Our welfare system recipients.

[VMI77]

I saw one posting indicating that we don't have any sort of constitutional based responsibility to care for them. And I agree from the legal point of view, nothing in the constitution requires that... But making that comparison is a bit like looking for a pineapple in an vegetable garden. Therefore we let them survive on public good will, economic outreach from religious organizations, and private funding. Sounds good - can we count on it in all economic conditions?

You seem to be confused about what the Constitution says and what it means. The Constitution is a charter for limited government. It defines what the Federal government is ALLOWED to do, and all those functions not specifically enumerated come under the sole power of the individual States. The Constitution DOES NOT ALLOW the Federal Government to provide welfare. Now granted, a liberal activist president (FDR) in collusion with a corrupt and dishonest Congress and a activist Supreme Court have deliberately re-interpreted the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean, but its clear meaning is quite obvious and simple. That said, if the government actually followed the Constitution, there is nothing prohibiting individual states from doling out all the welfare their residents are willing to cough up in taxes. And there are all kinds of reasons why the Founders wrote the Constitution the way they did --one of them being that the States were intended to be individual experiments for self-governance, both by individual demonstrations of what works and what doesn't, and as refuges for those citizens living in states that strayed too far in the wrong direction --another system of checks and balances.

It doesn't matter one iota what you think is good or how much money you're willing to cough up in taxes to the Feds to support the socialist notion of a guaranteed standard of living; the Federal government has no right to take my money and give it to someone else so they can enjoy someone's idea of a nice standard of living. Furthermore, no one has any right to any particular standard of living at someone else's expense. I most certainly would advocate a return to the system of the 30's and 40's. My father came out to California in the 30's without any money and without a job. He did whatever work he could find and saved his money. The medical system worked just fine --and everything was cheaper....after adjusting for inflation. Everything would be much cheaper now too if the government was out of the medical business, both in terms of inflating demand, and in terms of facilitating monopolistic practices that enable providers to charge outrageous non-market prices. The fact is NO ONE has the right to take wealth by force from someone else because they or the government say they "need" it.

There was recently an article in the media showing how prices for the same procedure vary from about $25,000 to $125,000. This is pure robbery by the medical establishment in collusion with the government. My son recently had an appendectomy. Because he is only employed part time and has no medical insurance, he was charged MORE for the procedure than if he'd had insurance --about $32,000. That price is absurd when you look at prices for procedures insurance won't pay for, like Lasik, and breast augmentation. Medical care is unaffordable because the Feds and the insurance industry have made it expensive.

No one has the right to expect me to pay for their medical treatment, emergency or otherwise. Does that make me a mean old Capitalist who wants to let poor people die at the Emergency Room door? No, I don't want people who truly need emergency care to die without it; but then, that's not what 90% of emergency room care is about anymore. I would gladly contribute money --charity-- for such people and there are many ways such costs could be borne without wealth distribution and a socialist nanny state. It would be charity....and at times charity should come with a bit of stigma attached, and at all times be received with gratitude, unlike "entitlements." However, no one has any right to live an unhealthy life, drink alcohol, get injured doing something they're not supposed to be doing, be in the country legally or illegally, etc, and be entitled to medical treatment on my dime. The situations most people find themselves in are the product of choices they make for themselves, good and bad. No one is entitled to my labor because they made bad choices. People who have children they can't pay for are not entitled to have me pay for them. When bad choices are subsidized and rewarded you get more bad choices.

Someone else in the thread, TAM I think, quoted Benjamin Franklin, about not making the poor comfortable in their poverty. The "entitlement" system and resulting mentality is fundamentally immoral --robbing Peter to pay Paul-- so disastrous consequences are inevitable. The moral degeneracy bred by a system that takes from productive people and gives to unproductive people and attempts to disguise the reality of the process by hobbling the notion of "charity" in order to cater to the "self-esteem" of the unproductive, and calling the proceeds of the theft in their behalf "entitlements," is unmeasurable, but it has pervaded the entire culture for the worst. It has resulted in generations of people who think someone else owes them a living by virtue of their mere existence. People have children they can't afford knowing that someone else will help pay for them, while people like my son and his wife, who would dearly love to have children, take responsibility for themselves and wait until their circumstances allow them to afford children. At some point people get tired of being responsible when those who are irresponsible are rewarded for their bad choices and bad behavior. A system that is fundamentally immoral cannot produce a moral outcome; and without morality we get degeneracy.

