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Kind of a circle jerk of poor summaries of the conservative positions on welfare. Generally the conservative argument is that welfare money should be earned in

Kind of a circle jerk of poor summaries of the conservative positions on welfare. Generally the conservative argument is that welfare money should be earned in some way, essentially by doing socially constructive things (ie staying off drugs, applying for jobs, not committing crime). The goal is to direct resources to people who can be helped and are actually putting in effort to take care of themselves, on the assumption that those people can take some assistance and really benefit from it, whereas the addict who is sleeping on the street will just use tax money to buy more drugs. A common liberal argument (not the only one but a common one), is that it’s more important to help “those in need,” no strings attached, that you can’t expect them to get out of the gutter until their basic needs are met and even if giving them money just enables their habit you have to “do something” and giving them clean needles and cash is better than “doing nothing.” One of the problems that manifests all over the world in varying degrees is the tension between doing “something” which can easily harm more than it helps (the conservatives tend to point to this), and doing ENOUGH to actually help someone (or robust social services to rehabilitate people). In the US it used to be common for people to be institutionalized, they’d have all their needs met and in most cases get some semblance of help, albeit at a cost to their freedom. Well, nobody really liked that system since it was very expensive and was prone to human rights problems (if someone is too mentally ill to consent and you try and experimental treatment on them, are you helping or using them as a lab rat?). So now those people are on the street. At the end of the day it’s a very difficult set of economic and moral problems to solve, and demonizing the political party you dislike and labeling them as heartless villains accomplishes exactly nothing. What arguably would help is sane housing and public health policies so people could afford a roof over their heads and get medical treatment when needed without having to have an upper class job to pay for it.

jernfrost 8y ago
I can respect that we have different views on how to reach the same goal, however I take issue with the conservative propensity to judge people. All too frequently conservatives rate people with some sort of failing as lesser people. There is a propensity to believe more in punishment and threats than positive re-enforcements. I believe in effective solutions. Often it seems conservatives will refuse to use an effective and proven solution if they deem it had somebody getting something for nothing. It seems as if conservatives will stay wide awake at night angry about somebody getting something they didn’t deserve. As a liberal I don’t care as much about what people deserve as I care about what works as well as human dignity.
- denverkarma 8y ago
  There may be some of that but I think you’re misunderstanding the predominant conservative view, which has two crucial parts: 1. Most conservatives believe that the government forcibly taking your money via taxes and using it for purposes you do not approve of is undemocratic and immoral. This is the root of the small government argument - that the government should only do the things that are broadly supported by the population and since the population is fragmented the set of things that enjoy near universal support are very small. 2. Most conservatives believe very deeply that human dignity is found in freedom, independence, and meaningful work. Some might say “meaningful life” instead but for many conservatives they believe very literally that doing something that matters is the reason for living and if you aren’t doing anything that matters then you will be miserable and have no dignity. It isn’t even about making money - though that can help make the work meaningful. For many they would say that what matters is being able to contribute to your community and take care of your friends and family, and if you do a job that sucks but it’s what you’ve got and it gives you the money to contribute and take care of the people who rely on you, then THAT is what is meaningful. So, suppose the proposal is “shall we give this homeless drug addict a home and food and money so their needs are met and put them in additction counseling and treatment and then hope they recover from their addiction, etc.” Perhaps the liberal argument is “yes that should work for getting most people on their feet, and if it enables some people to just live more comfortably in a drugged stupor then that’s okay because overall everyone will be better off.” The conservative argument would generally be, (1) it’s immoral to take money from people who work hard and take care of themselves to give it to someone who doesn’t work so they can live comfortably on drugs, and (2) by just giving them everything you are actually taking away the satisfaction and dignity that comes from taking care of yourself and knowing that you are independent and free. Note also that the conservatives tend to worry a lot about the moral hazard: they fear that any kind of “bailout” whether it’s for homeless people or for Wall Street etc. takes away the consequences of an individuals actions and therefore incentivizes risky, dangerous, or antisocial activity. Another way to distill it down is to say that liberals tend toward viewing individuals as inherently good and not responsible for bad things that happen to them, and conservatives tend to view people as inherently bad and mostly responsible for both the good and bad that happens to them. Conservatives tend to see civilization and civil, productive behavior as something very hard earned and fragile, and worry about how social changes like universal social programs and such may undermine civilization - think Brave New World. What I find most interesting is the economic libertarian argument about such things which is just to do whatever costs the least :) Anyway, this stuff is all interesting but to boil it all down what I’ve learned over time is that there isn’t really an us or them or right or wrong politically, rather there are mostly rational people who have reasonable justifications for how they think about these problems, and significantly different life experiences that result in significantly different beliefs about what works and what doesn’t, and therefore what politics they subscribe to.
jernfrost 8y ago
I’d also like to add the social democrat view of welfare as practiced in nordic countries. We try to avoid the American solution of a huge patchwork of small individual programs. Instead we prefer broad non-means tested rights. The reason is twofold: a lot of people don’t want to degrade themselves into taking welfare, hence they end up with no help. Support and quality for means tested programs tend to drop quickly, because only narrow interest groups exist to champion it. We see this with e.g. schools. It the middle class all send their children to private schools then the quality of public schools tend to be very bad. That is because there is less pressure to improve it. We saw this phenomenon over night when de-segregation happened. Blacks schools which got white studens received a lot more improvements, upgrades and quality focus.
zolthrowaway 8y ago
This is a very reasonable and levelheaded post. I think part of the massive frustration is that Conservative policies often times seem to feel like dragging their feet. Like you point out, we very often times end up with sub-optimal solutions to serious problems. The cycle feels like problem presents itself, progressive solution proposed, conservatives don't want to address the problem, eventually problem becomes too big and a crappy "compromise" is put in place. You are totally right that many of these problems are very difficult to solve. It's scary to put time and resources into things that may not work. We already are throwing so much money away into stopgap solutions though. The reason why I and many people feel frustrated with conservative policy is because it feels like they stall until we are forced into eventually doing "something" instead of implementing the full solution. Instead of saying, "hold on, do we really need this? Is this the best way to go about this?" it feels like conservative policy is to say "we will do everything we can to not spend money even if it is correct to do so." I totally get that this is a biased point of view. It's just an explanation as to why there is so much resentment of modern conservative politics.

