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Guest Post: A Community-Based Alternative To The Welfare State
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
It is important to discuss alternatives before the Status Quo devolves and collapses, so we have an intellectual framework to guide healthier, more sustainable alternatives once the current system implodes.
Two of the key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline are complacency and intellectual sclerosis, what I have termed a failure of imagination. (The others are military over-reach, chronic deficits, a parasitic Elite that is immune to what's left of the rule of law, weak leadership, mass dependence on the Central State and excessive consumption.)
Michael Grant described these causes of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
In other words, if our idea of intellectual rigor and honesty is Paul Krugman dancing around the Neo-Keynesian Cargo Cult campfire waving dead chickens and mumbling the same old nonsensical chants about aggregate demand, we are well and truly doomed.
This same intellectual sclerosis and spiritual vacuum characterizes our acceptance of the current welfare state. That dependence on the State is destructive to the the well-being and productivity of the dependents and to the fiscal health of the State is self-evident. As management guru Peter Drucker observed in his 1993 book, Post-Capitalist Society:
Joseph Schumpeter warned in 1918 that the fiscal state would in the end undermine government's ability to govern. Fifteen years later, Keynes hailed the fiscal state as the great liberator; no longer limited by restraints on spending, government in the fiscal state could govern effectively, Keynes maintained. We now know Schumpeter was right.
The Status Quo firmly embraces both sides of the welfare state coin: corporate welfare lavished on favored cartels (education, healthcare, defense, oil/gas, banking, etc.) and transfer payments to individuals, i.e. paying people to stay at home watching TV. Republicans and Democrats alike are crony-capitalists par excellence, and both ends of the political spectrum are delighted to warehouse the poor at home via welfare, where the steady drip of State dependence saps their motivation to make political demands on the State-corporate partnership.
(Warehousing the poor in prison for drug-related activity is far more costly and troublesome than simply paying them to stay home and watch TV.)
Politicos bleat the requisite lip-service to "creating jobs," but there is no discussion of policies that might give meaning and purpose to those without jobs while loosening the State's grip on the throat of society.
Correspondent Jeff W. recently shared an alternative vision of dealing with chronic unemployment that is light years away from the centralized welfare state. The key feature of Jeff's system is that it is centered in the community-based economy, the largely forgotten sector of the economy that has been hollowed out by the Central State and corporate-market machine.
Here are some thoughts about replacing the welfare state with community groups:
- Three bad ways to deal with chronic unemployment: government income transfer, government make-work jobs, and goosing the economy with debt money. These bad practices need to be supplanted by new practices.
- Because people are not factory-farm chickens, they need more than food, shelter and clothing in order for society to survive. A person also needs important work to do that will allow him to earn a respected role in the community. Community groups can provide important work as well as providing basic food, clothing and shelter.
- Community groups could be funded using the following principles:
a. The tax assessment on businesses and individuals need not be a dollar amount. It can be a requirement to take care of a person, e.g., if you earn $100,000 per year as a single person with no dependents, you might be assessed 1.56 dependents. Your share of the burden of taking care of the unemployed would be 1.56 people.
b. Communities should operate in a competitive environment, e.g., Church A Social Services takes care of people at $10,000/year/dependent. Church B Social Services does it for $9500. The $100,000 earner in the example above could save money by directing his funds to Church B. In this example he saves $780 ($15,600 - $14,820).
c. Dependents should be able to choose which community group to belong to. If all the dependents leave Church B because they are doing a poor job, then Church B Social Services is out of business.
d. A community group can keep its costs low by putting dependents to work, e.g., Churches A & B could operate a taxpaying restaurant, and use its profits to help fund their programs.
The main point I am trying to make is that intelligent new approaches are available to supplant the welfare state. Political leadership may not be available, and the people might not yet be ready for radical change (though they are getting closer to being ready), but ideas and plans are available today.
Thank you, Jeff, for articulating a community-based alternative to the centralized welfare state. One of the few commentators who understand the importance of membership is John Michael Greer of the The Archdruid Report.
Membership entails privileges that are dependent on fulfilling duties, guidelines and responsibilities. Failure to comply with the guidelines or evasion of responsibilities leads to dismissal from the group. This is the core of membership: it can be revoked if the membership privileges or other members are abused.
What is especially noteworthy in Jeff's alternative is the freedom of choice and competition. No one is forced to join a community group; they are free to not join a group and as a result of that choice not collect the benefits. Donors can choose which group to fund, so the community groups are competing for both donors and dependents.
The second key feature of Jeff's alternative is that the goal is not to warehouse the unemployed in front of a TV set, it is to offer them meaningful work and purposeful roles in their community.
As Jeff observed, we as a nation are not yet ready to even discuss alternatives to our corrupt, bankrupt corporate-state welfare system, but it is important to discuss alternatives before the Status Quo devolves and collapses, so we have an intellectual framework to guide healthier, more sustainable alternatives once the current system implodes.
Gordon T. Long and CHS discuss The Global Endgame (25 minutes, 30 slides)
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So when the economy, currency, and society collapses, we'll just form 'community groups' instead of 'welfare'...and that's supposedly what caused it all in the first place?
I'm not sure that's even in the realm of reality. Sounds like this was written by the Monopoly monacle guy.
