Terrorists break into US Capitol Building

[Suppressed Poet]

Part of why this is such a tough topic to talk about is that (US) conservatives and liberals have polar opposite perspectives on the issue. Conservatives are very concerned with the notion of who deserves help, while liberals are largely concerned with who needs help.

Ultimately though, the issue of poverty is not an individual issue: it's a social issue. Failing to address poverty has massive consequences for everyone, and treating it as an individual issue not only completely misses the structural problems that enable poverty in the first place, but it also exacerbates it and creates more need for the social safety net programs.

Take Welfare, for example. Right now about 45% of SNAP recipients are children. Another 20ish percent are their parents. The rest are more diverse, but the elderly and the disabled make up the majority of them. If we focus on whether or not the parents "deserve" help, then we're actually disproportionately harming children- literally taking food out of their mouths. All we're doing at that point is perpetuating poverty which just expands the need for the program in future generations.

Literally no one benefits from trying to cut a program like SNAP back. And doing so only serves to punish people for where they come from, not who they are. That's the opposite of a meritocracy, which is a concept that has historically been very important to conservatives.

There are over 45 million Americans living in poverty right now (~10% of all households), and our Welfare benefits are already so stripped down and have such convoluted eligibility criteria that only 70% of them quality for any assistance. 20% of our children live below the poverty line, and about 60 million Americans get some form of help from Welfare.

Taking money and resources away from such a massive percentage of our citizens just makes it harder for them to climb out of poverty. It also deprives local businesses, especially in areas with high poverty rates, of income. In turn that deprives people in the area of job opportunities (and often basics like nutrition) and causes massive spikes in crime from people who don't have enough to get by. Again, no one actually benefits from this.

But if we look at this as a social problem with the goal of providing support to families to help them climb out of poverty, we'll actually reduce long term poverty and create more opportunities for people who happened to have been born in the wrong zip code. Despite the commonly believed narrative that if you take money and resources away from poor people, that will somehow make them more likely to get out of poverty...it's actually the exact opposite.

You mistake me and are making some very broad assumptions. I am not concerned with who deserves what. Poverty sucks. Instead of just focusing on making it suck less, can we not spend effort to make it so there are less people in a total state of suckiness?

I volunteer my time frequently to help my local food pantry (Saint Vincent De Paul society). I say this not seeking praise or virtue signaling, but so you may understand that I and perhaps many others like me who may have a different political view are not all just heartless assholes who don’t care about those who are less fortunate.

You can’t just simply throw money at the poor to make them not poor. I want to see those 45 million Americans you mentioned grow past the poverty line and into the middle class, not just remain in a state of a life long reliance of welfare benefits. My intentions for that statement are not because I think those people are bad or undeserving. It’s because I would rather see their lives be TRULY improved. Poverty is a state of mind just as much as it is about one’s income. Taking care of their immediate needs of survival like food and shelter are important, but to really lift people out of poverty requires a lot more than that (mainly through education). The goal should be to have them become contributing members of society. Not all of those 45 million are capable for one reason or another, but a great many of them can achieve this.

So we are clear, I’ll once again state that I do not wish to end all welfare programs. I want to keep such programs minimal, and invest in economic and education programs and policies that will help a poor person transcend into a better future that is self sustaining.

[Suppressed Poet]

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

History has already proven time and again that this is NOT what lifts people out of poverty.

Also Marx made a lot of gender pronoun assumptions and should be canceled.

[time4fun]

T4F... how come over the years the rest of your posts haven't been as well written, or cogent?

That is an actual well written perspective that can be discussed. Try doing more like the above please, instead of your standard partisan hating.

On your points... for me... it goes back to how our K-12 education system is set up. The focus is not on the proper STEM, trade skill, and life skills children need to be successful adults. That is where the true cyclical nature of poverty stems from.

Yes, conservatives believe most situations people find themselves in is a personal responsibility issue, and society should not be responsible for their personal choices. However... because we as a society are failing people during their childhood education, and most importantly development... it is easy to understand why we are in the situation we are in.

Simple terms: The ones that "deserve" help, are the ones that "need" it... and work hard. The ones that "need" it, and don't work hard, don't "deserve" it. Harsh perspective perhaps, but that's my general perspective.

