Before There Was Welfare There Was Charity

reply to post by neo96


I respectfully want to reply that your post is very uncaring.

I grew up in a home of drug addicts, alcoholics and a mother who was physically incapable of working and a father who did not pay child support.

I grew up on welfare, food stamps, soup kitchens, food banks, and I did my clothes shopping at the Goodwill and Salvation Army with vouchers from the welfare office. We lived in the country and the walk just to the nearest bus stop to go to town to the food bank was a 4 mile walk and then the return walk with groceries in hand.

In Seventh grade I had one pair of pants to wear and I was ridiculed by the other students constantly for it. I was lucky for that bag of government potatoes and block of cheese and without I would have not eaten at home. I had a government school lunch punch card that got me a school lunch 9 months out of the year sometimes that was my only meal. I was ridiculed for that as well, of course by the rich kids, who had no idea how wonderful their life was,

Christmas and Birthdays are luxuries,sure, but do you now how it feels for a 9 year old boy to not have a Christmas morning, or any type of birthday celebration? I remember watching out my window on Christmas and seeing all the other kids running around with new toys, clothes, candy, a Christmas tree in their front window. I got nothing, not even an apology from my parents.

I think it may be beneficial for some people to imagine what it is like to be dirt poor and without the government check coming in every month I would have been homeless and hungrier than I already was.

reply to post by sdocpublishing

I respectfully want to reply that your post is very uncaring.

Sorry you feel that way there are millions of people in this country who have hard lives and no matter some people "feel" others have had it far worse.

I do not support a carte blanche approach for welfare i would rather have one weill funded program that works as it is designed to do than what we currently have in this country.

Too many people go around saying I do not care but that could not be any further from the truth the proponents of the welfare state and only looking at the here and now and not looking at the long term negative effects those social policies have on the people and the rest of us as they are supposedly trying to save.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by NoHierarchy

 

However, if your point is that government can NEVER do good within our current world... well that's just completely irrational/stupid thinking. Once again, I'm an Anarchist

Government can never do any good have never seen government do anything without force to accomplish that everything the current government and the purveyors of that ideology are the anti thesis of what a constitutional republic is.

edit on 26-5-2012 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Once again, stupid/irrational black-and-white thinking.

A constitutional republic is STILL a centralized government, a government is inherently hierarchical, coercive, and has the power to tax. I'm not sure what you're imagining.

reply to post by NoHierarchy


Really thought a constitutional government the power resides right where it belongs in the individuals own two hands.

Thought an anarchist would get that but turns around and wants more centralized power via social programs does not make sense to me.

reply to post by sdocpublishing


I know all too well how that is. I remember those Christmases and birthdays when the only present received is another day to live. I remember the ridicule from others for having less than them which remains present even from adults. You are treated as something less than them, something less than human. And for what? A child does not get to decide what family it shall be born into. Now add mental health disorders to the list. Now I know there are many people in this world that will argue that those "mental health disorders" are in ones head and are not a real disease, this is because they have never experienced it, much like growing up in poverty.

This is why I believe that a proper education should be readily available to all who desire it and that our nation should work harder to convince those who grew up poor to seek that education. Educated people, truly educated and not just those who go to school in order to get a job, will likely have a much better understanding of the world around them as well as develop the will to get he job that will allow them to live without the assistance of others.

If we have a nation where more of the poor are receiving a proper education than it is very likely that there will be less poor in future generations so there would be less welfare needed. The problem is that most would rather give up on the poor children, living by an opinion that they are already doomed anyway, rather than working as hard as possible to convince those children otherwise. Even without a family, the average human being will be unable to live happily on minimum wage, our nation deems an education as a necessity to earn a living and therefore everyone should have the opportunity to receive that education.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux

Either you have a profoundly ignorant understanding of history, or you think everyone else does, either way, when "industry/Capitalism started to take hold" is generally known as the Industrial Revolution which was a period between 1750 and 1850.

No sh**, Sherlock.
Yes, I was referring to the Industrial Revolution era and subsequent massive socio-economic changes.

Further, your assertion that the decline of community has something to do with flocking to cities ignores or pretends that urban settings are antithetical to community. I live in Los Angeles which is an odd mixture of many things, but a sprawling land of a thousand suburbs that in its urban proper has Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Thai Town, Little Armenia, to name just a few. The decline of community does not necessarily mean that community no longer exists, and community exists in urban settings just the same as it does in small town America.