Here's why this wont work:
People don't care about the poor. The reason we need a welfare state is that most people are selfish and narcissistic.
We need to rely on people to vote in politicians who are more compassionate and less selfish than themselves. Then and only then will the poor receive a helping hand.
People don't care about the poor.
Of course they do, and always have. Funny that the streets weren't full of starving poor and old people in 1910, huh?
It has only been since the state taxed away all our surplus that helping the poor has become especially hard.
Ask yourself this: If you were taxed like it was 1910 (that is, barely at all), how much more money would you have? And might you help the sick guy down the street? Or the blind woman? Or the orphan kids?
Most of us would. Indeed, most of us did.
nope
not me
Historically, there were far more efficient ways to handle the poor - those guys and gals that will "always be with us."
``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.
``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''
``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''
``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.
``Both very busy, sir.''
``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''
``Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, ``a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''
``Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.
``You wish to be anonymous?''
``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''
``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.''
Dickens wrote instruction manuals for 21st century social engineering.
Statists hate charity. They want all possible resources passed through them and theirs first.
Dickens was great. You are looking for HG Wells.
Dickens' constant refrain to his fiscal success was that he wrote for the rich guys. They always saw themselves rising to the top, no matter how squalid their circumstances were imposed by fate: True Nobility is always found among the lost souls of the masses. He omitted the "nurture" part, on the 'talent' and 'effort' part, and focused on the "superior breeding" part. Since his paying clients saw themselves as "superior breeds". That's ALL anyone needs to know about Dickens. The rest is just props, costumes, names and events.
Here is the PC socialist statist eugenic propaganda you are looking for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells_bibliography
Ahhhh - interesting. The assumption made in this post is essentially the problem and I'm going to bet the poster has no idea why either.
What most people aren't aware of is that there is an almighty s***storm of a debate going on right now that predicates how we structure society and the stakes are very high for the status quo including Economists.
There is a certain line of thinking - Humanity as naturally wicked, aggressive, people are self interested (think Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steve Pinker) vs humanity as naturally prone to cooperation and limits on material acquisitiveness (David Graeber and Brian Fergusson).
Once you get a feel for the nature of the debate you start seeing how the status quo (first view) has coloured our assumptions on Economics and the State for about the last 400 years (In effect since Hobbes - co-incidentally about the same time as nation states and state war emerge).
What would be useful is we start making an effort to understand and question some of long held views and understand what the latest evidence is telling us.
I beg to differ--look at Latin America for a preponerance of evidence about that. The US is looking more and more like that every day as the middle class gets hollowed out and the groups diverge to the two poles.
I beg to differ--look at Latin America for a preponerance of evidence about that.
People in Latin America take care of their old and sick - even while being abused by their rulers. Because they have less money doesn't mean they care less.
Because they didn't interrupt the part that Darwin got right back then. It only takes a few weeks exposure/starvation and they're ready to be picked up.
Which didn't often happen, except in epidemic situations.
MDB is right on target.
my favorite part: we need to elect politicians who are more compassionate and less selfish.
you should write for jon stewart. i swear you are the best comedian.
of course so is the author.
"if you earn $100,000 per year as a single person with no dependents, you might be assessed 1.56 dependents. Your share of the burden of taking care of the unemployed would be 1.56 people."
i should be responsible for 1.56 people. reallY? i'm one person and i need to raise 1.56 additional people?
fuck that. i didnt have kids because i want to take care of no one but me.
i am offended at the mere thought that i must take responsibility for others. mothers used to drown children they could not manage to feed or raise. need to bring that tradition back. i will take responsibility for 1.56 extra unfit to manage themselves folks only if i get to drown them. and remember, dont feed the animals, they might become dependant on it and become unable to take care of themselves.
want welfare, get spayed or neutered you fucking animals
enuf trying to make autistic, birth defect ridden fucks useful members of society at the expense of the healthy. you get to participate in special olympics once, right before euthanasia
fasttrack the death penalty
make smoking manditory
legalize gunfights, crack, heroin, meth and anything else fucking lethal
eliminate airbags and seatbelts
ban helmets
we can end the welfare state if we just let people who are unfit to live be culled from the herd as mother nature intended
and if any motherfucker ignores my DNR tattoo, i will sue
EXACTLY!!! Anyone downrates you they are unemployed nanny state sheeple.
1.56? How do I round off the bag limit, up or down? It should be 5, because McCain is wrong.
Maybe dial it back just a bit and realize that your gains did come from you being part of a community and rather than having your wealth involuntarily appropriated at gunpoint, what you would prefer is to be more in control of your charitable giving. But give you must.
must?
must?
why the fuck must i give anything to anyone?
that right there is whats wrong here
i must give to support people who wont support themselves
if you cant work because you were injured at work, and i look at that differently
other than that
other than that, make yourself a goddamn job
make it,take it
you aint entitled to anything but a good death, and you need to make that for yourself too
who are you who claims to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil?---God
@John Q. Pig sez:
At the same time John Q consumes as much as twenty or thirty 'others' elsewhere outside the blessed United States! John Q is all take and no give, the typical American Pig who hates taxes and governments because these things add something to the cost of almost free shit/bottomless greed!
