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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
And that this whole "defining people only by their supposed worth to the market economy" absolute bullshit to begin with?
Re welfare cheats: mostly an urban legend. Years ago in LA they spent millions of dollars upgrading the record keeping and tracking system to identify welfare cheats. The system netted less than 20 at a cost of almost a $175,000 per cheater.
As in food stamps and medicare/medicaid, most of the cheating is done by businesses and professionals.
What also gets me about the self-righteous Right is the fact that their favoritest person of all time, the Jesus man, was also quite specific about helping the poor and the downtrodden in society.. If I recall my Bible school days correctly, he also liked to hang out with societal outcasts, the REAL fringies, and wasn't at all keen on the Romney-types that were around in his day...
Why do they always so conveniently forget these things?
And I would rather see 1,000 welfare cheats than one criminal banker getting a $100 million golden parachute or whatever.
No, those poor, unfortunates don't even factor into their "thinking" when they rail against the "takers"; it's all those OTHERS they have in mind: the black, brown and red skinned layabouts who at worst, aren't doing anything differently than their white neighbors, and who at-best are probably working even harder at poverty-wage jobs that require them to take public assistance just in order to be able to afford the basic necessities.
For every urban "Welfare Queen" driving around their 'hood in a brand-spanking new Cadillac, there are probably a hundred rural types driving around in jacked up Dodge Ram King Cab's with moto-cross bikes or ATV's strapped in the bed. But, only ONE of these is cheating the system; can you guess which that would be?
You are a hundred percent right here. I said this exact same thing the other day. And yes, I'm proud to be a giver back into a system that sustains me and my neighbors, not just in a time of need but a time of plenty. I get a fantastic return for my tax dollars, most of the time. Not so much when Republicans start trillion-dollar wars with them, but in general.
In addition, many, many Romney supporters are "takers", because Romney had support among elderly retired people. Social Security? You're a taker. Medicare? You're a taker. Veteran? You're a taker. Own a home? You're a taker too, because of the mortgage interest deduction. Charitable giver? You're a taker. Library user, road user, electricity user? YOU'RE ALL TAKERS.
More takers: people who live in Idaho. You get quite a few more federal dollars than you pay in. Alaskans? Takers all. Alabamans, Mississippians, West Virginians? All of you are takers. All of you are WELFARE RECIPIENTS.
You realize of course that the top "Makers" of whom you speak need to keep plenty of us as Takers around so they can justify their hold on the counterfeit bills. To make the smaller Makers feel shame.
No, you don't understand.
I can see that now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88uqZzVhC…
Most of us would have benefitted from Romney's tax plan moneywise. I own my home morage free and have investments. I pay a lot in taxes. I will admit to some self interest by hoping medicare will still be around when I'm too old and sick to work.
But my friends and I firmly believe that a large part of what makes a society truly civilized is taking care of those in need.
Telling them that, no, that's not how things work ... doesn't work. I'd rather point out to people who don't think that way that that's how Republicans see them. They'll vote Democratic and the bitter, angry people will go back to the margins, where they belong.
I spent most of my childhood in poverty, first because of a bad economy in which my dad couldn't get a job, then later because my dad was in a bad accident and on disability. My mom worked third shift at a nursing home so that they could make sure I got to school and any extracurricular activities.
A few years ago after I graduated from college and my husband finished graduate school, my husband and I ended up using WIC and food stamps because we unexpectedly found our duet had become a trio. We would have qualified for more benefits, but didn't feel right when we knew that there were people worse off in a state (RI) that was already short on money, so we struggled through.
Now we live here. We're on the upper end of what the Pew Research Center considers middle class for the area. If/when I manage to find a job, we will likely move beyond that. Hey, we're better off than we were four years ago. (By the way, I got so annoyed being told I was was an anomaly prior to the election.) And yes, we pay our taxes. We might grouse about it a little, but we know that those roads don't pay for themselves; our parents' social security checks don't write themselves. The buses we use every day (that allowed us to go for a year after we moved here before buying a car), again, not paying for themselves.
Yes, I am proud to be a giver, too.
Take away - middle class means very different things in different parts of the US.
My point is, we can find flaws with either model of "giving". I personally believe that they both have value, and I'm proud to be a compulsory taxpayer who can also give to private charity at my own voluntary option. The two aren't mutually exclusive, which you are implying.
The amount of money that the elite have sucked out of a system that they've rigged in their favor is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a social safety net. Hell, if they hadn't TAKEN it all, we could all probably be basking in the social comfort net.
check out 'Give Back'
http://youtu.be/e-hUl_L-3es
I was reading Joe. My. God. last night, with all those conservatives grousing about the "Takers" winning, which is what inspired the piece. Especially the Ann Coulter post for some reason.
I agree with stirwise @30, I think it's absurd to use this language as well. Unfortunately the Right is really good at branding and I think it's time the Left use that power for good. I also commend you for never needing the assistance many do, but still see the benefit it provides to society.
And I'd also like to thank everyone for pointing out how little those 1% clowns actually "Make" for society. I know there are some great numbers out there looking at how much more benefit the person on Food Stamps brings to society versus an investment banker. But I'm late for class and can't hunt it down.
It may be a symptom of how precarious getting by has come that so many are so willing to divide us up so firmly and irremediably: if you're concerned about your (acceptable) place in the world, being told that you're there because of some set of inalienable virtues inherent in you---as opposed to luck, time, or chance, even partially---must be of great comfort.
great OP, enigma -- thanks!
Well, let's see, you've just explained that any form of majority rule is unacceptable (because consensus means nothing.) The criminal justice system is also right out (because if a single person acting alone as a vigilante judge, jury and executioner is immoral, then a system where those roles are distributed among many must also be immoral.)
Finally, turn around your sentiment to address the concept of "property" and you'll see it works the same way: If it's immoral for an individual to hold another person in bondage and claim all the fruits of their labor, then it's just as immoral for a class of property holders to amass all the profits while allowing the laborers that makes those profits possible to exist on subsistence wages. A set of laws that codifies inheritance of property, to borrow your construction, is a construct which allows the privileged minority to feel excused from the ethical constraint of forcing others to do their work for them while they reap the benefits.
Individuals acting outside evolved private law would be acting in an immoral way. Groups acting outside these same boundaries would also be acting in an immoral way. Applied private law, properly understood, incorporates the ethical boundaries which bind all of us.
Regarding property, you've imagined an obligation from property law which forces the non-property owners to work for the property owners. I reject your premise. Denying property as a right is to deny all of our evolved ethical foundations. Shall anyone help themselves to your personal property as well?
Taxation is simply adding an exception to the rule/ethic which says that taking from your neighbor is okay if done under the guise of a Democratic Republic. This is merely an attempt to bifurcate ethics into "individual" and "group" ethics - and smuggle in situational ethics. You can't build a polity around inconsistent ethics because anyone can justify any number of ethical transgressions on situational grounds. It underlies the justification for our government torturing terrorists, wiretapping, and war. All of these are justified by either group expedience or a consequentialist philosophy which must subordinate our individual ethics. We stagger about as a society, applying different and changing "rules" in a confused moral haze, and then we wonder why it often results in outcomes that we cringe at.