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Should we end welfare?

Should we get rid of welfare?

  • Yes. Nothing wrong with soup kitchens

    Votes: 19 44.2%
  • No. Freebies are great

    Votes: 24 55.8%

  • Total voters
    43
what he said

and it should be a state power not federal

And how about corporate welfare?
The kind Sen. Coburn tried to get rid of with his Back-in-Black plan in 2011.

And means-testing for public pensioners who already have far more than they'll ever need.
Tell me they need COLA--low-hanging fruit--each year.
If Congressman Ryan couldn't do COLA cut-back in December of 2013, who can ?
 
That is one of the toughest and oldest creatures on this planet. Here's a cuter picture:
SciSource_BS8236.jpg

Thanks... I just grossed out some female teachers and students!! :lol:
 
And how about corporate welfare?
The kind Sen. Coburn tried to get rid of with his Back-in-Black plan in 2011.

And means-testing for public pensioners who already have far more than they'll ever need.
Tell me they need COLA--low-hanging fruit--each year.
If Congressman Ryan couldn't do COLA cut-back in December of 2013, who can ?

corporate welfare is often a dishonest term because its often a quid pro quo

real welfare-the quid pro quo is buying votes
 
I've found it difficult to convince states much of anything to pick up on their own. In a severely conservative state, getting them to follow federal law is difficult by itself, and even harder to follow their own mandates. For one thing, their revenue is often not enough. Second, they may not want to do anything at all.

And then where is the federal getting the money? From the states, the people? Stop that for anything that isn't a direct federal grant of power and perhaps the states would have the funding. But really, most states already do have their own welfare programs. The ones that decide not to, that's up to their people to decide, as I should be.
 
I think we need to move towards a negative income tax, which would still need a good design, but would do a good deed in reducing bureaucracy.

I proposed just such a platform over in the Loft.
 
Outside of urban centers, distribution will cost a lot of that trillion dollars. The majority of those who need food stamps do not live in urban centers. The urban poor are merely a very conspicuous example, given the contrast to the wealth that most of the rest of a city enjoys. And, of course, they usually aren't white, while the rural poor usually are. We both know that these two groups are not discussed in the same way.

How does it cost more to electronically deposit an account whose owner is in Oklahoma v one whose owner is in Detroit?
 
I kid, I kid. But seriously, I think you are totally wrong when you say funding doesn't matter.

;) Whew!

Funding doesn't matter to those that want to learn. WANT TO LEARN.

Of course it matters in general to the masses...
 
But I just provided an extremely simple solution and said I know what to do :lol: Fund all public schools equally, adjusted for expenses as they vary from different locations. I'm sure our government would try to make it as complicated as you describe, but it doesn't need to be.

Equitable funding is and remains complicated, however. Not only do you have to ensure you have a good understanding of what equitable funding is for each area, you also have to get the funds. It's not a simple solution. On top of that, funding is just one means of a school system being able to increase results across demographics that have traditionally underperformed. That's why No Child Left Behind is a perfect case study. Not only did it demand performance increases by way of examinations, it also mandated tracking systems designed to really take a look at the numbers of these kids who were racial minorities, and so on. That was practically unheard of. Yet, have they been doing *that* correctly? The nearly universal view is that the AYP standards are needing significant overhaul at the very least. The data systems which have developed over the past decade have also helped us figure what what's going on and allows us to act, but determining what that should be and how to do it remains difficult among the education professional community, let alone the political class or the voting public.

Again, nothing is simple at all.
 
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It's a tardigrade, also called the water bear. Look 'em up, they're amazing. They might have extraterrestrial origins.
 
Equitable funding is and remains complicated, however. Not only do you have to ensure you have a good understanding of what equitable funding is for each area, you also have to get the funds. It's not a simple solution. On top of that, funding is just one means of a school system being able to increase results across demographics that have traditionally underperformed. That's why No Child Left Behind is a perfect case study. Not only did it demand performance increases by way of examinations, it also mandated tracking systems designed to really take a look at the numbers of these kids who were racial minorities, and so on. That was practically unheard of. Yet, have they been doing *that* correctly? The nearly universal view is that the AYP standards are needing significant overhaul at the very least. The data systems which have developed over the past decade have also helped us figure what what's going on and allows us to act, but determining what that should be and how to do it remains difficult among the education professional community, let alone the political class or the voting public.

