I am So Sick of Hearing That Raising Taxes is Bad For the Economy.

[rolling7]

Whichever departments gave them assistance are the ones who go after them.

Oh, you are right. But these offices are not budgeted a police force.

 

[DeafCaroline]

Oh, you are right. But these offices are not budgeted a police force.

You don't need to be budgeted a police force to cut someone off SS or other entitlements.

 

[TWA]

Oh, you are right. But these offices are not budgeted a police force.

Any office that disburses assistance also has an accountability and compliance unit. I don't understand why there is this big assumption among conservatives that everyone on welfare/foodstamps/SSI/etc is abusing it and scamming the system. The truth is, the vast majority of people on assistance programs are 100% qualified under the rules and depend on it for survival. Most people who scam the system are caught eventually.

 

[TXgolfer]

Love It!

 

[Reba]

Any office that disburses assistance also has an accountability and compliance unit. I don't understand why there is this big assumption among conservatives that everyone on welfare/foodstamps/SSI/etc is abusing it and scamming the system. ...

Maybe some conservatives believe that but not all do. That certainly isn't my position.

 

[Grayma]

I have never met anybody who believes that everybody on assistance is abusing it. Nor have I ever read anything making that claim.

Straw men are so much easier to mock than reality.
And photoshopped pictures with made up captions substitute for reasoned arguments.

 

[rolling7]

Any office that disburses assistance also has an accountability and compliance unit. I don't understand why there is this big assumption among conservatives that everyone on welfare/foodstamps/SSI/etc is abusing it and scamming the system. The truth is, the vast majority of people on assistance programs are 100% qualified under the rules and depend on it for survival. Most people who scam the system are caught eventually.

The title of the thread says it all. POTUS wants to raise taxes and keep spending on entitlement programs. How much longer can we taxpayers be expected to hold on?
I don't totally disagree with you that most people on entitlement are qualified but just being qualified under the rules does not equal responsible behavior. Look at the women getting entitlement for their children.....totally qualified under the rules....BUT....five kids and give baby daddys.....and no support from the daddys.
I even know, personally, a deaf man and deaf woman who have eleven kids. Never been married and live separate because she gets a housing allowance and entitlements for the kids. Since she is deaf, no income and has that many kids, she is qualified and untouchable. It is like we all know, it is not illegal to give birth over and over again.

 

[Grayma]

It is also most certainly not only extremely wealthy people who believe raising taxes is bad for the economy. My husband spent 20 years in the Air Force as an enlisted man. We had one kid when he joined. We had seven when he retired. We were often eligible for food stamps (although we did not take them after the first year we were married).
We've been pretty poor before, and we may be again (he just joined the ranks of the unemployed). But we've never see raising taxes as good for the economy.

 

[TWA]

Maybe some conservatives believe that but not all do. That certainly isn't my position.

I didn't say ALL conservatives believe that, but you can't possibly tell me for a second that there is not an overall negative viewpoint in the conservative circle not just for "entitlement" programs but for the people who survive on them. C'mon. Secondly, the fact that you, personally, don't feel this way does not really mean anything in terms of the argument. I'm very happy to know that you don't feel that way (thank you), but it doesn't change the fact that there are many who do.

I have never met anybody who believes that everybody on assistance is abusing it. Nor have I ever read anything making that claim.

Straw men are so much easier to mock than reality.
And photoshopped pictures with made up captions substitute for reasoned arguments.

Sigh, the denial of implied meaning defense. I think we last went through this a month or two ago. It was a pretty fun time. Just because a person/group/entity/political organization does not come out and specifically say "I FEEL THIS PARTICULAR WAY ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE/PERSON" does not mean their true intent or attitude cannot be deciphered from their words or actions.

But wait! You, personally, have not met anybody or read anything making this claim? Well, that must mean the claim has never been made by anyone! There goes my whole game plan. Drats.

I also find it very ironic that you would accuse me of building a strawman and then imply that I used a photo, which is obviously meant for humorous purposes, as a "reasoned argument." There's certainly truth to the picture and the caption, but as a point of evidence in a debate? c'mon.

 

[kokonut]

That poster upset me as it is true about how the government think the people are stupid! We where told in my state if we voted for the seat belt law our auto insurance rate would go down. Right!! I voted against the law.

Regardless, seat belts have saved countless lives.