[VMI77]

Someone pointed out that we all receive some form of assistance. It could be as simply as federal funds for our roads here in Texas, but we all receive something.

Sounds like you've been reading too many Obama speeches, or you really took his "you didn't build that" rhetoric to heart. Where do Federal funds come from exactly? Contrary to what liberals seem to think, they come from the pockets of the productive; they're not conjured out of thin air, or the progeny of government employees. I'm paying an enormous amount of taxes. I'm not receiving anything, I'm paying for it.

I think many are proponents of ending all forms of Federal assistance,

I'm a proponent of the Constitutional Republic created by our Founders; and that means I'm a proponent of following the highest law of the land, which does not grant the Feds any power to grant most of their so called assistance.

How many could pay for their retirement out of pocket on savings alone? No social security. No medicaid. No medicare. How many could afford to self pay for private insurance at retirement age? I know many will blame Obama for current costs, so take the cost of healthcare under Bush and it's projected growth rate. For me, I can comfortably self-retire on something like $3M at 65. That takes care of stock market crashes, the off chance that I live until 90, and insolvent social security. That amount of money keeps me in a middle class lifestyle. I probably won't hit $3M... Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Retire on $500k without any form of assistance in our current economy and I hope you're really healthy, don't live that long, or make great investment choices... If you think you don't have to worry about it, you're not looking around.

In other words, you're in favor of a Ponzi scheme that robs one generation in order to fund a middle class lifestyle for another generation that chose not to save for retirement. All Ponzi schemes eventually end in disaster for those who haven't already cleared their loot from it. The government can't conjure money out of thin air (not for long anyway)....it can only come from what productive people produce and save. The current Ponzi scheme is already on the road to collapse. You can't take out more than you put in (the case for virtually all current retirees) except by finding enough suckers to add money to the pot. If the wreck of a government we have can invest your money and pay you a retirement out of those funds, so can you. What you're really advocating is that you should get more out than what you put in, paid for by someone else: IOW, wealth redistribution.

No one has a right to a middle class life style. Everyone has the right to own what they produce and live accordingly. No, you can't save a lot of money when you go out to dinner every night, buy lunch everyday, go to the movies, buy big screen TVs, drive nice new cars, have a boat, RV, and jet skis, and finance homes you can't really afford. How is that MY problem? That's a choice people make and then whine about when they have to face the music of unemployment or retirement and have taken zero responsibility for their own lives. My son has only been able to get work part time, through no fault of his own, and he's married with wife not working, yet he manages to save money. He doesn't have a new car --I help him keep his car running. He and his wife don't go out to dinner at restaurants, or to the movies. OTOH, he hasn't borrowed any money either, because he understands that debt is a trap. He isn't living a middle class lifestyle because he can't afford it and takes responsibility for himself and his wife.

And yes, I fully expect to pay for my retirement out of my own savings, as I don't expect to have any other choice. Furthermore, how did it become a right to retire at 65, or younger? I don't expect to be able to just live a life of leisure once I hit some magic age. In any case, there are about to be a whole lot of people who are going to find out what it's like to have to take care of themselves.

without some change no one but the wealthy will be able to afford healthcare without assistance.

That's true, but there are other remedies than socialism or Obamacare. Some of them are going to show up on their own.

I should say we weren't a Socialist country.

Agreed.

[RogueUSMC]

No one is entitled to my labor because they made bad choices.

[Panda]

No one is entitled to my labor because they made bad choices.

