We are products of our environment.

• majorspark

  

  O-Trap;1492165 wrote:There is more to this than people realize. I don't excuse the kid for not doing what he knows he's supposed to do or for doing what he knows he's not supposed to do, but it's surprising how many young people I've met in recent years who grow up in a similar kind of situation who have no concept of the value of high school, let alone college. And I don't mean that they demonstrate this with their actions. I mean they even articulate it.
  
  I always used to assume that it was "common sense" (a logical fallacy on my part), but it only seemed that way to me because I'd not only been told it by people whose opinions I respected, but also because I saw it play out in the lives of people around me.
  
  Remove those elements from the equation and replace them with people preaching the gospel of government assistance being option #1 (yes, it is common, just more out of ignorance than laziness) and with THAT being the example that is demonstrated by others in their lives who they perceive to be "successful," and it's no wonder they pursue the paths they do.
  
  I honestly wish more of the people who complain about people on the government tit would spend some time trying to fix that problem, which honestly can be as simple as putting together a presentation for kids at an inner-city center or school and talking to said institution and explaining that you want to help educate kids on the benefits of a good education and why being smart is cool.

  I quoted this because I did not want to create a further discussion in the meme thread. But I thought you made some great points here. And I agree with most of them. We all hear the stories of those that have risen from poverty to achieve personal success and sometimes accumulating large amounts of personal wealth in the process.
  
  Those not having figures in their life instilling a solid work ethic and life goals can have a devastating affect on an individual. The poor of the past had to rely more on a family and local community structure rather than big government assistance programs. Today that is not as much the case. Kids are brought up by parents, guardians, or influential figures in their life that are on the doles. Not to mention the home life is often broken with the naturally desired male nurturing bond any young man needs is absent and replaced at times by violent gangs or malcontents.
  
  But in the past you had individuals like Al Capone a white guy with a "family" structure foregoing education and entering the thug life as a youth and becoming "successful" at it as an adult. I know there are exceptions and this case it is an example of a personal family failure. I would have to check statistics but common sense tells me a solid family structure with working individuals providing for their family produces the best results. I believe the current welfare state is detrimental to that. Families fail on a small scale (the smallest structural units in society) and produce a limited environment of failure. Where as government especially at a large scale can produce exponential failure. Its not a race thing as much as a systematic failure of government to want to hold their citizens personally accountable in exchange for receiving gubmint "gifts". Its a hard sell on the campaign trail.
  
  Leaving my constitutional convictions aside. If we are going to have large scale government assistance for the p00rz like Boatshoes says (especially if it evolves into perpetuity) why not replace the welfare state with a working state? That sounds scary (hammer and sickle like). But would the left ever compromise with the right, dismantle the welfare state, and force those able bodied p00rz's that take assistance from the state and attempt to avoid the work provided them (the lazy) from receiving any assistance? What about the children? I doubt leftist bleeding hearts could stomach it. No doubt the rugged individualist on the right would resist state funded work. But I am not so sure as many seem to be on board with drug testing as a condition for receiving state assistance. Requiring work as a condition is not all that removed from that. One would think they could be convinced with reasonable leadership. On the left maybe it should not be such a hard sell either as the "lazy" and "takers" are supposedly few and claimed to be falsely labeled by right as the ever growing 51% leeching off the producers.
  
  Anyways like Jmog said its a pipe dream.
• believer

  

  O-Trap;1492165 wrote:I honestly wish more of the people who complain about people on the government tit would spend some time trying to fix that problem, which honestly can be as simple as putting together a presentation for kids at an inner-city center or school and talking to said institution and explaining that you want to help educate kids on the benefits of a good education and why being smart is cool.

