7 ms·

>And the reason this is dysfunctional is because the government doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If there was more budget allocated to these benefit

by daenz 4y ago

>And the reason this is dysfunctional is because the government doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If there was more budget allocated to these benefits then we wouldn't have this problem. This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses" >How would you solve this without the government? The problem of people with disabilities needing help? Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? They were helped at a local level by charitable people who cared about each other and knew that taking care of each other was part of a healthy society. Neither business nor government replaces that.

taurath 4y ago
> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? I do. Especially when people who need the help are from poor communities who can’t spare much - much less provide things like in home care, transportation, etc. If you say gov doesn’t need to be involved then please show me who is gonna help. The only ones I know of are the same that throw queer kids or male domestic abuse victims out on the street. People are more charitable when they’re rich (or more accurately, on rising incomes), but they only help out people close to them. Poor people are dehumanized. That’s why we need the gov. Or did you not like see the lines of cars 20 miles long during covid for food assistance?
- daenz 4y ago
  Charitable programs in places of worship existed long before government programs. These are communities of people giving their time, money, and resources, and are actually invested in the people they are helping. If you don't believe they ever helped anyone, then we fundamentally disagree on historical facts.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Literally nobody is disputing that charities in places of worship "ever helped anyone". What's in dispute is whether they would have sufficient resources and the will to help everyone. There are plenty of stories about religious programs refusing to help those outside of their religion which presents a pretty big problem if we're supposed to rely on them for universal charity. One recent story: https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-net-is-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-what-does-that-mean-if-youre-not-one https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-net-i...
    - daenz 4y ago
      - taurath 4y ago
        Please assume I'm a reasonable person enough to not say that nobody has ever received help, and see the context as to what I meant - that many people do not receive enough help.
  - notriddle 4y ago
    Exactly what time period in what part of the world are you thinking of? If you go back too far, you'll hit a time when places of worship were the government, or at least so entangled in it as to make no difference. If you don't go back far enough, you'll hit a time when work houses and sanitariums were commonplace, which might be inhumane by modern standards, but definitely count as "government programs to help the poor."
  - taurath 4y ago
    > If you don't believe they ever helped anyone I can see from your very uncharitable reading of my comment how you could see that I was saying that. I was saying that many people have not and currently don't have receive help from those charitable institutions, and also its not enough. Look around you to see whether charitable programs are enough to solve these problems. If they were, they'd be solved. They are /helping/, but they're not enough, and often they come with strings attached like hide that you're LGBT, which some people literally can't do. People need actual security - if charitable programs gave it to people then there'd be no problem, but they can't or won't.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Those charitable programs exist now. There's nothing stopping them from existing. So why does the problem still exist then? And more importantly: Why have other countries solved this in a far better manner than the US? There's plenty of easy answers to these problems if we'd look to just emulate what other countries do for welfare, healthcare etc instead of pretending that we're better than them while failing at every aspect.
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Depends on the time period, and honest we simply didn't have modern medicine either. Your disabled child might have been left on the streets, left in the woods to die, or sold to someone else (other children might have been sold too). An infant? Infanticide was a thing at different times. Sometimes you'd be sent away to a home, where you'd be abused. You were often an outcast and a beggar and your life was a lot worse. And even worse, folks might have treated you like you deserved it because it was a sign of god's wrath. In short, folks with disabilities have it better than they did in the past because we started banding together as a society and taking care of folks (government). And we still fail folks.
- monkeybutton 4y ago
  Also being locked away in overcrowded sanitariums.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    I have definitely glossed over a lot of horrors when writing the above.
ska 4y ago
> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Prior to such programs, level of help was far more variable and often dependent mostly on family.
alistairSH 4y ago
No, they weren’t. You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns. It’s a common conservative narrative, but it simply isn’t based on reality. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-conservative-myth-of-a-social-safety-net-built-on-charity/284552/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-con... https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/american-social-policy-in-the-great-depression-and-wwii/ https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/...
- daenz 4y ago
  >You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns. You can leave off "it never existed" if you immediately acknowledge that it did exist, but with constraints. If the constraints/scaling are what you care about, then make the case that everyone is better off with an inefficient system of coercion and perverse incentives, versus a system where people are giving their time and money willingly out of the goodness inside them.
UncleMeat 4y ago
> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Yes. These people simply died. Charity helps a few of them but is woefully incapable of helping all of them. > They were helped at a local level by charitable people who cared about each other and knew that taking care of each other was part of a healthy society. My aunt has a brain injury. She needs trained help as well as expensive doctors. Charity has done fuck all to help her - except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her. Where are these magical charities she can go to?
- daenz 4y ago
  >except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her. Wouldn't you be happy if more people were like your parents? If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge? It's not an imaginary world, it just takes work to build. But the further we replace the spirit of charity with an impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion, the harder it is to realize that world.
  - jnovek 4y ago
    So I take it that you host a disabled person in your home, then? What’s even better is, this system already exists and is being utilized beyond its breaking point. How do I know? Well, it takes 1 to 2 YEARS to be approved for SSI or SSDI and, if you can’t work, someone has to pay for your basic cost of living. Or you become homeless. Anyone who is applying for SSDI and isn’t homeless is being supported by someone.
    - daenz 4y ago
      We may be hosting my partner's aunt or grandmother soon, since they will likely have nobody closer to look after them. Did I pass your "is a good person" test?
      - jnovek 4y ago
        OK, topic shift. In all seriousness, I appreciate it. No snark, I don’t care if we don’t see eye-to-eye from a policy perspective, I appreciate what you’re doing. Disability is a really hard experience. I can’t describe what it’s like to lose these things we take for granted. Being without pain. Making choices for yourself. Going to a movie. By giving a disabled person a home, you’re giving some of that back to them. If you’ve never done this before, you might be surprised by how hard it is, the rewards for the disabled person aren’t necessarily always visible, but what you’re doing is important.
jnovek 4y ago
I am disabled and applying for SSDI right now. Can you please point me to these charities that help the disabled afford to live that I keep hearing so much about? The process of applying for SSDI is horrible and demeaning and I’d really love to go with one of those organizations instead!
- daenz 4y ago
  How many places of worship have you visited and asked?
  - s5300 4y ago
    Lol. I’ve seen the most absolutely down & out “good” people who’ve eventually ended up at places of worship begging. They get disgusting looks & “we’ll pray for your soul” (saying it as if they believe it’s already been damned to hell)
    - daenz 4y ago
      How did you get such access to first hand knowledge of multiple peoples experiences at different places of worship?
      - s5300 4y ago
        Niche subreddits for medical conditions I can’t imagine anybody would spend the time of their days LARPing in, my own medical groups in which people tend to also face severe financial issues for a variety of reasons with ~30k combined people & ~5k active Over 12 years of dealing with things myself & making friends along the way in person & online. Spending countless nights trolling through comments in countless amounts of old threads of very vulnerable people trying to get away from things like domestic violence while also facing severely disabling medical issues (often but not limited to younger people with abusive parents somewhat controlling their lives via their disability) & reaching out to/begging quite literally wherever they’re able & overwhelmingly being turned away. Of course, you can always say that they/I are LARPing & there’s not much I can do about that unfortunately. If you’d like a bright side/silver lining to any of this - places that attract minorities/marginalized groups are often the most helpful (geeze, wonder why) & if shit ever truly hits the fan in your life, make your way to your nearest Sikh Gurudwara. As long as you show the most basic humility & respect the few things they ask you to observe in their place of worship, they will go so far out of their way to try to help you in every way they can. Unfortunately, malicious people tend to take advantage of this in bigger cities & some are starting to get slightly jaded. I cannot blame them, such is life. I’m not trying to say all religions orgs & charities are shit across the board. Perhaps it seemed that way. I’m just saying that they’re very much not as much of an answer that some of society seems to think they may be, & there are some truly awful people among them that will kick you harder when you’re already at your lowest point. (As with everywhere/everything)
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses" "more control" ? "Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking. I want you to pause for a moment and think critically for a moment and consider the context of the conversation. Right now, if you're disabled, you're given a paltry $841/month, and you're told that if you ever have more than $2,000 in cash, that $841 will be taken away. The government is forcing you to live in poverty. You can't save money. Imagine you found a way to start a business despite your disabilities, and single $2000 month of income takes all your benefits away. Any attempt at improving your situation becomes an all-in endevour, so you better not fuck it up, or else the government kicks you into homelessness after the $841/month gets taken away. How is improving this program by lifting the $2K limit expanding control? Seems like it would reduce control if you ask me by giving you the freedom to make the attempt at improving your life without worry of failure.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >"Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking. It takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to call that a tinfoil hat theory when we're literally in a comment section discussion all the stupid things people on .gov aid have to do/avoid in order to ensure continued income. If that's not control what is?
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    ... I'm literally arguing in favor of increasing the asset limit so people don't have to jump through hoops to avoid losing their benefits. I'm arguing against those controls. How are you twisting this around?
LodeOfCode 4y ago
Local charities don't even fully cover the holes in the existing welfare system. Why would you expect them to be able to bear the full burden in its stead?

