Here's the problem with government help.
- Thread starter Boilermaker03
- Start date
We need government help for people who WORK. Subsidize things like affordable/free college and affordable housing. The federal grant to states for affordable housing used to be much much higher. Bring back the WPA. It’s how we got the national parks.
Don’t just give a ton of people cheese for nothing.
If you work 40 hours a week you should have a life. And I mean work, not stand there with your thumb up your ass.
Those who disagree with this expose themselves as just another elitist who believes in meritocracy. I love being at thanksgiving or at a gathering and explaining to working people “hey, you have these problems and THAT guy who you think is a swell guy is the reason why.”
It’s awesome
We don't have affordable housing and education BECAUSE of government intervention. It's the reason these things are so expensive. Can't you see that? People aren't working because they can make just as much money or more than people working their asses off.
This is current reality because of our government fuccking everything up:
That's what we're doing!
I don't know who you are trying to say "that guy" is, but based on your responses so far, I'm guessing you're dead wrong.
I agree people who work should have a life, but we have to stop all of the spending to make that happen. Inflation is destroying people's wealth. I would hope you know what causes inflation.
No .. we don’t have them because the people who buy our government get much more in subsidies in return. A trillion a year on war.. when housing the American homeless at 1000 a month would only be 26 billion a year. THAT I pay my taxes for., not to have checks sent to defense contractors.
Where Did The Idea Of Obamacare Come From? A Defense Of The Heritage Foundation
Where did the idea for managed competition come from? It came from Stanford professor Alain Enthoven, who in 1978 proposed using the federal employee benefits program as a model for a national health care program.
www.forbes.com
Read the first paragraph.
You do realize the pentagon has confessed that there was 21 trillion they couldn’t account for right?
Like I said, people who buy our government is also a problem, but it's not THE problem. Government spending in general is why inflation happens which is a tax on the low and middle classes. The rich can absorb it.No .. we don’t have them because the people who buy our government get much more in subsidies in return. A trillion a year on war.. when housing the American homeless at 1000 a month would only be 26 billion a year. THAT I pay my taxes for., not to have checks sent to defense contractors.
Where Did The Idea Of Obamacare Come From? A Defense Of The Heritage Foundation
Where did the idea for managed competition come from? It came from Stanford professor Alain Enthoven, who in 1978 proposed using the federal employee benefits program as a model for a national health care program.
Read the first paragraph.
You do realize the pentagon has confessed that there was 21 trillion they couldn’t account for right?
So, where is the majority of our government spending?
Here is a break down of the types of spending:
As you can see, mandatory spending is by far the biggest part of that pie. Mandatory spending in 2021 comprised of $5.2 Trillion. $4.5 Trillion of that is social programs. Only $281 billion was for military.
Wars are under discretionary spending which is a whole other problem, but still do not even come close to social program spending.
It is THE problem. If you go back before Buckley … what was a better America? The previous 30 years when even most republicans wouldn’t come out against new deal? Or the decaying corpse in constantly looking at now?
You think all that war waste is an accident? Or ROI? Lol
Govt should ONLY help people with Day Care costs so that they can work.
The rest, housing, free college, health care etc. is just buying votes.
This is my favorite breakdown of this problem. Greg Mankiw wrote one of my Econ text books, was a presidential advisor, and might or might not still be head of Harvard’s undergrad Econ department. I’ve always appreciated how he uses his understanding of economics to describe the implication of policies through observed outcomes or projected outcomes based on economic principles, instead of politically-driven reasoning that ignores certain economic principles out of convenience to some agenda.
This blog post is 15 years old and built with imperfect (best available) data, so the exact dollar amounts he uses are a little off, but the principle stands. And note he pulls short of making recommendations such as removing benefits - he usually tries to avoid doing that where possible. Rather, his point is to inform how all the benefits stacked up on top of each other cause a poverty trap that gives people at the low income end of society little or no incentive to incrementally improve their earning ability.
gregmankiw.blogspot.com
This blog post is 15 years old and built with imperfect (best available) data, so the exact dollar amounts he uses are a little off, but the principle stands. And note he pulls short of making recommendations such as removing benefits - he usually tries to avoid doing that where possible. Rather, his point is to inform how all the benefits stacked up on top of each other cause a poverty trap that gives people at the low income end of society little or no incentive to incrementally improve their earning ability.
