4 ms·

> ...in some sense that's the point of weakening the social safety net. It sounds like you're saying people want to hurt poor people. Did you mean that or do y

> ...in some sense that's the point of weakening the social safety net. It sounds like you're saying people want to hurt poor people. Did you mean that or do you care to elaborate?

emodendroket 9y ago
Well, sure, my claim here is that without the threat of being unemployed and destitute it's hard to maintain labor discipline. "Political Aspects of Full Employment" is probably the classic essay outlining the case for this claim.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>It sounds like you're saying people want to hurt poor people. Well, let me quote some recent news: >Speaking to National Review editor Rich Lowry at an event hosted by the conservative magazine, House Speaker Paul Ryan made the case for the American Health Care Act by presenting it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cut Medicaid spending. >“We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan says, before interrupting himself to clarify exactly how big of an opportunity this is, “since you and I were drinking out of kegs.” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/17/14960358/paul-ryan-medicaid-keg https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/17/14960358/p... Yes, the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives wants to hurt poor people. He's been dreaming of it since he was doing keg-stands in college. He said so.
- mac01021 9y ago
  > the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives wants to hurt poor people. No. He wants the government to spend less of his money. Maybe he doesn't care whether that means poor people get hurt, but it's not the same thing.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    If his concern were really nothing but spending then he'd be an enthusiastic military budget hawk too. He isn't.
    - mac01021 9y ago
      Ok. So he wants to cut spending and also keep his party's donors happy. That second constraint prevents many kinds of cuts, but not all of them. My point was that he's not malicious, merely apathetic. Hurting people by cutting their benefits is not the goal. Cutting spending by cutting their benefits is the goal.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        And I'm supposed to believe that his donors have no interest in an employer-friendly labor market? Questions about how to spend money are rarely neutral, value-free ones. To put it another way, George W. Bush wildly expanded spending with his Medicare Part D program, but that was supported by the Republicans because it achieved other goals (the main one was ensuring no cost control was built into the measure, since it was suspected that if Democrats passed a similar measure it would allow negotiation to drive down costs). Is this the move of a group whose primary concern is fiscal discipline? https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/medicare-part-d-republican-budget-busting/ https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/medicare-part-...
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    He only ever wants to cut the social state. Nothing else. His agenda is clearly that the real moral "good guys" of the United States are big business, and everyone else should basically subsidize them, being mere hangers-on.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    If Ryan wanted to say we've been dreaming of [cutting spending] since you and I were drinking out of kegs he could have said that. But he didn't. He was talking about cutting Medicaid. He wasn't talking about canceling the F35. Indeed FY18 procures 46 more F35s. http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2018/fy2018_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...
- refurb 9y ago
  Umm... and Obama wanted to change the way the federal gov't shared in paying for Medicaid to get savings of $100B.[1] Considering how fast healthcare costs have risen, isn't cutting spending a good thing? [1]https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/medicaid-cuts-could-come-from-democrats/ https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/medicaid-cuts-could-come...
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Cutting spending without addressing costs just shifts the burden to people less able to pay for it. And I, for one, am not convinced anything is good just because Obama advocated for it.
bluGill 9y ago
It isn't that anybody wants to hurt the poor. It is that people want the poor to take care of themselves. I know I get jealous when I think of a certain girl I know who dropped out of high school and had a few kids and collected welfare to pay for it. I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. Note that I intentionally picked he worst, least sympathetic example of a poor person: someone who could have made something of her life by choose not to. I also know a poor person who is sympathetic: born with Downs Syndrome he will never be more than assistant usher in the local theater (the head usher - some kid who started two weeks ago - needs to handle the hard situations). As such he can never actually make a good living and most people are willing to spare some change to support him.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. This approaches self-parody, especially when you consider the type of lifestyle anybody can live solely on government assistance in this country.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    I know the lifestyle I was living while she was having kids: working at McDonald's to pay all my bills including tuition at a nice college. If she had been willing to apply herself she would have got some nice scholarships - just for making the stupid decision to have children she couldn't support) Yes the lifestyle she lived was not great. I'm not arguing it was. I've lived that lifestyle myself (though I had to make my own money, after basics there was nothing left over)
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  > It is that people want the poor to take care of themselves. > I know I get jealous when I think of a certain girl I know who dropped out of high school and had a few kids and collected welfare to pay for it. I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. And what percentage of the poor make these "bad decisions", and what percentage don't? If you're truly jealous, try living on welfare.

