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Guest Post: Fixing The Problem Isn't Difficult
Via Monty Pelerin's World blog,
The following was received via email. Supposedly it appeared in the Waco Tribune. We don’t know the author, but we assume those interested could look her up. Since the Constitution no longer matters, we assume we can make her President, even though she doesn’t meet the (formerly valid) age restriction.
This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. It’s her future she’s worried about and this is how she feels about the social welfare big government state that she’s being forced to live in! These solutions are just common sense in her opinion. This was in the Waco Tribune Herald, Waco , TX , Nov 18, 2011
Put Me In Charge...
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.
Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.
Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.
In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good..”
Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.
If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.
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We should be taxing the Fed's balance sheet.
Okay ... racism ... good!
Right?
Where is the part about the bankers stealing $10 trillion from the 'people'? No high-level theft and maybe there are some jobs for people to 'get'.
Steve from Virginia says: "Put me in charge, I will put the bankers and big business criminals in prison!" (those that I cannot hang ...)
Long prison terms serve to warn others.
I guess the genius who wrote the piece and wants to be in charge, also wants to be in charge of creating all these currently non-existent jobs that he wants people to get. Oh that's right, she didn't say anything about being in charge of doing that! I wonder why not. Seems like the fix isn't so easy eh, unless you are a privileged brat who's never gone hungry before in her life.
Actually he's 56 or so and was in the army for 20 years when there was no mission collecting government checks. Now, he's working as a "computer specialist" for the department of transportation in texas collecting government checks. When he retires, he'll be collecting 2 retirements and unlimited benefits. Hopefully it'll all go bust before then. I'd be willing to bet that if you added up all his contributions to society, there might be one years worth of work if a computer specialist even does anything for the department of transportation. He saw someone getting steaks at the grocery store with an EBT card and said "I paid for that!". Actually, the government did and pays for him too. Probably pays him 5 or 10 fold what welfare pays with about the same return to the government. He didn't want his picture taken for the newspaper article about this letter, probably because he weighs 400 lbs.
Sounds like facism to me. Bring on Hitler and Mussolini and Franco.
hate to say it, but at this point there are way too many people who are incentivised and way too much has been invested in maintaining the status quo. The only thing that will change our path is an all out revolution.
Yeah because history teaches us that those have great outcomes for most of society without massive levels of death, starvation, disease, and economic runi or that you even end up with a better gov't/leadership regime in charge after the fact.
Syria seems like it'll be alright. Massive death? Sure, but even on a percentage basis it's only 5% of the deaths we incurred during our own civil war. Now in the end they'll be economically beholded to Turkey, but Turkey will probably dominate a huge swath of the middle east anyway just as the Ottomans did. The last century was a historical anomaly.
How many people should die in Syria above the estimated 40k already? What is an acceptable threshold? 100k? 250k? Basically Syria has chased its most talented young people, has had serious damage to most of its urban areas, and completely fractured the tenuous truce between a country filled with different religious groups that won't be easy to put back together.
Turkey doesn't possess the natural resources that the Saudis, Iraqis, or the Iranians possess so by default they won't dominate the Middle East even if they will be an important regional player. Just one of several countries though.
Massive levels of death... such as 10,000 dead each year from disaffected factions fighting over turf control in major urban centers... like we have here in the good ol' US of A? Yea, I'd hate to see that happen.
This is a problem, no matter who you blame, that has its roots and support in the federal government's poverty programs. Whether it's the banksters or the Great Society, it is enabled by government misallocation of funds and power.
Ignorant comment. Go back and look at the economic damage the Civil War did to the US and in particular the Southern states where almost all of the fighting took place. There were select areas of the South that enjoyed a relatively quicker return to prominence but most of those regions had significant economic lag for 2-3 generations.
I guess ignorance is relative. Explain to me why the economic damage to urban centers (cities) such as Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Gary, Montgomerey, etc., brought about by the concentration of poverty as a direct result of high crime rates and rediculous murder tolls don't count equally to the economic lag that came as a result of the Civil War that concerns you? That crime comes from a desparate state among the inhabitants caused by indescriminate government spending on poverty that allowed the poor to reproduce at a faster clip than society at large, faster than opportunity could expand. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/large-cities-all-over-america-are-degenerating-into-gang-infested-war-zones
Not only that, but if you look at the CPI graph since the Revolutionary War posted here on the Hedge, you will note that through every war there has been inflation, and afterwards deflation. But our War on Poverty never ends, and the inflation deficit spending causes, most markedly since Nixon closed the gold window, continues unabated. That is why the way we have done things will never solve poverty, nor the crime associated with it.