[cb1000rider]

You seem to be confused about what the Constitution says and what it means. The Constitution is a charter for limited government. It defines what the Federal government is ALLOWED to do, and all those functions not specifically enumerated come under the sole power of the individual States. The Constitution DOES NOT ALLOW the Federal Government to provide welfare. Now granted, a liberal activist president (FDR) in collusion with a corrupt and dishonest Congress and a activist Supreme Court have deliberately re-interpreted the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean, but its clear meaning is quite obvious and simple. That said, if the government actually followed the Constitution, there is nothing prohibiting individual states from doling out all the welfare their residents are willing to cough up in taxes. And there are all kinds of reasons why the Founders wrote the Constitution the way they did --one of them being that the States were intended to be individual experiments for self-governance, both by individual demonstrations of what works and what doesn't, and as refuges for those citizens living in states that strayed too far in the wrong direction --another system of checks and balances.

So reading between the constitutional lecture lines, you seem to be saying that you think welfare is a job for the state.. And again, I'm looking for solutions, so I completely accept that as a reasonable solution. I can't say that it will solve the problem, as it only passes the burden of spending from federal taxes to state taxes (or property tax here in TX)... That assumes everything stays the same.

I do agree that states seem to have a better handle on the regional problems, certainly better than the federal government... So I certainly like that aspect.

In regard to the constitutional lecture. You guys can do that all day long, but the reality is that we pay taxes (too many) and currently pay into a system that takes from those who make money and at some level redistributes it. I see nothing in the constitution that "allows" for that, but we're not going to get the "reset" that you guys keep talking about any time soon, so why not work within the bounds of what we can change?

[VMI77]

So reading between the constitutional lecture lines, you seem to be saying that you think welfare is a job for the state.. And again, I'm looking for solutions, so I completely accept that as a reasonable solution. I can't say that it will solve the problem, as it only passes the burden of spending from federal taxes to state taxes (or property tax here in TX)... That assumes everything stays the same.

I'm saying the whole concept of welfare as implemented in the US and Europe is fundamentally wrong on a moral level and fundamentally flawed on a practical level, but yes, it's a job for the states, and possibly, even localities --like counties or large cities. Being on welfare shouldn't be "comfortable" it should be unpleasant, so that people want to get off of it. And it should be impossible to be on it beyond a certain period of time --which I suggest would need to be flexible and determined based on prevailing economic conditions. Ideally, it should be based on a charity model, and not run by the government. But if it's paid for by tax dollars it should come with other conditions, such as not being able to vote while receiving it, requirements to work, group housing, etc --essentially military like conditions without the combat.

I do agree that states seem to have a better handle on the regional problems, certainly better than the federal government... So I certainly like that aspect.

This is important for several reasons. Among them: the lower the governmental level the more influence taxpayers are likely to have in shaping the program; as you suggest, regional differences can be accounted for; and different implementations will help determine what works best and what doesn't work; and states that are too generous will find themselves home to a larger number of welfare recipients, which if not somewhat self-correcting will at least save the other states some money.

In regard to the constitutional lecture. You guys can do that all day long, but the reality is that we pay taxes (too many) and currently pay into a system that takes from those who make money and at some level redistributes it. I see nothing in the constitution that "allows" for that, but we're not going to get the "reset" that you guys keep talking about any time soon, so why not work within the bounds of what we can change?

There is a difference between a tax system that takes money from people to fund Constitutionally allowed government functions, such as national defense, and which results in some people getting money for performing those functions, and a transfer payment from someone productive to someone unproductive. As I alluded to earlier, as a practical matter I'm not all that concerned about the welfare system per se because it is eventually going to collapse under its own weight. My concern is how the moral decay it has helped foster has contributed to our moral degeneracy as a nation. Tuning the welfare system isn't going to change that and turn around will take generations and the collectivists control the educational system from bottom to top, and they control the media, except at the moment, for the intenet. I therefore don't believe we're going to get a reset unless some catastrophic event occurs, such as an economic collapse, so to me, fiddling with the welfare system is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

[gthaustex]

I saw one posting indicating that we don't have any sort of constitutional based responsibility to care for them. And I agree from the legal point of view, nothing in the constitution requires that... But making that comparison is a bit like looking for a pineapple in an vegetable garden. Therefore we let them survive on public good will, economic outreach from religious organizations, and private funding. Sounds good - can we count on it in all economic conditions?