  I honestly wish the people who present inner-city kids to the government tit as way of life would just stop so those of us who actually work and pay the taxes that make that tit possible would not have to feel the need to educate the kids on the moral common-sense of earning your own living rather than expecting to sponge off the labor of others to sustain a lazy lifestyle.
• HitsRus

  

  I wish O-trap's suggestion stood a snowball's chance in hell of working, but really such attempts are are whispers in a windstorm. There's no substitute for good parental role models. The best chance to impact disadvantaged youth would be thru volutnteering in 'big brother' type programs where you can actually get significant face and interactive time.
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1492245 wrote:. I would have to check statistics but common sense tells me a solid family structure with working individuals providing for their family produces the best results. I believe the current welfare state is detrimental to that.

  We cannot have our capitalism w/o a buffer stock to control inflation. Involuntary widespread Unemployment as we know it did not exist prior to the implementation of capitalist economies wherein people produce things to obtain money which they then use to obtain other goods and services, etc. Currently we have a buffer stock of unemployed masses. Ironically, this was Marx's critique of capitalism and then neo-classical economists accepted it as reality w/ the acceptance of the NAIRU.
  
  The current welfare state was designed during the golden age of capitalism when we thought we just needed to alleviate the poverty of the unemployed and underemployed and eventually, in a short period of time, they would be absorbed into the private sector and maybe even join a union and lead productive employed lives.
  
  It's not hard to understand the reasoning at the time for shunning the WPA in favor of supposed temporary poverty alleviation etc. We had decades of unprecedented growth and prosperity. That turned out to be a miserable failure. Sure, we alleviated poverty a lot but we really just made our unemployment buffer stock larger and more ineffective when the golden age of capitalism ended. Private charity is just as bad btw IMHO. A church handing out food is just as degrading and harmful to the labor supply over the long run as a SNAP card or a "welfare" check.
  
  We made the same mistake in the prosperous 90's when we eliminated "welfare" in favor of TANF w/ work requirements. The work requirement is useless when there aren't enough jobs!
  
  Mitt Romney was right when he said that everybody deserves the dignity of work...but the problem is that monetary capitalism simply doesn't permanently provide it to everyone on its own. It never has and it never will. The lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. was like 1.4% in 1944 during the greatest example of collective action in our history.
  
  a buffer stock of unemployed labor is an ineffective labor reserve...it's like a buffer stock of butter that you don't keep cold and let rot. The private sector does not readily absorb unemployed workers and there is always going to be unemployed workers in capitalism who can't find a buyer for their labor.
  
  So what should our buffer stock be? a reserve army of people w/o private sector jobs proving that they're capable of working, showing up on time, putting on a uniform and doing so to provide public services in our communities that are not profitable for private sector capitalists to provide...or a bunch of unemployed workers getting paid to surf the internet and apply for private sector jobs that will not hire them??
  
  Our Armed forces have a Ready Reserve...why shouldn't the rest of our economy??? Why do our businesses have to settle for an ineffective buffer stock of unemployed workers that they can't know for sure can work and have to deal with poaching from other employers???
  
  We can end all the stigmatization and demagoguery of people who are unemployed and use social insurance....we can eliminate any so-called moochers and we can provide our businesses with a ready reserve of employable people.
• ernest_t_bass

  

  I like your idea of working to receive compensation. In order to pick up their welfare check, they must go get a work ticket. Do "X" amount of hours of work, and you will receive your welfare check.
• BoatShoes

  ernest_t_bass;1492392 wrote:I like your idea of working to receive compensation. In order to pick up their welfare check, they must go get a work ticket. Do "X" amount of hours of work, and you will receive your welfare check.

  It shouldn't even be looked at in that manner. It is a public service job offer at some minimum wage below the private sector minimum wage just like the Navy Reserve is a public service job offer. Why would we want to stigmatize these folks by still calling it a "welfare check" considering the way in which "welfare" has been stigmatized in our society?
• ernest_t_bass

  

  BoatShoes;1492411 wrote:It shouldn't even be looked at in that manner. It is a public service job offer at some minimum wage below the private sector minimum wage just like the Navy Reserve is a public service job offer. Why would we want to stigmatize these folks by still calling it a "welfare check" considering the way in which "welfare" has been stigmatized in our society?