 

[rolling7]

It is also most certainly not only extremely wealthy people who believe raising taxes is bad for the economy. My husband spent 20 years in the Air Force as an enlisted man. We had one kid when he joined. We had seven when he retired. We were often eligible for food stamps (although we did not take them after the first year we were married).
We've been pretty poor before, and we may be again (he just joined the ranks of the unemployed). But we've never see raising taxes as good for the economy.

There would be no need to raise taxes if spending (read: wasted non-necessities) was brought under control. Ever notice how when spending cuts are mention some folks will bring in the argument that the spending is necessary but won't give a thought to waste?

 

[JabberJay]

I had to post this on my facebook.

 

[Grayma]

I think many people here agree with conservatives on the food stamps issue more than they think, based on comments on the thread about snack foods on food stamps. I saw people who here can find nothing to question about food stamps, over there insisting that their tax dollars should not be spent on cokes. But they are. And that's the kind of thing conservatives say.

Most conservatives I know and have read think the problem isn't that people are on them fraudulently, it's that the rules are too lax, and that there are no controls on what people buy with them.

Up until last week, when my husband joined the unemployed, he spent the last few years as a grocery store manager. He sees what the majority of people buy on their food stamps. It doesn't matter how much they 'meet the rules of eligibility' when they are buying cases of cokes, chocolate bars, twinkies, frozen convenience foods with zero nutritional value, and- really oddly, loads of crab legs. He sold more crab legs to people on food stamps than anybody else. In fact, I think in our county, you can only afford crab legs if you are on food stamps.

We went from 1 in 10 Americans on food stamps four years ago, to 1 in 7 last year.
My husband and I have been deeply involved in the lives of some of these people for the last five years. We're watching generational dependency, and it's destructive. We've been asked by school aged children why anybody in our family works when you get groceries, medical care and housing for free. They've sweetly offered to take us to the food pantry to show us how to get free food. We've watched the government reward their parents when they make foolish decisions and punish them when they try to save, or get jobs.

When my husband was regional manager of the little grocery chain where he worked, he tracked the food stamps income and found that one of the stores got 40% of their income from food stamps, one about 30-35%, one 25%, and one less than ten. We see how destructive this system is unless you are very, very strong and have some skills the government wn't provide to get free of it. This reliance on government income does not bode well for the future.

I don't find the Welfare State any more compassionate than the Slave State, honestly. It's cruel, it creates dependence and it weakens people.

It's also not compassionate at all to take money from one person and give it to another. True compassion digs into your own pockets.

I don't think the immense effort of using one's pinky finger to press a particular button in a private voting booth says anything at all about how much one cares for the poor. It's what you do personally. And as it happens, conservatives donate at least 30% more out of their own pockets, personally, than liberals do.

Arthur Brooks, the author of "Who Really Cares," says that "when you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more." He adds, "And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money."

And he says the differences in giving goes beyond money, pointing out that conservatives are 18 percent more likely to donate blood. He says this difference is not about politics, but about the different way conservatives and liberals view government.

"You find that people who believe it's the government's job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away," Brooks says. In fact, people who disagree with the statement, "The government has a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves," are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

It's easy to say that because you vote a certain way you care more about the poor, but it's not true. I don't prove I care more about my poor neighbor Jill by smacking my other neighbor Jack and stealing his wallet to give to her, nor do I prove my compassion by voting for somebody else to take his wallet and give the contents to her (and often to myself).

Some people prefer to rely on propaganda points (the Republicans don't care about the poor) instead of facts to inform their thinking. Happily, Brooks wasn't one of them:

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

 

[DeafCaroline]

I read Brooks' article: "According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do."

 

[Grayma]

I read Brooks' article: "According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do."

How odd that you left the next statement out:

But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It’s great to support the arts and education, but they’re not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

Hmmmm.

