What about the stupid?

[Hard Truth]

I never was for free trade when it didn't make other countries live up to our environmental standards and at least impose some fair wage restrictions on them but the reality is we are competing with the rest of the world now and they work cheap so our wages have to at least moderate or we will have no production whatsoever.

To a reasonable degree, I agree. We are unlikely to ever return to the days when a relatively untrained (or employer trained) factory worker can live an middle to upper middle class lifestyle, with a non-revenue generating wife. On the other hand, we have cheap electronics to distract, enlighten or connect us, depending on how we use them.

 

[vesper]

Whatever they believed individually is irrelevant. The federal government has no business taking money from me through the threat of use of force to give it to you.

If you want to start a charity just make sure the name you choose does not include "patriot' or Tea" or "911"... Try something like "Forward", or "Progress"..

I'm beginning to wonder if there was a picture next to the definition of hard-hearted, if it would be you.

Something you need to address are the different types of people who find themselves in dire straits of no making of their own versus the habitual abuser of entitlements.

Like you, I am tired of being raped by those who do not understand the meaning of personal responsibility. But there are those in our society that are not moochers, that do feel as long as they can survive with what they have will deplete all their personal resources before even asking for help. For those folks do you say, piss off? These are the people that would be more than willing to work if they had an opportunity to do so.

You are not going to get any disagreement from me that we are now living in a welfare state where those who actually work for a living and successful are being punished for it. They have become the serfs of those who don't carry their fair share in society and amount to moochers. Somehow they have justified because of their poor choices they are still entitled to special benefits to aid in their feckless choices at the expense of those who have put blood sweat and tears into their success. It is like the high school student that did not take advantage of the free education he was offered and opted to drop out. Then he finds out he can't get a decent paying job. Surprise!!! But then that yahoo will demand the one that put his life on hold for 4-8-12 years to achieve a degree that allotted him a road to success will demand the successful one to pay more so he can collect benefits that he/she did not earn. It's insane.

 

[Hard Truth]

For example, if your statement is true that people typically are doing okay, then temporarily not doing okay and thus use welfare, and then are doing okay again, how does that temporary assistance affect the society's belief over time about the government's role in their lives? The answer is that they learn to expect that government will cushion them whenever they hit a rough patch, hence it reduces the incentive to plan and save. This belief that we deserve to be rescued is fostered by government "help" over time. Why else would we have such foaming-at-the-mouth dissatisfaction about our situations despite there being larger nominal outlays for welfare currently than there ever were before in all of history? Because society is learning to become dependent on government.

Two questions right back atcha:
1) Should people naturally be motivated to live below their means, financially plan, and save?
2) Would people be more motivated to do this, or less so, if they knew nothing would be there to bail them out should they fail to do this?

Those are complicted questions. I understand the risk of dependency when people are given asistance. Yes, usually it is best if people live within their means and didn´t expect that others would help them when they didn´t have enough. On the other hand that can result in a hard, unrewarding life if people feel like they can´t take risks and are stuck within their limited circumstances. Most of us benefit from the assistance we get from our family when we are young adults. Without help from my parents I´m not sure I would have made it through college, an experience that help me develop skills, knowledge and better work habits which made me a productive tax payer. I´ve been poor and I´ve been well-off and I try not to forget that doing things like saving your money and going without luxuries is a lot easier said than done. When you are poor you feel like there may not be a tomorrow and

Many conservatives tend to minimize the help they get from their family and government and think that they alone are responsible for any success they have. A 100% self made person is very rare. We all depend on our government provided education, the roads, the laws and enforcement that make a civilized life possible. It is easy to see what happens when governments fall apart or doesn´t do enough in places like Somalia, India. I just finished a good book on Europe in the immediate aftermath of WWII, The Savage Continent The continent was rife with ethnic conflicts, violence, theft, starvation, rape and all sorts of coercion by those with the means. Despite some people´s fantasies, a couple of guns will not save you from an angry mob intent on destroying or removing you because you are the wrong ethnicity. Some of the most civilized people in the world acted like the people of Somalia or Iraq when the structure of their society fell apart. The comfortable, prosperous life we are used to in the USA is not possible without providing assistance to the people on the bottom and providing services and amenities for all.