You seem to be confused about what the Constitution says and what it means. The Constitution is a charter for limited government. It defines what the Federal government is ALLOWED to do, and all those functions not specifically enumerated come under the sole power of the individual States. The Constitution DOES NOT ALLOW the Federal Government to provide welfare. Now granted, a liberal activist president (FDR) in collusion with a corrupt and dishonest Congress and a activist Supreme Court have deliberately re-interpreted the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean, but its clear meaning is quite obvious and simple. That said, if the government actually followed the Constitution, there is nothing prohibiting individual states from doling out all the welfare their residents are willing to cough up in taxes. And there are all kinds of reasons why the Founders wrote the Constitution the way they did --one of them being that the States were intended to be individual experiments for self-governance, both by individual demonstrations of what works and what doesn't, and as refuges for those citizens living in states that strayed too far in the wrong direction --another system of checks and balances.

It doesn't matter one iota what you think is good or how much money you're willing to cough up in taxes to the Feds to support the socialist notion of a guaranteed standard of living; the Federal government has no right to take my money and give it to someone else so they can enjoy someone's idea of a nice standard of living. Furthermore, no one has any right to any particular standard of living at someone else's expense. I most certainly would advocate a return to the system of the 30's and 40's. My father came out to California in the 30's without any money and without a job. He did whatever work he could find and saved his money. The medical system worked just fine --and everything was cheaper....after adjusting for inflation. Everything would be much cheaper now too if the government was out of the medical business, both in terms of inflating demand, and in terms of facilitating monopolistic practices that enable providers to charge outrageous non-market prices. The fact is NO ONE has the right to take wealth by force from someone else because they or the government say they "need" it.

There was recently an article in the media showing how prices for the same procedure vary from about $25,000 to $125,000. This is pure robbery by the medical establishment in collusion with the government. My son recently had an appendectomy. Because he is only employed part time and has no medical insurance, he was charged MORE for the procedure than if he'd had insurance --about $32,000. That price is absurd when you look at prices for procedures insurance won't pay for, like Lasik, and breast augmentation. Medical care is unaffordable because the Feds and the insurance industry have made it expensive.

No one has the right to expect me to pay for their medical treatment, emergency or otherwise. Does that make me a mean old Capitalist who wants to let poor people die at the Emergency Room door? No, I don't want people who truly need emergency care to die without it; but then, that's not what 90% of emergency room care is about anymore. I would gladly contribute money --charity-- for such people and there are many ways such costs could be borne without wealth distribution and a socialist nanny state. It would be charity....and at times charity should come with a bit of stigma attached, and at all times be received with gratitude, unlike "entitlements." However, no one has any right to live an unhealthy life, drink alcohol, get injured doing something they're not supposed to be doing, be in the country legally or illegally, etc, and be entitled to medical treatment on my dime. The situations most people find themselves in are the product of choices they make for themselves, good and bad. No one is entitled to my labor because they made bad choices. People who have children they can't pay for are not entitled to have me pay for them. When bad choices are subsidized and rewarded you get more bad choices.

Someone else in the thread, TAM I think, quoted Benjamin Franklin, about not making the poor comfortable in their poverty. The "entitlement" system and resulting mentality is fundamentally immoral --robbing Peter to pay Paul-- so disastrous consequences are inevitable. The moral degeneracy bred by a system that takes from productive people and gives to unproductive people and attempts to disguise the reality of the process by hobbling the notion of "charity" in order to cater to the "self-esteem" of the unproductive, and calling the proceeds of the theft in their behalf "entitlements," is unmeasurable, but it has pervaded the entire culture for the worst. It has resulted in generations of people who think someone else owes them a living by virtue of their mere existence. People have children they can't afford knowing that someone else will help pay for them, while people like my son and his wife, who would dearly love to have children, take responsibility for themselves and wait until their circumstances allow them to afford children. At some point people get tired of being responsible when those who are irresponsible are rewarded for their bad choices and bad behavior. A system that is fundamentally immoral cannot produce a moral outcome; and without morality we get degeneracy.

Very well thought out and stated

[chuck j]

Lot of good thought going on , too bad that's all that we can do .

[bizarrenormality]

Lot of good thought going on , too bad that's all that we can do .

