Does that 25% include her own healthcare?
@goofyballer - sorry post crossed with you moving the other posts
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Naw all her taxes go to the lazy people taking advantage of them
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Zap,
If youâre not extracting resources from the earth or directly turning things into other more valuable things then youâre a leech. You just do it in a more socially acceptable way then this person who upsets you. The whole western economy is based on people trying to get money for doing as little as possible.
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+1 to office workers being lazy
These days a large chunk of peoples weekly hours are spent on social media and staying late to keep up the appearance of productivity. Thereâs a reason that companies whoâve moved to a 4 day week havenât seen a drop in output.
A soon to be ex office worker.
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One interesting psychological phenomenon is that even if people only work a small percentage of the time at the office and goof off the rest of the time, they are generally miserable 100% of the time in the office. So they feel like theyâre âworkingâ because they feel like theyâre suffering.
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Yeah, as someone who commishes a few fantasy baseball leagues, itâs hilarious how hard it is to get a response about league issues during the weekend, but man, during office hours people really suddenly have a lot to say!
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Most of them are miserable and do just enough to keep their job because they know they wonât be rewarded for working any harder.
Shit, I was exactly the same when I worked as a paper pusher in my early 20s. Couldnât pay me 6 figures to go back to menial office work.
Yes, because apart from a few obvious cases of very high or low performance that everyone can see performance review systems reward friends, arselickers and people very good at selling small achievements as major ones ie bullshitters.
Gaming that situation is the intelligent thing to do for people without a good alternative.
The issue I have with system gaming is that it inherently weakens and discredits the system youâre gaming.
Prana had a terrible experience with getting welfare when he needed it, and I think thatâs because people gamed it (and letâs be clear these people were always mostly white in the US not minorities⌠one of the many ways minorities have been routinely screwed in the US is through being denied benefits on literally any excuse) in very visible ways and got powerful negative emotional reactions out of people, then took that emotional reaction from personal experience and conjured up âwelfare queensâ who werenât just undeserving but black for that racism multiplier. Those emotional reactions were then weaponized by right wing politicians to convince people in the bottom 85% that the social safety net was for other people who were abusing it and not to protect them if something went wrong in their lives.
Iâm very pro obliterating poverty. I donât think itâs politically feasible to do means tested welfare in this political meta because of how easy it is to build propaganda that attacks it⌠so I think the best way to obliterate poverty is to give every adult in the US enough money every month that if they want to live a basic lifestyle they donât have to work at all.
In that scenario Zara would be getting the same amount of money from the state as her neighbor, and sheâd be getting her job income besides. She could be netting slightly less and probably still feel a lot less bitter. Her neighbor also wouldnât be incentivized to not find things to do with her time.
Man this is total bullshit.
People take a few instances and act as though everybodyâs doing that.
The whole welfare recipients being cheaters is projection. Capitalists think that since they would cheat the welfare system if they needed it then everybody else would do it as well. Shitting on welfare reflects poorly on them not on those who receive it.
Honestly, I wouldnât give a shit if people did cheat it. Countries have an obligation to take care of the least well-off of their people and if a few people do exploit that then so be it. Itâs a worthwhile sacrifice to take care of those who donât.
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Dude⌠the fact that youâve never been poor is super obvious here. Thereâs no demographic as bitter about welfare recipients as the working poor who make barely too much to get benefits. Itâs because they are working, very hard, to get barely more than the welfare recipients are getting and it rubs them the wrong way. They also generally live in the same places and have a lot of social contact with one another.
I know this because I spent the first 22ish years of my life being poor and mostly knowing poor people.
Youâre not envious of anyone, but thatâs not a typical experience. Envy is the emotional reaction weâre trying to get rid of to pass these policies. Just because you canât see it because youâre not experiencing it doesnât mean it isnât real.
Itâs amazing how fast leftyâs get just as irrational as right wing people when you talk about reforming one of their institutions (the welfare state). We can push massively more money through a universal system and actually eliminate poverty⌠or we can keep fighting about the minutiae of who gets what like the right wants us to. The best way to solve this exact conversation is to give everyone flat benefits. Itâs appealing for the same emotional reasons that the flat tax gets traction with people who it would absolutely fuck the living daylights out of
There are just about zero poor people who donât know some asshole like Zaraâs neighbor. Itâs not just that they are getting government benefits, itâs that they use them to make being toxic into a sustainable lifestyle. It turns out itâs hard to give money out to large groups of people without some people sucking in a loud/large/public way. The only obvious solution I see to that is to just give the benefits to everyone so that they have nothing to feel envious of.