Again, nothing is simple at all.

Oh, don't get me started on no child left behind. That is an idiotic law with massive waste, and harmful consequences. It is basically the exact opposite of my solution, btw. The funds already exist and are going into the schools now, just with dramatic variability among different schools. (There's tons of ways to reduce waste in education, but that's for another debate) A simple equation can calculate cost of living to base teacher's salaries, etc on.

Bottom line: If you want to reduce social inequality, evening the playing field in education is the way to go. Interesting read about why Finland has some of the best schools in the world and they take exactly this approach.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic


"Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

* * *

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality."
 
We spend nearly a trillion dollars each year on means tested handouts. A trillion bucks will buy a lot of soup...

Assuming you are correct, I have a few questions.

Where does that trillion dollars come from to give to welfare recipients?
Once given to welfare recipients where and with whom do they spend it?
If you stop all trillion dollars in welfare, what happens to the economy that is now short that $1 trillion dollars?

Let's start there.....
 
Means tested benefits are anathema for a multitude of reasons!

Dump them!

My two-pronged approach is to first instate true single-payer healthcare as a standalone universal program for all (we're over 40% of the way there, now).

Then, instate a modest universal 'basic income' program & do away with all other social-welfare programs.

The income doesn't have to be enough to support an individual or family, but something very modest - there's nothing wrong with a half-dozen individuals pulling resources to share an apartment to survive; it beats the streets.

I really wonder if the savings from shutting-down the social programs could finance a modest basic income program?
 
What value does welfare add that can't be met with soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and giveaways of essentials like used clothing?

Safety for individuals, esp. women and children. It's not an environment where children can do schoolwork and people can be a 'family'.
 
which is what the founders intended. If a state is too generous, it will learn that quickly as too many teat sucklers will migrate to that state and it will go bankrupt. so its self policing

I'd like to agree with that but esp. in cases like NYC and New York state, that wont work. The poverty-stricken inner city populations...and those affected by them....have much higher numbers proportionally to the rest of the state.
 
Means tested benefits are anathema for a multitude of reasons!

Dump them!

My two-pronged approach is to first instate true single-payer healthcare as a standalone universal program for all (we're over 40% of the way there, now).

Then, instate a modest universal 'basic income' program & do away with all other social-welfare programs.

The income doesn't have to be enough to support an individual or family, but something very modest - there's nothing wrong with a half-dozen individuals pulling resources to share an apartment to survive; it beats the streets.

I really wonder if the savings from shutting-down the social programs could finance a modest basic income program?

EASILY. And the biggest reason is because so much of the social program money actually just goes to seniors via Social Security and Medicare. And seniors are already the most privileged group of us, in fact Pew Research has some information suggesting they are more privileged relative to their living younger counterparts than any prior generation. In other words, it's not that they're that dramatically better off than their parents and grandparents, rather their children and grandchildren are just that much worse off. Therefore we have to ask why half our federal budget goes exclusively to health care and income guarantees for our least needy age demographic. What sense does that possibly make?

I am inclined to agree with you, we need single payer health care and we need to replace welfare with a GBI. Not because that is 100% aligned with my values but as a pragmatic, practical matter.
 
Oh, don't get me started on no child left behind. That is an idiotic law with massive waste, and harmful consequences.

I have a dissenting opinion. Given what we have seen over the course of the past 35 years, No Child Left Behind was a perfectly logical extension of dealing with a fairly real problem with standards and accountability practices in the American public education system. Furthermore, the pressure to collect data has helped tremendously. State Departments of Education and their local districts are largely reactionary bodies. For most of the time, the State Department of Education's interests go unnoticed by their local bodies. However, stick a federal mandate in there, and they are compelled beyond anything else to respond. Now, in some ways this has hurt the demographics they wanted to pump up. An increased number of kids had their parents contacted by administration who wanted them to stay home during test day (they were legally limited to how many they could skim off the normal reports, but the brash offensiveness of it was noted by parents). However, many other times it's interesting to note that those pressures have often also made schools actually....work to improve their education instead of letting them slide. Pressure from the feds kind of turned that around, because as I said before, the history has shown them to be largely reactionary bodies who need to be pushed toward "compliance" with new legislation to get anywhere. This past year, we have been doing significant work in addressing problems within each state by utilizing NCLB & IDEIA's mandated data collection and collection systems. In each of your states, over the next two to three years, you are seeing a pretty major overhaul of the special education system and an eventual reauthorization of the Act which was the predecessor to NCLB. I'm personally optimistic for what's coming down the pipe, of course I had some late nights trying to improve it so I am biased.