That may be all you're willing to do but that's far from all we're capable of doing if we care enough.

[chuck j]

What are your thoughts ?

[VoiceofReason]

So most people have no problem with the government giving billions of our tax dollars to other countries but are against assistance for people in this country?

I don’t know what to say.

[The Annoyed Man]

Complaining is easy. Tell me what you (meaning everyone) would do with the truly disabled and unemployable.

I think that's a great question. I saw one posting indicating that we don't have any sort of constitutional based responsibility to care for them. And I agree from the legal point of view, nothing in the constitution requires that... But making that comparison is a bit like looking for a pineapple in an vegetable garden. Therefore we let them survive on public good will, economic outreach from religious organizations, and private funding. Sounds good - can we count on it in all economic conditions?

No, we can't count on it, but then counting on government to do it isn't exactly working out, is it? ....no matter how high our taxes are....

I would establish a minimum standard of care/lifestyle and pay for it with tax dollars. I don't like it, but that's the choice I'd make. Lots of people here aren't going to like that, but how many are going to raise their hands and say that we should handle it the way we did before the 1940s?

First of all, go ahead and pay more taxes than you owe. I promise to neither protest nor try and stop you. If everybody who wanted or was willing to pay higher taxes simply shut their yaps and went ahead and paid additional taxes (roughly half the voters), is there anybody pollyanna enough to imagine that a grateful government would funnel all that extra money into supporting the poor? Please! Why do you imagine that if all of us had to pay higher taxes that government would funnel all that extra money into supporting the poor. cb1000rider, you're a smart guy. I don't for a minute think that you are that pollyanna. We can't even count on Congress to protect our Social Security investments by keeping it out of the general fund. What would make you, a rational man, think that we could count on Congress to sequester the additional tax money for relief of the poor? Simply not going to happen. It is my observation that LOTS of people say they'd be willing to pay more taxes to accomplish that goal, but NONE of them will do it unless it is compulsory for everybody. So in the end, they're not really interested in charity for charity's sake. What they want is for government to capture more of "everyone else's money." And that goes for everyone from your local mail carrier all the way up to Warren Buffet.....who is certainly in a better position than all but one or two other Americans to pay higher taxes....but won't put his money where his mouth is.

Secondly, I am old enough that pre-1940s was still fresh memory for my parents before I was born. Do you want to know what saved the economy? It wasn't FDR's New Deal, it was a little thing called WW2. Until the outbreak of WW2, FDR simply squandered the treasury in giving people "make-work" to keep them busy and collecting check, and staying out of trouble. But, THEY WORKED FOR THE MONEY! They built the great dams. They built highways. They built the Mount Rushmore Monument......etc., etc., etc. In other words, America received some benefit in exchange for the charity. Furthermore, some of FDR's economic consultants said in later years that the New Deal probably delayed economic recovery instead of helping it. It exceeds the mandate of the Constitution to provide charity of any kind whatsoever, but if you want government to provide it, then I as a taxpayer have a right to expect something in exchange for it. Put the poor to work, at a less than minimum wage salary (as an incentive for them to seek a minimum wage job instead of staying on the dole), and then stand back and watch them get themselves out of their financial holes.

For the small percentage of unfortunates who are genuinely disabled due to quantifiable physical injury or severe psychiatric disorder, the nation can make some kind of accommodation, and I would have no objection to putting money into that........if we cut money from somewhere else.....because government simply can't be all things to all people. But no more people on disability simply because they are too stressed out to work. We are ALL stressed out......particularly the self-employed such as myself.....and no more money to babymamas who keep adding ashcats to their family tree without a responsible and supportive father under the same roof.

Many years ago when I was young and single, I dated a young lady briefly. She was on welfare, and as a condition of her receiving it, she had to be involved in a job training program which she had to successfully complete in order to continue receiving welfare payments. Upon successful completion of the program, her welfare would be stopped. It was not open ended. She had to complete the program successfully by a certain date, or her welfare would be stopped. End result? She got a job.

It's the same sort of moral / ethical question when it comes to emergency medical care. Should we really turn people away from public care? In some cases, people will die as a result. I know that doctors are going to have a very hard time with that as a purely economic decision.

