What if a welfare society is a good idea after all?

reply to post by murfdog

There are varying degrees of communism. In its simplest purest sense, without greedy and power hungry or elite thinking humans messing it up, it could be a wonderful and evolutionary thing, and that evolution might be just what the world is ready for or maybe has forced on it...someday.

reply to post by TheXoor

If I had not already read ANVIL OF THE HEART I would probably think it would be a good thing. Having read it and seen what I have seen with welfare it seems the author of that book has a pretty good idea of what would happen. I lived for a while in Altgeld Gardens next to Golden Gates in Chicago. Almost all were on welfare and they had no chance of ever getting off of it. Not living there. Maybe if they moved but that would mean losing all benefits for a while and no one in that position can afford that.

Originally posted by grownshow

Originally posted by sylent6
Man if eveyone was (is) on welfare, crime would skyrocket because it would not be enough money.

Honesty, people who are now on welfare that is able to work needs to be doing community service to contribute to society and not sitting next to a mailbox.

What makes you think the majority of welfare recipients aren't already working? Most wal-mart employees qualify for government assistence of some sort not because they aren't working but because what walmart pays won't even begin to cover their basic expenses. Its extremely difficult to find full time work because employeers have long since discovered that its cheaper to hire multiple part timers to pay minimum wage than hire a full time employee that will eventually recieve benefits and/or health care. You simply cannot get ahead by working multiple part time jobs that will never lead to health care or benefits. In my state you can work 40 hours a week at minimum wage and still get food stamps.

The lazy welfare man/woman who refuses to work is largely a myth used to justify spending cuts. It happens but it's rare.

I'm not talking about foodstamps, that's a whole another story. Now, we all understand that work is hard to come by yes but, you can't use it as an excuse not to look for work. It doesn't matter if your working ten hours and still get welfare fine, at least your doing something. But when you give up and become lazy and be dependant on it and not looking for anything then people like me are pissed off because my taxes continue to go up and up and up. How would you like it if I was to sit on my ass all day, smoke weed, drink, live in a great neighborshood and pay $40 dollars aonth on rent living the good life and you are busting butt making $11.00 with a $800 month on rent, car payment and working little side jobs just to keep a float pay check by paycheck. After for so long you'll see that the picture doesn't ad up.

And yes there are jobs out there but people don't want to work it because either they don't like it or it doesn't pay enough but yet ...its a job. But us working class people are the ones who suffers...I mean welcome to the new America folks!

Originally posted by grey580
we will let bill cosby talk about this.

He has some thoughts on this.

He had me going until he started talking about the "N" word.
It is a word that has about as much meaning as "ain't" or any other colloquialism.

It stems from the word Negro meaning black.
Black in another language is still black.

The "N" word is the southernization of it, just like ya'll for you all.
I don't personally use it. But, nor do I understand the power given to a drawl of speech either.

As far as the topic at hand, I think community is where we are headed. Smaller groups that work together and help each other, as needed. This to me is the normal mode of life for mankind.
We are not meant to live in hives of anonymity to our neighbors.

But, whether large metropolises or small villages, everyone has value for their contribution. The sewers and the sowers are as important as the healers and the maintainers of the groups infrastructure as are the builders and herders. Yet, no one should sit back and contribute nothing at all.
When some fall sick or aged, even they can help in some small way, or be cherished for labors past by family and friends.

What happens to a world that has been built on constant growth, and then the decision has been made to start the downsizing, how does that play out exactly?

"Useless eaters:, lol, what are those?

Originally posted by murfdog

Originally posted by TheXoor


What if more and more welfare for more and more people really is the wave of the future...and what if this is a good thing?


sense?

You’re kidding right?
It’s been tried before. It’s called communism. It starts out great and ends real, real bad.
Don’t they teach this sh*t in school anymore?

Or in the case of China it starts out real, real bad and ends up being a superpower.

No one has an exact formula on communism so predicting it's demise can depend on many factors. If you look at all other forms of government, they are riddled with downfall so this idea that communism has been entirely mapped out with it's terminal flaws is like an anti-communist's urban myth.

All forms of government are mildly insane, picking on Communism is just cliche'

If you want to talk about a possible truly screwed formula right out of the gate... the usury banking system is a prime example in this day and age. Same old greed with shiny new cards but this one is about MATH. It's got numbers behind it. You've got a bunch of people with astronomical savings accounts that just collecting money, not doing anything to help anyone except serve as more collateral that is simply growing just because it's there.

