The Poverty Industry

[Dot Com]

"entitlements" are composed of, a lion's share of them, by Medicare & Soc Sec. non-poor, People of all political stripes count on/like those programs. They can be fixed (means test, raise eligibility age 2 yrs, etc... are possible solutions) if certain persons were willing to come to the table w/ realistic solutions other than handing out vouchers & leaving the elderly, often unable to make serious decisions involving numerous variables, to the "tender mercies" of the for-profit insurance co's.

 

[g5000]

Keeping the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages below 70 is also a form of welfare for all. We are living 30 percent longer than when the age was set at 65. 30 percent longer!

That's an astronomical waste of production.

 

[boedicca]

You can't pin $17 trillion of debt all on the poor. Not by a long shot.

We spend over a trillion dollars a year on tax expenditures. Your mortgage interest deduction is a form of welfare, too, you know! As is the tax exemption for your employer sponsored health insurance. We have higher tax rates and borrow money from China to pay for all that.

I can recall only one of the self-avowed libertarians or conservatives, besides myself, around here calling for the elimination of tax expenditures, even though that is a both libertarian and fiscal conservative plank.

You want to see REAL government waste? Dive into tax expenditures. Take a good look at them. It's a cesspool of corruption. There's your "industry".

We are ALL on the government tit. We ALL built that debt.

And as others have pointed out, Defense spending is out of control. We have not spent at these levels on Defense since WWII. We are not in a World War. We had an existential threat during the Cold War and still did not spend this much, even after adjusting for inflation!

That's why topics like this which kick the poor in the face, while ignoring the much, much, much bigger waste and spending going on are...well...disengenuous is too kind a word for that shit. The word for that is hypocrisy.

In fact, it is because our debt has reached a tipping point that we have so many poor. Job growth becomes stifled after debt reaches a certain point, and we are past that point.

So shut the fuck up about the poor until you are ready, willing and demanding to give up your own personal welfare money from the government, you goddam hypocrites.

How fucking dense can you be?

Nobody said all the debt was caused by the poor.

The poor are used by shakedown artists to loot taxpayer funds.

 

[bendog]

The problem with the OP is simply that it fails to distinguish between "handouts" v. "handups." For example, the single largest identifiable cause of the income growth from 1950-1976 was the GI bill. It increased worker productivity more than anything before or since. Cato's raison d'etre is to argue the govt has no role in affecting markets. Thus, giving a starving man an apple is the same thing as helping a person become a doctor.

 

[g5000]

You can't pin $17 trillion of debt all on the poor. Not by a long shot.

We spend over a trillion dollars a year on tax expenditures. Your mortgage interest deduction is a form of welfare, too, you know! As is the tax exemption for your employer sponsored health insurance. We have higher tax rates and borrow money from China to pay for all that.

I can recall only one of the self-avowed libertarians or conservatives, besides myself, around here calling for the elimination of tax expenditures, even though that is a both libertarian and fiscal conservative plank.

You want to see REAL government waste? Dive into tax expenditures. Take a good look at them. It's a cesspool of corruption. There's your "industry".

We are ALL on the government tit. We ALL built that debt.

And as others have pointed out, Defense spending is out of control. We have not spent at these levels on Defense since WWII. We are not in a World War. We had an existential threat during the Cold War and still did not spend this much, even after adjusting for inflation!

That's why topics like this which kick the poor in the face, while ignoring the much, much, much bigger waste and spending going on are...well...disengenuous is too kind a word for that shit. The word for that is hypocrisy.

In fact, it is because our debt has reached a tipping point that we have so many poor. Job growth becomes stifled after debt reaches a certain point, and we are past that point.

So shut the fuck up about the poor until you are ready, willing and demanding to give up your own personal welfare money from the government, you goddam hypocrites.

How fucking dense can you be?

Nobody said all the debt was caused by the poor.

The poor are used by shakedown artists to loot taxpayer funds.

How dense can YOU be?

