Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
how many died when obamcare forced the shutdown of so many rural hospitals?
what did you expect to happen when all the dems who approved obamacare never read or understood its legal ramifications???????????????????????
we have to pass it to find out what is in it' doesn't raise a red flag?????????????????
Once again, Obama ends up taking the blame.
However, if you are going to make those kinds of claims, you should at least cite examples and explain how exactly the ACA caused it.
The ACA is a very flawed piece of legislation, no doubt. Single-payer works well in pretty much every developed country on the planet, but Obama knew that conservative Americans would never accept it. So he went with a plan that included many parts of the GOP's own past plans for reforming healthcare (https://www.politifact.com/punditfac...are-plan-1993/)
Now, the ACA is a boogeyman for many on the right despite the fact that there was so much outrage when the GOP tried to repeal it during Trump's first two years in the White House that they had to back off...more than once.
The majority of poor people make crappy life choices. They spend money on stupid things. Nobody says "I'm going to be poor." They just make decisions which lead them down that road.
So...all poor deserve their poverty because they all made crappy life choices. I guess no one bothered to read the links on American poverty I provided, including one directly from the Census Bureau.
I think I get it now...if you can blame the poor for their poverty, you can then claim you don't want your tax dollars being used to fund any social programs that help them and not feel cruel.
So what about all the corporate welfare I mentioned several pages back? Is that less bothersome because it doesn't remind you that just about everyone is one disaster, one poor choice, one illness or accident away from relying on those very same programs?
1.) How do you determine whether they "deserve" it?
2.) How do you determine that they have earned it?
I have the exact same question. It wasn't me that said fast food workers don't deserve a living wage. So many people here complaining about the lazy poor, but apparently the working poor aren't worthy of making a living either.
So...all poor deserve their poverty because they all made crappy life choices. I guess no one bothered to read the links on American poverty I provided, including one directly from the Census Bureau.
I think I get it now...if you can blame the poor for their poverty, you can then claim you don't want your tax dollars being used to fund any social programs that help them and not feel cruel.
So what about all the corporate welfare I mentioned several pages back? Is that less bothersome because it doesn't remind you that just about everyone is one disaster, one poor choice, one illness or accident away from relying on those very same programs?
Every poor person? No. But most are that way due to life choices. I've been poor. Church donated clothes and powdered milk poor. Not because my parents didn't work, but because they spent money on stupid stuff. It is difficult to break that cycle, but myself and my siblings all did it to one extent or another. Only one of us went to college, and we all are capable of paying our own way without asking the Gov to intervene.
I don't have a problem with social programs. I have a problem with the most financially inept entity in the world (the US government) running them. Social programs should be local to the area affected and the entity or entities running them should be accountable to the people funding them.
As for corporate welfare, it has exactly nothing to do with poor people. If you want my opinion on it, it shouldn't exist. It is not the government's job to pick winners and losers in the corporate world, and the federal government should not be spending other people's money on anything other than infrastructure and defense.
You aren't going to shame me into agreeing with you, no matter how hard you try. Again, I grew up with more poverty than most people will ever deal with. I was forced to quit school in order to take care of family. I made a whole lot of stupid decisions in my younger years, some of which cost me multiple zeroes worth of money. Yet, I managed to get my GED and worked my butt off to get to a point that I and my family are, if not wealthy, at least comfortable in the fact that we can handle most emergencies Murphy might throw at us. It took work and sacrifice, which very few people are willing to do in today's world.
Every poor person? No. But most are that way due to life choices. I've been poor. Church donated clothes and powdered milk poor. Not because my parents didn't work, but because they spent money on stupid stuff. It is difficult to break that cycle, but myself and my siblings all did it to one extent or another. Only one of us went to college, and we all are capable of paying our own way without asking the Gov to intervene.
I don't have a problem with social programs. I have a problem with the most financially inept entity in the world (the US government) running them. Social programs should be local to the area affected and the entity or entities running them should be accountable to the people funding them.
As for corporate welfare, it has exactly nothing to do with poor people. If you want my opinion on it, it shouldn't exist. It is not the government's job to pick winners and losers in the corporate world, and the federal government should not be spending other people's money on anything other than infrastructure and defense.
You aren't going to shame me into agreeing with you, no matter how hard you try. Again, I grew up with more poverty than most people will ever deal with. I was forced to quit school in order to take care of family. I made a whole lot of stupid decisions in my younger years, some of which cost me multiple zeroes worth of money. Yet, I managed to get my GED and worked my butt off to get to a point that I and my family are, if not wealthy, at least comfortable in the fact that we can handle most emergencies Murphy might throw at us. It took work and sacrifice, which very few people are willing to do in today's world.
I'm certainly not trying to shame you and I respect the fact that you stated your view and then supported it with examples while being moderate and measured in tone and viewpoint.
