Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

If Liberals are so empathetic...

Page 15 of 22 [ 342 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 ... 22  Next

Previous topic | Next topic

ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 89
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

25 May 2012, 5:06 am

Raptor wrote:

Umm, if shelter and food were free then there wouldn't be much of a food and shelter issue but it's NOT free so the cost and where it's coming from have to be considered.
I've been on a few buses but I've never seen a black person at the back unless they wanted to be. I doubt any of them have experienced this persecution you're consumed with unless they are old and most all of them are OVER it already since it is OVER and has been OVER since for ages.
:wall:


To the first point: TANSTAAFL There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!

To the second point: Back of the bus has been over and gone for about 50 years. That along with separate bathrooms and water fountains. Separate facilities and segregated accommodations are so inefficient, expensive and silly that I can hardly believe that nonsense went on in my lifetime. But it did.

Segregation belongs in the same age and time as belief in demons.

ruveyn



TM
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,122

25 May 2012, 3:49 pm

edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?



Kraichgauer
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,751
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.

25 May 2012, 4:10 pm

TM wrote:
edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?


If you don't want people taking advantage of social programs, the government should actually help them get off the program, not by limiting the period of time the person benefits from said programs, but by providing them with employment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



TM
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,122

25 May 2012, 4:21 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
TM wrote:
edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?


If you don't want people taking advantage of social programs, the government should actually help them get off the program, not by limiting the period of time the person benefits from said programs, but by providing them with employment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Which doesn't solve the problem it only mitigates it. The value of an employee is a direct consequence of the value that employee creates in a given set of circumstances. There are limits to how many NPV positive public jobs that can be created at a given time. In an ideal world, there would always be enough government work to keep unemployment at a desirable level. However, in practice this tends to create an over-bureaucracy that creates work in order to keep people busy. Meaning that their work effort does not result in a positive NPV.

You can easily observe this phenomenon inside government in most of the Western world.



Kraichgauer
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,751
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.

25 May 2012, 4:31 pm

TM wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
TM wrote:
edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?


If you don't want people taking advantage of social programs, the government should actually help them get off the program, not by limiting the period of time the person benefits from said programs, but by providing them with employment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Which doesn't solve the problem it only mitigates it. The value of an employee is a direct consequence of the value that employee creates in a given set of circumstances. There are limits to how many NPV positive public jobs that can be created at a given time. In an ideal world, there would always be enough government work to keep unemployment at a desirable level. However, in practice this tends to create an over-bureaucracy that creates work in order to keep people busy. Meaning that their work effort does not result in a positive NPV.

You can easily observe this phenomenon inside government in most of the Western world.


I didn't mean government jobs, but those in the private sector. The government could give businesses tax breaks for hiring on the unemployed for positions that they either qualify for, or are created for them.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

25 May 2012, 8:15 pm

TM wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
TM wrote:
edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?


If you don't want people taking advantage of social programs, the government should actually help them get off the program, not by limiting the period of time the person benefits from said programs, but by providing them with employment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Which doesn't solve the problem it only mitigates it. The value of an employee is a direct consequence of the value that employee creates in a given set of circumstances. There are limits to how many NPV positive public jobs that can be created at a given time. In an ideal world, there would always be enough government work to keep unemployment at a desirable level. However, in practice this tends to create an over-bureaucracy that creates work in order to keep people busy. Meaning that their work effort does not result in a positive NPV.

You can easily observe this phenomenon inside government in most of the Western world.


What you're missing is that the entire veneer of civilization will be lost if unemployment grows to the point where vast segments of the population simply cannot provide for themselves. Since the age of industrialization we have turned a permanent corner in that people can no longer go back to farming their own plot and living off the land. Make enough people scared, angry, and desperate, and you're just stirring the caldron for the next totalitarian nightmare. I'd say that keeping people busy and ensuring that people's basic needs are met is in the interest of everyone, even if they're being paid to stand around juggling fish or watching paint dry. At some point it's not about "economic productivity" so much as keeping society stable, and this precludes your qualms about re-distributing basic necessities to "unproductive free-loaders".



Raptor
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,997
Location: Southeast U.S.A.