  I just think there should be jobs available if someone wants the $$$, in replacement of a "hand out." Let them "earn" the money that their receiving. "Clean up the town." Keep the town looking clean, and you're compensating people for doing it.
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1492245 wrote:Leaving my constitutional convictions aside. If we are going to have large scale government assistance for the p00rz like Boatshoes says (especially if it evolves into perpetuity) why not replace the welfare state with a working state? That sounds scary (hammer and sickle like). But would the left ever compromise with the right, dismantle the welfare state, and force those able bodied p00rz's that take assistance from the state and attempt to avoid the work provided them (the lazy) from receiving any assistance? What about the children? I doubt leftist bleeding hearts could stomach it. No doubt the rugged individualist on the right would resist state funded work. But I am not so sure as many seem to be on board with drug testing as a condition for receiving state assistance. Requiring work as a condition is not all that removed from that. One would think they could be convinced with reasonable leadership. On the left maybe it should not be such a hard sell either as the "lazy" and "takers" are supposedly few and claimed to be falsely labeled by right as the ever growing 51% leeching off the producers.
  
  Anyways like Jmog said its a pipe dream.

  To answer your particular questions as a liberal...obviously I can't speak for all liberals.
  
  I wouldn't force able bodied unemployed to take the Public Service Job. I would have an open public service job offer to everyone willing and able to work. If they do not accept the offer, they get nothing. I think there are less people that want to mooch than we all think. I think given the instability of private sector employment for low marginal product workers...more are driven onto the dole, etc. than would be in this type of scenario.
  
  If we have some scenario where you have the supposed welfare queen with 5 children frothing at the mouth due to the dole ending and refusing to accept the offer and letting her children starve....she should have them taken away and eventually she will come around if she wants to eat. I'm skeptical this type of thing would go down much but it would be what it is. It is better than the alternative.
  
  I'm open to some type of program wherein married-motherhood would qualify for some form of the regulated job guarantee.
  
  I think rugged individualists would be more open to it than you'd think...what kills unemployed conservatives is having to take unemployment insurance. I've known of conservative friends who've cried at the thought when they were unemployed.
  
  Lots of conservatives become low paid E-1's in the military. Why should this be any different? They serve their country honorably in exchange for a monetary consideration. Way better than the alternative of facing the prospect of having to get by on food stamps and unemployment checks.
  
  I also think it is wholly constitutional. The congress has the power to spend. Additionally it's a valid regulation of interstate commerce because it's just a change in the buffer stock we already use to regulate interstate commerce. It could be federally financed and locally administered.
  
  Non-profits could even get in on it like the Cleveland Downtown Alliance...and you could even have local firms buy some of the labor in an auction...craigslist auctionized.
  
  I honestly think at the end of the day conservatives and liberals could come together on this. Liberals oppose cuts to great society programs because there's nothing to replace it....republicans want to cut them because they think they create dependency.
• BoatShoes

  ernest_t_bass;1492414 wrote:I just think there should be jobs available if someone wants the $$$, in replacement of a "hand out." Let them "earn" the money that their receiving. "Clean up the town." Keep the town looking clean, and you're compensating people for doing it.

  I agree. But I think you want to avoid any stigmatization of it so that proud individuals like conservative rugged individualists don't look down on it.
• O-Trap

  

  believer;1492258 wrote:I honestly wish the people who present inner-city kids to the government tit as way of life would just stop so those of us who actually work and pay the taxes that make that tit possible would not have to feel the need to educate the kids on the moral common-sense of earning your own living rather than expecting to sponge off the labor of others to sustain a lazy lifestyle.

  Those people who present it that way likely had it presented to themselves that way. At least, that seems to be the common thread in the day-to-day I see.
  
  As I said, a lot of them genuinely aren't lazy, as they're going out doing odd-jobs somewhat regularly, getting paid WAY less than they could be at a job. They just don't get it.
  