O.T.
PELOSI demanding Obama BYPASS Congress on raising the debt ceiling,Just do it!.
She is a prime example of why some animals eat their young.(You working your way to irrevelancy Nancy?, your ass B gone too!)
That pic isn't true. Bank of America said you can't do they anymore or they will close your account.
Beans, Rice, Processed American Cheese, and Powdered Milk is little improvement over just buying fast food daily.
I also find it just a bit ironic too that the author obviously hates 'socialism' and the federal gov't role in peoples' lives and then recommends solutions that greatly expands governmental control including greatly expanded gov't bureaucracy and workers to enforce these ridiculsous (and disgusting) solutions.
This is just a young, immature person ranting and nothing more.
Not to say there are real problems with these problems. The overwhelmingly problem though this country continues to be at the top regardless of party and how we have increasinglymoved to a society where the basic rule of law is becoming an after thought with a 'fine.'
Paying 50 cents for beans, rice and cheese, and fixing a meal yourself, is little improvement over fast food that has worse nutrtion but costs taxpayers ten times as much? I see helping out the needy, but why help out the bottom line of McDonalds even more than the poor person patromizing the establishment?
The problem with understanding poverty programs is that most people don't see that they are stealth stimulus programs. The very "nutrition deserts" Ma Obama complains about exist because we give money to people to spend as they please instead of giving them the food directly for the nutrition they need. Many times they opt for prepared food, which has the grocery's or the restaurant's overhead and profit priced in. If the poor only received direct benifits in food, clothing, shelter and medical, but no cash, credit or equivalent, there would be no fast food restaurants, few grocery stores and likely no WalMarts in and around impoverished areas, because they are the main benificiaries of public spending on the poor.
Her solutions are right on. Nobody owes you or anyone else a posterity. Sure, we'll keep you from starving and freezing, and a wound from becoming septic. But have a kid while we're trying to help you, and you forfeit our help. That is a significant step forward in the social contract.
Her solutions would require large expansion of bureaucratic admintrations, personnel, and cost to implement these ridiculous solutions. Doesn't even begin to get into the disgusting and serious human rights violations including sterilizng people and controlling reproduction. You really want the federal gov't to have that kind of power?
As for reality, these programs are for domestic security interests first and foremost. Bismarck startted the first state run food distributions program in Prussia in urban areas because he realized that after the 1848 revolutions in Europe that having large urban centers with lots of starving/hungry people was a recipe for revolution/mass uprisings. That is why states since then have implemented these programs first and foremost.
I've been advocating this for such a long time now. So many people on food cards who drive nicer cars than me, all decked out with bells and whistles. A year ago the Baltimore sun published some sob story about a woman on welfare with 3 kids and no husband and even posted a picture of her looking all sad....but with a HUGE TV in the background. I knew then and there just who had it rough.
So they can sell their TV for $200, buy food for a week, then what? Its the poor bankers pleading for trillion dollar gov bailouts who are the real socialist crims.
I agree, but when Shoniqua hasn't worked for the past 10 years and gets to dive a nicer car than me, feed her illegitimate children on my dime, and has enough money to party on weekdays and visit the hair/nail salon then there's a problem. Oh yeah and the expensive clothing, big electronics, big taxpayer paid for apartments, jewelry, watches, etc. then I have a problem with that too. The rest of us in our frugality might have to forego those things, or if we want them bad enough save up for them. Heck, if I had the governemnt paying my housing and utilities and putting food on my table I might drive around in rims and blast music with my sound system, too.
Ah, nevermind, I get it now. You're just jealous you lack Shoniqua's money management skills.