There is so much extremism on this board - on both sides - and an unwillingness to take the time to read, reflect, and reply to one another in a way that is respectful and aware that there are many viewpoints and most have been arrived at after careful consideration. We might not agree with each other all the time, but hurling insults and believing one's viewpoint is objectively true while everyone who disagrees is a fool creates unnecessary rancor and hostility The notion that we might have something to learn from someone who doesn't share our views, or that we might be wrong about something is, in contrast, exceedingly rare in this particular forum.
Regarding your post, I agree that the federal government (at least during the last fifty years) has been a poor steward of the social programs it built. I think the problem with local control comes down to inequality based on politics, demographics, and so on. For example, more heavily Christian districts might administer its social programs largely through the church or with religious caveats attached, which would exclude those who were not Christian or religious. Areas that were dominated by a particular ethnic group might show bias to those who were not from that group. And so on.
The reason I mentioned corporate welfare in this thread is because so many posters express anger and outrage that their taxes are being used to help the poor while seeming oblivious or apathetic about the obscene amounts of tax dollars the government showers on corporations.
In your experience, the majority of those who are poor made bad choices that resulted in their living situation. My experience has shown me otherwise, but we can agree to disagree.
Medicaid vs. Medicare: An Overview
While they sound alike, Medicare and Medicaid are two different programs. Both can help you pay for health care and medical expenses, but Medicare is an age-based federal health insurance program that guarantees coverage for individuals ages 65 and over and some younger people with disabilities. By contrast, Medicaid is a public assistance program for needy Americans of all ages. Here’s how to tell them apart and discover whether you qualify for either or both of them.
Originally Posted by TheEmissary View Post
Here in North Carolina, the Republican-dominated legislature has consistently defeated any type of Medicaid expansion. What that means, is that a lower-middle class family who is "too rich" for Medicare (because the income limit to exclude eligibility is so low) and cannot afford ACA plans, is between a rock and a hard place.
So sorry to confuse you! The "above" paragraph with the word Medicare in red, should read Medicaid, which is "implied" by the rest of the sentence. I hope you're confused no longer!
So who is entitled to a living wage, then, in your opinion? What makes a fast food worker less deserving of a living wage than anyone else? If a fast-food worker working full-time is not entitled to a living wage - and I mean a living wage, not anything lavish - then why do they not deserve to make a living? They are working hard, doing a job that is in high demand.
First, the argument was that those who use government services like Medicaid are poor because they are lazy. Now, the argument has changed - it's not about laziness anymore. Now it's about having the right kind of job, because apparently working hard is not enough.
From your perch, I imagine everyone who works in a low-wage job is there because of some defect in their character that makes them unworthy of a decent life.
But let's take this idea and see where it leads...If everyone made all the right choices (like you have, apparently) and had advanced degrees or training in fields where demand was high, who would pick your fruits and vegetables, butcher your meat, cook your food, serve it to you, clean the streets, pick up trash, book your hotel ad clean the room when you leave, stock the shelves so you can buy products, package those products, take care of the sick and elderly, mind someone's children, landscape their yard, and so on? Do you see the problem?
If everyone is an architect or engineer, who does the low-paying grunt work that gets the architect's vision built according to the engineer's plans? If everyone is a manager, who does the work that the manager delegates?
I'm not saying a fast-food worker should be wealthy necessarily, but why do you believe they are undeserving of a living wage? What makes you so special that you deserve a reasonable income, and who gets to choose which professions are worthy? If you are going to complain about your tax dollars being used to fund social programs for the poor and ALSO claim that only certain jobs should pay a living wage, you have created a bit of a paradox in which only the few can make a living, and those who cannot must suffer in abject poverty because...they made poor choices, I guess? Which brings us back to the same place: if everyone makes all the "right" choices and gets advanced degrees, who is going to do the labor, the service jobs, the jobs that make the American lifestyle possible?
There was a time when working in a fast-food restaurant or stocking shelves in a grocery store or waiting tables was for young people getting their first taste of the working world in order to prepare them for life as a self-sufficient adult. However, in case you didn't notice, the economy has changed drastically in thirty years due to automation, globalization, and consumer demands for cheap goods. Now you can find plenty of people with advanced degrees making lattes at Starbucks because the economy in which their education was once valuable has disappeared.
This brings me back to my initial post in this thread - one that no right-wing members have bothered to comment on in a meaningful way. Corporate America refuses to pay living wages because no one is asking them or forcing them to. In the past, unions were able to effectively raise wages and the standard of living so that workers could make a living wage. Think about post-war America and its prosperity and relative economic equality. Isn't this what MAGA is all about? Getting back to a time when Americans were more prosperous?
Instead, governments at all levels have systematically destroyed the power of organized labor, and now the fox is not just in the hen house - he's running the hen house! And that seems to be just fine to many on the right, who then complain about homelessness, poverty, and their taxes being used to fund social programs that fill in the massive gaps corporate America has left in their quest to become money-making machines for a small group of executives and shareholders. And you wonder why the younger generation looks at the current system and starts thinking come socialism might not be a bad thing.