No it doesn't ignore or pretend that urban settings are antithetical to community. Yes, inevitably community springs up anywhere there are humans. Notice how I didn't say that "cities destroy community"? You're drawing false connections/conclusions. What I said was that people were dirt-poor and more/less forced to flock to cities for jobs and an increasingly industrial/Capitalist/every-man-for-himself economic system deteriorated communities from just about every angle. Yes... cities have cultural microcosms/neighborhoods, but does that mean that nothing is lost in transition? It doesn't, and often things are absolutely lost in economic transition/migration. Also, we're not talking about modern day Chinatown, we're talking about early-20th-century era mass migration and industrialization and its impacts on community/self-sufficiency.

In the O.P. I referenced "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," by Robert D. Putnam (1995). Here are some facts he points out in that essay:

Participation in parent-teacher organizations has dropped from more than 12 million in 1964
to about 7 million now.

Weekly churchgoing has declined from 48 percent in the late 1950s to about 41 percent in the
early 1970s, and remaining about the same since then.

Union membership has declined by more than half since the 1950s--representing only 15.8
percent of the work force in 1992.

Membership in traditional women's groups has declined steadily since the mid-1960s. "For
example, membership in the national Federation of Women's Clubs is down by more than
half (59 percent) since 1964, while membership in the League of Women Voters is off 42
percent since 1969".

Volunteers for mainline civic organizations have also experienced significant decline.
Volunteers for the Boy Scouts declined by 26 percent since 1970; volunteers for the Red
Cross are off by 61 percent since 1970.

Membership in fraternal organizations have dropped substantially. "Membership is down
significantly in the Lions (off 12 percent since , the Elks (off 18 percent since 1979), the Shriners (off 27 percent since 1979), the Jaycees (off 44 percent since 1979), and the Masons
(down 39 percent since 1959)"

"The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent"

From An Essay on the Decline of Communities by Frank W. Elwell

It is nice to have an opinion, and of course, everyone does, better still to have an informed opinion.

edit on 26-5-2012 by Jean Paul Zodeaux because: (no reason given)

I'd believe all these statistics, and many of them I've heard of. But the question is WHY, why is this happening. Part of it is just natural change, but part of it is economic; we live in an increasingly globalized society at the macro level while at the micro level, we're living increasingly individualist lifestyles. This is TERRIBLE for natural/local human communities/groups. I'm sure a major reason for this is that everything has been commodified, wages have stagnated, we work longer, have more bills, and any historically recent communal support has gone out of vogue/popularity. We live polar perversions of hyper-individualism and hyper-collectivism. Essentially, our society makes things difficult/inconvenient for long-lasting community at the local level.

reply to post by sdocpublishing

I grew up in a home of drug addicts, alcoholics and a mother who was physically incapable of working and a father who did not pay child support.

I grew up on welfare, food stamps, soup kitchens, food banks, and I did my clothes shopping at the Goodwill and Salvation Army with vouchers from the welfare office. We lived in the country and the walk just to the nearest bus stop to go to town to the food bank was a 4 mile walk and then the return walk with groceries in hand.

Respectfully, I do not see neo as uncaring at all.

I grew up with two alcoholic parents who was mentally incapable of working, and any time she tried it was only sporadic attempts to do so. She would sporadically attempt to find work because after my parents divorced my drunk father disappeared. No one knew if he was alive or dead for over three years. In that time, I the oldest of 8 children and about 13 years old, and the rest of her children refused to let my mother go on welfare. She, of course, scolded us, those of us old enough to have an opinion like this and vocalize it, and explained that we just didn't understand the seriousness of the problem.

So, she applied for welfare which meant that some case worker was coming to our house to determine whether or not our family qualified for welfare. The four eldest children were born 16 months apart, then there is the middle child born years after B. the youngest of the four eldest, then after M. the middle child was born, there was another extended period before the three little babies were born - the three youngest will forever remain "the babies" to me - each of them 11 months apart. The three "babies" were old enough to talk. At the time my mother had applied for welfare, our carpet in the living room was in desperate need of cleaning, and all of us kept complaining to our mother that it needed cleaning, but my poor drunken frustrated mother kept screaming there was no money to do so, but promised it would get cleaned soon.

The day the welfare case worker came to our house to interview my mother, it wound up being R., the youngest, who answered the door. My mother was a mess, sober but nervous, and was pleading with me to answer the door before one of the kids did, but as I got there I saw it was too late and there was little R. staring at the welfare woman, looking her up and down, and then, just as my mother walked up behind me, R. said to the lady: "Oh. Are you the carpet cleaning lady?"

