Poverty is a Liberal Farm System
When you give a bum ten bucks he buys a bottle of vodka. I learned this the hard way. I stood in line at Ralph's behind the very bum I gave ten bucks to and watched him do it. He brought a bottle of vodka and a can of soup to the cashier and the money wasn't enough to cover both items. The cashier literally asked him, “Which do you want more?” The bum, right in front of me, pushed the soup aside and bought the bottle vodka. Do I regret giving him that ten dollars? Absolutely. Decisions like this are destroying our country.Liberals in America are like I was that day. They want to believe in the best parts of humanity. They want to ease people's suffering which is a noble cause. The problem is reality. People who suffer do so because of bad decisions. People who make bad decisions that lead to suffering don't change their behavior because we give them money. Liberals believe that if you redistribute wealth and give people handouts they then have the tools to climb out of poverty. How is that war on poverty going? It's a miserable failure. When people bury themselves in poverty with bad decisions and then you reinforce that behavior with free money, they don't change their behavior. They waste that money and put their hand out for more. This is a vicious cycle. There are people on the cusp of poverty who see this and for solid economic reasons jump in. For a single mother making minimum wage you are often better off not working. The cost of a babysitter or some form of child care outweighs the wage you make so it is better for them to not work and jump on the government dole. This increases the burden on the tax payers inevitably bringing more people into this zone where not working and taking a slight pay cut is economically beneficial. It is a vicious cycle.
Liberals tell you that conservatives want to hold people down and create an exclusive white upper class. This couldn't be further from the truth. Let's take it from an economic standpoint. Who benefits when there are more poor? Liberals. Why then would conservatives promote a system that creates more poor people? That wouldn't make any sense. Conservatives want to promote ideas that change the entitlement mentality. They want policy that forces the poor, mired in bad decisions, to start making good ones. This requires tough love. People don't enjoy spanking their kids and making them cry, but I have never met a person who was spanked as a kid and regrets it. Personally, I should have been spanked more. You may disagree with me on this (not the spanking), but you cannot disagree with the fact that entitlements have done the exact opposite of what was intended.
Social Security was intended to help elderly Americans who outlived the average life expectancy. When enacted you received benefits at 65 and the average life span for men was 57 and for women 62. In the years since, life expectancy has increased dramatically, but not the age that you receive benefits. The result has been more Americans drawing from Social Security and more Americans becoming dependant on Social Security. This program wasn't enacted to make Americans stop funding their own retirement but that is what it has done.
Even unemployment benefits have gone awry. The latest extension created a situation where some people have been getting paid not to work for two years. Economically this is disastrous. Two years ago the economy hadn't really collapsed. A person making 50k a year when laid off was getting about 25k a year in unemployment benefits. Since the economy collapsed that job now pays less. Let's say that job pays 35k a year now. That person can resume working for 35k or continue not working for 25k. That means they can make 25k for 0 hours of work, or 35k for 40 hours a week. The decision is ultimately, do I work 40 hours a week for 10k. Absolutely not. You could make that 10k doing odd jobs that require much less than 40 hour work weeks. Unemployment provides a huge incentive not to work. Why take a job below your old salary when it just isn't worth it. Furthermore, decisions like this increase either the tax burden on working people, or adds the deficit. Both of those factors inhibit job growth, making it unlikely that meaningful jobs will be created. Unemployment has become an incentive not to work which was not its intended purpose.
Liberals will tell you cuts to entitlements are an attempt to hold you down. They will say it is some covert racist effort to make sure white supremacy is institutionalized. All the while entitlements grow their voting base. When you want to find the cause of a situation, look to those who benefit.
Tyson Bam