The government programs for the poor are the least of our problems. Your priorities are seriously warped.

 

[Dot Com]

Keeping the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages below 70 is also a form of welfare for all. We are living 30 percent longer than when the age was set at 65. 30 percent longer!

That's an astronomical waste of production.

This is a touchy topic because life expectancy is different for different demographics. For example- white women prolly have the longest life expectancy so raising the age req't say- 2 yrs would be no huge deal for them compared to other demographics who would essentially die before receiving a dime.

 

[bendog]

Keeping the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages below 70 is also a form of welfare for all. We are living 30 percent longer than when the age was set at 65. 30 percent longer!

That's an astronomical waste of production.

This is a touchy topic because life expectancy is different for different demographics. For example- white women prolly have the longest life expectancy so raising the age req't say- 2 yrs would be no huge deal for them compared to other demographics who would essentially die before receiving a dime.

no, no, no. Women exist to stick sharp knives in our backs.

Urban Dictionary: w.i.f.e.

 

[boedicca]

Keeping the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages below 70 is also a form of welfare for all. We are living 30 percent longer than when the age was set at 65. 30 percent longer!

That's an astronomical waste of production.

This is a touchy topic because life expectancy is different for different demographics. For example- white women prolly have the longest life expectancy so raising the age req't say- 2 yrs would be no huge deal for them compared to other demographics who would essentially die before receiving a dime.

Once again The Left engages in a War On Women.

 

[Dot Com]

after the above zany rw post, I felt compelled to torpedo this FAILthread again

 

[RightDown]

The simple answer is this: Under the United States Constitution, the Congress has no power to distribute money or benefits to any individual, for any purpose.

Starting with Social Security, all of these laws (all of this spending) are simply and totally outside the enumerated powers of Congress, and not to put too fine a point on it, but "...reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people." (See the Tenth Amendment).

So all we need to do is stop all programs that distribute money to The Poor, either directly or indirectly.

Ironically, it would take a cataclysmic revolution to FORCE our Federal Government to govern in accordance with our Constitution.

Nice, eh?

So you are implying that the Supreme Court routinely gets it wrong.
Cardozo was a genius. Read the excerpt below. Your Madisonian view of the constitution lost out.

Justice Cardozo wrote the opinions in Helvering vs. Davis and Steward Machine. After giving the 1788 dictionary the consideration he thought it deserved, he made clear the Court's view on the scope of the government's spending authority: "There have been statesman in our history who have stood for other views. . .We will not resurrect the contest. It is now settled by decision. The conception of the spending power advocated by Hamilton . . .has prevailed over that of Madison. . ." Arguing that the unemployment compensation program provided for the general welfare, Cardozo observed: ". . .there is need to remind ourselves of facts as to the problem of unemployment that are now matters of common knowledge. . .the roll of the unemployed, itself formidable enough, was only a partial roll of the destitute or needy. The fact developed quickly that the states were unable to give the requisite relief. The problem had become national in area and dimensions. There was need of help from the nation if the people were not to starve. It is too late today for the argument to be heard with tolerance that in a crisis so extreme the use of the moneys of the nation to relieve the unemployed and their dependents is a use for any purpose [other] than the promotion of the general welfare."

As another very wise Supreme Court Justice pointed out: The US constitution, and any constitution, cannot have the prolixity of a legal code (i.e., statutory law). Some of article one is purposely broad - taxing and spending, necessary and proper, commerce. Below is the full text of the reasoning behind this notion:


A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the American Constitution is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language. Why else were some of the limitations found in the 9th section of the 1st article introduced? It is also in some degree warranted by their having omitted to use any restrictive term which might prevent its receiving a fair and just interpretation. In considering this question, then, we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding.

McCulloch v, Maryland.

 

[RightDown]

Whereas there is a lot of pork in Defense, the real money is in the growth of entitlements and profiteering from Federal Debt.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/

Entitlement programs are not welfare programs so I don't see the problem. And since Soc. Security is run much more efficiently than any private insurer in terms of administrative costs, I'd think you'd be thrilled with the results...millions and millions and millions of people kept out of poverty.

