Ok, here’s one I’d like to see your reaction to. Not trying to stir up some sort of hate spewing thread, just wanted to hear some reactions and opinions. Liberals Mix Religion and Politics
Here are my general thoughts about the article: I agree with the idea of the people taking care of the poor instead of it being the government’s responsibility. The “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat” is one of the big reasons I don’t donate to a number of charities other then my church. We work closely with the local union mission homeless shelter that has a six month program that a number of people go through. Sadly though it seems they just go through it taking advantage of the generosity of it and once it is over they move on to the next homeless shelter instead of taking a job. Oh well. Guess we tried. Anyway… what do you think?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Jay, I've never understood that line. I mean, you believe that the government should push certain parts of Christianity on the populace, yes? The 10 Commandments, school prayer, ID and such? Why is the government doing what Jesus said to do too far, while these other things are okay?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
That was a phenomenally dumb article.
It calls liberal talking points 'a religion' in order to justify the title. The rest doesn't even have anything to do with that, it's just an argument that welfare of pretty much any sort is "state-sponsored slavery."
Posted by Tara (Member # 10030) on :
In general I agree with the article in that a communist society is doomed to failure and that it is more important to fix the system that caused the poverty than to simply give out more money.
However, I'm bothered by the article's repeated assertion that some people are poor simply because they don't work. What is the context for that? Where does that idea come from? I think the real issue is not that some poor people don't work, but that they spend the precious money they do procure on drugs or alcohol. Drug and alcohol addictions seem to me to be the prevailing issue here, rather than "laziness" or "thoughtlessness about the future". In which case, as charitable people, we should be setting up assessable rehab centers.
I don't think we need to cast a shadow of laziness over people of the lower class. As your own Jesus said, the poor will always be with us. I'm willing to bet the vast majority of poor people work their asses off all day long and are hardly the better for it.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
There's a lot of substance abuse, but also a lot of mental illness in the down and out homeless. However, truly homeless people are generally not on welfare, because you'd have to have somewhere for the check to be mailed.
Unemployment and similar entitlements provide stability for the economy. I may be against them philosophically, but we'd have a much bumpier ride, as a society, without them. They also create a disincentive for employers to fire people for no reason (because their state unemployment insurance rates would go up.)
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Read the article. I think that believing that it is to take from the rich to give to the poor betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of why many liberals advocate for social programs.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I'm sympathetic to the line of thought that taking money from people by force in order to take care of the poor is not being charitable. But I'd like to see some documentation showing that people were more generous in giving to charities before the Great Society than after, because I find it unlikely to be true. I don't doubt that some Republicans are great philanthropists, but I think just as many people don't want to be taxed simply because they want more to themselves. I also question whether private charity can match the government in terms of infrastructure to make sure that all those who need help have it available to them. It seems to me that some populous areas would be well covered, but that rural poor areas, like say Appalachia, would be largely forgotten. Also, I suspect government charity, and not private charity, is better equipped to meet your goal of avoiding professional paupers. Government charity has the record-keeping ability to keep track of who receives assistance from it--in fact, unemployment benefits do have limitations to keep people from perpetually receiving those benefits. If you think those restrictions need to be strengthened, or that welfare should be revamped to not punish those who seek to move off of it, or that training opportunities should be more available or even mandated for welfare recipients, I think those are all valid avenues of thought. But as you yourself noted, Jay, a private charity has no idea who simply moves on from charity to charity, which seems more enabling to professional paupers.
Most of all, though, I just find the notion that private charities can carry the load to be wishful thinking. Like trickle-down economics, it seems like a foolhardy thing to rely on.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
That quote from 2 Thes. is taken seriously out of context. If you read the verses before, it is not referring to beggars, homeless people and the idle poor but most specifically to ministers within the church. Many of the references to the "idle" in the bible can be applied equally well to the idle rich. Taken within the full context of the bible which through out emphasizes the importance of caring for the poor, these verses make far more sense if they are talking about the idle rich who are living off the labor of the poor rather than the other way around.
quote:. The rest doesn't even have anything to do with that, it's just an argument that welfare of pretty much any sort is "state-sponsored slavery."