26 May 2012, 8:34 am

edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.

Quote:
On the civil rights issue my angel says to "man up and stop whining".
But then again my angel looks at things pragmatically.........


Pragmatic he isn't - this is entirely about emotional needs, ego gratification, and other functions typically served by scapegoats, it's not borne out by rational analysis. Societies with functional civil rights are measurably better by almost any standard, whether it be economic, quality of life, or whatever. When they degrade - so does everything else.


Quote:
The public, one way or the other.

I guess by that you mean the government stealing from the public in the form of taxation to fund activities outside the role of government.

Quote:
Pragmatic he isn't - this is entirely about emotional needs, ego gratification, and other functions typically served by scapegoats, it's not borne out by rational analysis. Societies with functional civil rights are measurably better by almost any standard, whether it be economic, quality of life, or whatever. When they degrade - so does everything else.


After pragmatic he isn't (which I disagree with) I'm not sure where you're going with this but I assume it involves more of the government stealing from the haves to give to the have-nots even if many of those haves barely have enough themselves and the have-nots have no desire to pull themselves up.
:roll:



Raptor
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,997
Location: Southeast U.S.A.

26 May 2012, 8:42 am

marshall wrote:
TM wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
TM wrote:
edgewaters wrote:
Raptor wrote:
On the issues of starving and shelter my angel would like to know who's going to pay for it.


The public, one way or the other. It's just a question of how much. Far, far more to not provide the basics and be paying through the nose for the extravagant costs associated with homelessness (it's about 5x the cost, once you factor in business losses, emergency services like police and ambulance, legal costs, detention capacity, and so on and so forth).

Even outright extermination by the most efficient means possible costs tremendous resources, as the Germans learned.


Any cost put on the public, needs to be considered prior to the idea being put into practice. For instance, in a situation where people get room and board paid by the state if they cannot pay for it themselves, would that not encourage people to take advantage of it while realizing income from undocumented sources?

I'd love to see the cost estimates that you're dealing with here, furthermore the "line of causality" between the costs you have to use to adjust the cost estimate to determine that its less expensive. It's always dangerous when pro-government intervention groups "adjust" the real documented costs with estimates, because their estimates tend to be off by significant amounts.

For instance, how would buying up/arranging housing for former homeless people, out of whom quite a few have mental health problems, drug problems or both, influence property values, businesses in the relocation area and such?


If you don't want people taking advantage of social programs, the government should actually help them get off the program, not by limiting the period of time the person benefits from said programs, but by providing them with employment.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Which doesn't solve the problem it only mitigates it. The value of an employee is a direct consequence of the value that employee creates in a given set of circumstances. There are limits to how many NPV positive public jobs that can be created at a given time. In an ideal world, there would always be enough government work to keep unemployment at a desirable level. However, in practice this tends to create an over-bureaucracy that creates work in order to keep people busy. Meaning that their work effort does not result in a positive NPV.

You can easily observe this phenomenon inside government in most of the Western world.


What you're missing is that the entire veneer of civilization will be lost if unemployment grows to the point where vast segments of the population simply cannot provide for themselves. Since the age of industrialization we have turned a permanent corner in that people can no longer go back to farming their own plot and living off the land. Make enough people scared, angry, and desperate, and you're just stirring the caldron for the next totalitarian nightmare. I'd say that keeping people busy and ensuring that people's basic needs are met is in the interest of everyone, even if they're being paid to stand around juggling fish or watching paint dry. At some point it's not about "economic productivity" so much as keeping society stable, and this precludes your qualms about re-distributing basic necessities to "unproductive free-loaders".


Far better to have an environment that enables free enterprise to flourish and create productive jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fall on its ass when Peter runs out of money.....



Oodain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,

26 May 2012, 9:22 am

Raptor wrote:

Far better to have an environment that enables free enterprise to flourish and create productive jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fall on its ass when Peter runs out of money.....


there are still quite a few countries with a better social mobility and economic freedom than the us who can provide not only a basic safety net but free healthcare and education.

oddly enough many of those countries werent hit that hard by the recession as they already had the required mitigative tools in place.


_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//

the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.


