What if expanding the safety net is LESS expensive than cutting it?

Thanks, Gary. I couldn't tell who you meant by "someone" and Guy didn't put his excerpt from the Declaration of Independence in "quotes." Good catch.

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I am neither, Constitutionalist point of view would be me.

I am not a Democrat, not a socialist and not a leftist. I am independent.

Oh..oh! Are we labeling ourselves now?

I'm an independent too.

With pragmatist socialistic capitalistic libertarian anarchic tendencies.

I follow Cthulhu and all his teachings.

Luddite/technogeek ha!

For those of you that want to Battle it out the federalists papers

and much more can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/


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A society HAS to look after its less fortunate members otherwise it collapses. Hungry, homeless people have a tendency to turn to crime and riot in the streets which eventually leads to revolution and anarchy. Particularly when the "Have Nots" can see that the "Haves" have so much. So, it is common sense to support them just to keep then quiet, and this is without taking into account the humanitarian aspect.

It is the job of government to provide this support as it spreads the load over the whole society according to each individual's ability to pay due to the sliding income tax rates

It was posted previously (possibly in another thread) that the US unemployment benefit was $295 per week. I presume that this is the base rate for a single person. If this person has children and a dependant spouse then the rate would increase proportionally.

Is there any of the anti-government, anti-welfare posters here who would be willing to walk down the street and give an unemployed person this much out of their own pocket ? Hardly likely.

Privatise the Welfare system ? I don't think so. How would you do it ? The government would still have to provide the money to the "contractor" and to provide such a service nationally you would have to use a big organisation used to dealing with large amounts of money (Goldmann Sachs anyone ?). Being a large company their only interest would be skimming as much off the top as they possibly could and the US welfare system would finish up as bigger mess as the US Healthcare system, the taxpayer would still be paying, and you can go back to my first paragraph.

It's a shame that so many people let their ideology get in the way of their common sense, humanity and religious ideals (Forests and trees ?).

Edit: Even the Romans were aware of this, feed the unemployed, give them entertainment and they will be less likely to cause trouble. Hence the term "Bread and Circuses". So now do you really object to that 47%'er down the road having an X-box ?

T.A.

A society HAS to look after its less fortunate members otherwise it collapses.

If you want to know what is wrong with your hypothesis, you argue about crime and theft. That is the withdrawal of capital from society going to the less fortunate.

Is this how Bernie Maddoff is describing himself? No. Crime and theft are not only perpetrated by less fortunate.

A society HAS to look after its less fortunate members otherwise it collapses.

Interesting hypothesis. I'd suspect the other is also true. That a society that does look after its less fortunate members will collapse.

Lets go back in history and see, lots of different societies, all of them have collapsed. They all seemed to have a growth phase and an expiration of the growth phase leading to collapse, not counting those where an external event is the obvious cause. Not much help there.

If you want to know what is wrong with your hypothesis, you argue about crime and theft. That is the withdrawal of capital from society going to the less fortunate. It doesn't matter to the survival of the society if this happens via crime or via taxes. In both cases if enough capital is diverted from growth, growth ceases and collapse ensues........

Now I have assumed by "look after" you mean some form of social welfare. Other options of "look after" are available and have been tired as well. The founding of Australia for example. England still exists so this option perhaps has merit.

Is this how Bernie Maddoff is describing himself? No. Crime and theft are not only perpetrated by less fortunate.

A society HAS to look after its less fortunate members otherwise it collapses.

Interesting hypothesis. I'd suspect the other is also true. That a society that does look after its less fortunate members will collapse.

Lets go back in history and see, lots of different societies, all of them have collapsed. They all seemed to have a growth phase and an expiration of the growth phase leading to collapse, not counting those where an external event is the obvious cause. Not much help there.

If you want to know what is wrong with your hypothesis, you argue about crime and theft. That is the withdrawal of capital from society going to the less fortunate. It doesn't matter to the survival of the society if this happens via crime or via taxes. In both cases if enough capital is diverted from growth, growth ceases and collapse ensues........

Maybe the opposite is true. When a society is young the wealth is distributed on a reasonably even basis. As it the society ages the wealth tends to coagulate in small pockets leaving less capital available for the population at large. Also those with the wealth want to hang onto it, they no longer take risks with it and therefore "venture capital" is withdrawn from the society and held in storage. Thus "capital is diverted from growth, growth ceases and collapse ensues".

Look at what happened to Rome. Once the age of conquest had ended, there was no new capital coming into the system from conquests, the wealthy were unwilling to finance new legions because of the "risk" so the city stagnated. The concentrating of wealth also led to high unemployment as the population kept growing but jobs were not being created to keep up. The ruling class could see trouble brewing, hence the "bread and circuses".

T.A.

Now I have assumed by "look after" you mean some form of social welfare. Other options of "look after" are available and have been tired as well. The founding of Australia for example. England still exists so this option perhaps has merit.

You overlook the fact that conditions in Australia soon became better than they were in England. Many ex-convicts became very wealthy. It came to the point where people were deliberately committing crimes in order to get transported. The British government realised that transportation was no longer a deterrent. This is the main reason transportation was stopped. :-)