Only people utterly unfamiliar with the horrors of slavery could make such a point.
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
Wow. That was basically a troll article.
quote:This is a far cry from saying that rich people should be taxed and that the government should give indiscriminately to the poor even though they might be sluggards, lazy, and thoughtless about the future.
Is there any data to support this complaint? The idea that welfare props up lazy people comes up a lot and seems to be no more than a thought experiment. I've seen no studies that actually support it and my personal anecdotes would suggest that it is a myth. I'm not sure why laziness is the default assumption in the first place.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I'll happily admit that I'm lazy, and that's probably why I suspect other people of it. I do think that if you've got 6 weeks of unemployment coming in, many people will tend to search harder for work toward the end of that period than at the beginning - unless they are unable to meet their expenses on the diminished income, which is going to be the case pretty often. For the record, I've never been able to collect unemployment. I do know that right after losing a job can be a very demoralizing time.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
First off, don't pluralize Jay. This isn't about liberals, this is about a single talk show pundit. Taking one guy who uses a random religious justification and saying this is what all Liberals want is stupid, it's unfair, and it's lying. I can see why he did it though. In the face of so much religious justification for other things, he lowered himself to that level to try and battle on the same playing field. It was a dumb move, but unsurprising.
As to the actual article. Despite the programs in this country to help the poor, we still have a remarkably low unemployment rate, so I really don't think business is suffering in the way that article seems to imply. And we tried things your war. Before the Roosevelts business had it made. I won't even get into stuff like labor safety laws, which I'm sure cost your precious businesses a lot of dollars in the name of silly things like people not dying and children not working in sweatshops. But before FDR, the elderly died in poverty, and many had no hope of realizing whatever was left of the American dream. When you lose your job today, it's extremely easy to have your whole life collapse around you. Bills mount up fast, your credit score evaporates, which pretty much kills you for the next half decade, and if you can't get a job soon, you're out on the street anyway. Unemployment provides at least a temporary cushion to make sure that something like temporarily losing your job isn't a death knell, to you or your family.
We tried it your way every year before the 1940's, and I think we're a lot better off today than we were back then. Besides, you think liberals are charitable with government money to buy VOTES? If all they wanted were votes, they'd do what your people do, suck up to big business, get millions in corporate donations (to say nothing of other freebies) and then buy the votes that way. You're hardly one to talk about buying votes.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
That article was completely illogical and full of myths. One of the biggest myths out there is that poor people are poor because they are lazy. Pure bunk. There are many people out there who are working two or three jobs and STILL can't make a living. There are folks who go from working in factories making 65,000 a year and then end up at walmart making 8 bucks an hour with no health insurance. I don't think this guy who wrote this article lives in the real world. Also, the unemployment rate is a lot higher than they are stating. I've been out of a job now for 3 MONTHS! I'm registered for 15 temp places and I'm constantly applying for jobs. I hardly gotten any offers except for pales I can't get to because I don't have a car. I don't buy that welfare equals making people dependent and turns them into "Slaves" anymore than I buy the concept that people are poor because they don't want to work!
Posted by scholar (Member # 9232) on :
Synthesia, have you worked at all with any of those temp places? Because then you are underemployed, not unemployed. Still can't make a living, but technically not unemployed.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholar: Synthesia, have you worked at all with any of those temp places? Because then you are underemployed, not unemployed. Still can't make a living, but technically not unemployed.
I've only worked with one (two?) of them and I haven't had a job in 3 months. (That job that was supposed to last 6 weeks but only lasted 3 days doesn't count.) I think that counts as being unemployed. I do not have a job right now and I am on unemployment with an eviction note still hanging over my head! It's making me insane. I want to work! Plus Ocean State Job lot or Stop and Shop didn't contact me. They will not pay me enough to pay regular rent, let alone to get out of the hole. I am so mad.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Syn, I dealt with a long stretch a few years back where the only work offered me by my temp agency (repeatedly!) was $7/hr graveyard shift assembly line work. You have my sympathies.