The Poverty Trap
Chapter 20 of my favorite textbook has a section on antipoverty programs and work incentives. One basic point is that when multiple income-b...
gregmankiw.blogspot.com
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Again we have a fundamental disagreement. But again, put you and I in front of 100 working Americans with a white board and my immediate rebuttal is
“We can’t have those things, but we can spend a trillion dollars a year bombing in 7 countries”
Tends to have the group looking at you like “wait what.”
It’s also why the keep third parties out and why the debates AND THE NEWS (thanks bills Clinton) keeps the entire conversation very narrow.
Day Care gets people working. The way to help people get on their own 2 feet and be proud of themselves.
Housing buys voters. Ever been in a housing complex? Ones I worked at were Govt plantations that were dangerous for the young people, full of drugs and crime.
Govt help should be there for a hand out of poverty, not a shovel digging them deeper into it.
I am for at least a 20% reduction in military spending. They don't like that, cut them by 40%.
Spend smarter.
The only country that deserves financial military assistance is Israel. The rest are just floated by corrupt politicians and media types as they all get kickbacks from the military complex. As you saw in this last military bill ....billion$ for the military complex. Waste & corruption.
Yeah I was in a rent controlled apartment that a lady I knew had for $1000/month in Lafayette California. It was nice. I heard the block grants from the federal government for such apartments were down from 13 billion to 3 billion. And that was maybe 10 years ago. Have to have more money for war.
Certainly should NOT be the business of Govt to pay for housing.
Perhaps for homeless....maybe.
Why for the homeless and not for people who WORK. That was what the new deal was. Money for people who work. And life was wonderful. People who worked could have a hell of a life, even if the sold lawn mowers at sears. Despite the fact that I make quite a bit more than a lawn mower salesman, everything in society is better when he does better. Chicago had ghettos in the 60s. But instead of 1/3 of the Chicago area being what amounts to a ghetto, they were much much smaller.
I could get it if we weren’t the richest country in the history of the world and if lucrative subsidies weren’t handed to the wealthy as museum. But that just isn’t the case. We have the money. We need to be spending all of the tax money we do spend ON the people.
You save money with single payer. All the bloat of marketing, insurance and admin costs goes out the window.
Free college and trade school. Not Purdue. Think governors state. No frills. You go to a basic building and get basic instruction and that’s it. If you want football games and a student union yeah, you should pay.
Get the WPA back. Pay people a living wage to rebuild these neighborhoods.
My great grandfather had a store in the Chicago area. Worked his balls off since arriving as an immigrant. Became a butcher and then got a store. Guess what? When we had programs for working people and they had more disposable income, he had more customers! His store didn’t have to be in oakbrook, Illinois. He did quite fine in the south suburbs. But that was 1945-1975, not the shit hole that much of America is today doing it Milton friedman’s way.
Oh, grants to start any viable business where there is a need, if you start it as a co-op. Just like they do in Emilio Roman’s Italy. Basically, help people overcome economy of scale if they’re going to pay a living wage.
If we had no money like Bangladesh, fine. But we always have had the money. We just stopped spending it on the people and started handing it to the rich a long time ago
Because the homeless are either mentally ill......thus disabled and incapable of providing their own house.
The 2nd group... Drug addicts need temporary housing while they are getting off their drug. Then they can get a jump b and pay for their own house.
Individual responsibility dictates people pay for their own houses. Not sure why I should pay for my house & then also pay for someone else's house who is capable? That's nuts.
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We shouldn’t even have homelessness and could end it for a piddly amount of the money America wastes every year.
Oh, individual responsibility. Housing prices are very expensive. Do you know one big reason why?
Back in the Bush era banks were giving loans out to people who had no business getting them, then actually creating credit default swaps to bet against those mortgages. Then when the house of cards came crashing down and Friedmanist/capitalist dogma would tell you that the banks responsible should have lost everything like Lehman brothers, they got bailed out to the tune of 900 billion dollars. AND they got to keep the houses! Now those same banks are back forming LLCs and buying houses to rent back to the American public as usurious rates. And you want to tell Americans who bust their ass working about personal ****ing responsibility.
What about the 21 trillion that the pentagon just said they couldn’t account for? How many houses could we make affordable for people who work their ass off with that money. Who was held responsible for that?
Again, if you’re some broke country, I get it. The US is the richest country in the history of the world.