Dude, you're pretending you're too poor to afford a big teevee while posting to ZH...whatever. Bullshit alert!
more stupid shit from stupid dumbshits.
the welfare programs for people are anti riot programs. they have nothing to do with people getting stuff for nothing. they have everything to do with keeping people fed, clothed and housed so they won' t riot in the streets because they have realized how they have been fucked by .gov and the .1%. if they threaten to riot they will get more stuff.
the people who complain about these free loaders are too stupid to see the real purpose because they have no clue how the system works, thinking they are productive through their own efforts with luck having very little to do with their modest achievements as poor working stiffs, especially the ones making more than 100 grand/year(chump change still).these people would rather criticize(by design) the plight of someone they are less than 6 months away from being like than the system that has played them for the fool they are.
the ones who think humanity is the reason welfare is neccessary are even stupider. the only humanity in the equation is preservation of the status quo. welfare is a small price to pay for the orderly looting of the people and treasury, a very cost effective business strategy.
Nice rant doucher but youre missing the point. The writer isnt saying to ban welfare programs but rather to change the standards of entering the programs since in their current form they incentivize certain types of people to not work and simutanesously perpetuate the problem of poverty because of the program's favorable conditions.
you missed the entire point of the rant so sort yourself under the dumbshit column of the spreadsheet and wallow in your bliss.
It is the best plan I've heard. I've thought of the housing and food stamps, sterilization and no voting. But, 100% implementation of all policies shown above would change our country - for the better. Finally, I vote to have the whackado Sheriff of Maricopa County take over all of these programs. PB&J and pink underwear for everyone.
You really want to pay the increased taxes it costs to do all that shit, though?
Your the same kind of guy that would strongly rally around the first demigod/fascist type of politician who would advocate these type of positions too. Another closest fascist.
the first problem is that welfare recipients are not expected to repay the loan. why would anyone expect that system to work?
In order to "fix" a problem you must first correctly identify the problem. Here's a little excerpt from "A People's History of United States";
One percent of nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owner against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy nation.
The problem is simple and destruction is mathematically certain unless difficult fixes are undertaken.
Fixing the problem isn't difficult, it's impossible when only easy fixes are considered.
Extreme austerity or destruction are the fixes. Nothing easy about either.
CPL caught the fourchan spoof.(H/T to CPL) This letter is pure bullshit.
Besides, I've already had enough Dept of STATISTS today getting my passport expidited in Minneapolis at the .gov building. The security is pretty tight(way worse than TSA) but at least the metal detector wand found the spare button for my leather jacket! Of course the place is under construction so I suppose krugman was there and broke a window. After my backscattering experience and putting my clothes back on I had to ask the guy what was going on and he said just general maintenance. What they were really doing was fortifying the doors!
I had to park a few blocks away because I am too cheap to pay for up close parking. On every street around the building there was always one person just standing around desperately trying to look like civilians. They looked like regular folk to the casual observer and some might have been so but after I had concluded my business with .gov, I walked back to my car only to see these same people still standing around. Come on .gov, you can do better than that.
I would not generally say something like this but the STATISTS at the .gov building were actually polite and helpful.(whilst bastioning the doors) But then again I had fiat digits to give to them so I can get a little blue book with 28 pages and RFID in it that tells other STATISTS from around the world who I am.
Hope I get a raft of disses for this, but this young lady, like Santelli, has identified the wrong enemy of hard work and fair play. It is not the paltry $5 billion Uncle Sam has spent helping out homeowners in the crash, it is the trillions ladled out to the financial services industry that is the greater theft - by several orders of magnitude. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout...
But, I do have some sympathy for her - after all, she was educated in Texas.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Worries-grow-about-the-e...
I have to suspect that there is at least one mortgage banker, CDO maven, and other financial genius among the ZH herd. Now, you may be a fine, hardworking, honest financier - but as long as parasitic finance is growing faster than the larger economy, you are sucking our blood and you are our enemy. The FSA? Not so much.
I won't diss you and likely most ZHer's won't either. I guess I would question if you are understanding the whole concept of ZH though? If you have not noticed, most of us do not like like central bankers much nor do we like ponzi scheme CTRL-P economics. There are a great many of us who do not think the state should be involved in much of anything and should shut itself down to only the most basic functions if not disband altogether.