As it turned out, my mother was looking into other avenues to some how feed us and pay the bills, and had just the day before found a job. She wasn't sure whether she could handle the work, and I suppose really didn't want to work and would have rather had an easy check from the government...maybe, I'm not sure...but little R.'s snide remark to the welfare lady convinced my mom that perhaps we were not a family suited for government assistance and decided to take the job, of which, due to her frail mental state, only lasted for short time, but long enough to convince her not to take welfare, and long enough for her older brother, my uncle, a Chaplain in the army, to convince my mom to let him adopt us children. This legal maneuver would allow my mom to remain our legal guardian, put my uncle in a position to get a pay raise because of the new family and put us all on medical army benefits.

So, I guess you could say, my family still wound up on government assistance, or you could say that my uncle, who dedicated his life to the Catholic Church and the Army, acted charitably and made sure his sisters family was taken care of. I know what I said at the time...in order for this adoption to take place my uncle would have to hire a private detective to find my missing drunk of a father. What I had to say is that once this detective found my father there was no way he would sign the adoption papers and would step up, be a man, and be our father, and make sure his family was taken care of.

The next time I saw my father was at the attorney's office signing me and my brothers and sisters away for adoption. My mother insisted I come with her to see this so she could feed me the reality sandwich she thought I needed. Up until this adoption, and after my father left us, my family was dirt poor. That experience has informed my world view just the same as your personal experience has informed yours, but in the end, really sad stories do nothing at all to impugn neo, and I am pretty sure neo cares, and probably cares deeply.

I suspect that neo helps who he can, and I know he understands the profound problems that come with big government, and just because he understand this problem of big government doesn't mean he is uncaring or has a bad heart.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by NoHierarchy

 

Really thought a constitutional government the power resides right where it belongs in the individuals own two hands.

Thought an anarchist would get that but turns around and wants more centralized power via social programs does not make sense to me.

*facepalm*
Dude, what are you talking about?

ANY GOVERNMENT IS HIERARCHICAL/COERCIVE. Doesn't matter if it's based on a Constitutional Republic/Democracy or not... THAT is the nature of government. There's a quote I remember...

"Democracy is a sh**ty way to run a country. The only thing it has going for it is that it's a hundred times better than any other government."

If you want individual/communal power, power that is horizontal/voluntarist, where everyone has a say, then the ONLY way you're going to get that is through some sort of Anarchist system. If you use government, you will invite tyranny, no matter the sort or degree. If you use hierarchy (whether it's in government or economics) you invite disparity and tyranny, no matter the sort or degree.

If you'd read carefully, my point was that SO LONG AS GOVERNMENTS EXIST we may as well support any measures that have them serve US rather than allow them to serve those in power or those who have obtained most of the wealth/property. Whether it's lesser evil or not, the smart thing to do is to make the best choices out of what you've got, then for the LONG-TERM try to replace an unsustainable system with something fundamentally superior.

reply to post by NoHierarchy

If you'd read carefully, my point was that SO LONG AS GOVERNMENTS EXIST we may as well support any measures that have them serve US

Heard this before so the ends justify the means no thanks.

reply to post by NoHierarchy

No sh**, Sherlock. Yes, I was referring to the Industrial Revolution era and subsequent massive socio-economic changes.

Here we have you owning up to the time frame of this "industry/Capitalism" that you claim led to the decline of community, only to at the end of your post respond the statistics I posted showing a sharp decline here in modern times by saying this:

I'd believe all these statistics, and many of them I've heard of. But the question is WHY, why is this happening

Well, it certainly wasn't Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution that is causing this modern decline of community, and of course, the author of Bowling Alone is arguing that it is the rise of the welfare state...something any Sherlock would know because they would follow the links I provided and actually investigate. You don't have to agree with Bowling Alone, or my own arguments, but you have to know that I and others are not asking why, because we have a good idea why it is happening, and this is why we keep showing up in this thread and arguing our points.

reply to post by arbiture


YES!!!!

I want MY money back!...I will decide who I help, with MY money !!! That is FREEDOM!

I made a very similar argument a few years back when I was an executive board officer at the state level of an organization called the "Jaycees" or Junior Chamber of Commerce. It's like the Rotary or Lions Club for people 18-40 years old. We had years of declining membership, and those who were members usually didnt want to do anything. "WHY?" the board would ask. And I gave them a very unpopular answer. "Because," I said, "They do not want to do what they think the government is doing for them. We pay our taxes, and see a lot of it going to those in need, or those who claim they need it. We used to have soup kitchens. Now we have food stamps. We used to have the charity of a church, or an organization like the Jaycees. But we are outdated in today's society. Those who are interested in "helping" do it... but they get a paycheck to do it now that the government has a monopoly on "helping those in need".
This is also why it is needed more and more, and there are more and more people who abuse the system. When private organizations like the Jaycees, or a church, or the Lions, or Rotary, etc. Were looked-to to provide this service, we could be careful - now, it's a blanket "one size fits all" approach to welfare."
Very few people agreed with me then... and needless to say, I'm no longer a member.

