This whole conversation isn’t about rational facts. As a % of GDP US welfare spending is a rounding error. This conversation is about people’s emotional reactions to anecdotal facts. There is a % of the population that absolutely nobody wants to see do well at all, and they get more benefits per capita than normal people who need help.
Again nobody is going to be able to convince me these people don’t exist, because if they don’t exist why do I know like ten of them??? This isn’t like the abominable snowman lol. I could give you names, addresses, and social media profiles.
As I’ve said repeatedly earlier in the thread these people exist lots of places all through society, they aren’t all poor welfare recipients. Some of them have quite a bit of money.
More generally, we need a safety net to protect people when shit happens. The number of people choosing to jump into that net instead of staying on the high wire is relatively small, and we should accept that without condemnation.
I would prefer that people did not scam it, but yes the welfare system is designed to fail in myriad ways.
Given the choice I absolutely would blow it up and replace it with something that isn’t designed to fail.
This country has the resources to end, really end, poverty. We could give everyone in this country the opportunity to really fully develop themselves as people. Instead we feed off a permanent underclass that is incredibly difficult to escape.
One of the things we, the left, need to stop doing is getting tied to defending a social safety net that is in no way adequate, designed to fail, and a huge political liability. Fuck our current welfare programs, the fact that I ascended from poverty without any help from them at all isn’t a feature it’s a bug. I was abused, neglected, and then dropped into a series of really difficult situations and then through mostly blind luck I got to escape. The whole thing was a gauntlet designed to trip me up and I’m a white dude with all the privilege that entails. I can pinpoint a couple of exact moments in my life where if I was anything but a white dude my life would have been absolutely blown up irreparably.
Why was all of society trying to stop me when it should have been trying to help me rise? I’m an insane problem solver, did we not have enough problems in this country that needed to be solved? I’ve gotten to a point where I get to sell what I’m good at to the free market and there’s a massive shortage of what I’m good at… why was everything systemic actively working against me?
It’s because the whole thing is designed to keep people cheap. Full stop. We would prefer that they be stunted less valuable versions of themselves so that their time can be had cheaply. That’s why we don’t teach financial literacy or sex education in most public schools. That’s why we don’t teach anyone any real career skills besides completing the (rote) work we are assigned and being on time in school.
Now of course I’m experiencing the other side of the class bubble, and everything in society is actively trying to help me succeed… now that I’m already successful and expensive.
The irony of many people who complain about welfare cheats is that they themselves are receiving benefits from the government through things like tax loopholes and corporate welfare. They never face tangible penalties for their mooching but the poor do in reduced public spending and welfare cuts.
The adoration of the wealthy and condemnation of the poor is backwards thinking. It’s what justifies continuous increases in income inequality.
10 people doesn’t sound a huge number for you to know and I’m assuming because of what you’ve said about your background that most people wouldn’t know that many, so I’m struggling to see why we’re even having a conversation about such a small number when pursuing high earner tax avoiders would be far more profitable than demonising a tiny section of poor people, which seems pretty gross.
First off I’m not that social so I don’t know THAT many people. I only know that many because birds of a feather flock together and this is how my parents got by.
I obviously agree that pursuing tax avoiders is a more +EV strategy than cracking down on welfare frauds. Shit my whole goal with universality is to stop acting like the state should be investing resources into who is deserving enough for help. Let’s help everyone all the time and tax it back from the ones who it turned out didn’t need it after the fact.
I feel like some of you think I’m advocating against social safety nets. I’m advocating against means testing and the entire conversation that goes with it… and spending about 10x what the US currently does on helping the citizens with direct payments. The entire bottom 60% needs help, and we need to massively raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. Thankfully after the last 40 years of straight up looting they’ve got the coin.
It’s even deeper than that. We spend a lot of time talking about how progressive taxation is in this country but zero time talking about how progressive government expenditures are. They aren’t at all progressive. Most of the cash flowing out of the federal government is going to contractors, government employees (and most of this is to the best paid ones), and making absolutely certain that the property rights of the well heeled are given maximum respect… up to and including keeping anyone who could lower property values far away from the property. The % of the federal budget that ends up directly supporting the interests of the rich is… well nobody has done the study so I have no idea, but my guess is that it’s 70%+ and the only reason it isn’t higher is that Medicare covers a lot of people in the bottom 60%.
I’ve known people who have known people who did some kind of lying to get welfare, though it’s like a woman with a kid who lied about the kid’s father living with them because that would/could have caused benefits to be denied. I’ve known a couple people who got on disability/SSI at least one of whom definitely should have gotten off it, but didn’t, and another who is still unable to perform work that would be make more money than disability, but is kind of trapped because moving into any other kind of work would mean starting at the bottom, making less than disability and meanwhile losing disability.