And actually, it’s funny Mr conservative. I work my ass off, and in your own words you want me to pay for the homeless and for daycare for other people, but I’ve never needed daycare or been homeless. And I’ve never taken a dime from any program. Oh wait, I lied. I was on unemployment from June through August 2008 lol.
But when your daughter needs daycare you want me to pay for that. While I also pay to bail out banks and give lucrative subsidies to everyone from defense contractors to fossil fuel companies to renewable scams.
This is quite the scheme you and Friedman cooked up lol.
Sense vs. nonsense.
Sense.....help people succeed via an example like day care.
Nonsense.....pay for someone else's laziness like a house or electricity.
But ok, since you want to gripe about helping homeless & day care, items that make sense......I would agree to cut that......as long as you agree to cut all the nonsense......let's just cut all Govt spending to zero. I could go for that. Shift needed spending to states where the Constitution wanted it anyway.
No no… I want to pay for those things or partial subsidies for those things (depending what it is) for people who work. That’s what the new deal was. I’m less concerned about people who don’t work. In a perfect world yes, in the world we live in that would make me an establishment Democrat.
No, I don’t want to do that. But the fact that those are the things you pick shows hypocrisy on at least one item.
You still haven’t addressed:
Personal responsibility for banks
Where is the 21 trillion
Why can’t we have those things when we do have money for massive subsidies for fossil fuel companies, defense contractors and now renewable energy scams.
You’re not coming off as particularly well researched. More like you just watch Sean hannity or some fiscally conservative shit hole podcast. That doesn’t make you as a bad as a viewer of msnbc or Sam Seder. But it’s not great.
Bank bailouts or subsidies - not for.
Govt waste or military waste- not for.
New Deal - not for.
Any Subsidies - not for.
Renewable green energy scams - not for.
Am for anyone that wants to buy solar on their own or electric vehicles on their own. But not for subsidizing it.
Am for helping drug addicts get off drugs.
Am for keeping people working.
Am for helping mentally ill .
You’re almost there. Again, if we were broke, I can understand saying “we can’t go back to subsidizing affordable housing. We are Bangladesh. We have no money.”
We aren’t. You acknowledge not being for these things and yet we blow so much money every year on these things.
How about we cut all taxes and let people and corporations succeed with their own money? There is little need for Federal Government.
Sure federal drug & food quality, highways, some basic defense, etc. But that's not a lot of $. Certainly nowhere near what I am taxed now. So lets cut all federal taxes to closer to zero, and let people succeed.
WDC is a bloated mostly non essential waste l, and I hope Trump gets in there and cuts these agencies to the bare bones.
Of course it's not an accident, but war spending is 1/5th that of entitlements. So... entitlements is THE biggest problem.
You're treating this as an either or in order to get the policy you want. We need to cut both. We shouldn't be spending trillions to bomb other countries and we shouldn't be incentivizing people to not better themselves. Not only are we incentivizing people to stay in poverty, we are inflating them in poverty as well with the irresponsible spending.
Life might have seemed wonderful, but only because of the depression. The help then I'm sure seemed like a boondoggle, but in reality, it was only going to hurt them more down the road with inflation. In fact, inflation was rampant at the end of FDR's term. Wasn't until Truman stopped spending more than they were bringing in that it came under control.
That's cute, but we aren't just spending the tax money we have. We're spending money we DON'T have and it isn't working/hasn't worked for the most part. We have decades of data backing that point.
Save money and kill innovation. Care declines. No thank you. We need to deregulate and let markets work.
Also terrible idea. Those colleges would just ask for more and more money to pay for useless projects and pay for made up administrative positions. Just take a long look at how the school system is operated in Illinois. It's just a huge money grab with little to no care for the students.
Very fuccking stupid idea. The WPA was a waste. Like I said before and you failed to listen. Many of the projects done by WPA workers had to be immediately redone because the work was so shitty.
YOU THINK WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS MILTON FRIEDMAN'S WAY???????!!!!!!!! That's hilariously incorrect! What we have now is nothing like what Milton Friedman would want. Not even close.
What we have now is the byproduct of people like FDR and LBJ. Those two were SHIT presidents that has fuccked this country up big time!
Here's a book for you. You might learn something.
You're a bleeding heart, but your heart is misplaced. These things won't help people. Handouts don't help people like you think they do. People aren't that dissimilar from other animals.
lol corporations who gained that wealth through subsidies? do you know who the main consumer or tech was for decades in the beginning? Us!