Nobody asked the poor to be born and nobody asked for the pigs to be born, either. Get rid of the pigs and there are fewer poor by default!
Different people contribute different things to society. Except John Q Public. He must be a banker.
why must i contribute to society?
society is most of the damn problem
and what real productive good do you contribute to society you fucking hypocrite?
i am willing to bet less than 1% of people truly contribute to the good of society
and they are mostly scientists and philosophers and poets
in the third world people are starving to death
on average they have something like 5-7 children families
if you feed one, he/she will continue that trend by having 5-7 more kids
so whats more humane?
starve one now or seven later?
or drown the ones you cant feed and raise the one(s) you can feed?
morality and the good of society are totally at odds anyway
freedom of speech vs rampant pornography flooding into the minds of children
pick your bitter pill
but kindly keep in mind how ma nature operates, and she gives not a shit
you survive on your skills and personal network like flippin merecats, and not a whole lot different in the grand scheme
the age of oil and humanity are both just blips in time and purely transitory
you cant save everybody
and you need to focus resources where it does the most good
whats the phrase, misallocation of capital?
it does zero good for society spending millions cradle to grave on invalids, the elderly, birth defects, or any permanent condition.period.
30 grand a year to get a kid with downs syndrome through highschool....what the fuck good is that?
you need to be pragmatic people and not touchy feely mushy liberal democrats trying to save the dregs of society at the expense of the productive
If you have so much hatred for the world you live in, by all means, you are free to go. Leave your Internet behind though, wouldn't want you abusing the charity of ZH like the rest of us meerkats
@ Pig,
It's hard to personify the evils of our age by putting them into words but you've managed to do so in a comment on the Internet.
Good job!
you dont know what i consume
my footprint is small
thats how you retire at 42
dont consume...minimze, contract,shrink
my house for the wife and I is 500 square feet give or take
electricity runs 17 dollars a month
thats my only utility
my internet connection is via an antenna that aims down the road to an unprotected wifi
heat with wood i chop myself
i grow some food and hunt and fish
my biggest expense is dogfood
Impressive. Perhaps I was out of line, but the attitude of fuck'em all is a dangerous mindset that can lead to destructive behaviour in the wrong circumstances. I prefer generosity myself, society has provided for me and I don't mind returning the favor
Don't get close to anything you may have to eat.
You just missed one thing, guardrails, and stop this insane attack on what we used to call driving home from a party after a couple of kegs and a fifth of Wild Turkey.
People used to drive pretty shit-faced in cars with no airbags, not a whole helluva lot of guard rails, and no police state to fuck with you at every turn.
Seems the herd was a lot leaner and thinner back then, and Andy and Barney didn't need a Lenco Bearcat with a M2 mounted to guard the church yard sale.
Nice job JohnQ, I've been dying to see Darwin work his magic, (hell on me included), for years.
"Membership entails privileges that are dependent on fulfilling duties, guidelines and responsibilities."
But do I have the choice of opting out - of both "caring for" and "being cared for"?
If not, what's the difference?
It comes down to character, quite frankly. Do you want to be remembered as some rich asshole that everyone preferred dead, or would you prefer a more honorable legacy?
When "everyone" that you refer to comes from the movie "Idiocracy", I think the answer becomes crystal clear.
Peak Human Biped.
You've got to ask yourself a question, why are there so many poor people? Because the godamnned government is in the way! The government is the cause.
Let people prosper and the few poor will be taken care of.
Ahhhh - interesting. The assumption made in this post is essentially the problem and I'm going to bet the poster has no idea why either.
What most people aren't aware of is that there is an almighty s***storm of a debate going on right now that predicates how we structure society and the stakes are very high for the status quo including Economists.
There is a certain line of thinking - Humanity as naturally wicked, aggressive, people are self interested (think Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steve Pinker) vs humanity as naturally prone to cooperation and limits on material acquisitiveness (David Graeber and Brian Fergusson).
Once you get a feel for the nature of the debate you start seeing how the status quo (first view) has coloured our assumptions on Economics and the State for about the last 400 years (In effect since Hobbes - co-incidentally about the same time as nation states and state war emerge).
What would be useful is we start making an effort to understand and question some of long held views and understand what the latest evidence is telling us.
All children are born destitute and helpless. Their parents take care of them until they can care for themselves, except maybe you. I provide assistance to people who want to help themselves, and only after my needs are met. There are alot of scammers, after all congress is full of backstabbing beggars, so I am not indiscriminant in my charity. Sometime the greater charity is to not reward the villains.
It takes a village..... Maybe hitlary can run on that apocryphal(ie made up to suit) "African" folk wisdom.
It's not "In the realm of reality" for the masses....
80% of people won't survive a collapse
Could be just what "they" want....
Is what is most likely coming. One way or another.
And this bothers you/us 'How'? Are you for independence & self sufficiency or not?