by daenz 4y ago

taurath 4y ago

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? I do. Especially when people who need the help are from poor communities who can’t spare much - much less provide things like in home care, transportation, etc. If you say gov doesn’t need to be involved then please show me who is gonna help. The only ones I know of are the same that throw queer kids or male domestic abuse victims out on the street. People are more charitable when they’re rich (or more accurately, on rising incomes), but they only help out people close to them. Poor people are dehumanized. That’s why we need the gov. Or did you not like see the lines of cars 20 miles long during covid for food assistance?

daenz 4y ago
Charitable programs in places of worship existed long before government programs. These are communities of people giving their time, money, and resources, and are actually invested in the people they are helping. If you don't believe they ever helped anyone, then we fundamentally disagree on historical facts.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Literally nobody is disputing that charities in places of worship "ever helped anyone". What's in dispute is whether they would have sufficient resources and the will to help everyone. There are plenty of stories about religious programs refusing to help those outside of their religion which presents a pretty big problem if we're supposed to rely on them for universal charity. One recent story: https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-net-is-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-what-does-that-mean-if-youre-not-one https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-net-i...
  - daenz 4y ago
    - taurath 4y ago
      Please assume I'm a reasonable person enough to not say that nobody has ever received help, and see the context as to what I meant - that many people do not receive enough help.
- notriddle 4y ago
  Exactly what time period in what part of the world are you thinking of? If you go back too far, you'll hit a time when places of worship were the government, or at least so entangled in it as to make no difference. If you don't go back far enough, you'll hit a time when work houses and sanitariums were commonplace, which might be inhumane by modern standards, but definitely count as "government programs to help the poor."
- taurath 4y ago
  > If you don't believe they ever helped anyone I can see from your very uncharitable reading of my comment how you could see that I was saying that. I was saying that many people have not and currently don't have receive help from those charitable institutions, and also its not enough. Look around you to see whether charitable programs are enough to solve these problems. If they were, they'd be solved. They are /helping/, but they're not enough, and often they come with strings attached like hide that you're LGBT, which some people literally can't do. People need actual security - if charitable programs gave it to people then there'd be no problem, but they can't or won't.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  Those charitable programs exist now. There's nothing stopping them from existing. So why does the problem still exist then? And more importantly: Why have other countries solved this in a far better manner than the US? There's plenty of easy answers to these problems if we'd look to just emulate what other countries do for welfare, healthcare etc instead of pretending that we're better than them while failing at every aspect.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago

Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Depends on the time period, and honest we simply didn't have modern medicine either. Your disabled child might have been left on the streets, left in the woods to die, or sold to someone else (other children might have been sold too). An infant? Infanticide was a thing at different times. Sometimes you'd be sent away to a home, where you'd be abused. You were often an outcast and a beggar and your life was a lot worse. And even worse, folks might have treated you like you deserved it because it was a sign of god's wrath. In short, folks with disabilities have it better than they did in the past because we started banding together as a society and taking care of folks (government). And we still fail folks.

monkeybutton 4y ago
Also being locked away in overcrowded sanitariums.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  I have definitely glossed over a lot of horrors when writing the above.

ska 4y ago

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Prior to such programs, level of help was far more variable and often dependent mostly on family.

alistairSH 4y ago

No, they weren’t. You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns. It’s a common conservative narrative, but it simply isn’t based on reality. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-conservative-myth-of-a-social-safety-net-built-on-charity/284552/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-con... https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/american-social-policy-in-the-great-depression-and-wwii/ https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/...

daenz 4y ago
>You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns. You can leave off "it never existed" if you immediately acknowledge that it did exist, but with constraints. If the constraints/scaling are what you care about, then make the case that everyone is better off with an inefficient system of coercion and perverse incentives, versus a system where people are giving their time and money willingly out of the goodness inside them.