So, you’re telling me that a trucking company is going to wear out the road they drive on, but shouldn’t pay more access for greater use of the system?
I’m asking sensible questions and you’re replying like a child “let’s get rid of it all then!” No. Let’s take the trillions we are wasting each year and use it to do two things:
1. Maximize mobility through the classes. During the new deal, which ironically created many very successful people whose families had been poor for generations before that.. (many of whom became the conservatives who want to kick the ladder they climbed), it was possible to work hard and in one generation come from poverty to amassing quite a financial portfolio through work.
I’ve met a guy who was a laborer at the produce market in the 60s, started a grocery store with 25k (you could never do that today adjusted for inflation even) and is now worth billions. What’s he gonna be a laborer for today? He’d barely be able to get himself to work. And HE told me that lol.
2. Live up the promise of my parents generation. You work 40 hours a week and you get a life. A good one. Not true for many many people today. I know people working 70 hours a week scraping but. That was true back then. Not just of the prime jobs of any job. People who worked jobs like grocery store clerk had a house on my block as old people in the 80s. A car, one vacation a year and a good life. They didn’t need dad, who won’t tell me his tuition bill, to make sure they could focus on school and become valedictorians…
Where are you getting that war spending is 5 times that of a trillion in defense related costs?
By the way dumb**** nobody misunderstands shit. The right, aka management, thinks of social security and Medicare as an entitlement. And so does Joe Biden. It is you who doesn’t underStand.
That’s your choice when you go to the polls. One guy who wants to take your social security away because he works for the banks.. and also a Republican who wants to do the same
Sounds like you are entrenched as a BIG GOVT guy.
Govt NEVER will be the answer to most problems. Govt because of the very waste and inefficient systems, subsidies even you list is THE problem. The solution is to minimize it, not grow it.....and certainly NOT to count on it.
If you want a house, vacation, cars work for it. And work hard!
It is amazing you decry working 70 hours a week, like that is a lot or uncommon to have to.......I did exactly that and more many weeks for 35 years.
Government was big in the new deal.
Both of the parties love big government. They just want big subsidies to go back to their donors.
Turns out government has been a great solution for Lockheed Martin, Facebook, Citibank and on and on.
In 1966 it was a great solution for working Americans.
You’re just regurgitating shitty Friedmanist propaganda.
Friedmanists have ruled for the last 44 years at least. There are no new dealers in Washington. So why is the country so much shittier than 1972.
Fiscally conservative Republican politicians love big government. The pentagon lost 21 trillion dollars! Lol
How about we get rid of all subsidies?
NOT say, since those guys are getting it, I want mine. That just exacerbates the problems.
Big Govt is the problem but just as much are people that whine to get their share of OTHERS money.
Who was the last conservative who just kept government really inexpensive? Who are you holding up in reality? Teddy Roosevelt lmao? Andrew Jackson? Oh you know that Rutherford B Hayes. He just didn’t spend money
lol no. Working people contribute to our society. They get old and need social security. None of that is true of Goldman Sachs or Lockheed Martin.
but ironically, working people is not where the money is wasted. At all
First you decry subsidies.....then when I say cut them.....you laugh.
SS a need? Not always. I know I would manage my money better than Govt. No question. It is a need for only those that are poor managers of their money.
We continually come back to, Lockheed, banks, or Sachs got theirs.....I want mine. That just grows the problem. That is not a solution. The solution is no more subsidies & individuals work for their own.
Here is an idea.....perhaps, consider getting more hours to pay yourself better?? The amount of time you spend on here could perhaps be used making $. Sounds a bit more productive.
Me I am retired.
And just why is it you think they are scraping by? I dare you to ask them. Where they better off financially in 2019 than they are today? WHEN they answer yes, ask them how much better off.
The reason is because of inflation and idiotic climate policy that does nothing because it's a scam.
Food prices are up about 19% over the debacle known as the Biden presidency. Most people (not including lib elites and the like) see that every week when they shop for groceries.
always a good reminder, income tax was once considered unlawful
in a good system, people in government would compete for our hard earned $ like all others do.
sadly, government employees today are willing to use threats and intimidation to get our $ instead.
You can thank FDR for that. Supreme Court knocks down his first attempt at an income tax calling it unconstitutional so he finds another way to push it through. That man has ruined this country in more ways than one.
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