Bulldogs Views on social welfare and poverty

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Bolduca, Oct 30, 2011.

  1. Bolduca

    Bolduca New Member

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    Welfare: Here I am going to rant. Some of us out here were not born with a silver spoon in our mouths. If you have never been on Welfare or so poor you needed it to survive then you have no idea. An adequate social safety net is required to help those less fortunate to live, it also helps reduce crime. Now before the Republicans jump me, let me just say a desperate man will do what he must to support his family. If we end poverty we seriously impact crime as well get it. Don't be an Idiot help the poor and make life better on everyone. No person in this country should ever for any reason be homeless or forgotten. If we forget our own what do we become, and I Quote "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare."

    Fun fact the GDP of the united states("Gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period") is 14.2 Trillion. The United States Population is 307.007 Million. That is $46,253.01 Per American citizen yearly I believe if my math is correct.

    Now the fun facts. "One approximation of the annual number of homeless in America is from a study by the National Law centre on Homelessness and Poverty, which estimates between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness.""More than 40 percent of those experiencing homeless live entirely un-sheltered, and nearly a fifth of them are categorized as being ‘chronically homeless.’ Nationwide, homelessness was down from 2005 to 2007 in all categories, but, at the beginning of the year, the Alliance released an addendum suggesting as many as 1.5 million more Americans could become homelessess due to the rising employment and ensnaring foreclosures of the the Great Recession." That pretty much says it all.

    Now before you Republicans jump me and tell these poor people to get a job I have some more fun facts."One out of 50—or about 1.5 million—American children are homeless each year, according to a 2009 study by the National centre on Family Homelessness.""23 percent of homeless people are reported as chronically homeless. According to HUD's definition, a person who is "chronically homeless" is an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition (e.g., substance abuse, serious mental illness, developmental disability, or chronic physical illness) who has either been continuously homeless for a year or more, or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.""For persons in families, the three most commonly cited causes, according to a 2008 U.S. Conference of Mayors study are:

    Lack of affordable housing

    Poverty

    Unemployment

    For singles, the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness are:

    Substance abuse

    Lack of affordable housing

    Mental illness

    About 40% of homeless men are veterans, although veterans comprise only 34 percent of the general adult male population, according to research on veterans by the National Coalition for Homeless. On any given night, 200,000 veterans are homeless."

    Thanks for not forgetting the children and Vets America, and shame on you. If you don't Believe me look it up. I did, and we call our selves good people how do we sleep at night. Well I know how I sleep and its not well maybe that's because I have a conscience.

    I am not advocating redistributing every ones wealth just that Income disparity must be made much smaller before those at the top of this pyramid scheme of an economy have every thing and the rest of us are left to starve. If you are lucky or smart enough to be blessed with wealth and power it is your duty to improve the lives of those who allowed you to acquire such abundance. It is not your right to take advantage of people for personal gain for the sake of personal gain. People have a civic duty to advance the society they live in for the good of every one not just them selves, or else what is the point of society.

    No a ditch digger should not make as much as a doctor but they should make enough to live in relative comfort. It is an atrocity that in a country as developed as our own people are discarded by society and left to rot for no better reason than they are old, poor, or disabled. A topic that seems to be mostly ignored by politicians and the public in general. What do we do for these people? We open shelters that are more dangerous than living in the streets. We create laws that put them in prison for no other reason than they are less fortunate than others. This violates both the 5th and the 14th amendments.
     
  2. SGTKPF

    SGTKPF New Member

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    "Some of us out here were not born with a silver spoon in our mouths."
    True. But our country also has by far the smallest amount of "old money" of all industrialized nations. Therefore to generalize all of the affluent as having been born rich is incredibly wrong-headed.

    "About 40% of homeless men are veterans, although veterans comprise only 34 percent of the general adult male population, according to research on veterans by the National Coalition for Homeless. On any given night, 200,000 veterans are homeless."
    True, there is certainly a problem with homelessness amongst Vets. And yet Vets and Active Duty members are overwhelmingly Republican and conservative. Perhaps if the financial situation of servicememebers is SO important to your side you should stop cutting the DOD and DOVA spending at every oppurtunity. The current adminstration is seeking to drastically raise the premiums for Tricare (the military's health insurance company.) So appearantly everyone needs cheap/free health insurance... except vets. When you or any Leftist pays lip service to the military, it could not look more disingenuous.

    "I am not advocating redistributing every ones wealth"
    That's exactly what you're doing.