In a free society charity is given from the heart by choice not required by the state or community. Taxation of personal income is a very recent event and was for a great deal of time voluntary. In my opinion, anything but voluntary is theft by govt. Working for others is fine but what is more important is removing the obsticles of regulation from individuals so they can work for themselves. As far as operating a taxable restaurant, this type of senario would hurt other businesses that do not have the stream of money to fund it and thus would be at a disadvantage in that senario. The unfunded business owner would be unemployed through the unforseen consequences of this restaurant operation. Allow people to open restaurants and feed people without permits or inpections. This of course only applies to people and not corporations. Allow people to educate themselves through apprenticeship instead of putting out graduates in debt with diploma in hand and no common sense. Free the people and they will be fine. Trap them under the thumb of regulation and kill them by suffocation.
"Membership entails privileges that are dependent on fulfilling duties, guidelines and responsibilities. Failure to comply with the guidelines or evasion of responsibilities leads to dismissal from the group. This is the core of membership: it can be revoked if the membership privileges or other members are abused."
This argument has been around forever, and is as question-beggining as it has ever been.
By the way, Schumpeter thought Hitler would immediately fall from power. And Rome didn't collapse: it split into two empires, one headquartered at Constantinople and the other at Trier.
Why does ZH run articles by ignorant immature people? Because it is operated by ignorant immature people.
Let's just have 'ThunderDome' instead, then if you 'bust the Membership deal', you've got to 'face the wheel'...at least it would provide entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgq4w4dqKsU
You insult the memory of the livestock who grazed over the centuries amongst the ruins of the Forum.
A stunning tour de force of logic in action...
and a succinct summary of all we need to know about both past and future!
Rome's reduction into two rump remainders, which, relative to the size of the "EMPIRE" were little more than city states with Imperial pretension, has now been revealed to be no more than a 'consolidation,' or perhaps, a downsizing to a more efficiently managed nucleus>>>???
Will a break up of the USA from a 'civil war 2.0' will be equally able to enjoy recasting as a mere parting of ways???... and competing capitals in say, Charleston and Boston, Seattle and LA will be seen as 'competitive restructuring by the marketplace'..... or some such semantic shuffle???
"Why does ZH run articles by ignorant immature people?" ...this piece was pretty dumb, but your deadly diatribe against reason and historical record was magnitudes dumber.
anyone seeing what is going on in Brooklyn? It's falling apart now.
I had to google it, I had no idea there were riots going on there. MSM hasn't reported that at all.
Nothing to see here folks, move along, these are not the news stories you are looking for.
.
one specter pass would dry that shit up ricky-tick.
Sounds a little indiscriminate. How bout some little birds with miniguns? That's what they resorted to back in the mog.
Hence the Progressive drive to disarm law abiding citizens. Two innocents beaten is insufficient. We need more beatings. We need deaths! We need to make the sheeple surrender their lives to us willingly!
Just make sure to keep it away from the Nets arena
Did the nets lose? As good a reason as any I guess ...
3 days of riots in Brooklyn over NYPD shooting a kid....not a peep about it in any MSM news. Got to keep the sheeple placated by total blackout.
Next warning is in Colorado where they're trying to ban even common shotguns, and huge groups have just said 'Do it and deal with us in civil disobedience'.
How old is the "kid"?
just a baby. The picture they put up made him look like the lead singer from Musical Youth. In reality, like Saint Treyvon, he's a full grown silver back.
Old enough to breed old enough to bleed...out.
Guns and Obamacare.....there's your spark
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/03/gun-control-colorado-democrats-are-rea...
Thanks, scary shit...
This is your Republic(show free and prosperous people),
This is your Republic under Democrats(shows split screens of Detroit, Compton and New Orleans post Katrina)
Have links to any of the stories? Thanks...
Gang Member killed after pulling a gun on COPs.
Saw that article on some east coast rag. LULZ a minute in the comments section
People who watch the MSM on television would prefer not to know that the bad part of Brooklyn even exists, much less that the lumpy proletariat is having riots there.
I don't think in this case the MSM is denying people information they want. With a handful of exceptions, their priority is ratings and advertising dollars, and if Brooklyn riots would get that, you would see it 24/7.
Imagine what is coming with the Trayvon Martin case if they find Zimmerman not guilty (which is likely in my opinion).
Popcorn event right there. The prosecution is political, as the first call on that was probably dead right, the initial judgement of the police.
My problem is that this is in my back yard per se. Going to have to keep the family home around that time as I have a feeling all hell is going to break loose, South Central LA style.
You mean staged fake riots with multiple professional arsons and all the cop doing ppwk for 3 days? For the cameras...
Either way, best viewed from a distance.
Through a Zeiss or Burris optic?
I've got a better alternative: if you don't work, you don't eat.
I think i read that once, in some dusty old book of "ideas". I heard Miles Standish read it, too.
That's raycyst!
That's one of the wifes favorite sayings. I usually respond with 'putting up with you is a full time job.
Things generally degenerate from thete...
Smells like commune---ism.
And government appointed people decide who has worked and who has not.
If you point is that communism = commune-living, it is NOT. The former is centrally enforced (politically and militarily), the latter is a voluntary living in a commune of like-minded people. Unarmed monks, hippies or even an armed compound of Preppers can and do live in 'communes'. Is this a problem? Or are you insinuating something else?
Catherine Fitz described a HUD official saying something like 'but how would we help our supporters?' in response to a suggestion on how to reduce corruption in the HUD system.
