Not that you are entirely wrong but I know people that it helped including me.
It works occasionally for people who are using it to bridge a temporary gap. For people who are actually trying to pull themselves out of deep generational poverty it has a pretty shit track record IMO.
Obviously Iāve known lots of people who got food stamps in college. Thatās basically the best case scenario for means tested welfare. That doesnāt make it any better for a single mother with 4 kids who is utterly dependent on housing assistance and canāt get a better job because that raise would effectively have a 500% marginal tax rate (there are situations where 100-200 more a month could cost you 500-1000).
The ārightā is split on a lot of things as well and includes people who are God and Country, Law and Order people and thatās not at all the libertarian right. Iām not anti-libertarian, but a lot of the āleftā is. Butā¦whether UBI would work well or better than the current welfare system or not, I donāt see as something agreed upon by most economists and I think itās something that would need empirical study. Were I to implement it, it would be in stages with study. As Iāve repeatedly stated Iām not a big believer in means testing, but doing welfare as straight money vs. services like M4A, public schools, free meals at school, education and work training, and even public housing if done well are maybe better options, but itās not necessarily one or the other.
Right thats why i said you are not entirely wrong. But our safety net does help too.
Free meals in school is a good idea and always has been. Iād vastly upgrade school lunches and pair them with home economics classes where we teach kids how to take care of themselves. Knowing how to cook yourself a nutritious meal that doesnāt taste like shit in a timely manner is an extremely important public health thing with crazy ROIās just on healthcare savings. Kids need to be exposed to healthy food no matter how their parents feed them at home. Nutritionally deprived kids are much less likely to thrive than kids who are eating well, and kids who are thriving produce massively better returns to society as adults.
Universal public healthcare is obvious good policy and I donāt see as even being welfare. Itās just the most efficient way to run a healthcare system and gets the best results.
Education is also not welfare. Itās an investment in a productive workforce that is more than recaptured through taxes on their economic output later in life. Ditto for all forms of work training.
Public housing has basically been a disaster IMO and isnāt a solution to the problem of unaffordable housing. Zoning reform is the first step if we ever get serious about that, and we wonāt really know what to do next until weāve allowed full development of dense housing with good public transit to support it.
My goal is good policy that works. Iām not particularly ideological about it either. If it works Iām for it.
Federally subsidized housing has a lot of very good examples as well as bad. The approach in the 60s and 70s was very bad (perhaps intentionally so as an instrument of segregation). But thereās a lot of good federally subsidized housing built in the 80s onward that most people wouldnāt even know was some sort of public housing.
I would describe myself as anti-libertarian. I find religious conservatives more tolerable than Ayn Rand fanboys and intellectual dark web dorks.
I donāt particularly care for or against UBI, but I am committed to a liberal vision of the size and role of government.
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https://twitter.com/BetoORourke/status/1168616482529562625
Betoās not fucking around on guns.
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I donāt mind the government using the wealth generated by society to provide social services. I like that. But, other than taking some money (the fruit of collective society), and redistributing that for the benefit of society, I donāt like the government bossing people around. So, like limiting the police, military, drug enforcement, bordersā¦all the stuff that the government ends up using itās guns for, Iām against on principle and they should be clearly and overwhelmingly needed before they are imposed.
What the liberals have going for them is part of what people (often disingenuously) call classical liberalism. Civil rights - civil liberties.
Yeah Ayn Rand was cancer. Selfishness as a virtue sheesh. She also had zero idea how people actually get things done. Her entire framework was massively off and had almost no correlation with reality.
Unfortunately itās a very seductive ideology for privileged white people who donāt like the idea that they have any duty to anyone but themselves.
Government has a role to play. There are some activities that are badly needed by society that markets do not do a good job of delivering on. Schools, roads, natural monopolies, goods with low elasticity of demand (like healthcare), anything where competition is restricted in some major way.
Free markets are powerful thingsā¦ and like most powerful things they have situations where they are damn near magically good and they have situations where they are insanely bad for everyone. Government is the same. There is no going entirely one way or the other. Weāve tried almost every extreme variation at some point in history and itās always been a disaster basically.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1168566376606371840
https://mobile.twitter.com/BernieHistory/status/1168532524424994816
Ayn Rand died broke and on welfare
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Ayn Rand had a personality disorder. Mental illness is the only explanation for both her ideas and her personal choices.
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Itās clearly a hail mary play, but Iām in favor of pushing back against the Overton Window.
hard to say which state has the the worse combo, FL, SC, AK are all extremely bad as well
Hawaii seems to have two of the consistently best. So ironic that thatās where Tulsi comes from
Asked another way: Would he be doing this if a more conventional Republican (a Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush) were in the White House?
āUm, Iām not sure, to be quite honest with you,ā Mr. Biden said.
ā¦
In a tour of about a dozen of these campaign events across the early-voting states during the second half of August, Mr. Bidenās audiences were moderately enthusiastic, always polite and certainly appreciative of his visits. Given their revulsion for the incumbent, many attendees expressed gratitude that Mr. Biden was running for president. But they struggled to identify why he was running, or what the former vice president represented beyond a known and decent entity who was not Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
ā¦
But with some exceptions, Mr. Bidenās days as a potent and fiery stump speaker seem long past. He can exude a level of weariness certain days. He can be as unfocused, long-winded and prone to misstatement as ever. He has kept up a steady run of blunders and embarrassments, including a report last week in The Washington Post that he had gotten several basic facts wrong in an emotional story he told about an Afghan war hero.
So, which Dem who canāt win wants to take one for the team and be the bad guy who attacks Biden and harms his electability in exchange for a possible Cabinet position or VP spot with one of the other front-runners?
Well, we already know that Kamala isnāt afraid to take some shots at Biden. And maybe Castro?
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Unleashed Beto has been dropping fire and F-bombs recently, but Iām not sure if he has any beef with Biden.
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Klobuchar and Pete rely too much on āMidwestern niceā branding to really get the knives out.
Iām actually most interested to see how Warren handles Biden in the next debate. Mods are definitely going to try to stir up conflict and I have a feeling that she might want to rumble a bit.
The worst possible outcome is people taking Kamala-style shots at Biden, not making the case for why they should be president, and we get a kneecapped Biden limping across the goalline to lose against Trump.
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Beto on guns is how I want all Dem candidates to be on all lefty positions
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