The White Ghetto

[Kshartle]

Kshartle,

I told you I was in favor of government creating a safety net... if you need more detail than that:

- Free education
- Subsidized healthcare
- Help with housing
- Help with food costs

... essentially the same thing you mentioned regarding poverty.

So if government provides "basic needs" such as shelter, food, clothing, and those other tools you mention, which our governments (various levels of it, anyway) in many ways DO provide for people, how can you say that government aid creates poverty.

I received a government education for free (to me)... how did that create poverty for me?

Even if it does breed "dependence," that is very different than "poverty" given your definition.

I missed where you said that first part.

I would like to see if anyone else would prefer to answer your questions before I add a coment on how the government creates poverty doing this stuff. I don't think it's very interesting because it seems so obvious to me. That makes it boring to write about and I'd rather read what others think.

[pugchief]

government creating a safety net...

- Free education
- Subsidized healthcare
- Help with housing
- Help with food costs

Good plan in theory. Abuse of this plan = poor execution in reality.

People who are really in need should receive. Enormously stricter criteria is essential to qualify for, and continue to, receive benefits.

[Pointedstick]

Here is how "free" government education causes problems (pastebomb incoming):

A major problem with government schools is that their structure is often set up to exacerbate existing inequalities. In the United States, for example, government schools draw both their students and their tax revenues from specific geographic areas. Originally intended to create “neighborhood schools,”? the true result is a perverse segregation by income level. Wealthy areas, full of high earners able to pay hefty property tax bills, receive in return well-funded public schools that are mostly safe and attract top teachers eager for students who are generally non-violent and high-achieving. These good school districts attract more wealthy people and upwardly-mobile professionals, inflating neighborhood real estate prices and pricing out poorer people.  The same factor in reverse starves the schools in more impoverished neighborhoods of vital funds and leaves them with students from difficult and unsafe social situations. As the bad schools become a turn-off for home buyers, housing prices fall, and families who value education move elsewhere, starving the schools of the kinds of students that teachers actually want to teach. As a result, these schools gradually see their teaching staff replaced with the bottom of the barrel.
In most American cities, there is a shockingly stark contrast between the well-performing schools filled with the children of upper-middle-class professionals taught by skilled and caring instructors, and the poor schools filled with the children of impoverished and working-class laborers or the unemployed, taught by graduate school washouts and brutes. In this manner, well-off children attend schools that propel them to success, while children dealt worse cards in the game of life find themselves trapped in schools that teach them more about gangs and drugs than writing and math. In many of these places, government schooling is designed less to educate students and more to “get kids off the streets.”? Unfortunately, where street violence is a problem, this simply means that the violence migrates into the schools, since the gangsters-in-training and their victims alike are forced into the same buildings.
As a result of these perverse realities, public education in the United States is a tragic farce that mostly exists to perpetuate pre-existing class distinctions.

[Kshartle]

government creating a safety net...

- Free education
- Subsidized healthcare
- Help with housing
- Help with food costs

Good plan in theory. Abuse of this plan = poor execution in reality.

People who are really in need should receive. Enormously stricter criteria is essential to qualify for, and continue to, receive benefits.

I think the critera should be decided by the ones providing the benefits. This is not the government, they are only providing a portion of what they steal.

[Pointedstick]

In other words, if the "free" (not really free) government education was beneficial to you, it's highly likely that your parents had enough money to live in an area where the schools were of high quality, signaling that in a system without property taxes and neighborhood schools that distort real estate prices, they would have had enough money to afford even an expensive private school. And it is my contention that the absence of "free" (not really free) government primary education would result in a flowering of private schooling options, many of them extremely cheap or even free. What would be the reason to offer schooling for free? Why, to try to tilt dumber students in favor of your point of view, of course. Does this sound monstrous? Well then what do you think the government is getting out of educating kids for free? (not really free)

[moda0306]

Here is how "free" government education causes problems (pastebomb incoming):

A major problem with government schools is that their structure is often set up to exacerbate existing inequalities. In the United States, for example, government schools draw both their students and their tax revenues from specific geographic areas. Originally intended to create “neighborhood schools,”? the true result is a perverse segregation by income level. Wealthy areas, full of high earners able to pay hefty property tax bills, receive in return well-funded public schools that are mostly safe and attract top teachers eager for students who are generally non-violent and high-achieving. These good school districts attract more wealthy people and upwardly-mobile professionals, inflating neighborhood real estate prices and pricing out poorer people.  The same factor in reverse starves the schools in more impoverished neighborhoods of vital funds and leaves them with students from difficult and unsafe social situations. As the bad schools become a turn-off for home buyers, housing prices fall, and families who value education move elsewhere, starving the schools of the kinds of students that teachers actually want to teach. As a result, these schools gradually see their teaching staff replaced with the bottom of the barrel.
In most American cities, there is a shockingly stark contrast between the well-performing schools filled with the children of upper-middle-class professionals taught by skilled and caring instructors, and the poor schools filled with the children of impoverished and working-class laborers or the unemployed, taught by graduate school washouts and brutes. In this manner, well-off children attend schools that propel them to success, while children dealt worse cards in the game of life find themselves trapped in schools that teach them more about gangs and drugs than writing and math. In many of these places, government schooling is designed less to educate students and more to “get kids off the streets.”? Unfortunately, where street violence is a problem, this simply means that the violence migrates into the schools, since the gangsters-in-training and their victims alike are forced into the same buildings.
As a result of these perverse realities, public education in the United States is a tragic farce that mostly exists to perpetuate pre-existing class distinctions.

