Hey, Daneliuk and Jack-ass Stein,
I'm still waiting for a lucid explanation as to why it's cheaper for me to be sitting around, receiving health care and collecting social assistance instead of working and paying taxes.
Either of you two have enough balls between the two of you to give a sensible answer to that question?
The choice is not between one form of stealing and another form of stealing. The choice is between acting honestly or being a looter.
You are not entitled to the hard work of other people just because you really need something. You are entitled to ask for their voluntary help and respect their decision either way. Money - before anything else - is a measure of time. Time to create the wealth in question. When you take it away from someone by force, you're removing something they cannot replace - the hours of their lives it took to produce the wealth in the first place. Your problems, no matter how real and serious simply do not entitle you to enslave your fellow citizens.
So, instead of arrogantly acting like you're entitled to everyone else's wallet, try a little humility and asking politely for help. You'll get it and you won't have to defend thievery in the process.
As to your "paying taxes", this is a joke, right? First you enable/ defend a system built on the forceful extraction of wealth of your fellow citizens to be given to you, and they you give a small part of it back and declare your actions moral. So ... stealing is OK as long as you don't keep all of it?
It's possible to do both...
I'm entitled, just like all Canadians are to the health insurance plan we've paid into all our lives. I'm entitled to the health insurance that I paid into for the thirty years I was completely healthy. And, I'm still entitled to all the health insurance I've paid into since I lost much of my good health. In other words, I'm entitled to the health insurance I've paid into all of my working life.
In your delusions you see this health insurance as stolen money. I see it as getting the insurance support I paid for as long as I need it.
Got that you ignorant asshole?
In the Canadian system, not with any real benefit. Once one reaches a basic level of taxation by working, social assistance evaporates. In other words, social assistance is supposed to help you until you get back on your feet and then you're on your own.
I agree, you are. I never said otherwise nor do I think you are wrong for using a system that is compulsary. Your ideas are wrong because they are constructed to *defend* that system.
Completely agreed.
You continue to avoid the issue entirely. It's not your actions that are in question, its your principles in defending the system as a whole. I too have had to pay into a vile public system and I too shall try ti extract what I can from it, but that doesn't make the system right, nor am I morally permitted to valiantly defend such a system when it is built fundamentally on theft.
We have 3-5 generations now living on that.
Ah, yes... The liberal "I'm entitled to my entitlements" argument. Is your real name David Dingwall?
But there is no "health insurance plan" in Canada.
There is taxation, and there is government expenditure on health care. For you to talk about a Canadian health insurance plan is utter nonsense, especially because health care is a PROVINCIAL responsibility, and not a FEDERAL responsibility.
There is no national health care in Canada. There is federal money that flows into the provinces "general revenue" funds without any requirement to actually spend the money on health care. Bt that's as close as it gets.
Then that makes you a hypocrite of the worst sort. All your pontificating on the evil morals of the "vile public system", but you'd take what you can from it should the opportunity arise.
You're not man enough to stand up and follow through on your ideals, you're just a mouthpiece who has turned whining into an art form while lacking the balls to back up your big mouth.
You really are a coward. You'd set others on some supposed path of righteousness which you yourself are not willing to follow.
Amazing.
Ok, but consider the limitations of such a life. Maybe because of apathy, sheer laziness, or even medical difficulties, someone is living such a life. No future, never having any real discretionary income, nothing ever to look forward to except for more of the same. It's debilitating, depressing and a really difficult existence to follow. Not at all attractive. I don't consider that living.
I'm self employed and run my own business. *Whatever* you want to call it, I pay a substantial amount of it every month. Tax, insurance whatever, it's all the same to me.
Some of the evacuees from Katrina ended up in places like Salt Lake City, Billings, Omaha, and were amazed. A common refrain was "You means all I has to do is stand behind the counter and make Slurpees? And I gets PAID for that? Damn, that's cool!"
And the chain linking five generations of poverty was broken.
For many of the others, who landed in Houston for example, the refrain was: "Whatchew mean I can't be moseyin' thru my 'hood with a malt and a toke? I could back home!"
Welcome to the Grey Bar Hotel.