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


Glad you brought this up...arguing this on another thread....people denying progressives are socialists...

So I started studying the progressive websites....you really have to dig in..because they don't want people like "us" catching on...but yes indeedy they are and one of their main goals is getting the means of production (ownership of) into workers hands and also dividing up land equally and for all....

In light of our analysis above what this should mean, in turn, is that socialism should focus on dispersing the ownership and control of the means of production as widely as possible, so as to promote the enjoyment by the individual of the fruits of his own labor. To put this another way, socialism should promote equity-building capitalism or equity building "laborism". Definition: The term "socialism" properly refers to any economic system, whether capitalistic or "laboristic", that adopts as its objective the greatest economic good of the greatest number. Experience makes it clear that this requires dispersing the ownership and control of the means of production as widely as possible. The opposite of socialism is economic elitism (or degenerate economic conservatism), which is any economic system that seeks maximum good for a tiny elite at the expense of the majority. (This is the system which is in place in the US today.)

www.progressiveliving.org...


Just one tiny snippet of their pages and pages of ways they want to institute "American Progressivism".

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
reply to post by HolgerTheDane2

 

People coming to the hospital being refused proper care on the grounds that they have no Medical Insurrance.

Just goes to show that European television news is as crappy as U.S. television news. A proper journalist would have done enough digging to know at least a little about the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act:

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)[1] is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. Participating hospitals may only transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment under their own informed consent, after stabilization, or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment

There are no contradictions. When you are confronted with a contradiction it is best to reexamine the premise.

That is not to argue that U.S. premises on welfare is sound, only that European television news is crap, just like American television news.

thank you for that response

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by NoHierarchy

 

If you'd read carefully, my point was that SO LONG AS GOVERNMENTS EXIST we may as well support any measures that have them serve US

Heard this before so the ends justify the means no thanks.

You serious right now?

Ok, have it your way... let's have a government that invests all of our money into the 1%, corporate America, the police state, and militarism instead of renewables, space travel, universal healthcare, workers, education, and the poor. Yeah, that's extremely intelligent of you.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux and post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


The problem I had with you questioning my ethics wasn't that you were questioning them - it was why you were questioning them. That is of course why I said, “That is absurd man. You're questioning my ethics, because I can see evil for what it is? ”.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
The both of you reject my assertion that each of you possess personal power of untold force, naively pretending that this is not so and that your actions have no consequence, that your actions do not affect the many.

What are these personal powers of untold force you speak of? I responded to those sentiments when I stated my unwillingness to do what what was necessary to fix the problem, but I wasn't speaking of how to feed, cloth, and house the needy. I was addressing the actual root of the problem, which is, and has been for centuries, the power hungry elitist.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, and you did in fact understand that the problem I was addressing was the elitist's greed. If you did, I want to know how I alone can use my, “personal powers of untold force”, ethically, to solve the problem, because I don't think its possible.

I think that if everyone said no, they would use their weapons against us, and that wouldn't solve anything. I think if I invented something, and then tried to free everyone from greed, in that way, I must first be greedy to gain such wealth, and even if I did, they would just use their weapons to take it from me.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
Oh sure, not you, you will argue. It is not you who demands this help, even though you insist you are helpless. Why you mean all those truly helpless souls that are beneath you. They are who you passionately argue for insisting all must surrender to the state, while simultaneously insisting that your arguments, your support of this Leviathan state does not affect the many.

No! Bad boy! *squirts with water bottle*

I think you have bought into their premise that being greedy and selfish are admirable traits, if you succeed in life(based on their standards of success). I think that you almost cherish their greed and enslavement of us, since you continuously try to pin the guilt on someone who refuses to cooperate with a system based on their “admirable traits”.

You think man doesn't want to work for himself.
I think man doesn't want to work for a master.

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
reply to post by NoHierarchy

 

No sh**, Sherlock. Yes, I was referring to the Industrial Revolution era and subsequent massive socio-economic changes.

Here we have you owning up to the time frame of this "industry/Capitalism" that you claim led to the decline of community, only to at the end of your post respond the statistics I posted showing a sharp decline here in modern times by saying this:

Owning up? No... that's what I was referring to from the beginning, I wasn't hiding anything.

