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myurbandreamVatti sent me this email:
>This was in the Waco Tribune Herald, Waco , TX , Nov 18, 2011
>
> PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .
>
> Put me in charge of food stamps. I'd get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash
> for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans,
> blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want
> steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.
>
> Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women
> Norplant birth control implants or tubal legations. Then, we'll test
> recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use
> drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.
>
> Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?
>
> You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.
> Your home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be
> inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your
> own place.
>
> In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week
> or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways
> of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We
> will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo
> and speakers and put that money toward the "common good.."
>
> Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of
> the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you
> say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider
> that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing
> absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.
>
> If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at
> least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system
> rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
>
> AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes,
> that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will
> voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't
> welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.
~
Despite the horrendous political overtones and bias in there, I actually do think there are several salient points in it.
I think that food stamps should not be used for luxury food (brings to mind the news story about the guy arrested for using food stamps to buy steak and lobster, and then reselling them at a profit). I'm a bit biased about medical care - I don't think anyone's life should be casually ignored when the means to save them is available, regardless of cost. Housing is a HUGE pet peeve for me, though - if you're living on a government check in housing paid for by the government, you should not be living in a high-quality apartment - 'barracks' is right. I also don't think welfare checks should be able to buy new cars or flat screen TVs or new laptops.
The not-voting and the government-work things are questionable - that sounds to me very much like a communistic regime, in which citizens are told what job they will work and given no say in the matter and no way to change the entity that enforces the rules. However, if the welfare laborers (sounds like a euphemism for 'slave', doesn't it?) are able to get themselves a paying job to get out of the situation, then they aren't technically trapped as government slaves. On the other hand, it took me three months to find a job in my profession, so in a practical sense it would be very difficult to get out of government servitude in that way. But on the other other hand - it would be completely voluntary, right? If you don't want to do the government job anymore, then you just tell the government not to send you a check anymore, right? And if it's voluntary to begin with, then no-one can say they're being forced, so long as the government isn't the only employer out there.
Which, on a tangent, is a distinct and scary possibility - we officially have more people than either food or jobs, and we're artificially sustaining ourselves, imho. Something's gotta give.
>This was in the Waco Tribune Herald, Waco , TX , Nov 18, 2011
>
> PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .
>
> Put me in charge of food stamps. I'd get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash
> for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans,
> blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want
> steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.
>
> Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women
> Norplant birth control implants or tubal legations. Then, we'll test
> recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use
> drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.
>
> Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?
>
> You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.
> Your home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be
> inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your
> own place.
>
> In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week
> or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways
> of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We
> will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo
> and speakers and put that money toward the "common good.."
>
> Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of
> the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you
> say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider
> that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing
> absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.
>
> If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at
> least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system
> rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
>
> AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes,
> that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will
> voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't
> welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.
~
Despite the horrendous political overtones and bias in there, I actually do think there are several salient points in it.
I think that food stamps should not be used for luxury food (brings to mind the news story about the guy arrested for using food stamps to buy steak and lobster, and then reselling them at a profit). I'm a bit biased about medical care - I don't think anyone's life should be casually ignored when the means to save them is available, regardless of cost. Housing is a HUGE pet peeve for me, though - if you're living on a government check in housing paid for by the government, you should not be living in a high-quality apartment - 'barracks' is right. I also don't think welfare checks should be able to buy new cars or flat screen TVs or new laptops.
The not-voting and the government-work things are questionable - that sounds to me very much like a communistic regime, in which citizens are told what job they will work and given no say in the matter and no way to change the entity that enforces the rules. However, if the welfare laborers (sounds like a euphemism for 'slave', doesn't it?) are able to get themselves a paying job to get out of the situation, then they aren't technically trapped as government slaves. On the other hand, it took me three months to find a job in my profession, so in a practical sense it would be very difficult to get out of government servitude in that way. But on the other other hand - it would be completely voluntary, right? If you don't want to do the government job anymore, then you just tell the government not to send you a check anymore, right? And if it's voluntary to begin with, then no-one can say they're being forced, so long as the government isn't the only employer out there.