One of the most despicable things about the article to my thinking is that its title premise is spin. It's basically a response to members of the religious right using their faith as a political bludgeon and some members of the left pointing out, quite rightly, that those same people seem much more interested in the doctrines of their faith that allow them to condemn others and rail about values than the prominent ones that call on them not to rush to judgement and to care for the unfortunate. To say "Agh! You're mixing religion and politics!" is basically to sidestep a compelling accusation of hypocrisy- by means of another hypocrisy (the pot calling the kettle black, as it were.)
It seems like the author is contending that only the right gets to make faith a political issue. And if that's the case, I'm inclined to suggest he go take a long walk off a short pier.
Posted by Dog Walker (Member # 8301) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: That was a phenomenally dumb article.
It calls liberal talking points 'a religion' in order to justify the title. The rest doesn't even have anything to do with that, it's just an argument that welfare of pretty much any sort is "state-sponsored slavery."
I completely agree. This article looks as if it was written by some unprofessional extreme conservative. I hate it when people miss quote scripture to prove the point they want.
With that said I somewhat agree that some people that are unwilling to work use their welfare check as a crutch, but by no means does this mean all people do. I personally know of people that work for a few months then quit and collect unemployment so they can take a break from work. I also know hard working people that have been fired, some even unjustly, and getting an unemployment check helped them make it through a hard few weeks as they tried to get back on their feet.
I have no problem giving tax money to the latter of the two, but wish the gov't could weed out the deserving and those taking advantage of the system.
In a perfect world we would all work hard. Those that were well off would help those that were poor. There would be no need for government programs because everyone would take care of their neighbor.
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
Does Jay ever post apart from starting threads with links to something right-wing? Just checking.
--Enigmatic
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Not really.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Sometimes he makes a sports-photo related post, right?
Posted by String (Member # 6435) on :
quote:Originally posted by Threads: Wow. That was basically a troll article.
quote:This is a far cry from saying that rich people should be taxed and that the government should give indiscriminately to the poor even though they might be sluggards, lazy, and thoughtless about the future.
Is there any data to support this complaint? The idea that welfare props up lazy people comes up a lot and seems to be no more than a thought experiment. I've seen no studies that actually support it and my personal anecdotes would suggest that it is a myth. I'm not sure why laziness is the default assumption in the first place.
Well if you just want to take someones word for it, I know a good number of people abusing the welfare system in MI. I know Able-bodied people on S.S.I. Disability. I know Mothers who spend their state aid on drugs. I know people who move from county to county to stay on welfare indefinitely. I'm not saying that the government should not provide a safety-net for people in need. I am however letting you know that you don't need to see data on paper to know that its hard as hell to starve to death in this country. People do mooch.
It irks me a little bit to see some of my family members getting free rides, while I break my back at a warehouse fifty hours a week. sometimes I think that I could hold on to a little more of my money if less of it were spent helping people who won't help themselves.
Maybe it should be a little harder to get state aid. Mandatory drug tests. Maybe make people fill out aplications to places. I don't know. Not really a whole lot I can do about it though, so.... Live and let live.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
If they got rid of welfare altogether, the problem would get a lot worse. THere has to be a way to weed out moochers, like weeding out people who do foster care for the money and don't care enough for the children. Not every foster parent is like that, but the ones who are ruin it for kids who have already been through enough.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
quote:“If anyone will not work, neither let him eat”
I like this idea.
Any person who is retired, who has enough wealth that they live off their portfolio instead of off the sweat of their brow, the entire Jet-Set crowd from Paris Hilton to Brittney Spears to JLo and assoc, every person who has so much wealth that they don't need to work needs to give up their money and starve until they actually do some freakin work for a change.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
It irks me a little bit to see some of my family members getting free rides, while I break my back at a warehouse fifty hours a week. sometimes I think that I could hold on to a little more of my money if less of it were spent helping people who won't help themselves.
Then follow their track! Mooch from the government! If it irks you, if you can't help but resent it, join their team.
