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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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 Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Kimbop wrote: |
Public housing is free in the sense that the welfare assistance office pays the rent.
An all-encompassing state-controlled entity such as univeral healthcare is another cog in the welfare trap. Goodbye personal responsibility.
I don;t need medicare, welfare checks, or daycare assistance for my kids. I am very capable and hardworking, and beleive it or not-- I can fend for myself. I also tell people to better themselves; to strive for great things. |
1) No, the welfare assistance office doesn't pay the rent if you're talking about America. The HUD will pay for part of your rent if you qualify for their program and you get a landlord to agree to accept you as a Section 8 tenant, but you'll have to have some source of income for that to work. Welfare in America is limited to the disabled (not easy to qualify for, even for some *very* sick and incapacitated folks), the elderly, single parents with children, and those who were recently unemployed under immaculate circumstances through no fault of their own, and the unemployment checks only come for a very limited amount of time. The US government used to offer a program that provided a limited period of checks to people who could prove they were actively looking for jobs in addition to participating in community service or volunteer laboring for non-profits, but it isn't available anymore.
2) This is probably because you're unfamiliar with what I just went over above, but the US is not the place you want to live in if you don't have a job. We even have laws against homeless people sleeping outside or using bathrooms (private or public) too often despite not making any public housing available to them. It's pretty hard to find an employer who'll hire you when you don't have access to showers, dental hygiene, deodorant, clean clothes, work clothes, an email address, a physical address, a social security card, references, a recent work history, or an education. It's great that there are some private charitable organizations providing some of these services or assistance to access these services, but they are few and far between and frequently have to turn down prospective poverty stricken hopefuls because they're already stretched to budget capacity. I personally don't believe private charitable organizations would ever come anywhere close to solving the homeless and unemployment problems in a capitalist society on their own. Back to the original point though, we're one of the farthest things from a welfare trap society.
3) I'm also employed, educated, and have the support of my family should I ever need it. I would probably be less likely to support unemployment and housing benefits were I less well off because I'd feel like I was leeching off of others. I imagine most less well off people don't want to depend on the support of others, but the fact is that many do need more support than they're getting, if only temporarily. Many of the people who are for extending (or in many cases, creating any at all in the first place) public support for the less well off are fairly wealthy or securely in the middle class. They don't stand to personally benefit from the reform they support. I've noticed many people who are against welfare programs describe themselves as formerly poor people who worked their way into success, which makes them feel as though anyone could do the same and thus no public assistance is warranted. This is the same exact line of thinking that leads religious fanatics to assume that because they never needed insulin in addition to prayer to recover from their illnesses that they can deny their type 1 diabetic child insulin and blame his death on lack of prayer. Insulin shots are just as unnatural as government benefits, but I don't know many people who'd advocate for letting childhood diabetics better themselves.
Until you've lived every other human being's life on the planet, you can't assume that your own life experience proves anything about how possible it is for some other person to get by. This doesn't mean we are then morally required to have the state pay for everyone, but rather it means that any decision you make to actively oppose state support for others for the reasons you stated will be the product of self-satisfying blame the victim rationalization. You should acknowledge that such a system will always neglect the needy for a perceived greater good of property freedom. If that's where your priorities are at, that's fine, but don't pretend that such a system would allow everyone to fend for themselves if only they try hard enough or that anyone who does fail under such a system will always deserve it. |
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scotty12347
Joined: 16 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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As a Brit, America seems a very nice place to live, if you have plenty of money.
In England, if you lose your job and have no saving and suddenly get an illness, you would get treatment paid for, no matter what it is. Sure, you will have to wait a while longer, but it will be treated, and you could always get private healthcare if you wish to do so.
Also, you can claim for jobseekers allowance whilst looking for employment, im not sure if this is implemented in the USA
I've been watching a program about Jamie Oliver in America and it shows that being poor in America is much harder than it is in countries with more state protection such as those in the UK. I just think a lot of people stand to benefit from a government healthcare system, and i would assume that the people arguing against the healthcare bill are pretty wealthy, leading back to my first point. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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| scotty12347 wrote: |
As a Brit, America seems a very nice place to live, if you have plenty of money.