I'd believe all these statistics, and many of them I've heard of. But the question is WHY, why is this happening

Well, it certainly wasn't Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution that is causing this modern decline of community, and of course, the author of Bowling Alone is arguing that it is the rise of the welfare state...something any Sherlock would know because they would follow the links I provided and actually investigate. You don't have to agree with Bowling Alone, or my own arguments, but you have to know that I and others are not asking why, because we have a good idea why it is happening, and this is why we keep showing up in this thread and arguing our points.

You very casually brush off the very common-sense notion that Capitalism/industrialization helped to eat away at localized communities... but even a casual observer of history will note that industrialization/Capitalism has a serious double-edge and has absolutely contributed to creating a disjointed/uprooted working class, and also to economic uniformity, doling out communities, parcel by parcel, to the highest bidders (at the lowest prices) rather than seeking to create self-sustaining and tightly-knit communities.

Seems Bowling Alone is a controversial book within its own field with several strong criticisms. At the end of the day, it seems the author ignores new trends in social bonding while decrying the decay of historically recent (and outdated) trends like Boy Scouts and Bowling Leagues. The problem isn't that bowling leagues are dying, I'm sure most people don't give a sh** and aren't much affected by it. However, OVERALL, the loss of deep/developed/time-tested community bonds HAS affected people... it creates hyper-individualism on the local level and turns us all into self-interested workers and business-people instead of encouraging group support/solutions.

Once again, we have become collectivist in many of the wrong ways and individualist in many of the wrong ways. Wrong in the sense of what delivers the most support/satisfaction to we as a species.

reply to post by Bleeeeep


I have tried several times to answer your question of personal power and this so called "elite", but you are stubbornly refusing to hear my argument. Why is it you think I keep referring to this "they" you speak of as so called? Why do you think I keep placing quotation marks around words such as "ruler" and "elite"? Do you think it is because I accept them as my "ruler" as you do? Do you think it is because I accept that they are "elite" in some meaningful way like you do? Do you think I care one iota about who or what these so called "they" are?

You justify your surrender to "they" by declaring that if everyone said no to "they" that "they" would use their weapons against us. You are not only a slave to "they" but to your own fear of death. When I speak of your own personal power, this is what I am talking about; you have the power to fight for what you believe in. Clearly you believe in "they" as the "rulers" and "elite", and your lip service paid to their evil actions becomes moot. You support them wholly and by your life you do. You value your own life more than you do freedom, and because of this you will never know freedom.

Tragically, you are free to surrender to "they", and you are free to be "their" slave, not that you'd ever know that because you will never know freedom. I suppose it is even possible that you so value the life of your body that you would not even die for love. Maybe not, and perhaps as a parent you would gladly surrender your life to save your children, I don't know, I just know that in terms of freedom and fighting against tyranny, your fear of death becomes your justification for surrendering to "they".

You, under your conditions of surrender to "they" declare I've "bought into their premise that being greedy and selfish are admirable traits", but you have no evidence of my greed at all, you merely presume, simply because I do not trust government to handle charity, that I must greedy. In terms of selfishness, this is yet an even deeper problem, and I don't know who is responsible for this, or if it is simply just the accident of life, that lexicographers have come to collectively define selfishness as meaning a chief concern for ones own interest, especially with disregard for others. Can you not see the contradiction in this?

I have continually argued in this thread, and when asked by greeneyedleo to summarize what I thought this thread was about, reiterated that our interdependence with each other is a necessary tool of our survival. Coupling this with having a chief concern for ones own interest it is demonstrably so that regard for others is very much in our best interest! So, while I have used critical thought to analyze a flawed definition of a word, that word being "selfish", you have bought this contradictory definition lock, stock, and barrel, and then amusingly suggest it is I who have bought into somebody's crap.

Sigh.

reply to post by NoHierarchy

You serious right now? Ok, have it your way... let's have a government that invests all of our money into the 1%, corporate America, the police state, and militarism instead of renewables, space travel, universal healthcare, workers, education, and the poor. Yeah, that's extremely intelligent of you.

Why yes it is extremely intelligent of me for not being a communism or communist lite-socialist the problem there is money is being invested in bloated out of control government that serves no one but it's own self interest.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


If either of us is surrendering it is you who does so by willfully choosing to ignore "they". At least I am speaking out against them. You just want to ignore them and only talk about their political games in which these silver tongue people try to use to keep us enslaved. I see your game now and I am done here. Ignore "they" if you like.