This is discouraging for me.

As far as I am concerned that's the kind of thinking that ends with people tearing down our social safety net. There is precious little of it left, already.

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@edgarblythe,

Okay, every time I do something foolish that has consequences, I'll come to you to neutralize it at your own expense.

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@Brandon9000,

I knew that was the ultimate answer.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

I knew that was the ultimate answer.

Of course you do. How about when you've had 10 kids and you can't support them you aren't allowed to have 6 more? Sterilize her and then feed her kids. That is an answer as well. There has to be a better way then what we are doing now.

1 Reply

@McGentrix,

McGentrix wrote:

Sterilize her and then feed her kids. That is an answer as well. There has to be a better way then what we are doing now.

This route has been tried in the past. (For details, you can search the web for "eugenics".) After about three decades of trying it, conservatives and liberals ended up agreeing that eugenics is not the "better way" you are looking for.

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I notice all the solutions to society's ills involves doing things to the poorest and least powerful.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

I notice all the solutions to society's ills involves doing things to the poorest and least powerful.

Yes, awful things like not giving them taxpayer money to correct dumb life choices. And, lest you try to twist this statement, I have mentioned several times now that money beyond food and shelter could be given to people who have simply had bad luck in life.

Society should never let anyone starve or sleep on the streets, and an extra helping hand can be given to people who have been dealt a bad hand in life, but society is not always responsible for fixing problems people bring on themselves by bad life choices.

Your attempt to find villainy in what I say is simply childish.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Instead give charity to banks and corporations, who do equally stupid things, but we must pay for it and not them.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

Instead give charity to banks and corporations, who do equally stupid things, but we must pay for it and not them.

What does that have to do with this thread? I'm not aware of Brandon advocating for the various corporate bailouts that happened in 2008 and thereafter. Did I miss something?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

He doesn't want people's mistakes to be paid for by him. But, he is paying for banks and corporations mistakes all the time.
The point, for me, about helping that particular woman is that she can't be singled out if programs to help the poor are to be worth their salt. My mother made the mistake of marrying a man who refused to help raise her children, but gave her a new child every year. She requested surgery to keep her from having further children, but they refused to do it. The California welfare gave us money. Without it, her children would have been lost, most likely. But they all survived to live on their own, without government assistance. Everybody that genuinely needs help ought to have it.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

He doesn't want people's mistakes to be paid for by him. But, he is paying for banks and corporations mistakes all the time.

That's not a contradiction unless Brandon wants taxpayers to bail out Lehmann and General Motors. I'm not aware of him ever saying that he wants this. (Again, I could be missing something.)

Edgar Blythe wrote:

Everybody that genuinely needs help ought to have it.

I agree. I just don't see the logical connection between that and the bailouts of the banks and various other corporations.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

I do, but I don't want to derail the thread. You are correct that I should keep it out of this one.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

Instead give charity to banks and corporations, who do equally stupid things, but we must pay for it and not them.

I agree that some of the companies that got the TARP money should have been allowed to fail. That has always been my feeling, but these are separate cases.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

He doesn't want people's mistakes to be paid for by him. But, he is paying for banks and corporations mistakes all the time.
The point, for me, about helping that particular woman is that she can't be singled out if programs to help the poor are to be worth their salt. My mother made the mistake of marrying a man who refused to help raise her children, but gave her a new child every year. She requested surgery to keep her from having further children, but they refused to do it. The California welfare gave us money. Without it, her children would have been lost, most likely. But they all survived to live on their own, without government assistance. Everybody that genuinely needs help ought to have it.

I also said that deserving people should be helped. Simply having made choices that ultimately didn't work doesn't stop someone from being deserving. Not every plan that doesn't succeed is foolish. Nobody succeeds all of the time.

In this particular case which opened the thread, I think that there was actual bad judgment. Every case has to be decided on its own merits. To re-state an extreme, hypothetical case that I mentioned before, if I gamble myself into debt, I cannot expect society to pay it off for me, since my own recklessness was to blame. I don't see any evidence of that in your description of your own family situation.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Society should never let anyone starve

au contraire, there are plenty of folks who should be allowed to starve, unfortunately most of them are the people making the decisions that would see this woman and her kids starve

we should put up signs on capital (and parliament) hill, "please don't feed these animals"

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

Yea, how about actually educating them, training them and allowing them to be free from public assistance.

The progressive answer to the poor is to keep handing them stuff to keep them poor and under their control.

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@woiyo,

Do you realize the states with those receiving the most of government assistance are those who vote conservative? So tell me, how are they under our nefarious control when they vote the other way? It is yet another mythical republican talking point which unfortunately is believed by the very people receiving public assistance in those states. Go figure, it is impossible.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Why did she have so many children without anything close to the means to support them, and why did she marry a drug dealer or the sort of person who would become a drug dealer?

Who said he was a drug dealer? Where did you get that information?

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@joefromchicago,

Oh, well, he is black and in jail, it couldn't possibly be he is jail for not paying child support. He could be in jail for dealing or using, but what difference does it make in any case? Are we to the point where we are going to be running investigations into people's lives in order for them to get assistance? Would that be across the spectrum of society including the elderly or the white couple down the street who both receive disability who have six kids let loose around the neighborhood, including their two year old twins sons?

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@joefromchicago,

I read he was serving a five year sentence for selling cocaine...her troubles started when he went to jail, since the income was cut-off.

1 Reply

This is discouraging for me.

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