  The common conception seems to be that people who collect government benefits sit on their asses all day, eating junk food and watching bad television. Don't get me wrong. It happens, but of those I know on such assistance, I'd say less than a quarter of them fit that stereotype. Most I know have part-time jobs or low-wage full-time jobs. So why don't they get better ones? A LOT of them dropped out of high school.
  
  Now school isn't hard. Hell, this is Akron North territory. The schooling itself is almost so easy it ceases to be effective in actually "educating." But kids' parents/aunts/uncles/neighbors/etc. (insert someone they admire or respect) often have dropped out of school, and they never hear the value of the education, because a lot of people around them don't have one, so they can't speak on the virtues of it from experience.
  
  Those who "present" them to the assistance programs really are just people who had it presented to them, so they don't really know the value of the alternative.
  
  And seriously, what makes it such a hassle giving some time to others in society. I daresay that hand-up charity is probably the best kind one can give.
• O-Trap

  

  HitsRus;1492303 wrote:I wish O-trap's suggestion stood a snowball's chance in hell of working, but really such attempts are are whispers in a windstorm. There's no substitute for good parental role models. The best chance to impact disadvantaged youth would be thru volutnteering in 'big brother' type programs where you can actually get significant face and interactive time.

  I'd say they're only whispers in a windstorm because so few people do it. The more people do it, the less of a whisper it becomes.
  
  However, I agree that long-term relationships cannot be replaced by one-off classes or testimonials.
• O-Trap

  

  BoatShoes;1492411 wrote:It shouldn't even be looked at in that manner. It is a public service job offer at some minimum wage below the private sector minimum wage just like the Navy Reserve is a public service job offer. Why would we want to stigmatize these folks by still calling it a "welfare check" considering the way in which "welfare" has been stigmatized in our society?

  ... I'm speechless ...
  
  I think this would be a FANTASTIC model to be run at the local level.
  
  Pretty sure hell has frozen over.
• majorspark

  

  O-Trap;1492762 wrote:Those people who present it that way likely had it presented to themselves that way. At least, that seems to be the common thread in the day-to-day I see.
  
  As I said, a lot of them genuinely aren't lazy, as they're going out doing odd-jobs somewhat regularly, getting paid WAY less than they could be at a job. They just don't get it.
  
  The common conception seems to be that people who collect government benefits sit on their asses all day, eating junk food and watching bad television. Don't get me wrong. It happens, but of those I know on such assistance, I'd say less than a quarter of them fit that stereotype.

  I agree. And that percentage will naturally increase over generations. That is my point over time individuals will adapt to their environment.
• majorspark

  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:I wouldn't force able bodied unemployed to take the Public Service Job. I would have an open public service job offer to everyone willing and able to work. If they do not accept the offer, they get nothing. I think there are less people that want to mooch than we all think. I think given the instability of private sector employment for low marginal product workers...more are driven onto the dole, etc. than would be in this type of scenario.
  
  If we have some scenario where you have the supposed welfare queen with 5 children frothing at the mouth due to the dole ending and refusing to accept the offer and letting her children starve....she should have them taken away and eventually she will come around if she wants to eat. I'm skeptical this type of thing would go down much but it would be what it is. It is better than the alternative.

  The problem is this scenario would be demagogued to the nth degree by the left. Taking kid's and starving mothers... I can only imagine the political ads that would ensue. They would make the ad of Paul Ryan wheeling grandma off the cliff look like an act of generosity.
  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:I'm open to some type of program wherein married-motherhood would qualify for some form of the regulated job guarantee.

  
  
  Well this opens up a can of worms. What about married-fatherhood? What if two dudes are "married"? What to do if in a state two males or two females are not considered married?
  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:I think rugged individualists would be more open to it than you'd think...what kills unemployed conservatives is having to take unemployment insurance. I've known of conservative friends who've cried at the thought when they were unemployed.
  