Where it failed dramatically was in its design and implementation of accountability. AYP goals could never have been 100%, and punishing a school for essentially meeting dramatically high progress is asinine, just as it is often problematic to significantly punish a school for being unable to increase performance where it was unlikely that anyone short of Moses could achieve some results. States latching onto the law by mandating student graduation being tied to the performance on one test is absolutely unnecessary (it wasn't a required component to NCLB anyway). Tying a teacher or administrator's job security on the performance of those tests is likewise going to catch some issues regarding fidelity to reporting actual improvements as it is perhaps going to kill your educational staff. School should not have revolved around "teaching to the test," but rather using it as a means to track and incentivize school performance.

There probably was too little carrot and too much of a stick (actually, it was a stick covered with rusty nails and a lethal injection).

That being said--it was needed. RDA is the future, as it should be, but we need to make sure we are doing it right rather than incentivizing more harmful classroom environments.

Equal effect funding? Sure thing. But NCLB and RtT did much to be commended, even if it really needs serious reworking.
 
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God no.

It should be reformed and enhanced accordingly though.

True enough. In fact, the mantra about wanting people to work kind of needs some fleshing out. People presume that incentives to work mean make it harder to stay on by way of kicking you off benefits for various things.

While that may work for some, there's a lot built into our public policies which deincentivize working and independent living by penalize you too harshly for increasing your success. I'll use a personal example here, since that's easier to explain in detail. My sibling receives assistance due to his disability. That disability isn't going anywhere, no matter what. In fact, that disability was as a result of medical malpractice. He didn't ask for it at 4 years old, but there it was all the same. So he needs services and medical help, and a lot of it. It would be too much cashflow for even an ordinary fairly-well off blue collar worker to deal with a significant hourly wage and work hours. So he gets government aid to essentially stay even in terms of feeling normal for the day. He loves work, he excels at it and puts most of his coworkers to shame with his near-perfect record. But with federal services, he cannot work more than a certain number of hours or make just X much money, or else those services start fading pretty damn quickly. He also has to spend all that he earns in order to stay in the government's good graces. Many conservatives see the word "spend" and think "oh goody, he's getting a bunch of toys and nice things with tax payer support." Well, not really. He absolutely hates it. He's required to spend down so he can continue to live his incredibly modest life---but no more. You should have seen him when he was required to spend down. We went to the furniture store and he was grumbling the whole damn time. Sure, he could have used a better mattress...but why are they "making me waste all of this money when I want to save for a home?" It was degrading.

There is absolutely no incentive for him to climb the ladder, because he can't make too much of lose services that mere mortals can hardly pay for (my parents went near-broke doing so on their salaries when he was a kid). He's renting an apartment that is thankfully cheap, but he's incredibly vulnerable. Rent costs are on the average a few times higher than he's paying, due to the boom. Any higher than that and he's looking to living with mom and dad for the foreseeable future. So what's a sob to do? Buy property. Except he cannot save up for his own home. Government says so. He's required to not save a dime, he's required to work less, and he's required, and if he wanted to get married, government dramatically punishes him for that too (want to know why marriage rates for people with disabilities is so low? Look to that). Even the recently-passed ABLE Act only allows significant savings on "disability-related expenditures only." The regs are still being created, but that's not necessarily a promising sign for anyone with a disability wanting to accomplish the American dream.

In the pursuit of "pulling yourself by your bootstraps" government social safety nets, government often times does the opposite to the human spirit. Do you think this supposedly conservative idea fostered the ideals of conservatism in him? Nah. He's wanting to pursue conservative ideals in spite of conservatives.
 
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I am inclined to agree with you, we need single payer health care and we need to replace welfare with a GBI. Not because that is 100% aligned with my values but as a pragmatic, practical matter.
Thank you!

As for seniors, a single-payer health system would take care of their medical (as of now they already have single-payer, anyway - AKA Soc Sec), but the modest GBI I envision would likely be below the current individual max SS payment - that might be problematic, and I can't see having a GBI so high that some might see it as an opportunity to go through life on permanent vacation from day one.
 
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