Raptor
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,997
Location: Southeast U.S.A.

26 May 2012, 9:33 am

Oodain wrote:
Raptor wrote:

Far better to have an environment that enables free enterprise to flourish and create productive jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fall on its ass when Peter runs out of money.....


there are still quite a few countries with a better social mobility and economic freedom than the us who can provide not only a basic safety net but free healthcare and education.

oddly enough many of those countries werent hit that hard by the recession as they already had the required mitigative tools in place.


Free healthcare and education?
So you're saying that the facilities, supplies, services, and personnel that it takes to provide these services costs nobody anything?
Apparently hey do not have taxes in these countries.
Hmmmm..............



Oodain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,

26 May 2012, 10:46 am

Raptor wrote:
Oodain wrote:
Raptor wrote:

Far better to have an environment that enables free enterprise to flourish and create productive jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fall on its ass when Peter runs out of money.....


there are still quite a few countries with a better social mobility and economic freedom than the us who can provide not only a basic safety net but free healthcare and education.

oddly enough many of those countries werent hit that hard by the recession as they already had the required mitigative tools in place.


Free healthcare and education?
So you're saying that the facilities, supplies, services, and personnel that it takes to provide these services costs nobody anything?
Apparently hey do not have taxes in these countries.
Hmmmm..............


public then bad wording on my part i admit.

and it seems you arent actually interested in a debate or in what works elsewhere or your condescending tone would have been quite unneccesary.


_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//

the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.


ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 89
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

26 May 2012, 10:54 am

Raptor wrote:

Free healthcare and education?
So you're saying that the facilities, supplies, services, and personnel that it takes to provide these services costs nobody anything?
Apparently hey do not have taxes in these countries.
Hmmmm..............


As Robert A. Heinlein once write (or said). There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

ruveyn



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

26 May 2012, 11:43 am

Oodain wrote:
Raptor wrote:
Oodain wrote:
Raptor wrote:

Far better to have an environment that enables free enterprise to flourish and create productive jobs. Robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fall on its ass when Peter runs out of money.....


there are still quite a few countries with a better social mobility and economic freedom than the us who can provide not only a basic safety net but free healthcare and education.

oddly enough many of those countries werent hit that hard by the recession as they already had the required mitigative tools in place.


Free healthcare and education?
So you're saying that the facilities, supplies, services, and personnel that it takes to provide these services costs nobody anything?
Apparently hey do not have taxes in these countries.
Hmmmm..............


public then bad wording on my part i admit.

and it seems you arent actually interested in a debate or in what works elsewhere or your condescending tone would have been quite unneccesary.


The right is not primarily interested in what works. They're interested in making moral proclamations (i.e. taxation is theft) and this comes before anything else. If I hear one more time how "the left" is all about "subjective morality" and the right is somehow "pragmatic" I'm going to slap someone silly.



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 89
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

26 May 2012, 12:07 pm

marshall wrote:

The right is not primarily interested in what works. They're interested in making moral proclamations (i.e. taxation is theft) and this comes before anything else. If I hear one more time how "the left" is all about "subjective morality" and the right is somehow "pragmatic" I'm going to slap someone silly.


The current Republican stupidity is one of the least pragmatic things I have seen in a while. The anti-tax mentality is just another form of ignoring the true costs of things. One way or the other the public will have to pay for the goodies it receives. Nothing is truly for free. We can do it by modes of taxation that discourage investments (soak the rich, for example) or we can burden the middle class and pretend that the middle class will survives as a middle class or we can work on other ways of paying for what we get.

ruveyn



edgewaters
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,427
Location: Ontario

26 May 2012, 6:06 pm

I have to agree that it's a current problem, not a historical one. The right has certainly been more pragmatic at times in the past - Eisenhower comes to mind as a good example.



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 89
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

26 May 2012, 8:21 pm

edgewaters wrote:
I have to agree that it's a current problem, not a historical one. The right has certainly been more pragmatic at times in the past - Eisenhower comes to mind as a good example.


And Goldwater. If he had been elected the problem that homosexuals have in the military would have been resolved PDQ. Goldwater believed the only thing that matters in the military is how well the men fight.

ruveyn