The US Economy

We do that by not starting a war without good reason, and spend billions in a country that will use the money that should be used at home. We were already engaged with our military in Afghanistan and Bosnia, We didn't need to expand our war efforts in another country that posed no threat to our security, because the UN was successful in containing Saddam - in addition to our no fly zones. By saving those billions, that money could have been spent at home to take care of our own people with good health care, food and shelter - and better schools for our children.

What "tough love" amounted to when I worked with the homeless in Austin was Republicans asking us to "get them out of sight first, then do something about them." They were glad to sit on the committee, not keen on going down into the park at night with blankets and food. Homeless people were "scary," "unattractive," "inappropriate in a neighborhood of this kind."

What "tough love" really amounts to is passing on the responsibility to someone else, sometimes the victim himself, just as often the damn liberal who shouldered the "tough lover's" responsibility.

Yeah, but they would just gorw up to be "slackers." Its better to let our people starve, die, etc... that way there won't be all those "undesirables" around.
Ouch. Doing a republican imitation hurts!

That's one of the reasons there such a big divide between liberals and conservatives. I'm kind of in the middle of those extremes, because I believe in being more of a moderate. On one topic, I'm a far left liberal, and that is that our country should provide health care for all of our citizens. I find it deplorable that the richest country on this planet hasn't done that, while poorer countries have, and we still spend the greatest amount per capita on medical care.

Let me guess, these were "bible believeing Christians" who said this, yes?

Obviously, some are more committed to ideology than to remedy. What must be done, and what requires far more attention and effort than it has received, is that steps must be taken to provide real opportunity. There are serious shortcomings and inequities in the educational system, and in healthcare. Untill these are addressed effectively the problem will remain. Throwing money at it will not make the problem go away, it merely feeds it. The "Tough Love" part involves raising standards, not lowering expectations.

Actually, the two I was thinking of are, on the whole, nice people, church-goers, but incredibly badly informed and self-protective and squeamish. Not just self-protective, but the kind of people who turn their eyes away from any proof of a badly functioning society (community, neighborhood). A very egotistical, very childish mode of denial. Which is why I badger Timber. To be a good citizen, you have first to accept the circumstances as they present themselves, not as you wish they'd be. The right has taught itself carefully (and you have to be carefully taught). It shares a language (Welfare Queens, etc.) and then tries to convince us it thinks for itself.

I'm kinda fond of badgers, really; after all, they're not only admirably independent and self sufficient critters, they're Wisconsin's official mascot. They are really nasty scrappers too. I gotta admire that.
Of course, thanks to those very qualities, sometimes the only way to deal with 'em is to shoot 'em :wink:

Tartar, Having come from a very poor family when we were children, and understand that having food and shelter is not the blame of the children, I can understand and sympathize with people not having food or shelter. That's the reason why I donate only to two nonprofit organizations, the Second Harvest Food Bank and Habitat for Humanities. They provide food and shelter without regard to analyzing why they need the food or shelter; that there is need, and they provide. These organizations do not spend much on administration or advertising cost, and most of the money goes to provide those benefits without regard to race, culture, religion, or anything else. These two charities are the best of the best.

hobitbob - You're right, of course that I overstated my case. Of course there are good-hearted people on the left putting their feet to the ground where good works need to be done. I should not have claimed otherwise.

What I should have written is that I think these issues get used as political tools by people who care and people who don't, and that I think using people in need as political pawns is wrong.

However, I would also put your assertion that conservatives don't care at all in the same bin with my poorly considered comments along the same lines. The difference between liberals and conservatives isn't whether they think people in need should be helped, but whether they think it is the function of the federal government to help those in need. And on that point you might want to check the Constitution; it supports the conservative viewpoint on this question.

An excellent idea, but first we have to agree on how we define our capability; as access or by outcome.

I believe this is a fundamental (perhaps the fundamental) difference between liberals and conservatives; liberals look for equality of outcome, and if they don't see it, they believe something is wrong. Conservatives look for equality of access, and so long as it exists they trust that things are working as they should.

Conservatives believe the ideal America is one where everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve while liberals believe the ideal America is one where everyone has an equal share of available resources. The conservative ideal is founded in freedom, the liberal ideal is founded in control. The conservative ideal allows men and women to dictate their fortunes, the liberal ideal requires the state to dictate each man and woman's share.

Neither group believes we currently live in the ideal America, and perhaps the compromises necessitated by a reasonable debate between these polar views would yield a workable society that offers acceptable levels of freedom and security for all. My fear is that we never have this legitimate and potentially fruitful debate because we are forever being led off on worthless tangents by claims that conservatives want to starve children and that liberals want to murder babies.

Just my opinion, of course.

Well of course scrat I am probably the most left leaning liberal on A2K however I do believe that every man, woman and child in the US is INTITLED to standards of health care/education/housing/diet regardless of their "worthness." I am not speaking of cosmetic surgery, education at Yale, a condo on the beach or Alaskan king crab. But we as a nation do have more than adequate resources to provide these minumum human needs and should provide them without qualification.

With the possible exception of the spelling of entitled and the way we best achieve those results, I think we agree.

The thing is, I don't think we best do what you want by attempting to have the government mandate or provide those things. I think we come closest to your ideal by keeping men and women free and allowing everyone to reap the benefits of the labor of those free men and women. The history of the world seems to back that thinking up. Our poorest and most needy is rich by comparison with other countries who've tried to let the government ensure the outcome you desire.

