The New Nobles

[SKILORD]

Thank you, i shall prepare a rebuttal.

[SKILORD]

Originally posted by Spiffor
IIUC, you agree about pretty everything the State does except welfare ?

This is not a totally comprehensive thread, ifyou read the first post, this thread was meant to combat only welfare, i will not take issue with other faulty (IMHO) government policy here.

[Spiffor]

Good to know. Let me ask you this.

Do you think there is any use of welfare in the society, or do you think welfare is a mere injustice hurting the economy because of the clientelist interests of the poor ?

[SKILORD]

Well, shall i slowly centralise until my defeat is final, or shall i stand strong?

Well, "Spiff" i will have to object to all forms of welfare, I have offered alternatives above, such as charity and joining something constructive (Army, Peace Corps) to earn a living, or at least a meal.

Now it is your turn to object: sating something along the lines of.....

[Spiffor]

Now let me ask you another question :
do you think it is better for the society to let a lone mother raise her 2 kids, or is it better to have her work all day, thus leaving the children without parental monitoring ?

[Boris Godunov]

Re: Re: Re: The New Nobles

Originally posted by SKILORD
I never said there should be no taxation, i simply opposed Taxation without representation, Taxation in which only an elite few reap rewards while everyone foots the bill. If you wish to have a government they must offer services for all taxpayers, not just a few.

Uh, we have taxation with representation. Read what I wrote about being part of a representative Democracy. And what do you mean "elite few?" Everyone benefits from what taxes pay for, ya know. The government does offer services to all taxpayers. They all get military protection, public education, social security, medicare, etc.

I think half the stuff our government offers is totally uneccesarry, governments are designed to provide freedoms and maintin them (and, i will concede) grant those things out of the individual's reach, not to serve the poor, not to do anything other than simply protect rights and help everyone not a select few, every taxpaying citizen.

There are plenty of unneccessary government programs that benefit the rich as well. Remember that senators and congressman are constantly greasing up their donors with the old quid pro quo. Ever heard of corporate welfare?

As for Boris's teaher: I'll bet you the factory wouldn't have had to close if it had less taxes to pay (weak argument here, but i might as well throw it up)

You're right, it's a weak argument (and you shouldn't throw those up, because it just makes all your points look weaker). As I mentioned, it was during the recession in the early 90s. Taxes on the company had nothing to do with it (especially since, like most companies, I am sure Campbell's had found tons of ways to avoid paying most taxes, if any at all).

[SKILORD]

oohh.... ouch i suppose.

Actually that's the example i expected, well something along such lines, I simply did not have the balls to commit to saying for sure when you could oh so easily throw it in my face.

Anywayy here's the response:

She could very easily form some sort of Mothership Union, a 'Coalition', if you will, of like troubled persons working for the benifit of the group, since they each are inherintly equal (to a negligable degree) they would be able to divide time between mothering and working, doing so in shifts.

Hopw you like that? made that up off the top of my head and posted it too fast to check it for flaws.

[Boris Godunov]

Too bad she isnt a mother. Their problems were financial, and welfare kept them from total poverty long enough for her husband to get back on his feet.

[SKILORD]

Re: Re: Re: Re: The New Nobles

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Uh, we have taxation with representation. Read what I wrote about being part of a representative Democracy. And what do you mean "elite few?" Everyone benefits from what taxes pay for, ya know. The government does offer services to all taxpayers. They all get military protection, public education, social security, medicare, etc.

No, we don't all get welfare. Who would give unemployment benefits to the employed?

governments are designed to provide freedoms and maintin them (and, i will concede) grant those things out of the individual's reach, not to serve the poor, not to do anything other than simply protect rights and help everyone not a select few, every taxpaying citizen.

I mean that all programs which do not benefit, or are unavailable to each and every taxpayer, is taxation without representation. I don't mind those things which we all get, and stop whining about them, this thread is about welfare and unemployment benefites.

There are plenty of unneccessary government programs that benefit the rich as well. Remember that senators and congressman are constantly greasing up their donors with the old quid pro quo. Ever heard of corporate welfare?

Get rid of that too then! I don;t care which elite few benefits, i just want them to stop benefitting from me.