 

[Grayma]

It also makes little sense to eliminate religious donations because they also help the poor. Here are some examples of the 'religious' institutions that warmhearted liberals who care about the poor think shouldn't count:

Ghana West Africa Missions- which helps give clean working wells to villages that don't have them.
The Shoebox Project- families (or churches) prepare shoeboxes of gifts for poor children in third world countries. We usually include school supplies and some first aid supplies in ours.
Prison Fellowship Ministries- the Christmas Tree thing, where needy children, and often children of prison inmates, are given Christmas gifts and other donations.
Haiti Christian Development Project- they help with micro projects in agriculture, and other projects building towards self sustaining lives
Manna Global Ministries- they do several things, our interest was in the children's home which provides religious instruction as well as food, shelter, and education
Healing Hands International-
Hope for Haiti's Children- rebuilding homes, orphan care, nutrition, and so much more

During Hurricane Katrina, when the Red Cross and other secular agencies were insisting they could only use money, our then tiny church (30 people) collected thousands of dollars in blankets, baby clothes, diapers, formula, paper products and basic first aid and mailed it to another tiny church in the area, where they delivered the products to people who needed them within hours.

The Christian crisis pregnancy center where we adopted our daughters- the center, even 15 years later, still provides counseling and other services to our girls' birth mother. they provide job training, help with clothing and housing and a food pantry to mothers in need, and adoption is not their first goal. They prefer to help mothers keep their kids.

The local crisis pregnancy center in town, different denomination from the one where we adopted our girls, but they have the same goals and practices.

My kids once collected a thousand dollars and wanted to give it anonymously to a family in need, so they spoke to the leadership at our church, who accepted the money from the kids and then gave it to the family, telling them it was an anonymous donation. On paper, that was a donation to a religious institution.

We are not unique. Among the people we know, I think we probably donate less than most (largely because we have seven kids, and five are still at home).

There's no compassionate reason to eliminate organizations like these from consideration when looking at how much money people donate to charitable causes.

The facts are, conservatives do donate more of their own personal time and money to the needy than liberal do. This is hard to accept if one prefers demonizing and marginalizing those who disagree. Brooks didn't like the findings of his own research, either, but he did the honest thing and changed his mind.

You don't have to believe this is because one group cares more about the poor than another. Brooks himself believes it's a matter of different views about *how* to best meet charitable obligations.
Liberals believe that the government should do the job.
Conservatives believe people in private should do this.

Both sides act on those beliefs in a way that is consistent. Liberals agitate for more government, but don't donate as much, and Conservatives donate more, but agitate for less government.

 

[SteveMcGarrett]

It is always the extremely wealthy/rich people making this argument.

The 99% people should use this argument against them. Lowering taxes on the middle class and poor helps the economy most. THe tax rate on the rich has negilible affect on the economy.

Get rid of sales taxes and gas taxes which hits the lowest income people the most.

I AGREE!!! Thats why i want Obama get the DOJ on Florida ban on using food stamps on sodas. Sales taxes just like things expensive to buy like the Gas tax for example. If the wealthy can find loopholes by hiring lawyers and putting their money in swiss bank accounts instead of paying the I.R.S why cant the poor find loopholes too? Like you dont pay sales taxes with Food Stamps?

 

[SteveMcGarrett]

That poster upset me as it is true about how the government think the people are stupid! We where told in my state if we voted for the seat belt law our auto insurance rate would go down. Right!! I voted against the law.

Right!!! Seat Belt laws,Parking Meter violations,Traffic violations and trapping prositution has nothing to do with public safety. It has everything to do with REVINUE!

 

[DeafCaroline]

How odd that you left the next statement out:

Hmmmm.

Democrats support more social welfare programs than conservatives do. Hm. Democrats complain less about taxes spent on programs that benefit Americans. It's so strange conservatives like to help others abroad but not in their own country. Housing and feeding the homeless, indifent, disabled, who can not take care of themselves should first be the responsibility of the various church organizations that are now spending billions of donated dollars on feeding and housing the hungry and homeless in other countries.

Your own war veterans are suffering greatly from PTSD, there is a 12.% unemployment rate in veterans, a hefty share of them are homeless. Why is that if Republicans or conservatives are so charitable and caring?

Many Conservatives remind me a lot of a certain passage in the book "The Help" where white American women who treated their black maids as second class or worse were donating so generously to children in Africa.

 

[DeafCaroline]

It is always the extremely wealthy/rich people making this argument.

The 99% people should use this argument against them. Lowering taxes on the middle class and poor helps the economy most. THe tax rate on the rich has negilible affect on the economy.

Get rid of sales taxes and gas taxes which hits the lowest income people the most.

Every time the government, usually the Republicans, cut taxes, the federal deficit goes up.