Meanwhile, the corporate welfare continues unabated and no one on the right complains about their tax dollars being used to give multi-billion dollar companies tax breaks. It's the programs that help the poor that bother you. What the hell is that? What kind of twisted value system leads to that kind of thinking?
Thing is, the posters complaining about their taxes being used for social programs are probably not going to read this post. Those who do will either ignore it completely, or select one point to attack (kind of like you did). I don't understand when so many Americans became so cold-hearted that they would not only claim that the working poor deserve their poverty, but that they object to any of their tax money going to programs who assist those people. Meanwhile, they either ignore or approve of the billions and billions in tax dollars flowing to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Is that what the right believes? What about the so-called Evangelicals that make up such an important part of its base? What part of the Bible are they reading?
Summary, you want a nanny to care for you and parents to support you until you lay low.
So who is entitled to a living wage, then, in your opinion? What makes a fast food worker less deserving of a living wage than anyone else? If a fast-food worker working full-time is not entitled to a living wage - and I mean a living wage, not anything lavish - then why do they not deserve to make a living? They are working hard, doing a job that is in high demand.
First, the argument was that those who use government services like Medicaid are poor because they are lazy. Now, the argument has changed - it's not about laziness anymore. Now it's about having the right kind of job, because apparently working hard is not enough.
From your perch, I imagine everyone who works in a low-wage job is there because of some defect in their character that makes them unworthy of a decent life.
But let's take this idea and see where it leads...If everyone made all the right choices (like you have, apparently) and had advanced degrees or training in fields where demand was high, who would pick your fruits and vegetables, butcher your meat, cook your food, serve it to you, clean the streets, pick up trash, book your hotel ad clean the room when you leave, stock the shelves so you can buy products, package those products, take care of the sick and elderly, mind someone's children, landscape their yard, and so on? Do you see the problem?
If everyone is an architect or engineer, who does the low-paying grunt work that gets the architect's vision built according to the engineer's plans? If everyone is a manager, who does the work that the manager delegates?
I'm not saying a fast-food worker should be wealthy necessarily, but why do you believe they are undeserving of a living wage? What makes you so special that you deserve a reasonable income, and who gets to choose which professions are worthy? If you are going to complain about your tax dollars being used to fund social programs for the poor and ALSO claim that only certain jobs should pay a living wage, you have created a bit of a paradox in which only the few can make a living, and those who cannot must suffer in abject poverty because...they made poor choices, I guess? Which brings us back to the same place: if everyone makes all the "right" choices and gets advanced degrees, who is going to do the labor, the service jobs, the jobs that make the American lifestyle possible?
There was a time when working in a fast-food restaurant or stocking shelves in a grocery store or waiting tables was for young people getting their first taste of the working world in order to prepare them for life as a self-sufficient adult. However, in case you didn't notice, the economy has changed drastically in thirty years due to automation, globalization, and consumer demands for cheap goods. Now you can find plenty of people with advanced degrees making lattes at Starbucks because the economy in which their education was once valuable has disappeared.
This brings me back to my initial post in this thread - one that no right-wing members have bothered to comment on in a meaningful way. Corporate America refuses to pay living wages because no one is asking them or forcing them to. In the past, unions were able to effectively raise wages and the standard of living so that workers could make a living wage. Think about post-war America and its prosperity and relative economic equality. Isn't this what MAGA is all about? Getting back to a time when Americans were more prosperous?
Instead, governments at all levels have systematically destroyed the power of organized labor, and now the fox is not just in the hen house - he's running the hen house! And that seems to be just fine to many on the right, who then complain about homelessness, poverty, and their taxes being used to fund social programs that fill in the massive gaps corporate America has left in their quest to become money-making machines for a small group of executives and shareholders. And you wonder why the younger generation looks at the current system and starts thinking come socialism might not be a bad thing.
Meanwhile, the corporate welfare continues unabated and no one on the right complains about their tax dollars being used to give multi-billion dollar companies tax breaks. It's the programs that help the poor that bother you. What the hell is that? What kind of twisted value system leads to that kind of thinking?
Thing is, the posters complaining about their taxes being used for social programs are probably not going to read this post. Those who do will either ignore it completely, or select one point to attack (kind of like you did). I don't understand when so many Americans became so cold-hearted that they would not only claim that the working poor deserve their poverty, but that they object to any of their tax money going to programs who assist those people. Meanwhile, they either ignore or approve of the billions and billions in tax dollars flowing to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Is that what the right believes? What about the so-called Evangelicals that make up such an important part of its base? What part of the Bible are they reading?
I'm sorry but you are brain dead. No one is entitled to any wage. You earn your wage by providing a skill that an employer values. IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S JOB TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT PEOPLE MAKE. Get it through your think skull. And for Christs sake please stop calling a tax break welfare. That is THEIR money. The government does not own everything.
168 hours in a week. not making enough working 40? get another full time job, double your income!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