 

[boedicca]

Whereas there is a lot of pork in Defense, the real money is in the growth of entitlements and profiteering from Federal Debt.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/

Entitlement programs are not welfare programs so I don't see the problem. And since Soc. Security is run much more efficiently than any private insurer in terms of administrative costs, I'd think you'd be thrilled with the results...millions and millions and millions of people kept out of poverty.

You're a loon.

SS is not insurance. It's a ponzi scheme.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Whereas there is a lot of pork in Defense, the real money is in the growth of entitlements and profiteering from Federal Debt.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/

Entitlement programs are not welfare programs so I don't see the problem. And since Soc. Security is run much more efficiently than any private insurer in terms of administrative costs, I'd think you'd be thrilled with the results...millions and millions and millions of people kept out of poverty.

You're a loon.

SS is not insurance. It's a ponzi scheme.

You're a loon. What ponzi scheme has a 2 trillion dollar surplus?

 

[NYcarbineer]

There's a false premise under all this and that is that anti-poverty programs are designed to get people out of poverty, and therefore if we continue to have the same percentage or more of people below the poverty line,

that is supposed to mean the programs are a failure. But it is not the purpose of most of these programs to get people out of poverty. Most of these programs are designed to simply help people while they're poor.

Medicaid and food stamps help people who are poor/low income. They help them afford the otherwise unaffordable. It is not the purpose of those programs to help people find better jobs, or get them a better education. To say these programs, which are the two biggest ticket items, are failures because more people use them now than in the past is ridiculous.

 

[dannyboys]

The $85 billion being printed isn't for the poor. Its for the wealthy. Funny how the people whining about money for the poor aren't having a serious coniption over the greater amount of money being handed to the rich on a platinum platter. We don't see a how much that works out to per rich person.

Inflation caused by printing money hurts savers and investors far more than salary owners. Salaries have to increase to cover rampant inflation, however savings and investment value remain stagnant. Unless the rich transfer all thier wealth to land, gold or other commodities that maintain value, any rampant inflation that hits will hurt them just as much as anyone else. Nowadays most people's wealth is in paper.

ZIRP is slaughtering savers and investors, all to keep the bank executives in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed, even though they are the ones who caused all those people on food stamps to be out of work.

I'm so tired of hearing Ebeneezer Scrooge sickos whining about the poor on food stamps. They are seriously warped in the head.

God some people are a waste of band width.
The "bankers" did not cause the collapse of the manufacturing industry AKA the lost jobs. Can you read 'globalization'?
Tens of millions of Chinese and East Indian businessmen woke up and realized they could crank out a pair of blue jeans at a fraction of what the Levi company could.
Go to 'Wally-Mart' and see for yourself the result of 'big unions'. When Levi had to pay an illiterate twenty bucks an hour plus full family health benefits for life and a solid gold pension......transferable to the surviving spouse the writing was on the wall for the company as it was/is for tens of thousands of other businesses.
The LIBs and their union cronies are the all time gold medal stars at destroying everything they touch financially/socially.
I have a couple of free tickets for the 'See Downtown Detroit' bus tour. They're yours free.

 

[RightDown]

Whereas there is a lot of pork in Defense, the real money is in the growth of entitlements and profiteering from Federal Debt.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/

Entitlement programs are not welfare programs so I don't see the problem. And since Soc. Security is run much more efficiently than any private insurer in terms of administrative costs, I'd think you'd be thrilled with the results...millions and millions and millions of people kept out of poverty.

You're a loon.

SS is not insurance. It's a ponzi scheme.

You have no idea what you are talking about and I can prove it.

Are you a Michael Tanner disciple? He's a con-man. He loves SS when it's invested in the market so he and his Wall st. buddies can offer their 'services' for a fee of course.

How is SS a ponzi scheme?