  Lots of conservatives become low paid E-1's in the military. Why should this be any different? They serve their country honorably in exchange for a monetary consideration. Way better than the alternative of facing the prospect of having to get by on food stamps and unemployment checks.

  Maybe because under article 1 section 8 congress has the power to raise and support armies.
  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:I also think it is wholly constitutional. The congress has the power to spend.

  
  
  Congress does, but not without limit. You just segregate the first clause, pick and choose the middle and bastardize the last. I have always loved the irony when you hump the enumerated power contained in the "coin money" clause.
  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:Additionally it's a valid regulation of interstate commerce because it's just a change in the buffer stock we already use to regulate interstate commerce. It could be federally financed and locally administered.

  
  
  We all know what federally financed and locally administered means. The locals place their balls in the hands of Uncle Sam.
  

  BoatShoes;1492446 wrote:I honestly think at the end of the day conservatives and liberals could come together on this. Liberals oppose cuts to great society programs because there's nothing to replace it....republicans want to cut them because they think they create dependency.

  I don't share your optimism. I know you are not the typical left wing loon and I am not the typical right wing nut job. You I and others on this site are one thing. But its going to take a solid leader to convince the masses that pay scant attention to these matters to elect people that will use their power to bring about such a compromise. Also your are never going to get solidarity on many issues especially those of a social nature that govern 300+ million people. You people have to accept that. I have.
• QuakerOats

  BoatShoes;1492411 wrote:It shouldn't even be looked at in that manner. It is a public service job offer at some minimum wage below the private sector minimum wage just like the Navy Reserve is a public service job offer. Why would we want to stigmatize these folks by still calling it a "welfare check" considering the way in which "welfare" has been stigmatized in our society?

  
  Used to be some 'stigmatization', but maybe you haven't been in line in the grocery store lately (outside of Whole Foods, that is).
• QuakerOats

  And, I'm all for having to 'earn' the check, but I would first begin with a week or two of common sense training, to include explaining to the takers that the provider is not the government; it is other people paying their tab, and those people greatly resent generational dependency and are fed up with irresponsible behavior and laziness (which is 80% of the current recipients I would guess). I know, beating head against concrete wall.
• cruiser_96

  

  BoatShoes;1492411 wrote:It shouldn't even be looked at in that manner. It is a public service job offer at some minimum wage below the private sector minimum wage just like the Navy Reserve is a public service job offer. Why would we want to stigmatize these folks by still calling it a "welfare check" considering the way in which "welfare" has been stigmatized in our society?

  I think this make total sense... for one, maybe two generations.
  
  In the end, who or what defines the jobs? At some point, the ones calling the shots will manipulate things to their needs and advantages.
  
  I find it very difficult to argue with this:
  #1) From bondage to spiritual faith;
  #2) From spiritual faith to great courage;
  #3) From courage to liberty;
  #4) From liberty to abundance;
  #5) From abundance to selfishness;
  #6) From selfishness to complacency;
  #7) From complacency to apathy;
  #8) From apathy to dependence;
  #9) From dependence back into bondage.
  
  The #9 slot is quite glaring when the two lines of government and job "creator" become one.
  
  I could be wrong. But it makes sense to me.
• QuakerOats

  It feels like we went from #4 to #8 in just the last 5 years.
  
  
  
  Maybe its just me
• gut

  How many govt gigs - including the military and defense spending - is already basically a jobs program?
  
  Sure, it would be nice for these people to have to go out there and earn their welfare checks, but that is not a solution. The solution is figuring out how to grow the private sector - something that hasn't happened in the past 5 years and possibly over the last decade.
  
  Liberals think the answer to everything is growing the govt sector - and that is a drag on the economy and counter-productive.
  
  In the Great Depression, people relived on friends, family and neighbors to survive. Now they rely on the govt for food, shelter, education and all their needs. I wonder if there's a correlation with the decline of our communities.