Which, on a tangent, is a distinct and scary possibility - we officially have more people than either food or jobs, and we're artificially sustaining ourselves, imho. Something's gotta give.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 04:49 pm (UTC)there is no need to abolish Lone Star cards and a citizen's freedom to choose which meager meal they eat. a little co-ordination between the government and grocery store chains (assuming mom & pop's don't accept the card) could prohibit the purchase of luxury goods.
while the suggested restrictions are logical, they are extremely impractical to enforce. drug tests are easily beaten and very expensive. the cost of continually performing them would far outweigh whatever "savings" they gov't could wring out of it. Also, extremely invasive surgery twice person (for insertion upon entrance and removal upon exit): EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE!!!!!! and smacks of the eugenics sterilization surgeries.
from there it gets hazy. i actually do not know enough about the current situation to fully understand the argument here.
plasma tv's, xboxes, suped-up cars, luxury apartments - does this shit actually happen? how pervasive is it? why does it happen?
i do understand the military barracks, but i'm confused how exactly hiring personnel so that inspections can happen helps anything.
i'm also not sure how exactly the pay stub plays in.
i do understand finding a place for someone to work even if it is not a glamorous job. this sounds to me more like the CCC than communism (though it's arguable that even they're the same). the disenfranchisement bit is undoubted commie and aristocratic.
the "self-esteem" bit throws me for a loop. i have no idea what he's talking about here.
as to the "mistakes" claim: poverty is hereditary. period. yes, there are some exceptional examples. but these are outliers, they are beyond 4 or 5 standard deviations from average, "results not typical". i know people who have spent their entire lives struggling to break the poverty line. one guy sells drugs to supplement his day job just to make ends meet. how exactly has working since 14 and paying bills since 15 put him in this situation? the "mistakes" argument makes it sound like people are living in squalor because they bet on the wrong company's stock.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 06:03 pm (UTC)well, okay, one part: apparently there are ways to make people temporarily sterile that don't involve invasive surgery or thousands of dollars. idk. i brought up this point to a few other folks and they told me that there are relatively simple ways to temporarily sterilize people, at much less cost than having a child. bear in mind that the day-of-birth hospital visit costs $10k for a simple, no-complications birth; both jim and jenny cost $30k-$40k on the big day, and that's not counting all the various check-ups and pre-natal/ante-natal what-not. kids ain't cheap, and from the government's perspective, that's yet one more mouth to feed on their dime.
not that i'm advocating enforced sterility. i personally think a lot of this is over the top, hugely biased vitriol against perceived "laziness", but i can sense the frustration behind the argument, and there truly is a lot of abuse against the system going on. remember my perspective - i have one parent getting government disability checks fat enough to retire on, and another parent worked to the bone but barely making ends meet. i fully recognise how difficult it is to be poor and have no escape, and as you said, it's not a "mistake" to be born into the cycle of poverty. i never meant to imply that.
BUT, there are some people who make foolish decisions, perhaps because they have no better role model, and then end up relying on the government to support them in the aftermath. i'm talking about the stereotype of the teenage pregnant high school drop-out here, but it does happen, unfortunately. it's those people that the email from above was raving against.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 06:12 pm (UTC)every city has a certain percentage goal of what's called "affordable housing" - zB, the city says it wants 12% of its housing stock to be "affordable" for poverty-line citizens. what that means in practice is that various apartment complexes are paid a government check every month, which stands in lieu of rent that would be paid by the tenants who qualify for government aid. so people with zero income, or income well below the poverty line, are living in the apartment next door to you with their rent paid by the government. since apartment rent ranges from $675 to well above $1200 per month, that's a pretty penny being doled out by the government each month.
it doesn't happen in every apartment complex, just certain ones; there's a designation that the complex has, something like "category 44" or whatever, i don't remember exactly, which they get when they start accepting government-aid tenants.