That's is exactly the point: these people who were supposed to use the system to get back on their feet have instead decided to live off of it for literally generations. There is no incentive to get off.
True, they know no better. And maybe THAT is the real problem. We keep on giving these people fish whenever they are hungry and never teach them how to fish nor do we make an environment in which they even WANT to fish. They have become a group of circus seals who bark and get a fish tossed their way. Not enough to live off of, so they bark some more, but enough that they don't have any reason to go out and fend for themselves.
There is a lot of bashing going on in here and, quite frankly, all around the country. It is really disheartening. People who disagree with what is happening politically are being slammed, from Obama himself on down the line. We are all called extremists because we have the audacity to think differently and to speak up. We are labeled as racists because we disagree with a President who happens to have darker skin than any past President. Heck, we have even been labeled as terrorists because we dare to push back and speak up. I thought that was why Freedom Of Speech was in the very first section of The Bill Of Rights? I guess not....
I have posed this sort of question many times over the past week or so and I have not gotten any response from the progressives in here. Why did we have to scrap everything that was already in place and replace it with a new, EXPENSIVE bill? (Oh, and why was the student loan program bundled in a freaking health care bill? But that is a wholly different topic!) We had the safety nets in place and have had them in place for 40+ years now. Medicare and Medicaid were supposed to fix these sorts of problems but they haven't. If government could not afford those be-all and end-all programs, how the heck can it afford this one? (Answer: eventually they can't. There is only so much blood in the host and whenever the parasites have drained it all, they kill the host and the parasites go hungry.)
Here is my question: Why not fix what is there already? Seriously. And by fixing, I mean do not change any laws, do not increase taxes, do not decrease taxes (yet), and take a serious look at what we already have to clean out all of the bullcrap. The reason is that government is not in the business of business. And they SHOULDN'T be-- that is not its role, at least not in America. The only thing they know to do is to increase taxes to pay for an ever increasing deficit.
I have suggested it before: Hire a bunch of Wal-Mart and/or/ Home Depot and/or Lowes and/or any number of people who have run businesses and have them come in to clean house. I am 100% sure they will find tremendous inefficiencies in every government run program. And I am also sure that they can define processes and procedures that will drastically reduce the waste and inefficiencies and the nest result will be a huge amount of money that can actually be given back to the citizens of this country. That way, the programs that are already in place will do what they were intended to do, the liberals get what they want, and everybody will get a little bit of money back into their pockets.
That's is exactly the point: these people who were supposed to use the system to get back on their feet have instead decided to live off of it for literally generations. There is no incentive to get off.
True, they know no better. And maybe THAT is the real problem. We keep on giving these people fish whenever they are hungry and never teach them how to fish nor do we make an environment in which they even WANT to fish. They have become a group of circus seals who bark and get a fish tossed their way. Not enough to live off of, so they bark some more, but enough that they don't have any reason to go out and fend for themselves.
There is a lot of bashing going on in here and, quite frankly, all around the country. It is really disheartening. People who disagree with what is happening politically are being slammed, from Obama himself on down the line. We are all called extremists because we have the audacity to think differently and to speak up. We are labeled as racists because we disagree with a President who happens to have darker skin than any past President. Heck, we have even been labeled as terrorists because we dare to push back and speak up. I thought that was why Freedom Of Speech was in the very first section of The Bill Of Rights? I guess not....
I have posed this sort of question many times over the past week or so and I have not gotten any response from the progressives in here. Why did we have to scrap everything that was already in place and replace it with a new, EXPENSIVE bill? (Oh, and why was the student loan program bundled in a freaking health care bill? But that is a wholly different topic!) We had the safety nets in place and have had them in place for 40+ years now. Medicare and Medicaid were supposed to fix these sorts of problems but they haven't. If government could not afford those be-all and end-all programs, how the heck can it afford this one? (Answer: eventually they can't. There is only so much blood in the host and whenever the parasites have drained it all, they kill the host and the parasites go hungry.)
Here is my question: Why not fix what is there already? Seriously. And by fixing, I mean do not change any laws, do not increase taxes, do not decrease taxes (yet), and take a serious look at what we already have to clean out all of the bullcrap. The reason is that government is not in the business of business. And they SHOULDN'T be-- that is not its role, at least not in America. The only thing they know to do is to increase taxes to pay for an ever increasing deficit.