    "If you are lucky or smart enough to be blessed with wealth and power it is your duty to improve the lives of those who allowed you to acquire such abundance. It is not your right to take advantage of people for personal gain for the sake of personal gain. "
    Excuse me!? It's their duty? Why? Did some welfare recipient save the lives of each and every one of the affluent? Did they buy them lottery tickets that gave them their fortune? Did they hire them as CEO's? You clearly have no idea what the word "duty" means (another reason vets flock from those with your ideology) and to use that term in such a manner is disgusting and insulting. I am a strong supporter of private charities. But to use rhetoric such as yours that claims that giving to the poor is something the rich need to do, as opposed to something they do out of the goodness of their hearts is disgusting.

    "We open shelters that are more dangerous than living in the streets. We create laws that put them in prison for no other reason than they are less fortunate than others."
    Well that's just patently wrong. If the shelters are dangerous, it is precisely because of their inhabitants. It's not as if the shelters have trapdoors with spikes, or are boobytrapped in some other way. So in essence I am supposed to feel bad because there are people in shelters (which, the fact that they even exist is a monument to how charitable the rich are) that are dangerous... because of those same people!? You're clearly insane. Furthermore, there are no laws against being poor.

    "This violates both the 5th and the 14th amendments."
    Not even close. If you were right about jailing people for being poor (and you're really, really, really not right) then how are we violating the "due process of law"? These made up laws of your would be abhorant for other reasons, but they could not, by definition, violate due process. You really, really need to get your head checked out.

    The biggest problem is your complete ignorance of the argument of the other side (and this is now documented and provable, conservatives understand liberals and not the other way around, as shown in The Righteous Mind.) No one on the Right wants to see anyone homeless, esspecially not vets (since, you know, your side spits on them, mine doesn't.) It's not even selfishness that makes us oppose socialist programs, although most, myself included think it is only morally acceptable to allow people to keep what they earn (which raises another point about how hypocritical you are, I haven't seen a single check from you, try practicing what you preach.) The biggest reason to oppose the Socialism you support is because a Socialist system neccesarily collapses on itself. Margaret Tatcher put it much more succinctly when she said "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." See, when you enact social welfare programs, you pay people not to work. I understand that is not the intent (or your intent) but that is what you are doing. Now when ever you subsidize something, you get more of it. We can agree on that right? I mean that is the purpose of subsidies, right? To increase the amount of the subsidized thing. So when you subsidize something, especially something as desirable as not having to work, you get more of it. Now, at first,the majority of people will not want to be on welfare, both because of the slowly disappearing stigma associated with it. But as long as you're paying, people will jump on that bandwagon. So the amount of people of Government assistance will grow, as they have. So this will result in the Government spending more money, which it has to get from somewhere, so it raises taxes. So the people now at the bottom but not yet on welfare will realize how much it sucks paying others to not work, so more of them will go on "assistance." Which means more money is needed. So taxes go up again, causing more people to go on "assistance", etc. So that is reason 1 that the Socialism you want couldn't work. But it gets worse. If the Government were giving out very small benefits, it would take a long time for the scenario I presented to happen, because almost everyone makes more than what welfare would pay them. Of course you get to a point where taxes drive yout income down to the level of welfare checks (or even close to, since again, we're paying people not to work, and who wouldn't want that?) But that same system of increasing taxes makes the cost of living go up, because as you tax corporations, they raise prices, and because taxation necessarily causes inflationary movement in the currency. So because the COA went up, the Government raises the amount it gives out in assistance. So it becomes EVEN MORE appealing to drop out of the workforce and get paid to do nothing. So the vicious cycle essentiallly slams on the gas pedal at that point. Now, this scenario is a little extreme. It would probably never get to the point where each and every citizen is on welfare. But it doesn't need to get to that point. Currently over 50% of the country receives Government handouts. And it continues to rise. We are fast approaching a point where the producers can not support the leeches, even if they wanted to. So your policies punish productivity, and reward leeching. So when you have punished each and every producer out of producing anything, who is going to be taxed to pay for the leeches. And that is why your plans CAN not work, and why the sane (Republicans and Libertarians) oppose them.
     
  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    I think you got lost, this is the military forum, not the one for political discorse.

    Oh, and those figures on "homeless veterans"? Been covered many times, blown so far out of proportion it is not even close to reality. The majority of "homeless vets" were never in the military.
     
  4. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Military families shouldn't have to go begging for food...
    :salute:
    Charity says military use of food pantries has been rising for years
    August 19, 2014 WASHINGTON — The number of military families who struggle to put food on the table has been growing in the years since the Great Recession, the nation’s largest network of soup kitchens and food pantries said Tuesday.
     
  5. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. TO bad the actual article blows it.

    Veterans are not "members of the military". No more then ex-cops are cops, or former NFL players are Football Players.
     

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