jernfrost 8y ago

I can respect that we have different views on how to reach the same goal, however I take issue with the conservative propensity to judge people. All too frequently conservatives rate people with some sort of failing as lesser people. There is a propensity to believe more in punishment and threats than positive re-enforcements. I believe in effective solutions. Often it seems conservatives will refuse to use an effective and proven solution if they deem it had somebody getting something for nothing. It seems as if conservatives will stay wide awake at night angry about somebody getting something they didn’t deserve. As a liberal I don’t care as much about what people deserve as I care about what works as well as human dignity.

denverkarma 8y ago
There may be some of that but I think you’re misunderstanding the predominant conservative view, which has two crucial parts: 1. Most conservatives believe that the government forcibly taking your money via taxes and using it for purposes you do not approve of is undemocratic and immoral. This is the root of the small government argument - that the government should only do the things that are broadly supported by the population and since the population is fragmented the set of things that enjoy near universal support are very small. 2. Most conservatives believe very deeply that human dignity is found in freedom, independence, and meaningful work. Some might say “meaningful life” instead but for many conservatives they believe very literally that doing something that matters is the reason for living and if you aren’t doing anything that matters then you will be miserable and have no dignity. It isn’t even about making money - though that can help make the work meaningful. For many they would say that what matters is being able to contribute to your community and take care of your friends and family, and if you do a job that sucks but it’s what you’ve got and it gives you the money to contribute and take care of the people who rely on you, then THAT is what is meaningful. So, suppose the proposal is “shall we give this homeless drug addict a home and food and money so their needs are met and put them in additction counseling and treatment and then hope they recover from their addiction, etc.” Perhaps the liberal argument is “yes that should work for getting most people on their feet, and if it enables some people to just live more comfortably in a drugged stupor then that’s okay because overall everyone will be better off.” The conservative argument would generally be, (1) it’s immoral to take money from people who work hard and take care of themselves to give it to someone who doesn’t work so they can live comfortably on drugs, and (2) by just giving them everything you are actually taking away the satisfaction and dignity that comes from taking care of yourself and knowing that you are independent and free. Note also that the conservatives tend to worry a lot about the moral hazard: they fear that any kind of “bailout” whether it’s for homeless people or for Wall Street etc. takes away the consequences of an individuals actions and therefore incentivizes risky, dangerous, or antisocial activity. Another way to distill it down is to say that liberals tend toward viewing individuals as inherently good and not responsible for bad things that happen to them, and conservatives tend to view people as inherently bad and mostly responsible for both the good and bad that happens to them. Conservatives tend to see civilization and civil, productive behavior as something very hard earned and fragile, and worry about how social changes like universal social programs and such may undermine civilization - think Brave New World. What I find most interesting is the economic libertarian argument about such things which is just to do whatever costs the least :) Anyway, this stuff is all interesting but to boil it all down what I’ve learned over time is that there isn’t really an us or them or right or wrong politically, rather there are mostly rational people who have reasonable justifications for how they think about these problems, and significantly different life experiences that result in significantly different beliefs about what works and what doesn’t, and therefore what politics they subscribe to.

jernfrost 8y ago

I’d also like to add the social democrat view of welfare as practiced in nordic countries. We try to avoid the American solution of a huge patchwork of small individual programs. Instead we prefer broad non-means tested rights. The reason is twofold: a lot of people don’t want to degrade themselves into taking welfare, hence they end up with no help. Support and quality for means tested programs tend to drop quickly, because only narrow interest groups exist to champion it. We see this with e.g. schools. It the middle class all send their children to private schools then the quality of public schools tend to be very bad. That is because there is less pressure to improve it. We saw this phenomenon over night when de-segregation happened. Blacks schools which got white studens received a lot more improvements, upgrades and quality focus.

zolthrowaway 8y ago

This is a very reasonable and levelheaded post. I think part of the massive frustration is that Conservative policies often times seem to feel like dragging their feet. Like you point out, we very often times end up with sub-optimal solutions to serious problems. The cycle feels like problem presents itself, progressive solution proposed, conservatives don't want to address the problem, eventually problem becomes too big and a crappy "compromise" is put in place. You are totally right that many of these problems are very difficult to solve. It's scary to put time and resources into things that may not work. We already are throwing so much money away into stopgap solutions though. The reason why I and many people feel frustrated with conservative policy is because it feels like they stall until we are forced into eventually doing "something" instead of implementing the full solution. Instead of saying, "hold on, do we really need this? Is this the best way to go about this?" it feels like conservative policy is to say "we will do everything we can to not spend money even if it is correct to do so." I totally get that this is a biased point of view. It's just an explanation as to why there is so much resentment of modern conservative politics.