The dangers of government assistance need to be addressed better to avoid the pitfalls you describe, but the idea that we can have a good society without taking care of those in need is a fantasy. There are no examples of a place where that has worked in the modern world.

Back to the original intention of theis thread, it is the responsibilty of employers of full-time workers to provide adequate pay to their employees, not taxpayers and the government. If we required that, we could greatly reduce the overall cost of providing assistance. Yes, we would pay more for goods and services, but the extra cost will be going to the workers who earned it.

Another note- another factor in some of these disgareements is that the whole concept of preparing and saving for the future makes me sense in climates with severe winters. In places with warm weather all year round there is much less need to do that. The world´s cultures are different due to their differing circumstances of climate. This needs to be taken into consideration when trying t change a group of people´s behavior.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Many conservatives tend to minimize the help they get from their family and government and think that they alone are responsible for any success they have. A 100% self made person is very rare. We all depend on our government provided education, the roads, the laws and enforcement that make a civilized life possible.

Providing for economic infrastructure like you mention is inherently different than providing for individual adults' food, shelter and other needs.

It is easy to see what happens when governments fall apart or doesn´t do enough in places like Somalia, India.

Somalia was a communist government that fell apart, for the record.

The comfortable, prosperous life we are used to in the USA is not possible without providing assistance to the people on the bottom and providing services and amenities for all.

This is your opinion and I think it is a misattribution.

The dangers of government assistance need to be addressed better to avoid the pitfalls you describe, but the idea that we can have a good society without taking care of those in need is a fantasy. There are no examples of a place where that has worked in the modern world.

People who truly need to be taken care of (i.e. they cannot be their own legal guardians) should benefit from statutory procedures in place to have guardians assigned. I have never suggested otherwise. This is how we take care of the needy. People we regard as autonomous adults, on the other hand, inherently do not need to be taken care of. They are not children or legal dependents. They are adults, therefore it is their responsibility to take care of themselves.

Back to the original intention of theis thread, it is the responsibilty of employers of full-time workers to provide adequate pay to their employees, not taxpayers and the government.

You are wrong; it is not anyone's responsibility to make sure the pay is "adequate," because "adequate" is subjective and the person accepting the wage in exchange for the labor has the responsibility to make his or her own decision. The employer and employee agree to the terms of a trade, and that's that. The employer has a responsibility to pay the wage he agreed to pay, and the worker has a responsibility to complete the job duties if he expects to get paid. That's how contracts work.

 

[Misterveritis]

I'm beginning to wonder if there was a picture next to the definition of hard-hearted, if it would be you.

Maybe. More likely you would see the image of a Constitutionalist. Governments should never be in the charity business. Governments have no business stealing from me in order to give to you. It damages me. It damages you and it corrupts the politician.

Something you need to address are the different types of people who find themselves in dire straits of no making of their own versus the habitual abuser of entitlements.

Why do you believe *I* need to address is something you believe is a problem?

Like you, I am tired of being raped by those who do not understand the meaning of personal responsibility. But

It did not take long for the "butt" monkey to show itself. Once that little word "but" shows up it invalidates all that comes before it. It took one sentence to find a reason acceptable to you for the state to plunder me. People who have problems are not the state's problem. A state that takes from me for such false reasons is no longer legitimate. It serves as an instrument of theft.

there are those in our society that are not moochers, that do feel as long as they can survive with what they have will deplete all their personal resources before even asking for help. For those folks do you say, piss off? These are the people that would be more than willing to work if they had an opportunity to do so.

You are not going to get any disagreement from me that we are now living in a welfare state where those who actually work for a living and successful are being punished for it. They have become the serfs of those who don't carry their fair share in society and amount to moochers. Somehow they have justified because of their poor choices they are still entitled to special benefits to aid in their feckless choices at the expense of those who have put blood sweat and tears into their success. It is like the high school student that did not take advantage of the free education he was offered and opted to drop out. Then he finds out he can't get a decent paying job. Surprise!!! But then that yahoo will demand the one that put his life on hold for 4-8-12 years to achieve a degree that allotted him a road to success will demand the successful one to pay more so he can collect benefits that he/she did not earn. It's insane.

 

[vesper]

It did not take long for the "butt" monkey to show itself.