The system is intentionally corrupt - until accountability is restored there can be no real recovery from the slippery slope slide to [the edge of] the abyss.
Righty hoe then,
On the 1st of April, our rught hounrable thieves in parliament introduce the new welfare packages for the less well off. Even if it is'nt their fault they have been left on the 'Dole', the governing co-alition of the fucking damned are cutting average benefits by as much as 10%.
These thieving swines on the other hand have awarded themselves a 32% pay increase of our coin plus expenses.
Mark Carney takes over the BoE at this same time and according to the Telegraph is proposing an immediate 100 billion pound sterling QE for the thieving mother fuckers who have us in the mess in the first place.
Did you see the footage of the London Riots? Be warned fuckers in TPTB, we have had enough.
You really want to unleash the underclass and ground down of Britain? You WILL, wish, you, hadnt.
A 100 billion? Rookies we did that last month and will every month here after.
I do admire the British spirit but your QE and riots will look like a tea party compared to what the US will put on your TV.
Luckly your constitution and bill of rights has assured you of the right to bear arms to protect you and your family. Oh wait well at least you have a monarch.
Either way best of luck to us all.
P.S. Don't y'all say 100 thousand million not billion?
"...The Status Quo firmly embraces both sides of the welfare state coin: corporate welfare lavished on favored cartels (education, healthcare, defense, oil/gas, banking, etc.) and transfer payments to individuals, i.e. paying people to stay at home watching TV..."
there are some worthwhile comments in this essay, but on balance it is a mess, this statement being one of them.....i know it is great comfort food to believe that most of the unemployed want to stay at home to watch tv, and that welfare queens abound, but my guess is that it is a gross caricature....it allows the right winged trogladytes to whine about throwing the bums on the street, letting them starve to death, and other sinecures of stone aged conservatism.....
the economy is structurally incapable of employing everyone who wants a job, and if you would pull down one of your discrete mathematics text books to look up the pigeon hole theorem you would realize that not everyone can have a job - especially in our debt based money economy....the people who call it a fiat money system are blithering fucktards.....there is no fiat to it - it is all debt based and there is a huge difference between that and fiat.
the usa is beyond recovery and its demise irretrievably sealed.....the only question is timing....rome took a while, so i suspect the usa will take a while...and it will turn more aggressive, repressive, and totalitarian (if that's possible) than it already is, before giving up the ghost....
the community solution is salon imbicility at its finest - it is like listening to a high school student council devise a solution for world hunger...."if we all would just eat one less ho-ho a day, all the children of the world could have a meal because all of that grain could then be sent to the starving children"....i guarantee you that there are many in the anti-semitic comments section who should be donating generously to famine relief, homelessness, and other charitable organizations but whose arrogant disregard for others prevents that....
i love most of what you write, but this effort was a huge stink bomb...
https://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/give-thanks-to-the-homel...
It's not perfect (capitalism that is), but why in the heck are we evolving from a winning system, verified over the last 200 years by the tremendous gains in living standards, to a community/welfare state that will and never has been able to provide equality, which cannot exist in any real world?
All men are created equal ... Does NOT mean this property of equality is or should be retained through life.
Equality moves toward individualism as quickly as birth is a byegone, shaped by culture and choice. The end result is very little equality late in life.
Until death makes us all equal at the end.
it's a slow day otherwise; calm before the storm?
"why in the heck are we evolving from a winning system, verified over the last 200 years by the tremendous gains in living standards"
For the same reason Detroit died: the success of the creators and producers brought about a huge influx of foragers to undermine the system in place.
Why did America develop differently and then change? Because a different breed of people came here first and were later followed by the type of people that cause Europe's Disease.
Before the advent of the Nanny State, the poor were generally the responsibility of churches, family and community. Most of the problems we face today are a direct result of allowing the government to assume these responsibilities. Stealing from one group in order to help another is bullshit, even under the guise of "community groups". If people won't help their fellow man of their own freewill without a fucking reward for doing what is good and proper then we are fucked anyway.
Exactly right. And, when the poor were the responsibility of the churches and family, those who were poor due to refusal to work were shown the door.
All this fancy talk to describe what happens when a fractional reserve currency collapses.
It ain't rocket science.
We spend so much time trying to figure out why it collapses, and how to stop, prolong or put off the collapse.
It is simple.
It collapses because that is how the system works, unless you find out how to have infinite exponential expansion on earth.
pods
Throughout history artificially advanced societies have always collapsed back to a level of natural sustainability.....Oh how far we have to fall this time.............
Back to the turn of the century....
Which one though?
pods
Lol!
I am thinking 18th.
18th wasen't that bad actually, I can deal with it..
The thing that gets me is that you have certain people who work for sustainable living, like some greenies, etc. When our system requires exactly the opposite.
I leave a pretty small footprint on the earth, and am a steward of the land.
Just seems like the thing to do.
As a bonus, I am contributing to the collapse. :)
pods
Man and Nature seem to be at conflict over the meaning of sustainable. I wonder who will win...........
Food. It's really all about the food.
NOTHING will happen 'till the EBT cards fail and folks are hungry for more than a couple of days.
Or some more kids are shot.
Welcome to the beginning of the 4th Turning.