We tin foil hat wearing, Ron Paul admiring, PM hoarders tried to fix the mess two times, we failed, and it cost many of our jobs as a result. So, if you want to charge in and "fix" things then by all means proceed in doing so. I would advocate for the reading of some more Mises but diss you I will not. Yet.
I know it's way past time to care, but doesn't this,
plus this,
kind of overlook the facts of this?
but yes, "we" here at ZH are known for this myopia, carry on. . .
ZH makes me laugh. So many angry people on here toward people that have totally shitty lives.
"You can't afford to feed your kids? Then DIE! DIE! DIE!"
I mean it would seem easier to me to be pissed off at the billionaires living a lavish lifestyle by making money with money at the expensve of everyone else. Especially in a time with such high underemployment.
I agree with gov't assistance comes responsibility.I think people are willng to make sacrifices to get assistance.
I currently have no health insurance, not because I made "DUMB MISTAKES", but because it's hard enough finding a job, much less one that provides health insurance.
I am an advocate of Obamacare, not because I want free care, but because our current health care system is total shit. I pay $200 for a physical that should be $20.
I'm not asking for a handout, I'm asking for our society to allow people of limited means to actually FUCKING SURVIVE.
I'm willing to pay for health care. But with people that have the "I don't need to give a shit what my health care costs" Insurance Plans, YOU FUCK ME OVER.
Instead of getting angry at people that are already FUCKED, be reasonable. Don't come up with solutions to screw people, come up with reasonable solutions.
I totally agree, give people alternatives that force them to be responsible. But saying "you can't vote" is just being a cunt.
I think we should have rewards to people behave correctly. But what happens when you TRY to get an education? You get $100K in debt and you have ZeroHedgers cat-calling you for being a parasite.
You're fucked if do, you're fucked if you're fucked. And there will always be someone on ZH to call you a loser either way.
Dude, really? it's somone elses fault? You missed the whole point of the article. We (Americans) believe that God gave us the RIGHTS of life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. That is all you are assured of. You don't have the "right" to any of your complaints. Neither I nor any other is responsible for your percieved "wants" for they are just that, wants not RIGHTS.
That's delusional, imho.
Under your thinking, is it your fault that I shoot you in the head? After all it was your responsibility to duck.
So you are like Rockefeller, you believe in manifest destiny? You believe God ordains people to be poor and starving? You believe in natural selection, that allows those with wealth to grind out those without?
Yeah I don't. I actually think we can work together to better society.
Now it will cost $250, and maybe cost you your doctor who's just as pissed as you, even moreso as he's the scapegoat. Your bill may only be $20, but somebody pays the rest. Every dollar that flows through the insurance industry will be scalped a dime or two. Don't see how that helps the cost of health care, shitty or not.
Forcing people to buy health insurance to control the cost of health care is like forcing people to buy cars in order to control the price of oil. Insurance is the vehicle by which access to the doctor will be increased, causing costs to rise.
Yeah insurance sucks.
Something needs to be done. Personally I feel Obamacare is better than doing nothing.
If we can get to single payer, we can get rid of insurance companies.
But I want an insurance company. I want to pool my money with others of the same risk and pay a reasonable premium for the coverage. And only to keep me from going bankrupt, not to pay for my $200 exam. That's the key to affordability.
Spending my money the way I see best is how I define choice in health care. Taking away insurance companies so that a single-payer system can give medical care, equal to mine, to the indigent using my tax money, and that will likely cap services to ensure that everyone gets equal consideration from available resources, is the opposite of choice.
This young woman's heart might be in the right place, but like so many in Amerika she misses the point (as many of you have already pointed out).
In Amerika, welfare is simply the cost of doing business, that's all. Work or no work, as long as people keep consuming that keeps the economy humming. Everybody must be kept alive to be a consumer of something...whether it's tv, pharmaceuticals, food, gasoline, whatever.
Her proposals wouldn't fix anything, it would send this Titanic down faster, and none of us would have any time left to prepare.
Stop trying to fix things, everyone! Don't try to solve anything! Just keep on stacking and keep your eyes glued to the lifeboats. The Titanic is going down, let it go.
Thank the stars that welfare still exists, so you can get out and avoid the riots before they happen.
