The disgraceful Supreme Court justice should be held accountable for his actions but probably won’t.

  • @Strangle
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    01 year ago

    The implication is that these things are actively hurting people by keeping them in poverty and creating new poverty situations.

    I guess it also really depends on what you define ‘helping’ as. If all you’re looking for is to collect a small cheque and that’s ‘helping’, I guess these programs look great to you.

    But for someone like me, who thinks helping people become self sufficient and get off of programs like welfare, the numbers don’t look like that’s what’s happening at all.

    Someone collecting welfare is in a poverty state already, and most people who collect welfare do not actually have a great chance to ever get off of welfare.

    So instead of helping people, it ends up doing the ex’s T opposite. Keeping people perpetually dependent on social welfare programs.

    I don’t see that as helping.

    https://fee.org/articles/the-welfare-trap-labyrinth-of-programs-punishes-work/

    • HeinousTugboat
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      21 year ago

      But for someone like me, who thinks helping people become self sufficient and get off of programs like welfare, the numbers don’t look like that’s what’s happening at all.

      This has been proven not to actually help. You know what has? Giving cash to people. Just straight up giving them money. It’s too bad conservatives refuse to believe that and insist on means testing everything and reducing benefits wherever possible.

      There’s another fun thing. One half of the people in this conversation actually listen to experts. The other half considers all experts suspect and presumes they’re all politically motivated (to make them look bad, no doubt.)

      And I like how you shared an article talking about how people in poverty have the highest marginal tax rate. Considering conservatives are constantly cutting tax rates, that’s a delightful irony in your argument. Maybe if we quit giving ten times as much money to rich people and started using that money to support poor people, we could help them better.

      • @Strangle
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        01 year ago

        Taxes are certainly an issue, but just giving people money is not the answer to poverty.

        It is the perpetual poverty machine keeping people impoverished

        • HeinousTugboat
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          21 year ago

          Taxes are certainly an issue, but just giving people money is not the answer to poverty.

          There’s a lot of evidence that the solution to “people not having enough money to live” is, in fact, “giving people enough money to live”.

          It is the perpetual poverty machine keeping people impoverished

          AKA Capitalism, sure. With how much you whine about leftists, I’d assume you were all for that. A pretty major plank of conservative platforms is “hurt people more efficiently”.

          • @Strangle
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            01 year ago

            That’s just absolutely wrong.

            It’s like I said, we both want to help people, we just disagree about what’s actually helpful.

            You know that lottery winners are more likely to go broke too, right? Did you ever wonder why that might be?

            I’ll give you a hint, giving people money doesn’t solve anyone’s inability to manage money. You can throw hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands at people and if they don’t know how to manage their wealth, they’ll just be back asking for more money.

            That’s the perpetuality of it, it’s documented and really unarguable.

            People on welfare get trapped by welfare. It’s just the reality of the programs. They aren’t effective at doing what you want them to do.

            You’re actually hurting more people but thinking that you’re helping. It doesn’t make you a bad person, you’re just misguided and lied to

            • HeinousTugboat
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              31 year ago

              and lied to

              Yep. By the experts. That do things like “research”. Much better to listen to these other lies, that people that have a vested interest in the outcome want to tell me.

              You know that lottery winners are more likely to go broke too, right? Did you ever wonder why that might be?

              You are truly masterful at specious arguments. I wish some day I could attain your level of expertise at that. (And, for the record, that’s specious with an e. Last time you tried to use it you said spacious, which doesn’t make a lick of sense.)

              I don’t know how else to make you understand this. If you give enough money to survive to people in poverty, they stop being people in poverty. There’s evidence of this all over the world, not just in the US. If people on welfare get “trapped by welfare”, why does the poverty rate decline in every country that has welfare? Wouldn’t it increase? How do you explain all the research that show things like UBI causes dramatic improvements in quality of life in many places?

              Yes, giving a lifetime’s worth of cash to someone that’s been in poverty their whole life is a great way of completely destroying their life. I completely agree. It doesn’t make sense to try and apply that to giving those same people a reasonable amount to survive on, though.

              You’re actually hurting more people but thinking that you’re helping.

              Again. Experts, research and reality all agree with me.

              • @Strangle
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                01 year ago

                You would do well with looking at things a little more critically, instead of just swallowing whole whatever you’re told

                • HeinousTugboat
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                  31 year ago

                  Yeah, you’re definitely just projecting. Good advice, my man! Godspeed with the end of the world!

            • some_guy
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              1 year ago

              The fact that you believe lottery winners are more likely to go broke makes me think you don’t care much for reality at all, and put a lot more trust and energy into what makes you feel good and correct.

              https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/mega-millions-jackpot-winner-numbers-myths-about-lotteries.html

              And I’ll just add this here to shed some light on your other bootstrappy bs:

              Research into winners in Germany, Singapore, and Britain found that winning the lottery does, in fact, make people happier