First of all, the law requires an ER to provide any and all life-saving care necessary, regardless of the patient's ability to pay for it. You are not allowed to transfer a patient from a private hospital ER to a county hospital ER if transferring the patient will put his/her health at risk. The patient must be stable and safe for transfer before they can be transferred, no matter how inconvenient that might be to the ER or the hospital in which it is located. I worked in an ER for years, and that's just a fact Jack. No hospital is going to withhold care and let a patient die simply because he or she is poor. That's not only a red herring, it's pretty insulting to the people who are actually going to provide that healthcare at the point where the rubber meets the road—many of whom...orderlies and lower order nurses and technicians....are living barely above the poverty level themselves because they are not at the top of the healthcare provision food chain.

Secondly, the problem with poor people in the system isn't the dying poor. It's the poor who use the ER as their personal physician, clogging up the system and needlessly burning up massive amounts of resources, each of whom HAS to be seen just for the ER staff to CYA and document that the patient is not dying but only has a common cold. For every dying gunshot poor patient an ER sees, that same ER will see hundreds of poor people with nothing more than the common cold. I don't know about you, but when I have a cold, I don't go to the doctor. A cold is a cold is a cold. It will go away in 7-8 days, pretty much no matter what you do, and you have to just deal with it. I don't go to the doctor for a cold because if I do, it takes about $140 out of my pocket for the visit. Poor people don't have to pay for those visits to the ER for their common cold, and so they go, even though it isn't medically necessary, and even though it is a boat anchor on the public healthcare system. It's free (to them), so why not go? "Spend more" is nothing more than a recipe for more of the same.

Now, I don't have it in for the poor, but the poor are a fact of life and even Jesus said they will always be with us. That which we do for the least of them, we do for Him, but that is a religious choice. If you make it anything more than the barest shoestring minimum of a government requirement, it is no longer charity, because real charity comes from the heart. The Widow's Mite was greater in the Lord's eyes than the largest charitable gift ever given, and the largest donation ever has no value in God's eyes if it comes from the heart of anyone but a cheerful giver. If it is paid in taxes under a threat of punishment for failure to pay, it is no longer given, it is taken, and now it is no longer a matter of the heart.

Taxes and charity are simply two completely incompatible notions.

[chuck j]

TAM put up a good post , many people really dont understand how social security came about . This video gives a lot of history on it .

http://www.ssa.gov/history/video/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Social security could have been a great thing for this country , social security did not fail , the politicians bled it dry in the late 60's and 70's then tossed it to the side to finance their own projects . Social security or any other program if left in the hands of government will never work because of the folks in charge of it .

[VMI77]

Secondly, the problem with poor people in the system isn't the dying poor. It's the poor who use the ER as their personal physician, clogging up the system and needlessly burning up massive amounts of resources, each of whom HAS to be seen just for the ER staff to CYA and document that the patient is not dying but only has a common cold. For every dying gunshot poor patient an ER sees, that same ER will see hundreds of poor people with nothing more than the common cold. I don't know about you, but when I have a cold, I don't go to the doctor. A cold is a cold is a cold. It will go away in 7-8 days, pretty much no matter what you do, and you have to just deal with it. I don't go to the doctor for a cold because if I do, it takes about $140 out of my pocket for the visit. Poor people don't have to pay for those visits to the ER for their common cold, and so they go, even though it isn't medically necessary, and even though it is a boat anchor on the public healthcare system. It's free (to them), so why not go? "Spend more" is nothing more than a recipe for more of the same.

And of course, that's why insurance plans have co-payments and deductibles, which don't apply to the poor. And they also have the time to go spend a few hours in an emergency room when they get a cold. I've made several emergency room trips with elderly parents and while there I've never seen anyone walk in who really needed emergency treatment.

[cb1000rider]

No, we can't count on it, but then counting on government to do it isn't exactly working out, is it? ....no matter how high our taxes are....

I'd say it's working pretty well for those that receive checks regularly. When is the last time that being cash flow negative as a country actually meant that someone didn't get a welfare or disability check. I'm talking about reliability here, nothing else.