And despite the absurd claims of some here, I am not saying (as are no conservatives I know) that the poor should be allowed to starve. What I am saying is that the best way to minimize the numbers and plight of the least among us is NOT by having the government guarantee them a free ride. That "solution" has been shown to result in more of the very thing it was intended to solve.

I don't fault liberals for wanting to try different solutions than I would try, I fault them for refusing to learn from their mistakes.

Apology accepted, scrat. Good to see you minding your betters!


Agreed!


But often when federal funding is cut, there is no private funding for these organizations to fall back on. Thuis we get back to the conservative, "sorry you are dying, but look at the nifty tax deduction I can take for my Hummer, oh, and don't get too near, you stink awfully! I swear, you poor people should not be in public! There should be a law against your type!" example.

Ah, but your example assumes that the norm is for federal coffers to be funding these efforts in the first place, and that these programs would not exist (or fewer people would be helped) if the federal government were not deciding how you and I should help our fellow man by confiscating our earnings as taxes and doling it out as they see fit. Isn't it possible that you and I might help more people and do a better job were we allowed to decide how and to whom we gave? Isn't it also possible that some of the people who don't have jobs (and whom you would have the government help) might have a job if the government hadn't taken the money that could have been used to pay that person's wages?

I guess I'm as far to the left as Dys... for sure!

I wish memory would serve me better -- I can't give a link on this but may be able to later when I have more time to search.

There was a study, I think by architects, of how to improve public housing in (maybe) Chicago. Or Philly? They had been hired to create some new low-income housing and wanted it to be more welcoming and attractive than past designs, the kind of housing that people wouldn't immediately identify as public housing, that had real appeal, that took into account the desires and needs of those who would live there just as architects with individual residences for the middle class. And all of this within the usual constrained budget. They did it, but when the time came for the city to approve the housing, quite a few people objected strenuously BECAUSE of its attractive design, BECAUSE it was cheerful, BECAUSE it was like middle-class housing.

There is, of course, a whole side of American life which identifies poverty with sin and laziness which should be punished ("tough love") -- not our best side, and I'm surprised there are so many here who apparently belong to that group. These are the same folks who believe -- They need to feel the pain in order to improve themselves, in order to get out of poverty, and the last thing we want to do is coddle them. They think of "those people" as a mass, not as individuals. Just a taste of (in my case) helping families in the drug-ridden projects in Newark, and later work with the homeless in Austin cleared up my misconceptions wonderfully.

What's this prejudice all about? Well, lack of education and experience, for starters, and peer group pressure, and the fact that people like to feel they are better than others, and all that crummy stuff -- what prejudice is always about. But we need to outgrow that and understand that capitalism in its extremes produces the problem, in the same way that socialism in its extremes produces alienation and anomie. Both extremes are going to have to come to terms with the need for balance. Much better to be the sort of people who can deal with those at the other end of the scale as individuals owed no less respect than our neighbors and friends -- urging some on, helping others in just the way Dys has outlined, and making sure that participation in our society is as rewarding and fulfilling for them as it has been for those able to get to the top. We will have to make sure that those at the top follow the rules we like to impose on those at the bottom, too. We have been far too amused by and forgiving of those Corporate Welfare Cheats and far too unforgiving of the exhausted and alienated at the other end of the scale whose lawbreaking doesn't amuse us.

But, for the conservatives, the corporations seem to deserve handouts to "better themselves."

Tart - I hadn't heard of the situation you cite, but it sounds legitimate. I agree that the attitude they encountered was wrong, but I don't attribute the same reasons to it that you do. I don't think it had anything to do with prejudice, I think it had to do with money. My guess (and I could well be wrong, so please just let me offer my point of view and let it be my point of view and know that I recognize that your point of view could also be right (!)) is that people who built middle-income housing in the area looked at it and thought, "How will we be able to continue to charge what we do if people think they can get what we offer for considerably less?" I suspect that home owners in the area worried that the proposed designs would depress the value of their homes for roughly the same reason. I think people simply reacted as they believed it was in their best short term interests to do.

I'm not saying they were right to react that way, but simply suggesting that it may have had nothing to do with prejudice.

Well, when uneployment was down to 2 or 3% in Holland in the late nineties, wages were rising rawther rapidly ... Which is logical, because whereas in the eighties you could hire qualified academics for minimum wages just because there wasnt any choice for them anyway, in the late nineties competition amongst employers for people with an education in science or technical professions was so big that they had to tempt them with ever higher wages ... and bonuses and stocks, and the stocks were booming too ...

This month, on the other hand, the trade unions had to accept a 0% deal on wage rises for the next two years, in their collective negotiations with government and employers. Deemed necessary by the government because of the crisis - and because of the same crisis, the unions had few bargaining chips. All they got in return was compromises on all kinds of existing benefits deals that the government was threatening to curtail (disability, early retirement, etc).

On a related point - in principle I'm a Keynesian, but I guess that in today's globalised world you do have to realise that any money the state puts into the system, for example through public employment programs, is largely going to "leak" abroad, as the newly employed people use their extra wages to buy imported products with. That was much less so in FDR's time.

Now I still dont think thats necessarily bad, in the grand scheme of things - a nice bit of capitalist development aid, really (trade-not-aid) - but yeh, most people would object to any new great Keynesian project because of that reason.

Economy looking up, the Dems are back to bashing Bush on the war. They have to keep busy with their anti-productive crap, don't they?

Someone above said we should let poor people starve. Reminds me of the saying "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat. Teach a man to fish, and he'll sit in a boat drinking beer all day."