Pales in comparison to wealthy people/business owners who lie and cheat to lower their taxes. Not that I’m perfect, but I don’t do anything systematically (like always buy wholesale and no one pays sales tax or get paid in cash and keep money out of the bank).
If you care at all about actually changing anything you’ll stop having this conversation. It’s literally unwinnable and a trap. Envy and bitterness are human emotions that exist. Stop fighting reality on this and start thinking about how you can go around this conversation instead of through it.
Why argue about who needs help when the answer is so obviously everyone at some point?
You get that turning welfare into a political winner instead of a political loser would be instrumental in getting literally everything you want out of politics policy wise right?
Her neighbor sucks. Jesus Christ why does everyone feel the urge to defend literally any member of a disadvantaged group? Some people from literally every group are just the worst. Candace Owens is a black woman.
Do you guys not understand how bad of a look it is when you try to strip someone’s personal experience of the meaning they’ve attributed to it? The firmest thing that most of have reality wise is our own personal experience. Absolutely no one reacts well to people explaining to them what their experience was without having a deep understanding of that situation themselves.
Her neighbor is an emotional vampire who cares more about getting nonconsensual approval for her justifications of her life choices than she does about other people’s mental health. She’s telling Zara that working is for suckers because she wants Zara to pat her on the head and tell her that she’s being smart… or she just feels envious of Zara’s drive and wants to bring her down to her level because every time she sees Zara looking even a little bit happy it makes her confront the fact that she’s justifying self destructive behavior. My mom always has a circle of friends whose only purpose is to validate her justifications for being a huge net negative on the human race. They’re usually overjoyed to participate in this process because they too have justifications that they would like validated, and my mom is very good at validating whatever idiocy you’re spouting. But make no mistake, to have any kind of non-enemy relationship with these people at all you’d better at least outwardly agree with their bullshit or they are going to give you a hard time… which is why being a member of their immediate family is fucking awful. Not only are they actively victimizing you whenever it suits them, but you have to tell them that they were right afterward or it escalates.
Either way she’s awful and Zara should do everything she can to avoid her… except piss her off. People like that have nothing but time to plot against their enemies and it’s basically their favorite past time. Having a next door neighbor plotting your downfall 24/7 is very -EV.
Honestly I would probably move to get away from this person and not engage with neighbors in the future. I have a neighbor who is an ex cop who honestly scares me a little bit (his line of work is basically a legal grey area where having police connections would probably be hugely useful) and I’m supremely grateful that other than one conversation where I rapidly figured out he wasn’t anyone I ever wanted to know I’ve never had an interaction with the guy. Shit from clues in the conversation I figured out that this guy had gotten his claws in deep with several of the other neighbors, so I basically wrote off having any real contact with any of my other immediate neighbors either.
I made the right decision there and I have zero regrets about any of it. If you want socialization it’s easy to get without shitting where you eat. I’d never have a sexual relationship with a coworker, and similarly I have zero need to have any kind of meaningful relationship with a neighbor lol.
There’s some truth to this for sure. Zara probably is getting taken advantage of by her job a little bit and that’s definitely making it worse than it otherwise would be.
At the same time the narrative that not working is some kind of joy is even emptier. That’s some slow depressing time spent marinating in your own juices. I say this as someone who absolutely doesn’t do well when he doesn’t have something to work at.
Since I am German as well I can give u some numbers/percentages.
From my gross pay gets deducted:
14,33% payroll tax
0,79% solidarity tax
7,3% health insurance(employer share)
9,3% pension insurance
1,2% unemployment insurance
1,8% nursing care insurance
0,5% cant really decipher what ZusBei should be but its probably an additional premium for having no kids
So in the end I am left with 64-65% of my gross pay. I could have more if I would be married.
My salary costs the employer about 120% of my gross pay.
When my poker career came to a full stop I could have gotten welfare but decided not to because I didnt want to be monitored and getting stupid job offers and interviews. My dad said I should get the money thats what they paid for all these years.
Right now I assume that my payments into the pension fund wont be enough and that you probaby have to get additional insurance on longterm care because that wont be enough if you get old and need assistance.
Re. those lazy sun-seeking Greek bastards being subsidised by uber-efficient Germany
After studying there Mrs J worked for a short spell at an energy company in Germany, where it was normal for people to sit outside on the grass at lunchtime and not reappear at their desks until going home at 3.30pm.