How Counterproductive Are Social Programs?

[grandpa]

This thread is another break-off type.
Join in if you want, everybody!

It started here:

Quote by: commonsense I dont have to "believe it" I lived through it! I'm surprised someone who's been around as long as you have, being a "grandpa", doesnt have the firsthand experience of having seen the moral and social devastation that our counterproductive welfare system has wrought, first upon the black community, and now the population at large.

I hate to break it to you, but that's just a screen name. Anyway, you keep saying that social programs create all these problems, but you have yet to provide an explanation. Would you rather have more homeless people, or what?

Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't need government social programs -- but let me explain myself.

The real problem is what I've been saying over and over again: It's taxation AND rent AND mortgage payments. It's forced social programs as well as private property. Until we abolish landlordism and other forms of legal monopoly, and do away with policies of eviction, foreclosure and liquidation, of course people are going to demand safety nets. If you're an average joe and get laid off from work, you'd practically have to be a complete moron to not (at least) consider applying for food stamps -- especially during an economic downturn where you might not even find a job, especially one where you can adequately support yourself (even more so if you live in a small town where jobs are quite scarce, as I do). It's not an ideological matter, even. You do what you have to in order to survive.
If we really want to reduce tensions in the world, and in our neighborhoods, we'll seek the total abolition of authority, whether they're government bureacrats, bankers, or other land-grabbers.

Grandpa h.

[tengers]

Grandpa, perhaps you could explain how your system works. The system that we have now uses real estate property as the source of primary wealth in the nation. That property is exchanged to a buyer for a stream of payments. Would your idea be to sieze all property and somehow distribute it as they attempted in South Africa.

[Conan]

social programs are unproductive in the way they encourage people to stay helpless, and not better themselves.

[nerdvincent]

Quote by: tengers Grandpa, perhaps you could explain how your system works. The system that we have now uses real estate property as the source of primary wealth in the nation. That property is exchanged to a buyer for a stream of payments. Would your idea be to sieze all property and somehow distribute it as they attempted in South Africa.

Re-distribute it? Not really, that sounds like the Soviet version of communism we libertarian commie want to avoid. The land and the means of productions aren't "re-distributed", which implies that a power in place (easily corrupted) determines how it should be distributed.
And in South Africa, after the land has been redistributed the capitalist system I explain below took place. They just put the accumulation of capital to 0 so that it can start anew, whereas we want it to stop.

Here is what we think: you own the product of your work. Imagine a coal mine in a town: the mine is no-one's property, the guys are paid according to the coal extracted, and if coal worth 50$/ton, the worker will be paid 50$ per ton extracted minus the cost of production and maintenance (fuel used...). There is no "capitalist taxation" as in the exemple below.

Today what is happening: the mine is the investors', the workers are paid 20$ per-hour (they assimilate the worker to be a machine which costs 20$/hour to run, that is that the 20$ are part of the cost of production). If the workers extract a ton of coal in one hour, the worker will be paid 20$, the owners will sell it 50$ and they will put the 30$ left in their pocket (minus the cost of maintenance...) not because they worked for it, but because it's their mine. That "private property".

[nerdvincent]

Quote by: Fallen Angel social programs are unproductive in the way they encourage people to stay helpless, and not better themselves.

Oh yeah, I got it! Universal health care encourage people to stay sick!
Frankly...

Economic crisis was caused by capitalists, and workers should be the ones to better themselves? Or was the recent increasing of unemployement caused by people refusing to better themselves?




Here is a homemade story for you:

A dude worked at medium-low wage in the car industry for 25 years. He is now 48, one kid to feed, the other struggling of its own to pay college. He managed to live well-enough until his compagny started to lay off people. Paf.
He'll survive with the money he spared for his retirement, and in the current context it can be for months. He has been denied a loan to buy his house two years ago, and he now consider himself happy when he thinks about what happened to his brother Robert who took subprime to pay his house.
Tomorow he'll learn a bad new: his wife has a breast cancer. No job, no extra-money, and most of all no health care insurance. He'll pay her treatment sporadically for 3 months before she will be considered medically desperate. His wife will die 4 months latter at home, and the guy will have to work his *ss off as a janitor until his death at 71 because when the car industry started to hire he was considered too old with his 53 years of McDonalds and root beer.

