3 ms·

It's not that hard. If you are able, but don't work and live off government subsidies for food, housing, and health care then you're definitely mooching off the

by chimi 14y ago

It's not that hard. If you are able, but don't work and live off government subsidies for food, housing, and health care then you're definitely mooching off the system.

bryanlarsen 14y ago
Are Olympic athletes mooches? Are students mooches? Are entrepreneurs who live off unemployment mooches? By your definition they are. There are lots of "artists" that live off of welfare. Some of theme are mooches, some of them are just developing their craft and will later make millions doing it. How do you tell one from the other? You can't.
potatolicious 14y ago
Define able. Define subsidies. I don't get food stamps, nor welfare, but I did enjoy substantial government subsidies on education (odds are, so did you). I also drive on government-subsidized roads, and enjoy government services such as the police and fire departments. My drinking water comes from a vast infrastructure built by government funds - not all of which was taxed locally. My electricity comes from similar government-subsidized infrastructure, and wouldn't even exist if the federal government hadn't poured enormous amounts of cash into the research of power generation and transmission technologies. In short, my life story is one gigantic government subsidy, and odds are, so is yours. So is everyone's, to various degrees - nobody is even close to "clean" in this respect, unless you grew up in a monastery on a mountain top. Also, it's funny that you mention health care, because by that definition every single person in Western Europe, Canada, and Japan is a moocher. Ability is also a tricky notion because it is hard to separate from potential. Are we strictly talking about productivity, period, or are we talking about productivity commensurate with one's potential? What is the morality of someone who, after receiving substantial government subsidization getting an education, who gets a dead end job? He's not on welfare or food stamps, but he sure as hell isn't the high-earning tax payer we hoped he would be, based on the considerable investment made. Is he a moocher of the system? After all, he failed to "pay us back" for the extra investment we made in him (sending him to college, say). What is the morality of someone who, possessing a substantial intelligence, chooses not to apply himself in school, and ends up in the lowest rung of tax payers? Has he mooched off of us for failing to live up to his potential, or does he get a free pass? Does he have the "ability" to do higher level work? What about people whose failure to realize their full potential is due to external factors? This issue is anything but simple. But let's simplify this grossly: you're referring to people who choose not to work (period) and whose existences require the constant intervention of government above and beyond what government does for "everyone else" (that itself is a tricky notion, but bear with me). It turns out, we actually track these people, and they are an extremely small part of our society. The vast majority of people in our society work. The ones who do not actively seek to work. The percentage of people in our society who can work but choose not to, and lean on the government as a result is a rounding error. It's amazing how much libertarians and conservatives are willing to magnify this demographic by a thousandfold just to make their point.
- chimi 14y ago
  The subsidies you received and I received are the ambient subsidies we all have access to. The point you are not acknowledging is that some people take those subsidies and create additional value and improvements to the quality of life for those around them and others take additional subsidies on top of that ambient level of subsidization and at best create no additional value and at worst create a lower quality of life for others. It's not a tiny demographic, it's double digit percentages of the population, at least 1 out of 5 people and maybe more. We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers. Our society is currently set up in the reverse manner.
  - Jtsummers 14y ago
    So yeah, I believe I am parsing you correctly on your last sentence: > We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers. Our society is currently set up in the reverse manner. I believe you mean those lowdown, dirty, rotten moochers to be the consumers. I disagree with you, being on food stamps is a pretty lousy reward. The projects as the only affordable residency option is pretty lousy. Being constantly looked down upon by those with more is pretty lousy. Seems like a lousy reward all around. However, you may want to reword it anyways. Another reading of it suggests: Consumers can die from our products, they can waste away from our terribly unhealthy foods, in the end we want all the wealth for ourselves regardless of the fact that they're the one's needed for us to have a sustainable future. Sounds like a lot of companies. Those Facebook users are clearly moochers, they aren't paying anything to Facebook for the privilege of using their services. So Facebook is in the right to punish them by completely breaking down any conventional notion of privacy.</sarcasm> (Because in text form it's never clear).
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "It's not a tiny demographic, it's double digit percentages of the population, at least 1 out of 5 people and maybe more." This is an extraordinary claim that demands substantiation. Everything we know about US labor statistics suggests that the long-term unemployed are a tiny portion of the population (6.16 million as of last month, out of a labor force of 239 million). That's roughly 2.5% of the work force, or 1.98% of the total overall population. Note also that people who receive unemployment benefits (including food stamps) are required to be part of the work force (i.e., they are not lumped into the substantial out-of-work-force bucket). There's also the question of just how much these benefits are, and why anyone of sound mind would voluntarily, permanently go on them (even if they could sit on these benefits in perpetuity, which they can't): a single person is only eligible for $200 in food stamp benefits a month, scaling down to $668 for a family of 4. How many people who are on this benefit do you think are there voluntarily, because they're too lazy and $200 a month is such a strong incentive to stay out of work? There are so many crazy, absurd leaps in logic required for a person to conclude that a large portion of the population is too lazy to get work and just leeching off society. The reality is a hell of a lot more reasonable. > "We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers." This is counterproductive and absurd. We don't need to punish the "consumers", we need to help them become creators. This is my problem with libertarian types - you assume the world's problems can be solved by puritanical moralizing, and that people need to be beaten, not led, to productive behavior. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, this is moralizing in the guise of economics. Your punitive measures will have no positive effect besides making you feel better about having wrought vengeance upon those you perceive to have wronged creators. There is no rational basis for believing that punitive measures will make net-negative-value people into net-positive-values. So yeah, if we did things your way the world will go to hell in a hand basket. But that's okay, so long as "justice" is served, and those icky no-goodniks are properly flogged for their icky laziness.
Jtsummers 14y ago
I hear this rather frequently, but always sans numbers. What percentage of people on welfare are able bodied and able minded and do no work? A friend of mine likes to throw out the assertion that 50% of the population doesn't pay taxes. A gross misrepresentation of reality. 50% don't pay income taxes, but if they have a job they pay payroll taxes. If they purchase anything they pay sales tax. If they rent or own a home or apartment they pay property taxes. If they have a vehicle they pay property taxes. How about the companies making record profits that reduce their income tax burden to 0%? In what world is it reasonable to expect the bottom 80% of the population, with about 16% of the country's wealth, to provide a greater percentage of their individual wealth so that the top 20%, owning or controlling 84% of the country's wealth, can pay a lower percentage?