They have been. You were just skimming *wink*

[time4fun]

T4F... how come over the years the rest of your posts haven't been as well written, or cogent?

That is an actual well written perspective that can be discussed. Try doing more like the above please, instead of your standard partisan hating.

On your points... for me... it goes back to how our K-12 education system is set up. The focus is not on the proper STEM, trade skill, and life skills children need to be successful adults. That is where the true cyclical nature of poverty stems from.

Yes, conservatives believe most situations people find themselves in is a personal responsibility issue, and society should not be responsible for their personal choices. However... because we as a society are failing people during their childhood education, and most importantly development... it is easy to understand why we are in the situation we are in.

Simple terms: The ones that "deserve" help, are the ones that "need" it... and work hard. The ones that "need" it, and don't work hard, don't "deserve" it. Harsh perspective perhaps, but that's my general perspective.

I do wish that both sides would do more to articulate a non-moralistic argument on issues like poverty and healthcare access. Both liberals and conservatives have a hard time because we're all deeply uncomfortable with removing morality from the discussion (and both side ARE making strong moral arguments). But we don't have to go down that path at all: we should just deal with these issues in the same way we deal with agricultural problems and transportation problems.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but none of us are benefitting from perpetuating poverty. The question isn't just "do these children deserve to be punished because of decisions their parents made?". It's- do you deserve to have your car broken into by people who don't have other viable options to pay for necessities when we could have just opted to make sure they had enough money for food every month? Do we all deserve, as a society, to live without the scientific breakthroughs that we would have had if we weren't fating 20% of our children to lives of poverty. Or to live without the economic boon that comes from a healthier base of people who can afford to inject money into local businesses? Should you have to pay more in taxes for social safety net programs because the attempts to greatly defund those programs in the past have just created even more poverty in their wake?

Candidly it's the same with access to affordable healthcare. Should you have to pay more in taxes to reimburse hospitals for what they lose due the high frequency of medical expense-related bankruptcies and other failures to pay the bills by people without insurance? Should we all have to pay more in healthcare costs- which also greatly increases taxes- because we don't have a single payer system that would force medical providers and pharmaceutical companies to negotiate on pricing? Should your family have to spend hours longer in the ER because we have a host of people in there suffering from preventable illnesses they weren't able to diagnosed or treated earlier?

If we can just approach these issues from an objective, "this is bad for everyone", place then we can go about solving it with equal objectivity. We have decades of research and policy experience from our country and around the globe- we actually- and factually- know that there are certain actions we can take that will, objectively and factually, make every single person's life better in our country. But we're all busy arguing over abstract concepts, that we're incapable of arriving at a solution.

And we are all living worse lives because of it.

Your educational point is an interesting one. It's worth discussing, but I don't want to muddle the conversation further.

[Suppressed Poet]

we should just deal with these issues in the same way we deal with agricultural problems

Now hold on there just a minute… That really all depends now, doesn’t it?

If you start saying that we need to murder all the sparrows in order to increase rice yields, or demand that I need to switch over to the Impossible Whopper and/or Beyond KFC…. Un-Unh. No ma’am.

[~Rocktar~]

What a hyper moralistic pile of shit T4retardation presents. If paying poor people to not be poor worked then all our poor would be gone an the US would have no poor at all. We have paid enough since 1960 to do that. Unfortunately all it does it enslave people to the government, destroy families and society and financially devastate the country as "for the children" is used to increase taxes, increase control and enslave more people more effectively than any whip or chain. And it's ALWASY the argument of the Left that we just haven't spent enough, tried enough, done enough, given the government enough control and so on.

So t4retardation, how much of YOUR money do I deserve to take at gunpoint and spend however I want?

[Neveragain]

I do wish that both sides would do more to articulate a non-moralistic argument on issues like poverty and healthcare access. Both liberals and conservatives have a hard time because we're all deeply uncomfortable with removing morality from the discussion (and both side ARE making strong moral arguments). But we don't have to go down that path at all: we should just deal with these issues in the same way we deal with agricultural problems and transportation problems.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but none of us are benefitting from perpetuating poverty. The question isn't just "do these children deserve to be punished because of decisions their parents made?". It's- do you deserve to have your car broken into by people who don't have other viable options to pay for necessities when we could have just opted to make sure they had enough money for food every month? Do we all deserve, as a society, to live without the scientific breakthroughs that we would have had if we weren't fating 20% of our children to lives of poverty. Or to live without the economic boon that comes from a healthier base of people who can afford to inject money into local businesses? Should you have to pay more in taxes for social safety net programs because the attempts to greatly defund those programs in the past have just created even more poverty in their wake?

