HappySqurriel said:
theprof00 said:
mrstickball said:
Mr Khan said:
TheRealMafoo said:
Kasz216 said:
The implicatons seem clear... and really only make sense so long as you accept the position that "nobody wants people to die out in the street."
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The problem with that statement, is government taking over the job of taking care of people, is going to kill more people in the end then if they just let us do it.
When government was not feeding and housing people, people in this country were not dying in the streets. They were being well fed, well houses, and in much safer environments. A larger portion of this group of people also contributed in some fashion.
It was a much better system. I hate it when people think because I don't want government doing something, that it means I don't want it done (I know that's not you Kasz).
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I'd like some statistics on that, definitely.
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Sadly, I am trying to find starvation statistics in the US.
The ironic thing is....We don't have any sort of tangible statistics in the US for such things. The truth is, even during the great depression, few died from hunger. So you gotta wonder what all these food cards do today, when things are infinitely better on average, yet we still pay out billions in such things.
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Just a quick question:
When I was young, my family was pretty poor for boston standards. We were probably slightly above the poverty line. So, of course, we could never afford things like Nike's or a car or a nice tv etc etc. However, people who were on foodstamps and welfare that I knew always had the new air jordans (250$), multiple big screen tvs, civics or other such 16k$ cars, went to the movies, bought new clothes all the time, and had new computers compared to my DOS based tandy.
If increasing the profits of a company increases the wealth and income of its board and brand, then how is welfare worse than just barely living above the poverty line?
From what cursory research I've done, about 1.2 trillion gets pumped into welfare systems every year, and for food based benefits, for every dollar the state gives, 1.50$ gets put into the state economy.
So I'm curious to know why welfare is such a bad thing, when it seems like the 1.2 trillion that gets sent out goes directly into big business and banking, whereas the family budget we had barely went anywhere. All we bought were groceries, medical, insurance, and clothes from salvation army.
We also didn't pay for rent since my family just did repairs and maintenance on the apartment building
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The money people who are paid welfare put into the economy would have been put into the economy anyways.
If your economy has 100% of its workforce doing productive work everyone will be better off than an economy where 75% of people do productive work and 25% of people are paid to do no work at all. In this case the 25% of people are given money to buy goods or services from the other 75% of the people, but they do not produce any goods or services of their own; and as a result the total quantity of goods and services produced is lower (and more sparsely distributed throughout the population).
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I'm confused. Take now for a setting. Businesses aren't hiring because they aren't making enough revenue to cover the overhead. Welfare seems like it gives money to the consumers, and the consumers put money into the products that are popular, which in turn increases revenues and profits leading hiring more workers to open more stores and continue increasing revenue as is the capitalist formula.
If the govment got rid of welfare or even worse, things like unemployment, They would be effectively taking 1.2 trillion dollars away from businesses. According to 2002 census, there are 23.3 million businesses in the US http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html
But I've also heard that it's closer to 31 million now. So, we are looking at a loss per business of 38,000k on average. Many big box stores, retailers, and others, can afford to pay at least one person to work for each 38,000 in revenue. (Assuming 14,000$ worth of associated costs), which would equal 31 million jobs.
(as a fun fact, the tax collected on those purchases is 60B$ at a 5% sales tax that goes right into the state economies)
What I'm curious about, is what do you think the government should do instead? It seems pretty obvious that the government is "subsidizing" business through welfare.
I agree that more people should be working and producing more product, but conversely, if there is too much product, doesn't that also lower profit margin?
Also, what do you mean it would be put back into the economy anyway? It's taken out of taxes, right? What should they do? Lower taxes? And if so, who should they lower taxes for?
