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Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do

by typon 5y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Indeed. And our definition of "deserve" is perverse as well. It tends to mean "people like me".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alexilliamson 5y ago
Yes this the tradeoff we need to make more explicit in these discussions. Is it better to err on the side of feeding too many people? Or do we err on the side of extensively validating peoples' hunger status, knowing that for every inch of red tape added means another hungry person left in need.
refurb 5y ago
Unemployment in CA went $23B in debt because of Covid (spent more in benefits than collected). $11B is estimated to be fraud. Your statement is quite trite to be honest.
- xphilter 5y ago
  So are the fraudsters poor people (before the payout obviously) or are they just fraudsters? Maybe we just need a better system.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  What are you trying to advocate for; making it much harder to receive unemployment benefits? Then your statement demonstrates the exact point the parent commenter is trying to make. 89% of payments weren't considered fraudulent. I.e. it seems like you're suggesting that you'd rather sacrifice the well-being of the millions of people who received legitimate unemployment benefits just to prevent payments to a relatively small percentage of people who don't deserve them. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/californias-unemployment-fraud-20-billion https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/californ...
  - refurb 5y ago
    What are you advocating for? Social programs that enrich organize crime to the tune of billions?
    - tylerhou 5y ago
      I'm advocating for the honest representation of the net utility for social programs by stating their benefits in addition to their downsides. It's not a fair representation to only show losses without acknowledging that without unemployment (or with more stringent fraud checks that also would increase false rejections), many people would have lost their homes or lives during the pandemic.
complianceowl 5y ago
The mistake you make is assuming that your supposed 'noble intentions' justify what you are proposing; they do not. Your noble intentions are absolutely hypocritical and fake. If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. A nation can just as easily 'accidentally help someone' to its own demise. What happens when you incentivize idleness on a national scale? What happens tax rates have to keep going up and up to fund the benefits of the idle? What about all the vast social welfare programs we already have in place here in America? What about the worker shortage that unemployment benefits caused just recently during the pandemic? A worker shortage I saw everywhere, first hand. Whatever country you're from, you're doing a bad job representing it.
- johnday 5y ago
  > If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. Why "instead"? Why can this person not both donate directly and wish that everyone else were obligated to do the same?
  - galfarragem 5y ago
    Obligating people to do things that they don't agree with never lasts.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      The US’ military budget says otherwise.
    - johnday 5y ago
      Not sure what you mean by this. Taxes are so ubiquitous that there's literally an idiom about it.
  - 5y ago
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do" This reads like hyperbole and cynicism. Americans as a whole donate a large amount to charity each year and the United States already has wide-ranging social welfare programs. I challenge the use of the word "accidentally", because there are legitimate concerns about dependency, freeloading, and quite frankly, fairness. It is easy to declare that some population is being "underserved" but the funds for that service need to come from somewhere. Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to look at the system critically and with reservations?
- WarChortle 5y ago
  I am speaking in generalities because I don't know your exact stance on everything. The American military budget is so massively over-bloated its sickening. No only that, they made 35 Trillion dollars in adjustments in 2019 alone. The year before they made 30 Trillion dollars in adjustments. In 2018 the pentagon failed its first ever independent audit, instead of releasing the report, they changed their own rules to hide the report under the guise of "national security". I shudder to think how much money is being skimmed from the pentagon budget, but no one seems to care. > Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to look at the system critically and with reservations? Its not, but I find it disturbing how, in general, even the smallest whiff of fraud from a social program, brings all sorts of regulations and cuts. But the Pentagon making 65 trillion dollars in adjustments to its budget in 2 years is meet with silence. For me, I would rather every single person in this country go to bed with a full stomach, even if it meant some amount of fraud, then to let the pentagon piss away more money. If people really cared about not wasting their tax dollars they would be outraged over the pentagon. Doing a proper audit of that would probably get back so much money any fraud in social programs would be statistically insignificant.
  - creato 5y ago
    35 trillion is almost double the entire GDP of the US, and almost 10x the entire federal budget. I don't know where you are getting that number.
pdonis 5y ago
If anything is sacrificing the well-being of poor Americans who deserve better, it is the fact that helping them is punted to government bureaucracies instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations who are both able and motivated to exercise much better judgment about who needs help and what help is needed than any government bureaucrat can possibly do.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy. We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria!
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy No, it isn't, it's freedom. Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. > We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. If you think there are people who deserve help and are not being helped by existing organizations, you start an organization to help them. If a democratic majority agrees with you that those people deserve help and aren't getting it, you'll have no trouble getting donations. > Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria! And if you think government-run programs actually do what the "democratically decided criteria" say they are supposed to do, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you. Anyone who has actually had to deal with these government-run programs (as my wife and I have for years, both on behalf of friends who are constantly getting the runaround from bureaucratic screw-ups and from my wife's experience as a social worker) will tell you that they are terrible at actually helping people.

Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do

by typon 5y ago

Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Indeed. And our definition of "deserve" is perverse as well. It tends to mean "people like me".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alexilliamson 5y ago

Yes this the tradeoff we need to make more explicit in these discussions. Is it better to err on the side of feeding too many people? Or do we err on the side of extensively validating peoples' hunger status, knowing that for every inch of red tape added means another hungry person left in need.

refurb 5y ago

Unemployment in CA went $23B in debt because of Covid (spent more in benefits than collected). $11B is estimated to be fraud. Your statement is quite trite to be honest.

xphilter 5y ago
So are the fraudsters poor people (before the payout obviously) or are they just fraudsters? Maybe we just need a better system.
tylerhou 5y ago
What are you trying to advocate for; making it much harder to receive unemployment benefits? Then your statement demonstrates the exact point the parent commenter is trying to make. 89% of payments weren't considered fraudulent. I.e. it seems like you're suggesting that you'd rather sacrifice the well-being of the millions of people who received legitimate unemployment benefits just to prevent payments to a relatively small percentage of people who don't deserve them. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/californias-unemployment-fraud-20-billion https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/californ...
- refurb 5y ago
  What are you advocating for? Social programs that enrich organize crime to the tune of billions?
  - tylerhou 5y ago
    I'm advocating for the honest representation of the net utility for social programs by stating their benefits in addition to their downsides. It's not a fair representation to only show losses without acknowledging that without unemployment (or with more stringent fraud checks that also would increase false rejections), many people would have lost their homes or lives during the pandemic.

complianceowl 5y ago

The mistake you make is assuming that your supposed 'noble intentions' justify what you are proposing; they do not. Your noble intentions are absolutely hypocritical and fake. If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. A nation can just as easily 'accidentally help someone' to its own demise. What happens when you incentivize idleness on a national scale? What happens tax rates have to keep going up and up to fund the benefits of the idle? What about all the vast social welfare programs we already have in place here in America? What about the worker shortage that unemployment benefits caused just recently during the pandemic? A worker shortage I saw everywhere, first hand. Whatever country you're from, you're doing a bad job representing it.

johnday 5y ago
> If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. Why "instead"? Why can this person not both donate directly and wish that everyone else were obligated to do the same?
- galfarragem 5y ago
  Obligating people to do things that they don't agree with never lasts.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    The US’ military budget says otherwise.
  - johnday 5y ago
    Not sure what you mean by this. Taxes are so ubiquitous that there's literally an idiom about it.
- 5y ago

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do" This reads like hyperbole and cynicism. Americans as a whole donate a large amount to charity each year and the United States already has wide-ranging social welfare programs. I challenge the use of the word "accidentally", because there are legitimate concerns about dependency, freeloading, and quite frankly, fairness. It is easy to declare that some population is being "underserved" but the funds for that service need to come from somewhere. Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to look at the system critically and with reservations?

WarChortle 5y ago
I am speaking in generalities because I don't know your exact stance on everything. The American military budget is so massively over-bloated its sickening. No only that, they made 35 Trillion dollars in adjustments in 2019 alone. The year before they made 30 Trillion dollars in adjustments. In 2018 the pentagon failed its first ever independent audit, instead of releasing the report, they changed their own rules to hide the report under the guise of "national security". I shudder to think how much money is being skimmed from the pentagon budget, but no one seems to care. > Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to look at the system critically and with reservations? Its not, but I find it disturbing how, in general, even the smallest whiff of fraud from a social program, brings all sorts of regulations and cuts. But the Pentagon making 65 trillion dollars in adjustments to its budget in 2 years is meet with silence. For me, I would rather every single person in this country go to bed with a full stomach, even if it meant some amount of fraud, then to let the pentagon piss away more money. If people really cared about not wasting their tax dollars they would be outraged over the pentagon. Doing a proper audit of that would probably get back so much money any fraud in social programs would be statistically insignificant.
- creato 5y ago
  35 trillion is almost double the entire GDP of the US, and almost 10x the entire federal budget. I don't know where you are getting that number.

pdonis 5y ago

If anything is sacrificing the well-being of poor Americans who deserve better, it is the fact that helping them is punted to government bureaucracies instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations who are both able and motivated to exercise much better judgment about who needs help and what help is needed than any government bureaucrat can possibly do.

mschuster91 5y ago
> instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy. We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria!
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy No, it isn't, it's freedom. Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. > We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. If you think there are people who deserve help and are not being helped by existing organizations, you start an organization to help them. If a democratic majority agrees with you that those people deserve help and aren't getting it, you'll have no trouble getting donations. > Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria! And if you think government-run programs actually do what the "democratically decided criteria" say they are supposed to do, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you. Anyone who has actually had to deal with these government-run programs (as my wife and I have for years, both on behalf of friends who are constantly getting the runaround from bureaucratic screw-ups and from my wife's experience as a social worker) will tell you that they are terrible at actually helping people.