by chimi 14y ago

It's not that hard. If you are able, but don't work and live off government subsidies for food, housing, and health care then you're definitely mooching off the system.

bryanlarsen 14y ago

Are Olympic athletes mooches? Are students mooches? Are entrepreneurs who live off unemployment mooches? By your definition they are. There are lots of "artists" that live off of welfare. Some of theme are mooches, some of them are just developing their craft and will later make millions doing it. How do you tell one from the other? You can't.

potatolicious 14y ago

Define able. Define subsidies. I don't get food stamps, nor welfare, but I did enjoy substantial government subsidies on education (odds are, so did you). I also drive on government-subsidized roads, and enjoy government services such as the police and fire departments. My drinking water comes from a vast infrastructure built by government funds - not all of which was taxed locally. My electricity comes from similar government-subsidized infrastructure, and wouldn't even exist if the federal government hadn't poured enormous amounts of cash into the research of power generation and transmission technologies. In short, my life story is one gigantic government subsidy, and odds are, so is yours. So is everyone's, to various degrees - nobody is even close to "clean" in this respect, unless you grew up in a monastery on a mountain top. Also, it's funny that you mention health care, because by that definition every single person in Western Europe, Canada, and Japan is a moocher. Ability is also a tricky notion because it is hard to separate from potential. Are we strictly talking about productivity, period, or are we talking about productivity commensurate with one's potential? What is the morality of someone who, after receiving substantial government subsidization getting an education, who gets a dead end job? He's not on welfare or food stamps, but he sure as hell isn't the high-earning tax payer we hoped he would be, based on the considerable investment made. Is he a moocher of the system? After all, he failed to "pay us back" for the extra investment we made in him (sending him to college, say). What is the morality of someone who, possessing a substantial intelligence, chooses not to apply himself in school, and ends up in the lowest rung of tax payers? Has he mooched off of us for failing to live up to his potential, or does he get a free pass? Does he have the "ability" to do higher level work? What about people whose failure to realize their full potential is due to external factors? This issue is anything but simple. But let's simplify this grossly: you're referring to people who choose not to work (period) and whose existences require the constant intervention of government above and beyond what government does for "everyone else" (that itself is a tricky notion, but bear with me). It turns out, we actually track these people, and they are an extremely small part of our society. The vast majority of people in our society work. The ones who do not actively seek to work. The percentage of people in our society who can work but choose not to, and lean on the government as a result is a rounding error. It's amazing how much libertarians and conservatives are willing to magnify this demographic by a thousandfold just to make their point.