This is a problem with locally-funded education.  You'll notice that countries with much more centralized education infrastructures don't have as much of this inequality. 

If you think this inequality is bad now, wait until everyone has to pay for their own education.

[moda0306]

Kshartle,

So a government that provides housing, education, healthcare and food for the poor (many countries do this to varying degrees) is actually promoting poverty even though it is providing the very things that, by your definition, eliminate poverty??

I know that's not what you're saying, but it's what your contradictions are implying.

If those things are provided for people, how is that expanding poverty?  It really is not that obvious to me...

[Pointedstick]

Kshartle,

So a government that provides housing, education, healthcare and food for the poor (many countries do this to varying degrees) is actually promoting poverty even though it is providing the very things that, by your definition, eliminate poverty??

I know that's not what you're saying, but it's what your contradictions are implying.

If those things are provided for people, how is that expanding poverty?  It really is not that obvious to me...

People in poverty (defined here as a lack of material goods) who are simply given the material goods may become lifted out of poverty, but they will become dependent on the entity that gave them the goods continuing to do so forever because they did not lift themselves out of poverty in a sustainable manner. The moment the subsidies end, they will fall back into poverty because they still don't know how to prevent themselves from being impoverished.

This is why IMHO safety nets, welfare, and charity need to be well-targeted to have any hope of succeeding. If you look at an impoverished person who is fundamentally healthy in mind and body, this is a person who is impoverished because they do not know the life skills that you and I do. Simply giving them the stuff they have the capacity to earn for themselves if they knew how does nothing to help them. It just turns them into a ward of the state, their mom, etc.

This is of course distinguished from aid to the mentally ill, physically disabled, etc. Those kinds of people really do have impediments to earning a living and dependence on other people is less unfortunate because they have fewer options.

[Kshartle]

Kshartle,

So a government that provides housing, education, healthcare and food for the poor (many countries do this to varying degrees) is actually promoting poverty even though it is providing the very things that, by your definition, eliminate poverty??

I know that's not what you're saying, but it's what your contradictions are implying.

If those things are provided for people, how is that expanding poverty?  It really is not that obvious to me...

No contradiction from me.

Yes, stealing from some and auctioning off the stolen goods through the democractic process certainly breeds dependancy and poverty.

It breeds the poverty because eventually you run out of other people's money. Look at the unfunded liabilites.

There is no contradiction in my position.

[Kshartle]

Kshartle,

So a government that provides housing, education, healthcare and food for the poor (many countries do this to varying degrees) is actually promoting poverty even though it is providing the very things that, by your definition, eliminate poverty??

I know that's not what you're saying, but it's what your contradictions are implying.

If those things are provided for people, how is that expanding poverty?  It really is not that obvious to me...

People in poverty (defined here as a lack of material goods) who are simply given the material goods may become lifted out of poverty, but they will become dependent on the entity that gave them the goods continuing to do so forever because they did not lift themselves out of poverty in a sustainable manner. The moment the subsidies end, they will fall back into poverty because they still don't know how to prevent themselves from being impoverished.

This is why IMHO safety nets, welfare, and charity need to be well-targeted to have any hope of succeeding. If you look at an impoverished person who is fundamentally healthy in mind and body, this is a person who is impoverished because they do not know the life skills that you and I do. Simply giving them the stuff they have the capacity to earn for themselves if they knew how does nothing to help them. It just turns them into a ward of the state, their mom, etc.

This is of course distinguished from aid to the mentally ill, physically disabled, etc. Those kinds of people really do have impediments to earning a living and dependence on other people is less unfortunate because they have fewer options.

Yes well said. This is how the poor are bred by the state. It is cruel because the promises cannot be kept. That's why I say all this government borrowing which enslaves the unborn, the inflation which raises prices on the poor is a cruel hoax being played on people to gain their support.

The government masters keep $0.50 of every dollar and say "gee look what I did for you"

Or as Browne always said....."Government breaks your legs, hands you a crutch and says look what I did for you".


Mentally ill, physically disabled are such a tiny portion there is no doubt they would be much much better cared for if we were wealthier and so much wasn't being handed to deadbeats.

Opposing welfare is to love people and the poor and unfortunate. It's to love them and actually think about real solutions rather than the mentally lazy non-solution of stealing.

Stealing, like all violence is an attempt to get something for nothing. Since something cannot come from nothing you know beforehand it's going to be a complete failure. Unless the goal is to create more poor. The war on poverty has succeeded in that.

[moda0306]

Kshartle,

We can't run out of other people's money in a closed system... nor can you with the way our fiat monetary system works.

So if you can provide some reason why providing housing, food, education, and healthcare will collapse a society (into not being able to provide it for people going forward), I'm all ears... but based on where western civilization is at today, it doesn't appear that your argument holds much water.  Many very prosperous countries provide these safety nets to people.

[I Shrugged]

I'm of the opinion that it's hopeless.  Prosperity and democracy lead to overly-generous welfare, using the term very generally.  Eventually entitlements and programs become too much for the productive economy to bear, and a long slide begins.  Then hungry upstarts, countries on the rise, will take over.  Rinse and repeat.  I don't see a way out of it for the USA.

My way of dealing with it was to take a cue from Ayn Rand, and stop supporting the looters.  I sold my business, and structured my investments so as to incur extremely low taxes.