First of all, go ahead and pay more taxes than you owe. I promise to neither protest nor try and stop you. If everybody who wanted or was willing to pay higher taxes simply shut their yaps and went ahead and paid additional taxes (roughly half the voters), is there anybody pollyanna enough to imagine that a grateful government would funnel all that extra money into supporting the poor? Please! Why do you imagine that if all of us had to pay higher taxes that government would funnel all that extra money into supporting the poor. cb1000rider, you're a smart guy. I don't for a minute think that you are that pollyanna. We can't even count on Congress to protect our Social Security investments by keeping it out of the general fund. What would make you, a rational man, think that we could count on Congress to sequester the additional tax money for relief of the poor? Simply not going to happen. It is my observation that LOTS of people say they'd be willing to pay more taxes to accomplish that goal, but NONE of them will do it unless it is compulsory for everybody. So in the end, they're not really interested in charity for charity's sake. What they want is for government to capture more of "everyone else's money." And that goes for everyone from your local mail carrier all the way up to Warren Buffet.....who is certainly in a better position than all but one or two other Americans to pay higher taxes....but won't put his money where his mouth is.

I dunno how we got off base here.
I'm not talking about additional funding to welfare or disability, I'm talking about less of it. It's less because I believe, strongly in the case of disability, that a simple status review every few years would likely shake off a lot of deadbeats. We were talking about what we do with the truly disabled and how those people continue to live their lives facing a potential cut-off of government support.

Second, I *would* vote to raise our taxes. I *would* voluntarily pay more. I'm making very unpopular statements, so I need to qualify them: I would do either or both under the condition that those funds went directly toward our deficit and we have a balanced budget resolution that makes it darn near impossible to run a deficit again, unless we have almost unilateral executive and congressional agreement in association with an event like a war. We've got a credit card bill. We need to pay it off. And yes, I realize that technically, we're "at war" right now. I would not pay more nor would I want to increase our taxes as the government is being run today. Those dollars would simply be swallowed up by another political faction sponsored by a special interest. And if there is one things we've proven over and over. Once we have big government, it's very difficult to reduce that footprint.

Secondly, I am old enough that pre-1940s was still fresh memory for my parents before I was born. Do you want to know what saved the economy? It wasn't FDR's New Deal, it was a little thing called WW2. Until the outbreak of WW2, FDR simply squandered the treasury in giving people "make-work" to keep them busy and collecting check, and staying out of trouble. But, THEY WORKED FOR THE MONEY! They built the great dams. They built highways. They built the Mount Rushmore Monument......etc., etc., etc. In other words, America received some benefit in exchange for the charity. Furthermore, some of FDR's economic consultants said in later years that the New Deal probably delayed economic recovery instead of helping it. It exceeds the mandate of the Constitution to provide charity of any kind whatsoever, but if you want government to provide it, then I as a taxpayer have a right to expect something in exchange for it. Put the poor to work, at a less than minimum wage salary (as an incentive for them to seek a minimum wage job instead of staying on the dole), and then stand back and watch them get themselves out of their financial holes.

I don't have the wisdom of your years, but historically I understand that two things happened economically that align with what you're saying:
1) WW2 jump started the economy.
2) The new deal also put massive amounts of money into the economy. Essentially this provided a basis for some modern economic theories that suggest you get money liberal in economic depressions.

And I'm with you... I'm not for free lifetime benefits for those that can't work. Those that can work should. If they can work a little bit, they should. The reality is that the current system discourages them from earning on their own. And we've got a bunch of people that aren't really disabled getting moderate-level retirement checks.

For the small percentage of unfortunates who are genuinely disabled due to quantifiable physical injury or severe psychiatric disorder, the nation can make some kind of accommodation, and I would have no objection to putting money into that........if we cut money from somewhere else.....because government simply can't be all things to all people. But no more people on disability simply because they are too stressed out to work. We are ALL stressed out......particularly the self-employed such as myself.....and no more money to babymamas who keep adding ashcats to their family tree without a responsible and supportive father under the same roof.

