Is welfare a drain on the country?

a bison errs wrote:

a bison! wrote:

I loose 44 cents on every dollar I make. If not for work and relationship would move to Florida or Texas in a heart beat. If I didn't have to pay so much in taxes I would continue to beef up my brokerage account in equities.

So you and your "relationship" both have better jobs in a high tax state than you could get in a low tax state? Hmm, how can that be? I thought low taxes solved everything!

Good point, North Dakotans! You have to think critically about this. Yes the tax situation in Nevada, Texas and Florida is nice and should be advantaged when possible but you have to consider that it's not just a Free good with no consequences, like fruit dropping from a tree. Income taxes correlate with government services, basic infrastructure upkeep and security.

We have plenty of money.

Paying off warlords all over the middle east with pallets of 100 dollar bills, foreign aid to countries that hate us..

Plenty of money.

TrackB0t wrote:

cici wrote:

I hope you are trolling because no sensible person would think that tax writeoffs/etc are the same as welfare.

What is the difference between the government giving you a 1000 dollar check or requiring you to pay 1000 less? By far the biggest redistribution of wealth programs are for the middle class. Talk about getting ride of things like deductible health care, home mortgage deduction, deduction of state taxes, and the like gets the upper middle class up in arms. They want to get their hands on that lovely government money (and yes all of your money comes from the government. Just read a bill sometime).

Top1% gets the most disproportionate tax deduction. It's not even close. (See Figure 3 below.)

Liberal Lies and more Lies wrote:

There is no such thing as Corporate Welfare. Its merely propaganda perpetrated on the uneducated by those who wish to achieve power by deception.

Wow are you a naive puppet of the elites who are sticking it to us.

CatlitterHotub wrote:

Welfare is "revolution insurance" and only dumb people fail to realize that.

If you totally left the poor to their own, they would revolt and over throw the middle class. (see Bolshvik Rev.)

On the other hand if you give these stupid poor folks just enough to be comfortable they won't want to risk that, so they just shuffle on with their terrible lives, living away from where most of us do not see them, interact with them, go to school with them.

In the end welfare is a benefit to the wealthy and middle class.

only sensible answer so far.

The welfare system is not perfect, obviously, but as it stands right now it helps out our country TREMENDOUSLY. Nobody likes the people who just plain are lazy and work the system to get unemployment. Thankfully, they only make up 9% of all people on unemployment. Obviously there are (many) other forms of welfare, but unemployment is one that gets the most press.

Taking away all forms of welfare would be HORRENDOUS for our country and almost certainly cost significantly more than welfare does currently. Overall, welfare SAVES the economy money.

This Man wrote:

Property owner wrote:

I would say that those who don't pay (net) taxes shouldn't be allowed to vote . . .

This ^ sounds like a really good idea. Feudalism, anyone?

One wonders if this guy has thought through the possibilities inherent in his logic: It used to be that only (white, male) property owners were allowed to vote in this nation. By premising the vote on income-- and thus taxation relative to income-- one re-inaugurates this vicious cycle, opening the flood gates to higher and higher, more exclusive bars on who can and can't vote. That's not democracy... But, of course, neither is this...

NRA says... wrote:

Asdfghjkl wrote:

The government is a monopoly on physical force. Its sole alternative is to either use that force to protect individual safety or infringe on it.

The government does not have a monopoly on physical force. The Second Amendment guarantees the rights of the PEOPLE to protect themselves from the tyranny of government.

True, or cool story, take your pick. Now test that out, with your personal cache of 2nd Amendment weapons, against the full force of the U.S. military.

Keeping the manned fighter airplane aerospace services base here is a total $100B welfare waste give drones are soon going to eliminated manned fighter airplanes.

You make some good points. I wonder if the people who discourse on the evils (or benefits) of welfare have actually been poor, or lived in an impoverished area. If one's perspective comes out of MBA studies at an R-1 university, or from your profitable small business concern, this is unlikely.

My parents, both sides, grew up in severe poverty (rural on one side; inner-city on the other), on the dole. Of them and their nine siblings, most joined the military and made a career, or got killed, that way, three graduated from college and made a career that way, and three fell into crime/drugs. About half "made it", half didn't. I'd guess, if looked at longitudinally, that's about typical. Despite gov't aid, the streets and our country's warmongering combined kill off maybe half the very poor; the rest, with the help of gov't aid, better themselves substantially.

Take that for what you will.

Brojos welfare to m a l m o is a drain on this site.

All that money spent on military is a drain on the economy

Yes. I was going to say. The military is a big welfare/jobs program that drains money. But if I could do it again I would take advantage of it. Join the Air Force for four years, do an office job, get paid, get college paid for, possibly have the opportunity to live abroad.

It is possible to be both a republican and see the need and benefit of a welfare system, but not a welfare state. Welfare is meant to be a hand up, not a hand out. My parents were on welfare for a short period of time after my father finished serving his country in Vietnam and before he found gainful employment. He was not lazy (he had just finished his undergrad work at Stanford before he was drafted and served in army intelligence), he was just reentering the work force at a bad time (both economically and at a shameful time in our countries history when anti-war activists were shaming those who served in the military) with a wife and young child. He soon found work as a postal worker, used his GI bill to attend law school at night, and became a lawyer. The welfare system is an excellent bridge when used appropriately. Unfortunately many well intended welfare programs have become systemic and are exploited. Take for instance Carter's WIC program. It is well meaning, but has had the unintended consequence of destroying marriage, which has destroyed the nation as a whole.

HRE wrote:

Why should the government protect physical safety? How is that somehow moral while every other thing it does is not?

C'mon Rich. Don't be obtuse. It's the basic social contract.