You're right, it's a weak argument (and you shouldn't throw those up, because it just makes all your points look weaker). As I mentioned, it was during the recession in the early 90s. Taxes on the company had nothing to do with it (especially since, like most companies, I am sure Campbell's had found tons of ways to avoid paying most taxes, if any at all).

Well then I shall ignore the line of inquiry

I could say that all recessions are caused by government. Though I wouldn't, and i shan't don't quote me on that, because i cannot say it with conviction.

[SKILORD]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Too bad she isnt a mother. Their problems were financial, and welfare kept them from total poverty long enough for her husband to get back on his feet.

While i am quite happy that you found no fault in the 'Motherhood Union' idea, or at least none solid enough to post.

Anyway, why couldn't he get a part time job and eke out for a little while on that? Jobs aren't so hard to find, i mean my god, we have illegal immigrants piling up at the border filing our jobs, maybe if we were protected from them as our government should do he would have been able to find a job more quickly. Maybe he would have been able to get a small job to fill his mouth and that of his family while he searched for a career.

Now we shan't(which is a rather nice word) go down the immigration path, i have said all that stands saying on it tonight.

[SKILORD]

whilke you stare dumbfounded at my logic, I thank you for goading me to keep the argument running.

[Spiffor]

Oh, and if you want a rebuttal to you first post, here it comes.

1
The comparison between the feudal nobility and the current poor is inherently flawed. And I'm being polite. The feudal nobility concentrated all powers in its hands : financial, military, and a strong alliance with the religious power (which can be compared with today's media in terms of opinion making)
Feudal lords ruled ruthlessly on their serfs, who ruined themseleves and fell into famine for the sake of the lord, who considered deserving it, because Feudal lords were the military elite (the army you love so much).
Serfs had no ways to oppose the views or the power of the lord, except for some peasant revolts which always ended in bloodbath, with the peasant's victory of course.
Of course the nobility didn't pay taxes, despite being the richest people around : they were serving the King's militarily, so it was deemed a sacrifice great enough (of course, peasants were cannon fodder during medieval battles, but they still paid taxes).

Stretch the current taxpayer's situation however you want, it has by no means the same oppression than what happened to the serfs. And stretch the situation of welfare recievers however you want, it has no comparison with the outstanding wealth the lords lived in.
Especially in the US, welfare recievers are the worst-off. The state never had an ambition of equating incomes like in Sweden for example, and the welfare only adressed to the very poorest.

2.
Why are there still traces of welfare in the free-market fanatical country that is the US ? Not because of moral grounds. Not because the socialists own you. But because welfare somehow soothes the gap between poorest and the rest of the population.
It is a well documented case that poverty is a major cause of crime and family unstability. Lone mothers are outstandingly overrepresented in the poor population : indeed, it is much harder to pay fixed charges (rent, food for children, misc.) alone than when married. To make the ends meet, these people would have to work all day, without being able to raise their children, leaving them to themselves. See my point ?
OTOH, there are also not miserous people who have to rely on welfare at some point, because of some accident in their lives. Boris told you about his friends. Welfare is a safety net whose purpose is to serve those in need, rather than to make profit, unlike insurance companies. It provides a much better safety net for those who need a short-term support before becoming useful to society again. Hadn't Boris' friends this safety net, they might have tanked now, and wouldn't be any useful to America. I suppose it is not what you want.
Many people, encountering a career incident, have tanked to the bottom, i.e becoming a bum, because of the lack of safety nets. I hardly call a bum useful for the US, at least not as much as, say, a teacher.
It doesn't have to be a career incident. A friend of mine, who'll have a brilliant career no doubt, had a terrible accident a year ago. He needed 2 full weeks at hospital to survive. His parents, despite being doctor and teacher, could have never afforded the cost of this operation (we are talking about hundreds of thousands here). Hadn't be welfare present, this guy wouldn't have survived, and wouldn't have produced wealth for his country for the rest of his career.
Like it or not, safet nets are useful, they are necessary.

