum CA food stamp amount (Google says $367 monthly for a family of two, I have no idea whether it's correct, but let's go with it), we'd not be in a great hurry to spend it. On the contrary, we'd be looking at early payment on the mortgage, IRAs etc. for a good chunk of that cash. Good choices for us, but it doesn't propel the economy a whole lot.
Compare that to somebody properly poor. They tend to spend the ever-loving out of every dime they see simply to stay fed, housed etc. - that's what being poor means.
So with all moral implications aside, with spending being the engine of the economy, Uncle Sam's logical choice when deciding between tax breaks and food stamps is going to be food stamps. It has the best ROI.
(The "everybody should be on food stamps" is a nonsensical argument, of course, because it ignores the differences in spending behavior. Makes no more sense than saying that "everybody should get a Yale MBA and become a rich CEO" - economies don't work that way.)
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dane_in_LA
It sort of is, actually.
Taking my family as an example - we're middle-class working schmoes, and if our taxes went down in an amount matching that of the maximum CA food stamp amount (Google says $367 monthly for a family of two, I have no idea whether it's correct, but let's go with it), we'd not be in a great hurry to spend it. On the contrary, we'd be looking at early payment on the mortgage, IRAs etc. for a good chunk of that cash. Good choices for us, but it doesn't propel the economy a whole lot.
Compare that to somebody properly poor. They tend to spend the ever-loving out of every dime they see simply to stay fed, housed etc. - that's what being poor means.
So with all moral implications aside, with spending being the engine of the economy, Uncle Sam's logical choice when deciding between tax breaks and food stamps is going to be food stamps. It has the best ROI.
(The "everybody should be on food stamps" is a nonsensical argument, of course, because it ignores the differences in spending behavior. Makes no more sense than saying that "everybody should get a Yale MBA and become a rich CEO" - economies don't work that way.)
You've added another piece to the puzzle yes... but your still not stimulating anything...
Okay... going back to the scale example...
Right side me is now paying 3.00 instead of 5.00 cause I got the tax break...
Left side is still getting 5.00 because he's hungry....
Where is the other 2.00 coming from to feed Left?
Joe Blow borrows it to pay left then I'm on the hook for that 2.00 + interest because we know that Joe Blow can't produce a dime on his own. So now I still owe that original 5 plus interest. And we still haven't stimulated a thing, because if nothing else, I'm farther behind than I was before...I guess We have proved that tax breaks alone will not solve anything by itself, so I guess that's something...
To follow this assertion to its logical conclusion, wouldn't everyone being on food stamps be even better?
When in reality, too much of a "good thing" is bad.
Social safety nets are a good thing. Overuse of them is bad.
You know. Like wine. One glass of red wine is good for digestion. A whole bottle is bad for you.
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