there is no need to abolish Lone Star cards and a citizen's freedom to choose which meager meal they eat. a little co-ordination between the government and grocery store chains (assuming mom & pop's don't accept the card) could prohibit the purchase of luxury goods.
while the suggested restrictions are logical, they are extremely impractical to enforce. drug tests are easily beaten and very expensive. the cost of continually performing them would far outweigh whatever "savings" they gov't could wring out of it. Also, extremely invasive surgery twice person (for insertion upon entrance and removal upon exit): EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE!!!!!! and smacks of the eugenics sterilization surgeries.
from there it gets hazy. i actually do not know enough about the current situation to fully understand the argument here. plasma tv's, xboxes, suped-up cars, luxury apartments - does this shit actually happen? how pervasive is it? why does it happen? i do understand the military barracks, but i'm confused how exactly hiring personnel so that inspections can happen helps anything. i'm also not sure how exactly the pay stub plays in. i do understand finding a place for someone to work even if it is not a glamorous job. this sounds to me more like the CCC than communism (though it's arguable that even they're the same). the disenfranchisement bit is undoubted commie and aristocratic. the "self-esteem" bit throws me for a loop. i have no idea what he's talking about here.
as to the "mistakes" claim: poverty is hereditary. period. yes, there are some exceptional examples. but these are outliers, they are beyond 4 or 5 standard deviations from average, "results not typical". i know people who have spent their entire lives struggling to break the poverty line. one guy sells drugs to supplement his day job just to make ends meet. how exactly has working since 14 and paying bills since 15 put him in this situation? the "mistakes" argument makes it sound like people are living in squalor because they bet on the wrong company's stock.
i am not disagreeing with you on anything you said!!!
well, okay, one part: apparently there are ways to make people temporarily sterile that don't involve invasive surgery or thousands of dollars. idk. i brought up this point to a few other folks and they told me that there are relatively simple ways to temporarily sterilize people, at much less cost than having a child. bear in mind that the day-of-birth hospital visit costs $10k for a simple, no-complications birth; both jim and jenny cost $30k-$40k on the big day, and that's not counting all the various check-ups and pre-natal/ante-natal what-not. kids ain't cheap, and from the government's perspective, that's yet one more mouth to feed on their dime.
not that i'm advocating enforced sterility. i personally think a lot of this is over the top, hugely biased vitriol against perceived "laziness", but i can sense the frustration behind the argument, and there truly is a lot of abuse against the system going on. remember my perspective - i have one parent getting government disability checks fat enough to retire on, and another parent worked to the bone but barely making ends meet. i fully recognise how difficult it is to be poor and have no escape, and as you said, it's not a "mistake" to be born into the cycle of poverty. i never meant to imply that.
BUT, there are some people who make foolish decisions, perhaps because they have no better role model, and then end up relying on the government to support them in the aftermath. i'm talking about the stereotype of the teenage pregnant high school drop-out here, but it does happen, unfortunately. it's those people that the email from above was raving against.
side note: luxury apartments. that shit happens. i learned about this both from my realtor mom-in-law and from various situations that cropped up while i was working for the city of pearland.
every city has a certain percentage goal of what's called "affordable housing" - zB, the city says it wants 12% of its housing stock to be "affordable" for poverty-line citizens. what that means in practice is that various apartment complexes are paid a government check every month, which stands in lieu of rent that would be paid by the tenants who qualify for government aid. so people with zero income, or income well below the poverty line, are living in the apartment next door to you with their rent paid by the government. since apartment rent ranges from $675 to well above $1200 per month, that's a pretty penny being doled out by the government each month.
it doesn't happen in every apartment complex, just certain ones; there's a designation that the complex has, something like "category 44" or whatever, i don't remember exactly, which they get when they start accepting government-aid tenants.
there is no need to abolish Lone Star cards and a citizen's freedom to choose which meager meal they eat. a little co-ordination between the government and grocery store chains (assuming mom & pop's don't accept the card) could prohibit the purchase of luxury goods.
while the suggested restrictions are logical, they are extremely impractical to enforce. drug tests are easily beaten and very expensive. the cost of continually performing them would far outweigh whatever "savings" they gov't could wring out of it. Also, extremely invasive surgery twice person (for insertion upon entrance and removal upon exit): EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE!!!!!! and smacks of the eugenics sterilization surgeries.
from there it gets hazy. i actually do not know enough about the current situation to fully understand the argument here.
plasma tv's, xboxes, suped-up cars, luxury apartments - does this shit actually happen? how pervasive is it? why does it happen?
i do understand the military barracks, but i'm confused how exactly hiring personnel so that inspections can happen helps anything.
i'm also not sure how exactly the pay stub plays in.
i do understand finding a place for someone to work even if it is not a glamorous job. this sounds to me more like the CCC than communism (though it's arguable that even they're the same). the disenfranchisement bit is undoubted commie and aristocratic.
the "self-esteem" bit throws me for a loop. i have no idea what he's talking about here.
as to the "mistakes" claim: poverty is hereditary. period. yes, there are some exceptional examples. but these are outliers, they are beyond 4 or 5 standard deviations from average, "results not typical". i know people who have spent their entire lives struggling to break the poverty line. one guy sells drugs to supplement his day job just to make ends meet. how exactly has working since 14 and paying bills since 15 put him in this situation? the "mistakes" argument makes it sound like people are living in squalor because they bet on the wrong company's stock.
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well, okay, one part: apparently there are ways to make people temporarily sterile that don't involve invasive surgery or thousands of dollars. idk. i brought up this point to a few other folks and they told me that there are relatively simple ways to temporarily sterilize people, at much less cost than having a child. bear in mind that the day-of-birth hospital visit costs $10k for a simple, no-complications birth; both jim and jenny cost $30k-$40k on the big day, and that's not counting all the various check-ups and pre-natal/ante-natal what-not. kids ain't cheap, and from the government's perspective, that's yet one more mouth to feed on their dime.
not that i'm advocating enforced sterility. i personally think a lot of this is over the top, hugely biased vitriol against perceived "laziness", but i can sense the frustration behind the argument, and there truly is a lot of abuse against the system going on. remember my perspective - i have one parent getting government disability checks fat enough to retire on, and another parent worked to the bone but barely making ends meet. i fully recognise how difficult it is to be poor and have no escape, and as you said, it's not a "mistake" to be born into the cycle of poverty. i never meant to imply that.
BUT, there are some people who make foolish decisions, perhaps because they have no better role model, and then end up relying on the government to support them in the aftermath. i'm talking about the stereotype of the teenage pregnant high school drop-out here, but it does happen, unfortunately. it's those people that the email from above was raving against.
Reply
every city has a certain percentage goal of what's called "affordable housing" - zB, the city says it wants 12% of its housing stock to be "affordable" for poverty-line citizens. what that means in practice is that various apartment complexes are paid a government check every month, which stands in lieu of rent that would be paid by the tenants who qualify for government aid. so people with zero income, or income well below the poverty line, are living in the apartment next door to you with their rent paid by the government. since apartment rent ranges from $675 to well above $1200 per month, that's a pretty penny being doled out by the government each month.
it doesn't happen in every apartment complex, just certain ones; there's a designation that the complex has, something like "category 44" or whatever, i don't remember exactly, which they get when they start accepting government-aid tenants.
Reply
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