Nah, with captialism both guys would be pointing guns at each other and the guy with no money would be making an offer to the guy with money that would involve both putting their guns down and coming to an equitable arrangement.
Everybody with money wants something, and everybody without money has something to offer.
It seems to us that the writer quoted is a shallow materialist Texan. Cripes, with all the looting the State Government of Oily Texas does, he/she is one to complain about urban survival profiles! Some people don't go for the greasy as first choice ya-know!!
Bling is tribal signals, power-suits appropriate to non Traitor-Federate Flag flying herder-bandits.
ESPN polling shows that Texas (and nearby OK, LA, AL) have the highest "don't care" on Ice Hockey existing. Yet they have put Dallas Stars there. So these people make PERFECT decisions don't they?!
Cripes.
Repost of what CPL stated earlier:
"I have to let you guys in on a secret.
That's a troll thread from 4chan around 2010 when the /new/ forum was running before it was replaced with /pol/. Seriously. Google the following.
It's been a troll thread for a long ass time."
Who made Ding Dong's and Ho Ho's and have they made any lately?
bullshit op, this welfare cards for booze is a propaganda stunt by the banks, divide and conquer the little people, arguing over pennies, while the banksters get away with trillions.
Since 2007, welfare recipents increased from 27 to 47 million- these were people that lost their jobs, and their homes, they wouldn't be on welfare if not for the banker bastards.
Ha! Good luck with any of that sort of nonsense. People who don’t care take no pride in doing anything right, they do terrible work. They will deliberately do bad work and sabotage stuff. Anytime you coerce or compel people to be a part of a govt social program the outcome is going to be negative - not worth it. Nor will any program that tries to do that be around long, as they are self-defeating. It just takes years for the people who support it to realize that approach doesn't work. What's required is INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT of people as they then become keen and willing to do things that are productive and skilled. Then they will do things and do them well with equanimity.
'Public' and 'private' spheres are overwhelmed by arrogant pushy but internally-under-developed people who think they know what really matters to humans, or should matter - for everyone! They all want to use regimented cookie-cutter approaches on individuals, that always completely fail. And when these do fail, they aren't even honest about what failed, they just presume and assert that the non-performing humans failed rather than their demented immature views of what it is that humans care about or should care about. Humans care about whey they care about, and you can't change it.
You have nothing to do with it. It's incredible what this fool of a girl is saying, "Listen to me, I have the right no-nonsense immediate answers for everyone!". Sorry sweetie, you're a quintessential example of why children need to grow-up and develop internally, rather than just externally. At the moment the world has a world full of internally chronically retarded people. It's the very cause of the suicidal dysfunction we see all across the USA and Europe, the so called "DEVELOPED [EXTERIOR] WORLD".
Such exterior development is made ludicrous, dysfunctional and self-destructive by the abundant-scarcity of DEVELOPED [INTERIOR] WORLD. The approach of trying to change the exterior sans the interior development is what we see everywhere around us. It's why 'dumb' politicians try to constantly manipulate society to get development occurring in the wrong place, then wonders why the society is being overwhelmed by cretins. It's because the politicians and the voters are actually people who have not developed internally. Oh, how surprising all this is!
Do I think humanity is ever going to create an internally and externally developed world?
Don't know, humanity looks quite hopeless. It's highly likely the dominant majority will always be completely and utterly out of balance, developmentally between exterior and interior, thus massively arrogant, self-destructive and endlessly creating exterior socio-political and economic 'progress' toward our mutually assured demise. (MAD)
PS: and if you're a 'greenie', 'socialist', fascio-capitalist, or academic of some variety, don't for one second think I'm implying you're in any way an internally-developed person, as most probably you're far more internally-retarded than average.
For posterity,
18 November 2010, Waco Tribune, Letters to the Editor
http://www.wacotrib.com/opinion/letters/LETTERS-Fixing-Social-Security-P...
brilliant!! now if we could use that attitude across the gangs that operate in chicago, los angeles, washington, miami and apply the same logic to the Fed, banks, insurance companies, the pentagon, Washington DC and what goes for the entertainment industry we would all be so much better off. Just needs softening with a link to hiring at like minded corporations so that we can weed out the wasters from those with talent.
Problem hey that depends of you buddy!!!!! magento development