3.
Safety nets are a necessity, sure. But why not use charity instead of welfare to give safety ents to the poor ? The answer is simple : bad distribution. Charity comes from an emotion of goodwill (which is a good thing), and this emotion is both flawed and manipulable.
[Short story] : I was once in a train shortly before the journey started. A guy comes and holds his speech like he has no job and no resources to feed his family. Clients aboard the train were relatively wealthy, and gave big coins. He exited with more than 20$ earned in 5 minutes. OTOH, I've seen just before a woman begging in the subway station, and I didn't see anybody giving to her. I was a fool too, because I gave to the train guy.[/short story]
This was an illustration on how mislead charity can be, when acting on individual level. But maybe we could trust the churches to handle it more rationally ? NO, and here is why: The irrationality of these churches will be less terrible than the individual's ones, but their allocation of funds will remained biased nonetheless. Do you think churches will give charity to well known pro-choice people ? Do you think churches will not use this help to lure the poor in their preaching ? And more importantly : how rational would be the distribution of wealth if "richer" churches have much more money than "poorer" churches ? How would Flint's church help the people of Flint, for example ?
This is why we a nationwide welfare system is the only modern tool to provide the safety net I proved the necessity above (point 2)

4.
The tricky part is : "Should this welfare system be mandatory ?". The answer is YES, and here is why. The people who will obviously profit from such a welfare system are the poorest, so they'll sign up immediately. The richest have almost everything to lose, because it is extremely unlikely they fall to the same low as the poorest anytime in their lives. The middle-class have a risk, like when signing up for an insurance : some people will have career accidents, bad luck, savings thrown out the toilet after a bad financial move, terrible disease which will cost thousands to heal, but some will not.
The natural reflex will be for these people to say "heck no ! I keep my money" (exactly like you're doing right now). It would then prove dramatic for them and their families should they have an accident their resources couldn't ever repay.
In the end, if such a system was voluntary, the poor people would be the only one signing up, and hence there wouldn't be any money to fund the safety net. It would also plunge numbers of lower-classes and middle-classes to the hell of misery because of their short term refusal to pay for it, which is bad for the society overall, and can be bad for you in particular.
For such a system to be funded and to work, it has to be compulsory.

[SKILORD]

Especially in the US, welfare recievers are the worst-off. The state never had an ambition of equating incomes like in Sweden for example, and the welfare only adressed to the very poorest.

Did, or did not, Sweden have to scale back their efforts at Welfare because they were wrecking themselves?

Feudal lords ruled ruthlessly on their serfs, who ruined themseleves and fell into famine for the sake of the lord, who considered deserving it, because Feudal lords were the military elite (the army you love so much).
Serfs had no ways to oppose the views or the power of the lord, except for some peasant revolts which always ended in bloodbath, with the peasant's victory of course.

The current poor are not the militarry elite, but they are protected by them, the poor are protected by the US far better than the rich are, meaning that if it came down between them the government would side with the poor.

The comparison between the feudal nobility and the current poor is inherently flawed. And I'm being polite. The feudal nobility concentrated all powers in its hands : financial, military, and a strong alliance with the religious power (which can be compared with today's media in terms of opinion making)

Financial power is the case i will assume I have made by the tone of this post.
Military I have said above.
Media of course.

What you see here is that all the powers have been greatly weakened over the years which is nice. I would rather they awere abolished from monopoly.

It is a well documented case that poverty is a major cause of crime and family unstability. Lone mothers are outstandingly overrepresented in the poor population : indeed, it is much harder to pay fixed charges (rent, food for children, misc.) alone than when married. To make the ends meet, these people would have to work all day, without being able to raise their children, leaving them to themselves. See my point ?

You didn't read my post on the subject, did you?


The post's tone is exasperation. It concedes defeat with it's diction and even you must realise how thin you've stretched things at some points.

Next I suppose come the personal insults.

Anyway, most is obsolete since the last few posts of mine anyway.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by SKILORD
The current poor are not the militarry elite, but they are protected by them, the poor are protected by the US far better than the rich are, meaning that if it came down between them the government would side with the poor.

I stopped reading your reply after this. If you have this kind of misconception, you are obviously living in a parallel universe, and I can't speak about a universe I don't know.

[SKILORD]

alright, we shall return to your universe.

How, exactly do you suppose a 'Peasant Revolt' of CEO's and White collar workers would go over? We try to take down the people trying to receive welfare checks what do you tink this army and police, of whom i am ever so fond, will react?