Capitalism is like agreeing to a huge global loan with a ridiculous balloon payment because money doesn't just create itself. Numbers do not lie. No matter how many times you do the equation, money cannot simply create itself. When it's all said and done there is going to be a huge gap because numbers simply don't work that way.

Now when you take look at the bigger picture, look at the age of our so called democracy... it's kind of young and as prosperous as we are told to view ourselves, we are in debt to those very same communists we are not supposed to agree with politically.

Pretty ironic if you ask me.

reply to post by Tecumte


I agree, lets help them make a change ..oh wait I think some already done and these people be saying "oh that's too hard for me to do" Some people don't want to help themselves but your hard earn tax dollars does.

People need to shut off that damn tv and hit those fields and learn to work or I will sign an executive order making people work in work camps for a $1.50 a day, for 5 days a week, for 13hrs day and theeeeen you can have your welfare and if you refuse well....be homeless (sarcasm)

Originally posted by sylent6
reply to post by Tecumte

 

I agree, lets help them make a change ..oh wait I think some already done and these people be saying "oh that's too hard for me to do" Some people don't want to help themselves but your hard earn tax dollars does.

People need to shut off that damn tv and hit those fields and learn to work or I will sign an executive order making people work in work camps for a $1.50 a day, for 5 days a week, for 13hrs day and theeeeen you can have your welfare and if you refuse well....be homeless (sarcasm)

some people occasionally do need a hand up rather than a hand out

Not having a 36 inch flat screen though and 100 bucks a month cable doesn't necessarily qualify one as 'poor'.

Multi trillionaires need to step back too and realize when enough is enough, (yeah I know you have bunkers, but just sayin) I'd be happy with a Jubilee reset, I think the parasites have already sucked way enough blood, time for a people bailout, just print another hundred trillion or so and we'll wipe the slate clean and start over, c'mon it's just Monopoly money anyway.

Originally posted by sylent6
I'm not talking about foodstamps, that's a whole another story. Now, we all understand that work is hard to come by yes but, you can't use it as an excuse not to look for work. It doesn't matter if your working ten hours and still get welfare fine, at least your doing something. But when you give up and become lazy and be dependant on it and not looking for anything then people like me are pissed off because my taxes continue to go up and up and up. How would you like it if I was to sit on my ass all day, smoke weed, drink, live in a great neighborshood and pay $40 dollars aonth on rent living the good life and you are busting butt making $11.00 with a $800 month on rent, car payment and working little side jobs just to keep a float pay check by paycheck. After for so long you'll see that the picture doesn't ad up.

And yes there are jobs out there but people don't want to work it because either they don't like it or it doesn't pay enough but yet ...its a job. But us working class people are the ones who suffers...I mean welcome to the new America folks!

edit on 8-11-2012 by sylent6 because: (no reason given)

You are worried about a boogieman myth that doesn't exist. In an age where the federal reserve is being exposed, trillions in corporate welfare for the ultra rich, and limitless wars all over the planet, there shouldn't be anyone who still believes the majority of their taxes go to a welfare queen/king. There isn't anyway to convince someone so mired into a believe system which isn't true. There aren't welfare recipients that live the high life as you suggest and your taxes primarily go to corporate welfare for the ultra rich and to the military industrial complex to wage a generational war. You don't get the point that recieving welfare doesn't mean you are unemployed. You can still qualify for all sorts of government assistence working a 40 hour a week minimum wage job.

You've been sold a lie the elites put out in order to divide us by class and perpetuate an us vs them mentality. There isn't a welfare queen who lives a lifestyle far greater than yours. If you want to know which people to be pissed at, you need to learn what Big agri subsidies, banker bailout, wall street bailout, military industrial complex, and prison industrial complex is.

reply to post by TheXoor


There is a difference between using technology to create abundance, and welfare.

When a resource is abundant its price drops. Likewise, when a resource is scarce its price sky-rockets.

That is why, in certain circumstances, it would be absurd to try to sell something to someone.

Like our atmosphere.

I don't remember ever having to pay to breathe. The atmosphere is too abundant for such a thing to take place.

But the act of breathing, and using this readily available resource is not welfare. Breathing does not make me dependent on any other human being. It certainly makes me dependent on the welfare of the planet, but such a relation is a symbiotic one, and is a dependency all organisms on this biosphere share. My dependence on oxygen does not make me apathetic, nor rob me of my drive to better myself.

Welfare, or the reliance on other humans does, and for that reason should be avoided.

But the problem with welfare is two-fold. It is not just the dependence that welfare breeds that is the only concern for any rational person. On the other side, those doing the giving, are given power. There is power over keeping people dependent on you. You have taken an equal, and turned them into a subject.