Now tell me, where do you see room to "better yourself"? As a matter of fact, the only room you can get in a capitalist system is through social policies. I'd like not to need them, and we true socialist are working so that we won't need them anymore.

Parrallel story: his only kid left, the eldest being dead in Iraq to pay his study, started selling dope down the block shortly after his mother died. He was 19 when he went in jail, and he will come out at 26, only with his high school diploma and his balls. Luckily, the car industry started hiring people and...

[talksalotatu]

Quote by: Fallen Angel social programs are unproductive in the way they encourage people to stay helpless, and not better themselves.

The largest social program in the US is Social Security. It has been the most successful program as well.

Before SS was begun in 1935, young couples trying to raise families in the worst of times were also saddled with parents too or ill to hold a job if they could find it.
It was a burden President Franklin Roosevelt saw as to large to bear, and therefore, bad for the country because it prevented any advancement by too many people.

As a person of advanced years, I remember those times. SS has worked and would work better if we had a healthcare system that was both fair to all and monitored to the penny. Medicare is rife with overspending and that's why it is in trouble. ?

[tengers]

Nerdvincent, your evaluation of the way things work is similar to the way Native Americans operated. In their case, no one owned the Earth, and the idea was foreign to them. They did reserve hunting areas for their tribe and defended these territories. In the case of South American tribes, they operated mines and built cities. This concept worked for Native American Indians because they built no permanent structures and simply lived off the land. No let's say we build a ship or an airliner, who owns it, the person who paid all the workers to build it or the workers. Let's further say, someone builds a farm, who owns it and when that person passes on, who gets it? That is how property laws began.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: tengers Grandpa, perhaps you could explain how your system works. The system that we have now uses real estate property as the source of primary wealth in the nation. That property is exchanged to a buyer for a stream of payments. Would your idea be to sieze all property and somehow distribute it as they attempted in South Africa.

It is not necessary to seize all property.
The government can invest in the housing industry in other ways. By offering rental accommodation for emergency and those below the poverty line.
Toughening up on restrictions that landlords must operate under and ensuring fair contracts between landlords and tenets.
Regulate zoning laws and promote future planning in building designs.

There are plenty of positive ways that government can give welfare assistance.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: Fallen Angel social programs are unproductive in the way they encourage people to stay helpless, and not better themselves.

This might sound a bit obvious, but, wouldn't it be a good idea to change the social programs to ones that would encourage people to better themselves?

[rmnunez]

It would be wonderful if social programs could be changed so they encouraged people to better themselves. There are 2 schools of thought on this; the lefty perspective is to make the programs larger, more generously endowed and profligate, to expand their services and those covered. The alternate approach is the opposite, to abbreviate the assistance offered, make it very temporary and reduce the amounts and coverage with the aim to encourage recipients to get off the dole as soon as possible.

[MyApologies]

Quote by: talksalotatu The largest social program in the US is Social Security. It has been the most successful program as well. Before SS was begun in 1935, young couples trying to raise families in the worst of times were also saddled with parents too or ill to hold a job if they could find it. It was a burden President Franklin Roosevelt saw as to large to bear, and therefore, bad for the country because it prevented any advancement by too many people. As a person of advanced years, I remember those times. SS has worked and would work better if we had a healthcare system that was both fair to all and monitored to the penny. Medicare is rife with overspending and that's why it is in trouble. ?

Social Security is horrible, I'm surprised no one is calling you out on this post. You realize its going to fail in a few years right?
Recession Puts a Major Strain On Social Security Trust Fund - washingtonpost.com
Additionally, welfare systems are used to insight riots. The Cloward-Pivon strategy is being employed currently, they're going to crash the system and screw people until their is violence on the streets. Then martial law.

Social Security is, by all definitions, a massive ponzi scheme.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: rmnunez It would be wonderful if social programs could be changed so they encouraged people to better themselves. There are 2 schools of thought on this; the lefty perspective is to make the programs larger, more generously endowed and profligate, to expand their services and those covered. .

