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This is what happens when you think with your emotions instead of with your brain.
If we didn't have a bloated military we could have universal healthcare, paid time off, and universal day care. Okay, that sounds compassionate and moral and wonderful and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over.
Now, the brain. Defense spending is 18% of the budget. Social security and medicare/medicaid is 48%. Oh well, the warm fuzzy feeling was nice while it lasted.
When you're ready to come back to reality, you will see that if you cut the defense budget by half you can still only increase social spending by a fifth. Sorry to inform you that the whole "give to the poor instead of buying more guns" thing is just rhetoric. The money is not, in fact, there. It's only there in liberal fantasies. It's fantasy designed to drum up votes. It can't happen. It's exactly like whole "make the rich pay their fair share" stuff. The rich are already paying 70% of the income taxes, and even if you took all the money that the top 1% own, it wouldn't be enough to run the government for a week. The combined net work of the top 1% is less than the government's weekly budget. After that week is over, then what?
What we need for our problems are real solutions, not compassionate rhetoric. The rhetoric brings in the votes but it doesn't solve the problems. That's how you get half a century of the "Great Society" and the "War on Poverty" without it accomplishing anything whatsoever. It's feel-good platitudes, not reality.
The problem with the "War on Poverty" is it is a rather all or nothing situation. For an individual with no kids, you make about 11K a year you get nothing except medicaid IF your state expanded medicaid through Obamacare. So pretty much, you make up to a point and you get subsidies and then poof they are gone in the next rather than slowly reducing them like Obamacare's subsidized health plans.
The other problem with asking for cuts is where do you make the cuts. It's easy to point to the 48% for SS, medicare, medicaid but that is combining where there are specific payroll taxes for them (which I'll admit is a shortfall as it stands) but how do we cut it? If your brother is someone struggling to keep his family fed (due to a lowering paying job) and his wife (your sister-in-law) can't find work, you are asking for them to potentially end up underwater and need you to handout money to them to bail them out.
I am not a liberal nor am I conservative because I think with my head as much as my heart. The issue is balance sheet wise it may make sense but the country IS NOT a business and it shouldn't be run as such despite what TEA Partiers and other far right conservatives think.
Lots of people I know have lots of children but make very little money. When I asked them why they had so many children when neither the mother or father made much money, they basically told me that money and income should not be a consideration when deciding how large your family is. They say children are a gift from God and if the children are born everyone should welcome them to the world and society will help support them. They believe that even though they are poor financially they have just as much right to bring lots of babies into the world as someone who is rich.
If you are parents would you agree that society (taxpayers) have a obligation to help bring up your children because our country needs a younger generation from all kinds of people (rich and poor)? Would your financial situation impact your decision to have a larger family? In other words, should only rich parents be able to have a very large family?
(* The other side would say that it is wrong to have babies if they know the taxpayer is going to support them)
In this society, you have to be pretty well off to afford kids. Its amazing that taxpayers who choose to NOT have kids have to support other people's kids. Its a screwed up society for sure.
Lots of people I know have lots of children but make very little money. When I asked them why they had so many children when neither the mother or father made much money, they basically told me that money and income should not be a consideration when deciding how large your family is. They say children are a gift from God and if the children are born everyone should welcome them to the world and society will help support them. They believe that even though they are poor financially they have just as much right to bring lots of babies into the world as someone who is rich.
If you are parents would you agree that society (taxpayers) have a obligation to help bring up your children because our country needs a younger generation from all kinds of people (rich and poor)? Would your financial situation impact your decision to have a larger family? In other words, should only rich parents be able to have a very large family?
(* The other side would say that it is wrong to have babies if they know the taxpayer is going to support them)
Yes to me it is wrong to have kids if you don't have the money to take care of them...! Irresponsible behavior. It is not a luxury item or property that you want. Having kids is something that should not be seen like a selfie and just wanting to have it...it is about being able to care for them and try to give them a better life than you had your self or at least similar but if you don't have money that to me it is selfish to share poor with a child instead of better your living conditions and making sure you are able to pay for what a child's basic needs are than start having a child.
Lots of people I know have lots of children but make very little money. When I asked them why they had so many children when neither the mother or father made much money, they basically told me that money and income should not be a consideration when deciding how large your family is. They say children are a gift from God and if the children are born everyone should welcome them to the world and society will help support them. They believe that even though they are poor financially they have just as much right to bring lots of babies into the world as someone who is rich.
If you are parents would you agree that society (taxpayers) have a obligation to help bring up your children because our country needs a younger generation from all kinds of people (rich and poor)? Would your financial situation impact your decision to have a larger family? In other words, should only rich parents be able to have a very large family?
(* The other side would say that it is wrong to have babies if they know the taxpayer is going to support them)
it is morally wrong to have lots of kids and ask other people to support them.
if you can support that many kids more power to you.
but you better not beg for hand outs and tax deductions.
imo tax deductions for kids should be limited to 2-3 children anymore = NO.
also welfare limitation of 2-3 children anymore = you support them.
it is morally wrong to have lots of kids and ask other people to support them.
if you can support that many kids more power to you.
but you better not beg for hand outs and tax deductions.
imo tax deductions for kids should be limited to 2-3 children anymore = NO.
also welfare limitation of 2-3 children anymore = you support them.
IMO, bringing kids into the world even if one can afford them one should keep in mind our population growth and our limited resources to sustain a given population.
One would have to look extensively into every case and judge them individually like that. And of course you have to establish values. Are we valuing life over economy to the fullest extent? If so, even a parent who has kids they can and do take care of without anyone else's help, will be doing the immoral thing if that child happens to become a serial killer. Conversely, a parent who relies on government assistance for the entire length of the kid's childhood can make it up to people by seeing to it that that child becomes a doctor and saves lives in turn.
However, I would think the odds of the latter happening are slim. I could just be succumbing to stereotypes here, but most parents I know who rely on government assistance on the regular, are not motivating their children to be awesome - many of them struggle to motivate their kids to turn out okay, IME.
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