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Iâve been poor, when I was younger and in a badly paid public sector job. I was mainly bitter about high earners using loop holes to escape paying their taxes. As far as I was concerned if some poor people dependent on benefits could game the system for a few extra quid a week, good for them because the welfare system was inadequate.
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Oh thereâs plenty of people to feel bitter about. And nobody has as much bitterness to distribute as someone in the group that works the most hours for the least money.
I donât think youâre from the US. In the UK I feel like thereâs a good deal more working class solidarity. In the US theyâve done a really good job of getting us to identify with other aspects of our identity. When I was growing up there wasnât very much class resentment, although that is changing rapidly. Our whole society runs hard on the myth of meritocracy lol.
The welfare system isnât just about giving people money. Itâs about keeping them housed, fed, healthy, educated and out of prison. Those things donât just benefit them but society as a whole. Itâs hard to see the benefits of a strong social safety net just by walking around countries that have it. But itâs extremely easy to see the consequences of those that donât.
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There must be something in the air since a version of this conversation started a couple of days ago with some friends on Signal. A good friend popped in with this gem:
So, you are basically furthering a welfare stateâŚmy issue with continuing to give people money, is that the folks get used to it and realize the handouts are better than actually workingâŚits a known fact that many folks are better doing this and watching netflix at home than actually working. I dont want to keep paying for that.
Itâs worth noting that all of us in this group are from immigrant households (8 different countries on 3 continents) where our parents had nothing but worked hard to provide their kids with opportunities that most of us were able to take advantage of. Heâs a successful professional with a business that has several employees.
So I tell him heâs being a dick, share some articles that refute his point and ask him to verify his claim. Virtually everyone else agreed with me btw. The response:
Sorry, I was doing something else while you guys furthered this chatâŚits complex but I can tell you for a fact that I have been paying my employees to work much less than they used to work. My choice not to put them out. I also provide all my employees full, 100% health coverage. A very good plan. I pay lots in taxes. I provide them with good salaries and the system of supply and demand keeps it balanced and honest. am happy to appropriate our tax money and if I had my way, would distribute it in much greater proportions to education and other social programs that would eventually improve ALL levels of our society. I consider our public education, health system and our infrastructure a primary need and should be our priority. So much of our money goes into sectors that should be reduced. I believe in the welfare system as well for those who need it. Thise who apply and use it to buy food for their children. Use it to benefit their life and hopefully to further their own existence and social standing. I wish everyone was benefiting from the middle classâŚbut in our extremism, there is definitely imbalance that needs addressing. I supported Bernie, just so you know where I stand. I just think that sending money out into the darkness is not going to help anyone in working to be innovative, get creative and entrepreneurial. We have to be very careful in using unemployment benefits to potentially section off a good amount of people who could be productive and participate in the uplifting that would otherwise become sedentaryâŚ
I highlighted the last sentence and told him that repeating a lie doesnât make it true. I was then asked to take a break from the discussion. Nice
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100% agreed. Iâm not against social safety nets, Iâm against how weâve organized ours. I think itâs a political dead end and weâve been stuck in that dead end since the 60âs. I think that dead end is mostly the result of how easy it is to divert the conversation into a question about who gets what. I think that whole conversation is incredibly dangerous and the rhetorical equivalent of an ambush. Itâs just perfect for stirring maximum envy and resentment and getting everyone to start screaming at each other.
Weâve gotta get away from that ASAP. It only serves the people who want to get rid of the welfare state entirely.
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That might have been the case in the UK decades ago, but hasnât been since. Workers here have been sliced and diced to be squared up against each other, as elsewhere, to the point that itâs hard to define the working class.
Tax avoidance here is way, way more costly to the Treasury than people over claiming welfare benefits, and that was before google, fb and the others.
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Yeah, welfare is intentionally underfunded and poorly organized to allow those who wish to exploit it to do so. Then, the politicians can turn around and use that small minority as justification to further defund it. They can repeat this process until itâs completely gone.
The welfare state of America merely provides an illusion of the government giving a shit. They could make it work if they want to but theyâd rather invest that money into the military and defense to score easy political points.
I stand by my belief that an expanded system needs to be properly organized and funded.
If people scam it, then so be it. The consequences of a well-funded, organized welfare system are far less damaging than the consequences of having the one that currently exists in America.