> ...in some sense that's the point of weakening the social safety net. It sounds like you're saying people want to hurt poor people. Did you mean that or do you care to elaborate?

emodendroket 9y ago

Well, sure, my claim here is that without the threat of being unemployed and destitute it's hard to maintain labor discipline. "Political Aspects of Full Employment" is probably the classic essay outlining the case for this claim.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>It sounds like you're saying people want to hurt poor people. Well, let me quote some recent news: >Speaking to National Review editor Rich Lowry at an event hosted by the conservative magazine, House Speaker Paul Ryan made the case for the American Health Care Act by presenting it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cut Medicaid spending. >“We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan says, before interrupting himself to clarify exactly how big of an opportunity this is, “since you and I were drinking out of kegs.” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/17/14960358/paul-ryan-medicaid-keg https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/17/14960358/p... Yes, the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives wants to hurt poor people. He's been dreaming of it since he was doing keg-stands in college. He said so.

mac01021 9y ago
> the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives wants to hurt poor people. No. He wants the government to spend less of his money. Maybe he doesn't care whether that means poor people get hurt, but it's not the same thing.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  If his concern were really nothing but spending then he'd be an enthusiastic military budget hawk too. He isn't.
  - mac01021 9y ago
    Ok. So he wants to cut spending and also keep his party's donors happy. That second constraint prevents many kinds of cuts, but not all of them. My point was that he's not malicious, merely apathetic. Hurting people by cutting their benefits is not the goal. Cutting spending by cutting their benefits is the goal.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      And I'm supposed to believe that his donors have no interest in an employer-friendly labor market? Questions about how to spend money are rarely neutral, value-free ones. To put it another way, George W. Bush wildly expanded spending with his Medicare Part D program, but that was supported by the Republicans because it achieved other goals (the main one was ensuring no cost control was built into the measure, since it was suspected that if Democrats passed a similar measure it would allow negotiation to drive down costs). Is this the move of a group whose primary concern is fiscal discipline? https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/medicare-part-d-republican-budget-busting/ https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/medicare-part-...
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  He only ever wants to cut the social state. Nothing else. His agenda is clearly that the real moral "good guys" of the United States are big business, and everyone else should basically subsidize them, being mere hangers-on.
- CalChris 9y ago
  If Ryan wanted to say we've been dreaming of [cutting spending] since you and I were drinking out of kegs he could have said that. But he didn't. He was talking about cutting Medicaid. He wasn't talking about canceling the F35. Indeed FY18 procures 46 more F35s. http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2018/fy2018_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...
refurb 9y ago
Umm... and Obama wanted to change the way the federal gov't shared in paying for Medicaid to get savings of $100B.[1] Considering how fast healthcare costs have risen, isn't cutting spending a good thing? [1]https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/medicaid-cuts-could-come-from-democrats/ https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/medicaid-cuts-could-come...
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Cutting spending without addressing costs just shifts the burden to people less able to pay for it. And I, for one, am not convinced anything is good just because Obama advocated for it.

bluGill 9y ago

It isn't that anybody wants to hurt the poor. It is that people want the poor to take care of themselves. I know I get jealous when I think of a certain girl I know who dropped out of high school and had a few kids and collected welfare to pay for it. I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. Note that I intentionally picked he worst, least sympathetic example of a poor person: someone who could have made something of her life by choose not to. I also know a poor person who is sympathetic: born with Downs Syndrome he will never be more than assistant usher in the local theater (the head usher - some kid who started two weeks ago - needs to handle the hard situations). As such he can never actually make a good living and most people are willing to spare some change to support him.

emodendroket 9y ago
> I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. This approaches self-parody, especially when you consider the type of lifestyle anybody can live solely on government assistance in this country.
- bluGill 9y ago
  I know the lifestyle I was living while she was having kids: working at McDonald's to pay all my bills including tuition at a nice college. If she had been willing to apply herself she would have got some nice scholarships - just for making the stupid decision to have children she couldn't support) Yes the lifestyle she lived was not great. I'm not arguing it was. I've lived that lifestyle myself (though I had to make my own money, after basics there was nothing left over)
0xfeba 9y ago
> It is that people want the poor to take care of themselves. > I know I get jealous when I think of a certain girl I know who dropped out of high school and had a few kids and collected welfare to pay for it. I worked hard to pay for my college education, now I'm in part paying for her bad decisions, my share of her support could be spent on a widget I want instead. And what percentage of the poor make these "bad decisions", and what percentage don't? If you're truly jealous, try living on welfare.