chimi 14y ago
The subsidies you received and I received are the ambient subsidies we all have access to. The point you are not acknowledging is that some people take those subsidies and create additional value and improvements to the quality of life for those around them and others take additional subsidies on top of that ambient level of subsidization and at best create no additional value and at worst create a lower quality of life for others. It's not a tiny demographic, it's double digit percentages of the population, at least 1 out of 5 people and maybe more. We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers. Our society is currently set up in the reverse manner.
- Jtsummers 14y ago
  So yeah, I believe I am parsing you correctly on your last sentence: > We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers. Our society is currently set up in the reverse manner. I believe you mean those lowdown, dirty, rotten moochers to be the consumers. I disagree with you, being on food stamps is a pretty lousy reward. The projects as the only affordable residency option is pretty lousy. Being constantly looked down upon by those with more is pretty lousy. Seems like a lousy reward all around. However, you may want to reword it anyways. Another reading of it suggests: Consumers can die from our products, they can waste away from our terribly unhealthy foods, in the end we want all the wealth for ourselves regardless of the fact that they're the one's needed for us to have a sustainable future. Sounds like a lot of companies. Those Facebook users are clearly moochers, they aren't paying anything to Facebook for the privilege of using their services. So Facebook is in the right to punish them by completely breaking down any conventional notion of privacy.</sarcasm> (Because in text form it's never clear).
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "It's not a tiny demographic, it's double digit percentages of the population, at least 1 out of 5 people and maybe more." This is an extraordinary claim that demands substantiation. Everything we know about US labor statistics suggests that the long-term unemployed are a tiny portion of the population (6.16 million as of last month, out of a labor force of 239 million). That's roughly 2.5% of the work force, or 1.98% of the total overall population. Note also that people who receive unemployment benefits (including food stamps) are required to be part of the work force (i.e., they are not lumped into the substantial out-of-work-force bucket). There's also the question of just how much these benefits are, and why anyone of sound mind would voluntarily, permanently go on them (even if they could sit on these benefits in perpetuity, which they can't): a single person is only eligible for $200 in food stamp benefits a month, scaling down to $668 for a family of 4. How many people who are on this benefit do you think are there voluntarily, because they're too lazy and $200 a month is such a strong incentive to stay out of work? There are so many crazy, absurd leaps in logic required for a person to conclude that a large portion of the population is too lazy to get work and just leeching off society. The reality is a hell of a lot more reasonable. > "We need to enable and reward the creators and punish the consumers." This is counterproductive and absurd. We don't need to punish the "consumers", we need to help them become creators. This is my problem with libertarian types - you assume the world's problems can be solved by puritanical moralizing, and that people need to be beaten, not led, to productive behavior. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, this is moralizing in the guise of economics. Your punitive measures will have no positive effect besides making you feel better about having wrought vengeance upon those you perceive to have wronged creators. There is no rational basis for believing that punitive measures will make net-negative-value people into net-positive-values. So yeah, if we did things your way the world will go to hell in a hand basket. But that's okay, so long as "justice" is served, and those icky no-goodniks are properly flogged for their icky laziness.

Jtsummers 14y ago

I hear this rather frequently, but always sans numbers. What percentage of people on welfare are able bodied and able minded and do no work? A friend of mine likes to throw out the assertion that 50% of the population doesn't pay taxes. A gross misrepresentation of reality. 50% don't pay income taxes, but if they have a job they pay payroll taxes. If they purchase anything they pay sales tax. If they rent or own a home or apartment they pay property taxes. If they have a vehicle they pay property taxes. How about the companies making record profits that reduce their income tax burden to 0%? In what world is it reasonable to expect the bottom 80% of the population, with about 16% of the country's wealth, to provide a greater percentage of their individual wealth so that the top 20%, owning or controlling 84% of the country's wealth, can pay a lower percentage?