UncleMeat 4y ago

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? Yes. These people simply died. Charity helps a few of them but is woefully incapable of helping all of them. > They were helped at a local level by charitable people who cared about each other and knew that taking care of each other was part of a healthy society. My aunt has a brain injury. She needs trained help as well as expensive doctors. Charity has done fuck all to help her - except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her. Where are these magical charities she can go to?

daenz 4y ago
>except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her. Wouldn't you be happy if more people were like your parents? If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge? It's not an imaginary world, it just takes work to build. But the further we replace the spirit of charity with an impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion, the harder it is to realize that world.
- jnovek 4y ago
  So I take it that you host a disabled person in your home, then? What’s even better is, this system already exists and is being utilized beyond its breaking point. How do I know? Well, it takes 1 to 2 YEARS to be approved for SSI or SSDI and, if you can’t work, someone has to pay for your basic cost of living. Or you become homeless. Anyone who is applying for SSDI and isn’t homeless is being supported by someone.
  - daenz 4y ago
    We may be hosting my partner's aunt or grandmother soon, since they will likely have nobody closer to look after them. Did I pass your "is a good person" test?
    - jnovek 4y ago
      OK, topic shift. In all seriousness, I appreciate it. No snark, I don’t care if we don’t see eye-to-eye from a policy perspective, I appreciate what you’re doing. Disability is a really hard experience. I can’t describe what it’s like to lose these things we take for granted. Being without pain. Making choices for yourself. Going to a movie. By giving a disabled person a home, you’re giving some of that back to them. If you’ve never done this before, you might be surprised by how hard it is, the rewards for the disabled person aren’t necessarily always visible, but what you’re doing is important.

jnovek 4y ago

I am disabled and applying for SSDI right now. Can you please point me to these charities that help the disabled afford to live that I keep hearing so much about? The process of applying for SSDI is horrible and demeaning and I’d really love to go with one of those organizations instead!

daenz 4y ago
How many places of worship have you visited and asked?
- s5300 4y ago
  Lol. I’ve seen the most absolutely down & out “good” people who’ve eventually ended up at places of worship begging. They get disgusting looks & “we’ll pray for your soul” (saying it as if they believe it’s already been damned to hell)
  - daenz 4y ago
    How did you get such access to first hand knowledge of multiple peoples experiences at different places of worship?
    - s5300 4y ago
      Niche subreddits for medical conditions I can’t imagine anybody would spend the time of their days LARPing in, my own medical groups in which people tend to also face severe financial issues for a variety of reasons with ~30k combined people & ~5k active Over 12 years of dealing with things myself & making friends along the way in person & online. Spending countless nights trolling through comments in countless amounts of old threads of very vulnerable people trying to get away from things like domestic violence while also facing severely disabling medical issues (often but not limited to younger people with abusive parents somewhat controlling their lives via their disability) & reaching out to/begging quite literally wherever they’re able & overwhelmingly being turned away. Of course, you can always say that they/I are LARPing & there’s not much I can do about that unfortunately. If you’d like a bright side/silver lining to any of this - places that attract minorities/marginalized groups are often the most helpful (geeze, wonder why) & if shit ever truly hits the fan in your life, make your way to your nearest Sikh Gurudwara. As long as you show the most basic humility & respect the few things they ask you to observe in their place of worship, they will go so far out of their way to try to help you in every way they can. Unfortunately, malicious people tend to take advantage of this in bigger cities & some are starting to get slightly jaded. I cannot blame them, such is life. I’m not trying to say all religions orgs & charities are shit across the board. Perhaps it seemed that way. I’m just saying that they’re very much not as much of an answer that some of society seems to think they may be, & there are some truly awful people among them that will kick you harder when you’re already at your lowest point. (As with everywhere/everything)

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

> This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses" "more control" ? "Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking. I want you to pause for a moment and think critically for a moment and consider the context of the conversation. Right now, if you're disabled, you're given a paltry $841/month, and you're told that if you ever have more than $2,000 in cash, that $841 will be taken away. The government is forcing you to live in poverty. You can't save money. Imagine you found a way to start a business despite your disabilities, and single $2000 month of income takes all your benefits away. Any attempt at improving your situation becomes an all-in endevour, so you better not fuck it up, or else the government kicks you into homelessness after the $841/month gets taken away. How is improving this program by lifting the $2K limit expanding control? Seems like it would reduce control if you ask me by giving you the freedom to make the attempt at improving your life without worry of failure.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>"Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking. It takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to call that a tinfoil hat theory when we're literally in a comment section discussion all the stupid things people on .gov aid have to do/avoid in order to ensure continued income. If that's not control what is?
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  ... I'm literally arguing in favor of increasing the asset limit so people don't have to jump through hoops to avoid losing their benefits. I'm arguing against those controls. How are you twisting this around?

LodeOfCode 4y ago

Local charities don't even fully cover the holes in the existing welfare system. Why would you expect them to be able to bear the full burden in its stead?