+1 ...Food/EBT or the electrical grid going down in large urban areas....
Instant mayhem
Its all about the moral hazard of delegating your personal responsibility to the mob.
I lived in a small town that would tell each welfare requestor to show up the next morning to work on the road crew. Rarely did any report for duty.
Or pick up litter, paint infrastructure, weed park gardens. You see that done in China as well as street sweeping. But here we just pay them not to work. Dumb fucking country.
That's exactly how it should be handled. People need to work for handouts - and soon they will find real paying jobs.
The biggest single driver or 'multiplier' of the 'welfare state' are mega corporations, which are inherently anti-capitalist and anti-competition.
Their size/wealth allows them to exert outsized pressures upon governments/regulators to demand preferential treatment that further adds to their size. They use this size to either buy and dismember smaller competitive entities, or 'loss leader' (undercut) their competition into bankruptcy. Both result in job losses, loss of individual wealth and investment and ultimately tax revenue for all levels of government.
While they use the many willing stooges/sell-outs in government to help them get even bigger, they also leave governments holding the bag for the increased numbers of unemployed. Before long, as we are seeing now, the cycle becomes self-driving and sustaining. Wal-Mart is falling on hard times because its business model was entirely predatory; 'loss leader' undercutting their smaller local competition and absorbing their customer base. Problem is, this business model sucks active capital out of the economy and over time magnifies the problem until each Wal-Mart store opening is more expensive than the competition locally available to absorb.
Don't blame government for bailing out the poor...blame government for being so utterly greedy, self-serving, stupid and short-sighted that it didn't put a limit on corporate size, subsidies and tax-benefits. Read Adam Smith...our economy is now run by corporations that are practising a form of auto-erotic economic asphyxiation where the noose has to get tighter and tighter for them to 'get off'. If you want to get the 'scroungers' off the 'entitlements', then we have to put more individuals back in business for themselves and that means putting corporations on a much shorter, much more tax-disadvantageous leash. We need lots more competition, not less, and lots more 'active' capital.
+10000
I'm all for it - if those 1.56 people will wash my windows, cut my grass and rake my leaves. That would technically make them employed, right?
Wages are kept artificially high by discouraging people to enter the workforce, especially young workers. A spartain but reasonably comfortable living on welfare removes that person from competing in the job market. But there is a deficit between that person's lost production and the increased need for revenue by the state, revenue that comes from real production in order to take care of that person. The only way to close that deficit is to get that person productive in some way.
There's another community-based alternative to welfare. It's called communes. Just scatter a bunch of big mailboxes across several thousand government-owned tracts and send all welfare checks, EBT cards, etc., to those mailboxes. When the people leave the cities to come pick up those checks, put a rake in their hands and tell them if they want more help they need to work in the field growing food or in the shop making tools and furniture for the people in the fields. Because the checks won't ever be sent to urban areas again.
The federal government screwed up 50 years ago when it set out to construct "working poor" housing projects in the heart of cities so people could be close to job opportunities. Since then, minimum wage laws saw many of those jobs for the poor disappear and immigrants took most others, leaving most without opportunity aside from crime and government handouts. Cities should be the apex of the economic pyramid, pinnacles of capitalism, but just about every town has an area or areas of blight occupied by people who despite decades of government assistance cannot better themselves, and who render vast swathes of town places you don't want to be at night. Or in broad daylight for that matter.
Bring back cities and we bring back the economy.
Check the stats: 30 years of flat wage growth and inflation that has eaten away at spending power versus corporate profits that are literally off the scale. People are happy to work when there's something to work for. What we have now is thinly disguised neo-feudalism.
I'm not saying that wages are too high, only that if every able-bodied adult had to work, because there was no social safety net and no minimum wage laws, wages would be depressed even more. So I believe that welfare, EBT and extended unemployment are all part of policy to minimize the size of the workforce to combat wage deflation.
People should work to live. Wanting to work is not an option, because somebody somewhere is working in your stead if you aren't. Fact is that most jobs throughout the world and throughout history haven't provided the wages to get the worker the nicer things in life. We have a system that has been able to do that better than most. Those who are not in the system, the welfare recipients among them, do not have access to that opportunity, and I think it's by design.
I actually do this . I have a slew of 'lost generation ' nieces & nephews. Whenever they come around I offer something for some labor. Slaughter twenty chickens & I'll give you five, can twenty jars from the garden and I'll give you five, etc.
It's getting to the point where I'm gonna be forced to turn some away, or make a schedule.
I guess they're pretty hungry.
Dumb Article as far as alternate welfare state. Just my opinion.
We are taught that we are egoistic beings, but it's not entirely true. Most of us would be happy to share our success, if we had our basic needs fulfilled, i.e. food, shelter and happiness. System based on altruism has the same weekness as socialism, i.e. parasites - people who will use wealth created by others and not contribute anything to society. I believe however, that in decentralised system each individual helping others is more likely to detect such lazy people, and stop helping them. As a result, within a local society, such lazy person would quickly have to adapt and start being useful. Centralised help simply doesn't care about misused money, and has no control over such issues.