I have suggested it before: Hire a bunch of Wal-Mart and/or/ Home Depot and/or Lowes and/or any number of people who have run businesses and have them come in to clean house. I am 100% sure they will find tremendous inefficiencies in every government run program. And I am also sure that they can define processes and procedures that will drastically reduce the waste and inefficiencies and the nest result will be a huge amount of money that can actually be given back to the citizens of this country. That way, the programs that are already in place will do what they were intended to do, the liberals get what they want, and everybody will get a little bit of money back into their pockets.
Nonny makes a good point, it isn't hard in the US to find large numbers of people that they or anyone in their family has not worked or done anything of even minor importance to contribute to the system for generations.
I'm not speaking of the disabled or unhealthy, these are people that are healthy and able to work, but lack desire and motivation. They were not taught to work, they were taught to game the system. And yes, they live a minimal life, one that no one here could tolerate.
How do you break this cycle of dependancy without destroying the disabled and ones that only need a hand up. I don't know, it is more of a moral/ethical issue of the people than a broken welfare system.
It isn't hard to understand why some rage against what is billed as yet another freebie, it is an affront to all that have worked all their life without asking anything from the government.
I have mixed feelings about the health care issue, on one hand me and my wife both have preexisting conditions extensive enough that they could be tied to almost any health issue, any insurance company would be glad to be rid of us, on the other hand we have excellant health care and insurance. We never pay any amount for anything and only pay a small portion of the premiums. It is part of my pay, no union lobbied for me, I earned these benefits by hard work and careful selection of who I was willing to work for. I expect to be heavily taxed in the future, for the being in this position.
One thing I know for certain, whether you are politically right, left, center, or space alien, the government can be lots of things, but it is never your friend.
basilisk
That's an oft-made argument, but ... out of curiosity ... what % meet that description, and ... how do you know??
Because the simple solution couldn't make it past the lobbyists and those who finance election campaigns.
What's that solution? Expand Medicare to everyone.
All the bureaucracy is in place - some staffing up would be required, but no new agency.
Adding the rest of the population expands the base to cover many more healthy people thus solving the financial problems that Medicare has now.
Costs would be further controlled because Medicare decides what to pay for a procedure, not a for profit hospital or medical group. With this healthier membership it might even be possible to increase those payments somewhat, especially to primary care physician's.
Even more cost control would be achieved because all Medicare supplement policies must offer the same benefits in one of several categories. Insurance companies compete on the basis of price. With those healthier members, costs of supplement policies would go down.
Yes, there's fraud in the Medicare program and it needs to be controlled better. But people have been defrauding insurance companies and governments for a very long time - it's not a problem confined to Medicare.
But as I said, it upsets too many rice bowls.
I do not have those numbers but I do live in Pittsburgh and there are quite a number of people that meet this description who have lived in public housing for generations.
I wrote in another thread about a guy I worked with who lived in public housing for a while way back when (in the late 50s or early
60s) and he was the first person who really described this to me. He said way back then, the prevailing attitude of those in public housing was that it would be temporary and did their best to get out. There were families who didn't try all that hard to get out and those people were shunned to a point by the others in the housing project.He still lives in the North Side, a community within the Pittsburgh city limits. He has lived in that area all his life and he is in his
60's now. The public housing complex he lived in is fairly close to where he lives now and he is very familiar with the area. Since he retired, he has been working in a non-profit agency smack dab in the middle of public housing and he can give insight that is a far cry from what you see on television or hear on the radio.How many people? Sheer numbers? And the percentage of the whole? No real clue but this guy says there are thousands and thousands of people living this way and have been for three, four, five-plus generations. It IS true. And the biggest problem is APATHY both from within these communities as well as without.
This is a brief synopsis that he gave me whenever we met for lunch this past Christmas:
His true work now is with the young people and he is trying to reach out to the kids that are stuck in the middle of childhood and adulthood. From what he sees, the vast, vast majority of the kids in these areas come either from one parent families (mom only) or NO- PARENT families (grandma or aunt) are raising these kids. He gets really pissed off because the males walk away from any and all responsibility...they just don't care. When the kids are small, they really get excited about going to school and learning and going to church and have grand illusions of getting out of the place.