Candidly it's the same with access to affordable healthcare. Should you have to pay more in taxes to reimburse hospitals for what they lose due the high frequency of medical expense-related bankruptcies and other failures to pay the bills by people without insurance? Should we all have to pay more in healthcare costs- which also greatly increases taxes- because we don't have a single payer system that would force medical providers and pharmaceutical companies to negotiate on pricing? Should your family have to spend hours longer in the ER because we have a host of people in there suffering from preventable illnesses they weren't able to diagnosed or treated earlier?

If we can just approach these issues from an objective, "this is bad for everyone", place then we can go about solving it with equal objectivity. We have decades of research and policy experience from our country and around the globe- we actually- and factually- know that there are certain actions we can take that will, objectively and factually, make every single person's life better in our country. But we're all busy arguing over abstract concepts, that we're incapable of arriving at a solution.

And we are all living worse lives because of it.

Your educational point is an interesting one. It's worth discussing, but I don't want to muddle the conversation further.

Now do government land confiscation that poor people could otherwise access, industry could gather more resources, creating more jobs and lowering the cost of everything.

Godless fucking witch.

[time4fun]

Now do government land confiscation that poor people could otherwise access, industry could gather more resources, creating more jobs and lowering the cost of everything.

Godless fucking witch.

The fact that you are so deeply and personally offended by the notion of helping other people honestly made me feel sick to my stomach. That's a darkness that there's really no coming back from.

But more to the point- you have absolutely missed the entire point of the argument.

[Parkbandit]

I do wish that both sides would do more to articulate a non-moralistic argument on issues like poverty and healthcare access. Both liberals and conservatives have a hard time because we're all deeply uncomfortable with removing morality from the discussion (and both side ARE making strong moral arguments). But we don't have to go down that path at all: we should just deal with these issues in the same way we deal with agricultural problems and transportation problems.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but none of us are benefitting from perpetuating poverty. The question isn't just "do these children deserve to be punished because of decisions their parents made?". It's- do you deserve to have your car broken into by people who don't have other viable options to pay for necessities when we could have just opted to make sure they had enough money for food every month? Do we all deserve, as a society, to live without the scientific breakthroughs that we would have had if we weren't fating 20% of our children to lives of poverty. Or to live without the economic boon that comes from a healthier base of people who can afford to inject money into local businesses? Should you have to pay more in taxes for social safety net programs because the attempts to greatly defund those programs in the past have just created even more poverty in their wake?

Candidly it's the same with access to affordable healthcare. Should you have to pay more in taxes to reimburse hospitals for what they lose due the high frequency of medical expense-related bankruptcies and other failures to pay the bills by people without insurance? Should we all have to pay more in healthcare costs- which also greatly increases taxes- because we don't have a single payer system that would force medical providers and pharmaceutical companies to negotiate on pricing? Should your family have to spend hours longer in the ER because we have a host of people in there suffering from preventable illnesses they weren't able to diagnosed or treated earlier?

If we can just approach these issues from an objective, "this is bad for everyone", place then we can go about solving it with equal objectivity. We have decades of research and policy experience from our country and around the globe- we actually- and factually- know that there are certain actions we can take that will, objectively and factually, make every single person's life better in our country. But we're all busy arguing over abstract concepts, that we're incapable of arriving at a solution.

And we are all living worse lives because of it.

Your educational point is an interesting one. It's worth discussing, but I don't want to muddle the conversation further.

I love the soapbox you suddenly believe you are standing on... as if you don't have a history of being a completely unhinged alt-leftist lunatic. Where was this "Let's all just put partisan politics aside and come to some solutions to help Americans" for the past 7 years?

Oh.. it didn't fit your narrative and suddenly, when the country's least favorite vegetable is our President.. NOW you want to talk about unity and solutions.

[Methais]

The fact that you are so deeply and personally offended by the notion of helping other people honestly made me feel sick to my stomach. That's a darkness that there's really no coming back from.

But more to the point- you have absolutely missed the entire point of the argument.

Stop lying.