Communism/socialism will never work, because such system enforces certain behaviour from people by force and kills incentives to do something useful for society. Similar system (based on altruism) can be created only by free will of people. And it has to be very decentralised, based on local economy and society. As long as there is government and all social help based on taxes, normal people cannot show their good side and start helping others, because almost all surplus they earn is taken away, and they don't have enough themselves.
I guess we can start to build such small 'cells' of future society between our friends and neighbours. More people will join over time. But first of all, we need to say good bye to centralised administration. Fractional reserve banking must go away too.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
Winston Churchill
All revolutions are economic. Communism came into existence as a means to dislodge an entrenched economic elite. Communism was then in turn dumped in favour of free market capitalism as a means to dislodge another entrenched economic elite. One feeds the other....cause and effect. Capitalism is indeed the way to go, but as we see now, it also can become unbalanced and favour the formation of an entrenched economic elite.
It's not CAPITALISM, it's a bunch of criminals that are using the Government to enrich themselves, AKA "Mercantilism".
We have created a monster called the Federal Government.
The only way to reform is to starve the monster by cutting it's food supply: taxes and bonds.
Here is my idea on how to replace the welfare state: Don't work, don't eat. That is a powerful incentive to work. It's been working for straight white males {only class not covered by EEO} for as long as I have been around, which is longer than most here. Demand that these mega-churches fulfill their God commanded edict to care for the sick and poor, and much of the problem is solved. If they don't, treat them as what they really are, a business, and tax them. Give the tax money collected to a church that will.
Your premise is off. Krugman is a clown and a symptom, but not of "terminal empire" decline. Asshats like him are the puppets of the cocksuckers our political representatives betrayed us to, the products of the socialist selection & breeding process that has replaced the merit system. This is economic warfare. The disaster you see is the cummulative result of the looters suppressing the best from the cradle, killing the ones who might be a problem, installing their loyal second raters and increasing their numbers. To contribute to this is to aid my murderers; yet they require my cooperation. My talent, the best of my ability, is off the market.
http://www.dailypaul.com/133313/francisco-d-anconias-ayn-rands-money-spe...
So how would community-based welfare work for me? I'm the only Jew in a small rural town. Obviously I belong to no church and asking one for help would invite a never-ending attempt to convert me. Then you've got the Baptists who think all the other Christians are going to Hell. To attach social welfare to religion only works when the group is of the same religion, and I think I'm too old for a commune.
A welfare needing jew....I guess you could just go to Ben, seems to be the way it works for the tribesmen.
attaching "welfare to religion" is the ultimate herding of people into mind-controlled helplessness - the perfect gov't. dream, a buncha true believers to draw their military/service-members from, the (self)righteous love killing the heathens. . .
hierarchical belief systems are a huge part of the problem, they can never be part of the solution.
What makes you believe that?
(snicker)
I'd like to propose: Work, or Fucking Starve.
your mileage may vary.
"The dispossessed" by Ursula K Le Guin is a worth while read that addresses many of the issues at play here.
Of course EGO is often the largest blockade to progress...
This is long, but I think it is the gist of what has happened. But hey I am not you so you will maybe see it a different way because my position can be considered out of the box now.
For the author, the biggest and ONLY GAME IN TOWN at the moment is... Capitalists at the top of the pile, Socialists at the bottom. BLOODY AWESOME. Watch and observe how they economcially kill each other off in the end.
Take benefits to kick it all off. A pacification trick worked for a shortwhile provided the relative cost was cheap enough nobody blinked an eye. Then it became "too easy" so as not to have to deal with the problem and just keep doing it. SARC YOU ONLY GOT BENEFITS BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH WORK.
Up steps your government, where ever you may live, starts borrowing, small at first with YOY increases if only so they can pay a debt that can never be paid. US 16 trillion, UK big enough and look around the world they are all f%^king at it in some shape or form.
Capitalists at the top now, ooooh this is good, get the drip attached to that money supply fast. Way to go making you a mint as the borrowed money flows through benefit hands to the top. For this to work you had to condition the middle to bottom to be socialist hence all the support for socialist ideals at this level.
Governments by creating the easy money to support the mechanism seemed to work on disregarding the inflation that has 2 parts demand and money supply. For those who were going to buy = the benefits part and vast quantities of money. So up ramps the value of everything far faster than demand could do through an inceased population level.
Struggling to create it? Need more people to borrow etc or arrive with loads of money to try and keep it all ticking along through an ever increasing GDP. That is what your immigration is being used for. The inflation of value in a nation means you can import or offshore at a far cheaper rate all so you can keep borrowing more money and the persistant bastardised state of the economy.
All governments are playing this game, expand the borrowed money that is "debt". Through derivatives and various other pieces of traded paper, nothing was sacred in this process. Unless you physically hold the item in your hands and can fight to keep it you have nothing, the value worthless in the twinkle of somebody elses eye.
CAPITALISTS NOW ARE STUCK THOUGH (tbh they are not and never were capitalists).So happy with the current bastardised system that keeps them in a lifestyle they should never have got accustomed too. These are the ones really speculating at the top, ramping up all those paper values that is primarliy based on debt. KILL ALL F^&KING BNEFITS FOR ALL AND WATCH THE EXCESS DIE. Can't even have a war of conquering without increasing the debt even further let alonet those that you kill probably owe you a share of the debt. WW1,WW2, no WW3 who the fuck needs nukes when you are economically nuked.
