Our tax dollars hard at work

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't actually disagree with what you're saying, like I said it was probably the wrong choice of words. There is however a knee-jerk reaction across the pond that when anyone mentions the word "social" they hear "communism".

I don't disagree with your "kneejerk" assertion. Far, far too many folks are just against it on principle but when asked CANNOT elucidate what principle(s) they're standing on. Nor can they actually explain, say, the differences between socialist-lite like you have in France and hard communists/statists like you have in the Putin regime.

We actually have a worst problem here in the UK in terms of people living off the state all their lives. I actually know a few of these teenage mums in my village who specifically fell pregnant to get a house and benefits (and presumably to move away from a difficult home). I don't particularly enjoy watching my tax go to these people, but all they are doing is playing the system. Then they have more kids and get more money. then their kids do the same...

I grew up in southeast Louisiana which was and is a bastion of welfare-state moochers. Nothing like driving by a dilapidated house with no A/C or heat, screen doors only, junk in the yard, 6 people sitting in chairs on the porch during a workday and a fucking Cadillac STS sitting in the driveway, while I was 17, working a full-time job AND going to school, living with parents and driving a 15-year-old pickup truck. And they were probably first in line to whine and complain when we instituted welfare reform back in the 90s requiring they actually actively look for a job.

But what would happen if you just pulled the plug?

Now that is a fabulous question with a completely fucked up complex set of answers. I'll have a go at it but I think faster than I can type.

The way I see it, we here in the USofA have observed the very gradual erosion of personal responsibility such that 50 years of inertia has built up. We have so many people either wholly on welfare support or taking advantage of subsidies to maintain a lifestyle they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford that if we just cut off the spigot tomorrow, we'd probably see mass riots, the collapse of any civil order in major population centers, and tens of thousands of folks would probably starve to death because they were suddenly lost and unable to even find food without someone helping them. I could go into a bit of the "harder" side of my views on this, which is that it might be better for the host to weed out the parasites in a more absolute fashion, but I struggle with that one as I'm loathe to condemn anyone to death outright just because they're a fucking moron. How many of our great citizens today came from what was borderline destitute poverty? Problem is, anytime these...people riot, they end up NOT destroying the object of their hatred, but instead destroy the shops and businesses and civil offices in their OWN DAMN COMMUNITIES! This would be akin to a slave living in a small shack on his master's plantation saying, "Ya know what, fuck this, I'm being taken advantage of and I want more food!" and then going out and burning down his own shack and the grain silo the slaveowner uses to feed his slaves. The moronity of that position absolutely baffles me.

The problem with NOT getting us unfucked from the depredations of the welfare nanny state and class-warfare-based progressive taxation is that if we keep going they way we're going, we're going to run out of money and the system is going to collapse _anyway_, resulting in probably MORE death and destruction nation-wide (and world-wide to be honest) than would happen if we just yanked out the carpet. Do they not see that the more of them are on the dole, the less people like me are out here paying taxes into the system that props them up and eventually they're gonna run out of taxpayers? Who's gonna build houses for them when the house-builders give up and become dolists, too?

It's freaking maddening to watch, but in fairness I'm somewhat educated and cared enough to learn some of the history and mechanics of economic and governmental systems. I don't expect everyone to study the same things but I do expect people who VOTE to actually understand what the fuck they're voting for. Actions have consequences.

A friend I eat lunch with regularly proposed a great idea: let's restrict voting to people who actually pay into the tax system. If you actually get more money back from the government than you paid in, you do not get to vote. Now, you might say, "But that's just fiat by the rich!" OK, there are two easy ways to fix that situation: 1) go get a fucking job, or 2) change the tax code so EVERYONE pays the same taxes (such as the fair tax or a flat-rate consumption tax). Now everyone's on the same playing field and everyone has skin in the game. How long do you think it would take for the Great Unwashed to realize how they're been fucking themselves over? Well, they'd have to stop listening to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Malik Shabazz and the other race/class hustlers out there first but you get the idea.

TL;DR = we'd do far more good for the poor to actually do the Right Thing and make it a fair system to ALL than we do by Feel Good regulations that allow certain people to game the system for no actual work.