Such a thing should be avoided at all costs.

reply to post by FriendlyPsicopath


That's just flat out not correct. Machines will be much smarter than humans with better reasoning abilities in the very near future. Not hundreds of years....maybe a decade or two.

As soon as machines start to become intelligent the rate of progress in the world will fold in on itself at such a quick rate with the ability to think intelligently and process billions or trillions of calculations per second on top of not sleeping things will get crazy very quickly. They'll be able to do the entire lifelong work of a scientist in their head in a matter of seconds.

I believe this is what people like Ray Kurzweil refer to as "The Singularity". He tends to think that it will create a new Utopia. I think that remains to be seen. It could really go either way.

Originally posted by sylent6
reply to post by Tecumte

 

I agree, lets help them make a change ..oh wait I think some already done and these people be saying "oh that's too hard for me to do" Some people don't want to help themselves but your hard earn tax dollars does.

People need to shut off that damn tv and hit those fields and learn to work or I will sign an executive order making people work in work camps for a $1.50 a day, for 5 days a week, for 13hrs day and theeeeen you can have your welfare and if you refuse well....be homeless (sarcasm)

Leaving your disdain for fellow human beings aside, what do you think having large slave factories in your home country would do for the economy? The united states has already lost nearly all its manufacturing to slave factories in china. You build the $1.50 slave pits in the states and it will kill what little industry is left. Then when you don't have a job, you can join the people you formerly mocked.

We already have a corporate welfare society. For every dollar that goes into helping some destitute homeless vet on the street or some single jobless mom, think of how many dollars make their way into parasitic financial and corporate accounts, people that really serve little pupose other than to gorge themselves on the tax dollar trough.

The question really is what kind of 'welfare society' would be preferable, assuming one is always going to exist in one form or another, leeches that suck off the system to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars really are the major 'welfare' problem I see, how to bring some of this money home.

Originally posted by TheXoor
OK, I can see you getting ready to throw bottles at my head through the chickenwire like the patrons at that country and western bar in the Blues Brothers. Here me out before the frothing commences...this is a pretty speculative idea but we are here to speculate, no?

What if more and more welfare for more and more people really is the wave of the future...and what if this is a good thing?

First of all, let's look at automation. Factories are increasingly run by robots. We don't even need cashiers in Wal-mart anymore...they can do auto-checkout. Information flows like a firehose gusher from the Internet. All this is only going to increase in the years ahead.

Meanwhile we have outsourcing and offshoring...what can't be made by robots can be made in China or elsewhere for literally pennies a day.

The result of these acclerating trends is an abundance of stuff, made dirt cheap...warehouse shelves groan under the weight of unsold inventory, parking lots are packed with shiny new cars. Millions of foreclosed but quite-livable homes stand empty. There is so much stuff but nobody to buy it since jobs are disappearing. But here is where welfare comes in: Why not simply pump up the volume and make it so that all the out-of-work strugglers have the money necessary to buy all this nifty stuff that's just hanging around?

It seems evntually technology will remove the need for almost all human work. Instead of that being a cause for fear (of losing jobs) like it is now, why not look at it as the ultimate liberation --- The end of work! Welfare for all! Free stuff! A paradise!

I'm sure there are plenty of kinks to be ironed out in this vision, and getting from here to there will take some doing. But if you are open-minded enough to entertain the possibility...doesn't it make a certain amount of sense?

This is the Communist Utopia. The pinnacle of human society. Where people work because they love it not because they need to work to survive. This is the society of Star Trek, something to strive for.

reply to post by TheXoor


It's not going to work. When I was young, I had these fantastic visions of a future where the machines did all the work and we humans got to bask in the rewards. There is a problem with that. The machines still cost money to build and the people footing the bill for that are not going to share in the booty. And they shouldn't. It's scary and sad when a robot can replace a human worker but it is happening everyday. When you are on the receiving end of the benefits, no one says a word...when you are on the losing end...people shriek at how unfair it is.

The problem with the Utopia you describe is that it will inevitably move toward enslavement....of one form or another. Sure, it is nice to think we are all "star trek" and greed has been defeated and we all get to be artists and musicians and the computers will take care of the work...it just isn't going to happen.

I suppose to be fair...it COULD happen but humanity is a greedy and selfish species. We are not going to work our butts off to make a machine and not reap the rewards personally...sorry...

It is nice to ponder and it might actually have merit to explore exactly why we are the way we are. I have been doing that exploration for years...it's called philosophy. We are a strange animal and sometime the reasons we do things are the strangest and most bizarre things you can imagine.