Once again, you and I see eye to eye here. I don't have enough faith in my fellow brothers and sisters to believe that they'd spring for a reliable means of living for those that are truly disabled. That's an opinion, not a fact. The disconnect you and I seem to have is that I believe we're paying for this already. And I think the price can and should go down by shaking off the dead beats.

The babby-mama issue is harder. Technically the additional funds are for the additional kids. You can't take money away from the mom without taking it away from the kid. The kid had nothing to do with that bad situation and often that situation leads to a greater social burden down the road. It's the same problem with child support. Dads (and some moms) provide funding to another adult for the kid, but the reality is that those funds can be spent on anything...

Many years ago when I was young and single, I dated a young lady briefly. She was on welfare, and as a condition of her receiving it, she had to be involved in a job training program which she had to successfully complete in order to continue receiving welfare payments. Upon successful completion of the program, her welfare would be stopped. It was not open ended. She had to complete the program successfully by a certain date, or her welfare would be stopped. End result? She got a job.

I love that idea.. And I don't know how long it's been since you were young and single, but I know that since the 1980s it's been progressively harder to get and stay on welfare. That's why people have shifted to disability, which right now is a lifetime grant backed by a large set of lawyers that make a living having it granted. To be honest, I know it's an out used by insurance companies. If they have to pay out on disability insurance, they can provide attorneys to payees that will work to get the customer on the federal roles. Most disability insurance has an "alternate income" clause.

First of all, the law requires an ER to provide any and all life-saving care necessary, regardless of the patient's ability to pay for it. You are not allowed to transfer a patient from a private hospital ER to a county hospital ER if transferring the patient will put his/her health at risk. The patient must be stable and safe for transfer before they can be transferred, no matter how inconvenient that might be to the ER or the hospital in which it is located. I worked in an ER for years, and that's just a fact Jack. No hospital is going to withhold care and let a patient die simply because he or she is poor. That's not only a red herring, it's pretty insulting to the people who are actually going to provide that healthcare at the point where the rubber meets the road—many of whom...orderlies and lower order nurses and technicians....are living barely above the poverty level themselves because they are not at the top of the healthcare provision food chain.

I see it the same way you do. But we've got members of this forum that advocate no care of any kind for the non-citizens which is why I bring it up. I think that's a real problem. And advocating that is an ethical decision in my mind. No doctor that I know would refuse care in an emergency.

Secondly, the problem with poor people in the system isn't the dying poor. It's the poor who use the ER as their personal physician, clogging up the system and needlessly burning up massive amounts of resources, each of whom HAS to be seen just for the ER staff to CYA and document that the patient is not dying but only has a common cold. For every dying gunshot poor patient an ER sees, that same ER will see hundreds of poor people with nothing more than the common cold. I don't know about you, but when I have a cold, I don't go to the doctor. A cold is a cold is a cold. It will go away in 7-8 days, pretty much no matter what you do, and you have to just deal with it. I don't go to the doctor for a cold because if I do, it takes about $140 out of my pocket for the visit. Poor people don't have to pay for those visits to the ER for their common cold, and so they go, even though it isn't medically necessary, and even though it is a boat anchor on the public healthcare system. It's free (to them), so why not go? "Spend more" is nothing more than a recipe for more of the same.

Yep. 100% agree.

Now, I don't have it in for the poor, but the poor are a fact of life and even Jesus said they will always be with us. That which we do for the least of them, we do for Him, but that is a religious choice. If you make it anything more than the barest shoestring minimum of a government requirement, it is no longer charity, because real charity comes from the heart. The Widow's Mite was greater in the Lord's eyes than the largest charitable gift ever given, and the largest donation ever has no value in God's eyes if it comes from the heart of anyone but a cheerful giver. If it is paid in taxes under a threat of punishment for failure to pay, it is no longer given, it is taken, and now it is no longer a matter of the heart.

Yet you advocate some level of government care for those that are truely poor and disabled, just as I do... If I read you correctly above. You just don't want it to cost more than it does already.

And I can agree with your constitutional assessments also, but the difference is that I don't expect a sudden constitutional reset. I tend to work from where we are today rather than where we "should" be constitutionally.... I see a huge constitutional erosion in terms of our freedoms being taken away in the name of security already...