 

[MarineTpartier]

I almost agree with this, but have one exception with your view - those that are truely disabled, physically or mentally still deserve life, liberty (as much as is possible) and to persue happiness with gov't assistance.

Concur. The message lost on many libertarian types is that if they (Im generalizing) would give more money to charity and concentrate more on community, then we wouldn't need the gubment to take care of everything. I wish the libertarian/conservative/Tea Party types would make a push for that. More charity, more community. We don't need the Romney's of the world, with a car elevator in their 5th home, preaching to us about not letting the gov't take our money. Uncharitable idiots like him are the ones that give libs/socialists/commies/etc the ammo they need to try and take our money. Meanwhile said lib/socialist/commie types are giving even less to charity than guys like Romney. Check out Biden's charitable donations. Oh yeah, there are none. He cares about the poor though......

 

[ReformCollege]

This is a question primarily addressed to conservatives and libertarians:

The arguments opposing unionization, living wages, minimum wages, minimum wage increases and government benefits for the working poor are primarily based on the argument that the lowest wage working poor deserve to be paid poorly because they have not made an effort to increase their education and/or skills. What out people who do not have the mental capacity for higher level jobs? I am not referring to the mentally or developmentally disabled, but the people at the lower end of average intelligence.

What kind of life are those lower intelligence, relatively unskilled workers entitled to when they work full time?

Should they be able to afford their own apartment, quality food, a car, health care, to raise children?

If they deserve more than a minimum wage can provide, should they be required to move to a less expensive region?

Should they go to private charities for support rather than get government benefits such as food stamps?

Is there a limit to how little an employer can pay such a person before it is immoral exploitation?

Is there a limit to how little an employer can pay such a person before it should be illegal exploitation?

Would your answers be the same if the obstacle to obtaining more skills/education are not intelligence, but other circumstances such as having children to raise?

Would your answers be the same if the reason that the worker hasn't obtained more skills/education is that they have other life priorities (i.e. working on their acting career), or they just don't want to( fearful or lazy)?

If these different types of unskilled workers (the unintelligent, the life circumstance and the lazy/other priorities) should be treated differently, what mechanism/laws should be used to create these divisions and allow for different treatment of the three types?

I didn't realize anyone is entitled to anything.

 

[ReformCollege]

Would I be wrong in thinking that your political philosophy simply doesn't care what happens to poor people and that you feel that only private charities and individuals should be empowered to help them? Apparently you also feel that it is OK to exploit workers with excessively low pay and there should be no legal limit to such exploitation, correct?

Exploitation..... hahah. Apparently you didn't get the memo that Marx ideology was a miserable failure.

 

[Hard Truth]

Exploitation..... hahah. Apparently you didn't get the memo that Marx ideology was a miserable failure.

The word exploitation existed long before Marx and will exist long after. Apparently some people think that exploitation doesn´t exist or that it isn´t wrong. I think those people may be sociopaths.

 

[ReformCollege]

The word exploitation existed long before Marx and will exist long after. Apparently some people think that exploitation doesn´t exist or that it isn´t wrong. I think those people may be sociopaths.

Exploitation as a word has been whored by the Marxists, who want to apply the world to even mutually beneficial agreements that they deem "unfair" from their ivory tower.

 

[RabidAlpaca]

The word exploitation existed long before Marx and will exist long after. Apparently some people think that exploitation doesn´t exist or that it isn´t wrong. I think those people may be sociopaths.

The standard of living for the poor has never in the history of mankind been better than it has been with capitalism.

 

[Hard Truth]

The standard of living for the poor has never in the history of mankind been better than it has been with capitalism.

That doesn´t mean it´s good enough and it won´t be good enough until everyone has adequate food, shelter, clothing and access to education and transportation.

I am not anti-capitalist, I am pro-regulated capitalism with some services provided by a representational democractic government.

 

[Hard Truth]

It seems that many among us from the libertarian/conservative side believe that all employment except for slavery is a simple matter to be negotiated by the employer and employee with no regulation and that this qualifies as fair to both parties. Logically this would also include immigrants from anywhere in the world, including the poorest locales. Immigration laws restricting the employer´s right to find the best value in employees violate these free market principals, right?

 

[Hard Truth]

Well?