SOCIALISTS ARE ALSO STUCK NOW. The value you think you are worth is far less than you can ever imagine that a bullet would not cost. So they feel for those less fortunate than themselves (the conditioned response). Really? More like you don't want to see the body count of the excess population. So you put up with the increasing number on welfare to keep it all going along in your own little happy world that is an illusion being maintained for now. The debt increases though so what you going to do?
If anybody can see this, constraining this bastardised economic system does not work neither. Any attempt to constrain it you go to stagnation like Japan. They resort back to pumping even more into their economy when the same mechanism prevails so you end up in exactly the same position the can kicked further down the road.
Nice global economy you got going there. SARC waste of space.
"... It can be a requirement to take care of a person ..."
When Mother Theresa was asked by "a goody doer aka Liberal" how he could make the world a better place to live she replied:
"Take care of your family".
This post is total and absolute bull shit.
They used to have a good system called the work house.
Nobody hung around very long.
goody doer
We evolved in tribes that succeeded in part due to mutual compassion.
No stupid central planning needed.
Last year my Aunt took me to my Grand Father's grave..
My grandfather was a radical communist anarchist, who according to my mother trekked to NYC every Mayday to march.. He loved to Bellow the Internationale in Yiddish.
Much to my amusement , he was buried in the Workman's Circle Cemetary.
The Anarchists of my hommetown had organized a mutual self help organization. which took upon itself, the duty of seeing that it's members had a decent burial.
There were similar organizations in every walk of life before the advent of the Welfare State.
True community. True properly directed compassion. Thus , irony of irony's my communist Anarchist grandfather was a practicing anarcho capitalist.
It is the welfare check that enables selfish , isolated individualism.
Liberty promotes community.
A "family planner" is a central planner.
A "community planner" is a central planner.
A "city planner" is a central planner.
A "county planner" is a central planner.
A "state planner" is a central planner.
A "federal planner" is a central planner.
A "global planner" is a central planner.
A "galactic planner" is a central planner.
Every one of you who have "plans for my life" can jam it up your butt. You are my enemy. How dare you tell me how I must live my life. How dare you tell me who I must help and in what ways. How dare you decide for others what they must do. That is pure tyranny, no matter whether you claim control over a family, a neighborhood, a state, a nation, a cluster of galaxies, or the entire freaking universe.
Why is everyone so completely trained to think in collectivist ways? Do you think I prefer being screwed over by local predators rather than country-wide predators? At this point, I think the planet needs to be blasted into smithereens to eliminate the mental disease that infects 99.9999% of the sentient beings on this planet. The 0.0001% who are content to live their own lives and let others do the same are so out numbered that we might as well admit the species is terminally insane, and be done with it.
It's
Monopoly /
http://www.getminted.com/img/monopoly-on-a-roll-board.jpg
Risk Filtering /
Gatekeepting/
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/rhine-river-castle-paul-sachtleben.jpg
Monopolist Benefactoring, Both Directly
Fiscally, And In Terms Of Cost Shifting,
Under The Guise Of National Purpose.
Actually, ObamaCare replaces the inability to move
across state lines to take adv of r.e./job op's lest one
often suffers a med coverage exclusion owing to risk
factor being present, and the eventual choice for many/most
of premium death spiral of go naked, with monopoly and
risk filtering (higher risk inducing higher premiums inducing
subsidy for having been shaken down to the povery
level, though the statutory cartel profit scheme runs to
20% operational profit from as high as 40% (“bronze tier”)
before the shaken-down patients go into the high risk
exhanges, the alternative being ending immunity from
anti-trust and, because in medicine, we all decline,
risk equalization (not risk filtering.)
Also, corporate welfate is massive amounts of
cost shifting. You name the place and time, and I’ll
show you the cost shifting.
Gatekeeping defines much of what doctors can do,
The patient who's
thriving on phys therapy in Medicare Disability will be told to go back
to languishing on expensive drugs cause her physical
therapy allowance needs to re-set only with the new calendar
year.
What 'community-based' effort is going to raise that $9500 or $10000 per poor person? It isn't community based if it based on centralized tax collection.
The Masons, Moose and Elk clubs, as well as the various ethnic brotherhoods used to take care of their own communities. They had their own lodge doctors, hospitals, and old folks homes. The AMA didn't like the idea of lodge doctors, and most of the rest got priced out by government alternatives. Why belong to a lodge if it means you pay for a duplicate set of social services?
You do not have to force this activity, it comes naturallly. It will not, however, cover everybody. There are some real bastards out there that won't be allowed to join any group of sane humans, as well as some loners who just don't like the rest of us. Charity helps the second, I'm willing to let the first group fall through the cracks.
I love the duplicity of the 'no one is forced to join' line. Somebody took money from you in taxes, and now you can't the benefits due you unless you do what they say. But you aren't being 'forced'. I'll bet it won't be easy to start an organization to get on the list of those approved for getting the $10,000 checks. And yet, at some point, somebody with a farm will be getting those checks because he provides meaningful work for folks in the fields.
Hope for meaningful work from a government welfare program? Skittles and rainbows and unicorns!