Wait, you don't want to? Because doing things your way has benefits way beyond the financial? Then what's the problem?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
How do you even get enough money when you get unemployment or welfare? Unemployment pays out HALF an income. Its not enough to live off of. (especially when you are trying to pay a certain amount of money to your landlady to stave off eviction) You seriously can't relax and do nothing on that sort of money without huge stomach aches. One is constantly on edge.
Dang, I want a job already! I hate not working. It's so boring. But it would be nice to get a good job though.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Sometimes he makes a sports-photo related post, right?
Yep. And he really really really likes Orson Scott Card a whole lot. He posts about that fairly frequently on the other side.
Posted by String (Member # 6435) on :
quote:Originally posted by Foust: It irks me a little bit to see some of my family members getting free rides, while I break my back at a warehouse fifty hours a week. sometimes I think that I could hold on to a little more of my money if less of it were spent helping people who won't help themselves.
Then follow their track! Mooch from the government! If it irks you, if you can't help but resent it, join their team.
Wait, you don't want to? Because doing things your way has benefits way beyond the financial? Then what's the problem?
Of course your right, but it still gets under my skin, thats all I'm saying. Like Synesthesia said the Income that the moochers manage to live off of could not support just me, Let alone my daughter, and my really really bad habit of buying old video games that cost too much money.
Probably the second biggest reason I wouldn't mooch is that I would be limiting my income and hurting myself. That's not to say I wouldn't take an unemployment check If I got laid off, because I would. I'd just have to live a whole lot skinnier.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Of all the liberals DeMar could have chosen to pick on...Alan Colmes?
Really?
Reeeaaaallly?
I mean, I know when I'm unsure about a difficult issue I generally flip on FNC and just repeat whatever Alan happens to be mumbling at the time. From what I gather at the meetings though, this isn't Standard Liberal-Approved Practice (SLAP).
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
The Algebra of Economics and why we are always talking past each other.
It seems to me that the above analyst, and many Conservatives have a basic philosophy.
W=$
W is Work. $ is Dollars.
As the Value for W increases, the more work you do, the amount of $ you get will increase.
The funny thing is that this is usually proposed by people who have a high W, but no where near as high as many others who make far less $.
They assume that if $ is close to 0, then W must also be close to 0. This is not often the case.
Education plays an enormous part in what ones income will be. A high school drop out who works 60 hours a week will still make less money than a Lawyer or Doctor, because they don't have the appropriate training. While an investment broker who knows how to play the system will make even more.
So it could be more appropriate to say
W*E=$.
Then there are the lucky folks, people who have inherited all their money so have to do no work whatsoever, or people who hit the lottery, or buy stock on a whim that explodes. There are others who buy stock in EnRon just before its collapse, or despite working 50 hours a week at the same company for 15 years, get laid off, or who's boss dislikes their gender, race, or hair color and refuses to grant them the raises they deserve.
Perhaps they invested their education in Computers just as outsourcing came into vogue, or they married a man who told them to quit working outside the home, only ten years later to have that man divorce them and leave them pennyless.
This is Luck. So we change the formula again so that:
(W*E)*L=$
Then there is Time. Someone who invests a lot of their time early on gains the benefits of that work not immediately, but later. It could be time spent working hard in school, or time spent working hard moving up the corporate ladder.
How would we put that in the formula?
What other variables exist in that formula?
Government welfare is designed not to replace W, but to replace L. It also strives to enhance E, but that seems always to be ignored, both pro and con.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I've been giving this some thought. Liberals do respond to religious ideology in political ways. No question. The Catholic Workers Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
I think some differences lie in what religious principles are being promoted - what is considered important. At least in my opinion, whether the insertion of religious principles is a good thing or not depends on the goal of those doing the insertion. If the goal is to broadly apply principles that make people better off - more free, better fed, educated, housed - that is a good thing. If the goal is to make them follow a particular creed or to exclude them because they don't, it isn't a good insertion of religion into the political process.
Nor, I believe, is it a good religious practice.
And I checked the gospels. If there was anything in what Jesus said about only helping the deserving poor, I missed it.
edit to add: Seriously, Christians who are using that one passage from 2 Thess. to excuse their indiffernce to the poor are reaching to the point of dishonesty.