Strawman or just ignorant, not sure which.

The point of the lefty is to encourage transparency in the way programs are run. If they can show tangible evidence of improving the situation then fund them , otherwise get rid of them.
The lefty agenda is to amke sure government cannot get away with underhanded tricks like trying to shuffle the problem away without really doing anything about it as your alternative suggests.

The alternate approach is the opposite, to abbreviate the assistance offered, make it very temporary and reduce the amounts and coverage with the aim to encourage recipients to get off the dole as soon as possible

[grandpa]

Quote by: MyApologies Social Security is horrible, I'm surprised no one is calling you out on this post. You realize its going to fail in a few years right?

What you call "horrible" is one of the most practical, reasonable functions our government has taken upon itself. Sure it's a "scheme," and I can certainly find valid criticisms for it. But the idea that welfare is intended to cause riots is pretty ludicrous. If anything it's intended for the opposite effect. In fact, last time I checked, welfare programs are a very small part of the national budget.

There's no reason any social program "has to" fail. That depends on how policies are carried out, and the ideologies which govern a given population.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: SoylentGreen Strawman or just ignorant, not sure which. The point of the lefty is to encourage transparency in the way programs are run.

I was watching FOX News this morning and, as I predicted, their only response to the G20 protesters was to encourage viewers to not listen to them. That's the way FOX News -- and state-capitalist ideologues in general -- want our global institutions to function (or not function, depending on one's view). It reveals their contempt for an impartial viewer's quest for truth, and for the basic standards of journalism; standards which include elaborating extensively on alternate points of view.

Grandpa h.

[MyApologies]

Quote by: grandpa What you call "horrible" is one of the most practical, reasonable functions our government has taken upon itself. Sure it's a "scheme," and I can certainly find valid criticisms for it. But the idea that welfare is intended to cause riots is pretty ludicrous. If anything it's intended for the opposite effect. In fact, last time I checked, welfare programs are a very small part of the national budget. There's no reason any social program "has to" fail. That depends on how policies are carried out, and the ideologies which govern a given population. Grandpa h.

It isn't intended to insight riots, it can be exploited and is exploited to cause riots. I think social safety nets are a good idea within reason, but Social Security comes with a very expensive risk we might soon face.

[grandpa]

Quote by: MyApologies It isn't intended to insight riots, it can be exploited and is exploited to cause riots. I think social safety nets are a good idea within reason, but Social Security comes with a very expensive risk we might soon face.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Exploitation is what inspires the riots. I hardly doubt that is the aim, aside from perhaps the prison industry.

Grandpa h.

[barts]

"Social programs" is a very imprecise and very general term. What social programs exactly are not supposed to work? If a particular social program doesn't work or doesn't work as intended, let's find out why. But let's first define "social program" and identify the the problem ones.

To blindly say social programs work or don't work is simply expressions of faith.

[tengers]

Quote by: MyApologies Social Security is horrible, I'm surprised no one is calling you out on this post. You realize its going to fail in a few years right? Recession Puts a Major Strain On Social Security Trust Fund - washingtonpost.com Additionally, welfare systems are used to insight riots. The Cloward-Pivon strategy is being employed currently, they're going to crash the system and screw people until their is violence on the streets. Then martial law. Social Security is, by all definitions, a massive ponzi scheme.

Social Security is not actually insolvent. The problem with it is that the Government uses the collection of SS taxes for other purposes, such as building bombers or whatever. There is no trust fund, per se, the collections for SS exceed the payouts and have for many years. If there was a trust fund, there would be a huge amount in it. Last time I looked collections exceeded payouts bu a 100 Billion or so.

[grandpa]

Quote by: tengers Social Security is not actually insolvent. The problem with it is that the Government uses the collection of SS taxes for other purposes, such as building bombers or whatever.

In other words, its very purpose is up in the air (no pun intended with the bomber statement). That strikes me as a valid consideration.

Grandpa h.

[rmnunez]

Its not true the Government uses SS taxes for other purposes, the Government must allocate for SS expenditures first and then craft a budget from what is left. SS taxes are simply inadequate to cover SS expenditures and this is mostly due to people living longer.