In England, if you lose your job and have no saving and suddenly get an illness, you would get treatment paid for, no matter what it is. Sure, you will have to wait a while longer, but it will be treated, and you could always get private healthcare if you wish to do so. |
Yeah. In America, if you're one of the lucky middle class or above kids, you'll be fine up until you get seriously ill for the first time after college, at which point you'll be under some shoddy partial coverage from your job's group insurance if you're lucky, or completely lacking coverage because your job doesn't offer it or you weren't employed at the time. Either way, you're in for some serious debt if it's an emergency and probably no treatment at all if it's deemed non-emergency and beyond your coverage plan or it's deemed non-emergency and you don't have insurance.
Also, it's a TOTAL myth that you have to wait longer to get treatment in socialist countries than you would in America. People routinely get stuck with appointments set for two months later or more with specialists here too (and that's if you're already a patient), depending on the specialty and region in the US. And you don't get any treatment if you don't have the coverage and it isn't an emergency, so even if socialist medical care were slower (which it isn't), that argument would amount to saying that it's better for poor people to be denied non-emergency health care altogether so long as wealthier people don't have to wait an extra couple weeks for their non-emergency health care.
| scotty12347 wrote: |
| Also, you can claim for jobseekers allowance whilst looking for employment, im not sure if this is implemented in the USA |
You can deduct expenses incurred during a job search in your taxes to some extent assuming you end up getting a job so you can make taxable money in the first place. There is also an unemployment benefits system in place, but to qualify you have to prove that you had been working for a certain amount of time beforehand and that you were laid off through no fault of your own.
| scotty12347 wrote: |
| I've been watching a program about Jamie Oliver in America and it shows that being poor in America is much harder than it is in countries with more state protection such as those in the UK. I just think a lot of people stand to benefit from a government healthcare system, and i would assume that the people arguing against the healthcare bill are pretty wealthy, leading back to my first point. |
You'd think that, wouldn't you? As a general rule of thumb, the breakdown between proponents and opponents of public health care reform as well as all other issues of state protection reform is usually split with the upper middle class and regular upper class supporting said reforms while the poor, lower middle class, and extreme upper class tend to oppose it. The former groups tend to support the Democrats (the American liberal party) while the latter groups tend to support the Republicans (the American conservative party). Among the latter groups, the poor and lower middle class have traditionally been the religious right while the extreme upper class comprises the base for the fiscal right, which means Republican politicians have to constantly balance anti-intellectualism, empty jingoist rhetoric, and internal social intolerance to appeal to the religious right with the need to ensure their wealthier backers that they won't be screwing around with their tax bracket. They seem to have done this pretty successfully in the past by encouraging the innate tendency among the uneducated to blame the victim, even when that victim is their self or their families or their friends. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Kimbop wrote: |
| The government OWES me free healthcare. No need to be responsible, take care of myself, or even look for a job, because the nanny state will provide: 1) My medical treatment 2) My healthy food 3) My housing 4) My schooling. I'm planning on having 5 kids, and I see no need to study hard in school. Heck, my kids can get a unionized janitor job when they grow up, so need to force them to better themselves. Anyone who disagrees with me is a selfish moderate-caucasian-democrat whose hardworking daddy should be ashamed of himself for supporting slavery 150 years ago. |
I come from a country where health care is provided, and none of the above applies. Your attempt is futile and misleading.
1)The government is FOR the people, that means they should act in their best interest. Health care provides for a parachute when things go wrong. You cannot abuse health care, when you are healthy, there is nothing to take care of, but when you are sick, you can't go out and work.
2) The government is not making prepackaged health food for all to eat. But it does have the obligation to EDUCATE their population. An educated population takes better care of themselves.
3) When you are poor and uneducated, but have children, how are you as a country going to provide "Equal Opportunity" to those children. Basic housing can go a very long way for children to become part of society, rather then not.
4)Education is a significant factor in any country. Low education means low productivity. The rest you can imagine yourself. What is a problem is that they are lowering educational standards, this is a worrying trend, because it is actually undoing the positive effects of education.
I don't know what you were trying to achieve with your over generalization. |
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