The problem is when these same kids get to be a little older. Ten, eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen. This is when boys start to get caught up in the glory of the streets and are used as drug runners and see all sorts of terrible things. They think it is fabulous and say "to hell with school--this is where it's at!" To make matters worse, you may have a mother who is trying her hardest to do what is right, is holding down a job of some sort, so she only gets *some* public assistance (good for her!!!!) and she is sitting at the kitchen table worrying about the next time she can feed the kids and have heat at the same time when, all of a sudden, her 12-year-old tosses $200 in front of her. What the hell is she supposed to do? It's money from heaven. Talk about being torn!
Girls at these ages are starting to want a baby or two. It becomes a status symbol and if one has a baby, she makes all the girls around her jealous and they start pushing boys to have sex so they can have one, too. Of course, these girls figure out way early that if they have a baby that they start getting paid. They have no clue how to manage their money nor do they understand that what they get paid is not necessarily enough to live on and spend money that should be used on the kids for themselves or their extended family or friends.
Marty said this money they receive both helps the family and also keeps them in poverty. The money the boy brings home enables his mother (or grandmother or aunt) to make ends meet but he is destined to move up the drug ladder and either become a drug addict himself and/ or become a pusher and have his life cut short either because of drugs or guns or the law. The money the young girl-turned-mother receives also helps but since neither she nor her family know how to manage money (not do they want to learn), the money is wasted and they find themselves needing more, so she goes out and has another kid and the cycle starts all over again.
Like I said, he works in a non-profit where they promote after-school and weekend activities to keep the younger kids off the streets and to, hopefully, get them educated enough to not take to the streets but it is a long, hard row to hoe. The successes are very, very few and this job has certainly taken its toll on him. He has aged more in the past five or six years than I saw him age the 15 years before that.
Finally, I asked him if the welfare checks and public housing and food stamps and what have you has a positive or negative affect on these people. Not surprisingly, he said it was both. It was helping them because they NEED it for without, they would starve or freeze to death or a host of other bad things. It was bad because they knew this money and benefits will just keep coming their way and all they need to do is have a good, old time. He said he sees the money coming in to feed the people but there is no incentive for these people to better themselves.
He is looking for the big, overall plan that will get these people to turn their lives around and the government is not implementing any plans; they are just throwing money at it and turning their backs on these people. Thus the apathy from the people who are receiving aid, from the people paying for the aid, and (worse of all, maybe) the government. Apathy all around.
I do not know what it is like outside of Pittsburgh but I do know that there are far less people in this situation than there are in Cleveland or Baltimore or Detroit or Miami or Chicago or New York or Los Angeles...the list can go on and on. I heard on the radio that the math competency for fourth-graders in Detroit was something like
8%...EIGHT PERCENT and the math competency for eighth-graders there was FOUR PERCENT.It isn't the amount of money you throw at a situation; it is how you handle the situation that counts. This health care bill is another example of an entitlement program that will be used and abused and will not have the desired affect. It will become bloated and extremely cost ineffective within twenty years. I mean, wasn't SSI supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread? It is more-or-less broke now. Then Medicare and Medicaid was going to save the people who couldn't afford health care...and they are broke now. What kind of faith do you have that this health care program will not be broke within a generation?
Quit throwing money at something and start devising plans to make things better.
Yep, I agree. And this bill was also a sweet thing to slip 100% of student loans to the federal government. Under what premise? So the evil banks and other lending institutions could not profit off these loans and so the profit goes to help pay for a bloated mistake.
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:43:26 -0500, the infamous Upscale scrawled the following:
Far, far too many people DO consider that living, Uppy. I've read stats that say up to 90% of people in the Philly (ditto the whole eastern USA) grow up, live, and die within 10 miles of their birth city. I'd guess that a whole bunch of them would not have a problem with it. If people don't have any creativity, they have no need to do things, to move around, and to switch jobs for fun like the rest of us. Others are just lazy and don't care at all.
-- Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand. -- Oprah Winfrey
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