Well, a few ended up in executive positions at my former mega-corp.
Very cute. Nevertheless, good management manages for desired outputs, not a priori preferred inputs.
Yeah, there's plenty of proof in this thread all right.
You may not have much to say, but I must admit that you say it very cleverly.Exactly.
Yeah, there's plenty of proof in this thread all right.
I'll try and take out your non-sequiters the next time I mock one of your posts.
Zyngawhich Facebook game company? The game industry is small, she may work with friends of mine.
What would a person working 1 week per month need with vacation time? And every day is a "paid holiday". And as far as training and professional development--hey, the person apparently has all the training they need. And a 401K is for suckers who want to support themselves--ya never need one if the money cow doesn't dry up.
I think what we have here is a parallel to the question sometimes asked about legal/judicial systems: is it better to punish a hundred innocent people rather than have one guilty person evade paying for their crime, or would it be preferable to let a hundred guilty people go free lest one innocent person suffer for a crime s/he didn't commit? In the case of welfare the question would be should some people who are genuinely unable to work be left destitute to make sure no slacker gets a dime, or is it better to pay some slackers rather to ensure that no truly disabled person lacks subsistence? I doubt that it's possible to design benefit qualifications so that all the genuinely disabled can get them but not a single person who isn't does. In the end I think it comes down to, what sort of a country do we, the citizens, want this to be? I don't want people who could work given incentives not to, but even less do I want people who can't work to lack even the bare necessities of life.(snip)I've said this before and I'll repeat it here - I do feel we need to provide for those unable to work. There are people who genuinely need our help.
Unfortunately, we've taught a lot of others how to loot, and turned them loose in the welfare benefits supermarket.
What "this shouldn't change" means though, is that the children of poor parents are punished for the bad choices that their parents made, before they themselves had any option of choosing one way or the other. My parents and grandparents, maybe even my remoter forebears, all made choices which made it much more possible for me to make good choices, and I think also made it more likely that if I did so I would be rewarded. As an example, I chose to show up at school every day rather than cutting classes. That was easy for me, because the schools where I lived (due to the smart choices of my parents) were safe to go to and the teachers were competent. A student in the inner city might make the same choice I did, but if her school is gang-infested and the teachers are inferior, as may easily be the case, what will she gain by doing so? A substandard education that doesn't prepare her to succeed in college, unlike what I got as a result of "just showing up". Sir Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." To me, that's the real meaning of the "birth lottery". Yes, personal choice matters, but the choices of our ancestors can give us a huge head start in life, or mean that we come up to bat with two strikes already against us. The fact that I haven't achieved my own success (such as it is) by my good choices alone, makes me loth to conclude that people who are failing are doing so due solely to their own bad decisions.
I agree that should be the goal, but how exactly do we go about doing it? It's all very well to say, "no money without work" but private sector employers can't be forced to hire the people who are currently on welfare—so does the government become the employer of last resort and the taxpaying public at least gets some return in the form of work on the money that's currently being paid out in benefits? Is there in fact enough work to be done in this country for every able-bodied person now on welfare to earn a living wage? How can a system be set up so it incentivizes people to move ahead to economic self-sufficiency but yet is is an adequate safety net for people who are truly incapable of supporting themselves? I don't know the answers to these questions, or if they even have answers. Suggestions anyone?
You acknowledge that your argument is based on cherry picked numbers yet you still continue to make an argument?!? Unbelievable.
I said a living wage and intermittent day labor at sub-minimum wages falls far short of that. What does it matter how many more jobs are created, unless they pay enough to live on without government subsidies? People aren't going to get off welfare unless they can support themselves on what they earn—it wouldn't make any economic sense.
Well I don't want to draw down the wrath of the pig, so I won't say any more about the birth lottery. I'm grateful that my exposure to these sorts of programs was relatively brief (although it seemed endless at the time) and many years ago. I do remember that I had to demonstrate, by coming into the Unemployment office with a list of jobs I had applied for, that I was actively looking for work, in order to continue getting unemployment benefits. I don't know if that's still required. Maybe things have gotten more lenient since the 1980's. I also remember it was the most miserable two years of my life so far. If having to experience repeated rejection by potential employers plus being treated like dirt by the people in the "Employment Security" office (maybe I was just projecting the fact that I felt like dirt onto them) in return for barely enough money to live on doesn't incentivize people to get off of unemployment I don't know what would. I certainly wanted out as fast as possible.
What I meant was, what if private sector employers have no job openings available at all? That was my experience in the 80's—matters never progressed as far as negotiating over wages, there was essentially no work to be had in my field. When I finally did find a job it was doing something else, and I've never worked again in the profession I got my degree in. Right now unemployment is officially standing at nearly 10%, and if people working part time because they can't find full time jobs plus those who have become discouraged and stopped looking were added it would probably be well into the double digits. Where is a low-skilled worker with no employment background going to find any job at any wage in this environment, when well-qualified people with good work histories are hitting a brick wall in their job search? That is what I meant by you can't force employers to hire.
I think you've made the choice too binary--there's no set income level at which people are suddenly able to support themselves. There are various levels of comfort and convenience. The "acceptable" level has shifted upward over the past 50 years due to the (very flukish and not-to-be-repeated) post war wealth growth in the US. Before the war, people (rich and poor alike) spent a much higher percentage of their income on food than we do today. People did what they needed to do to get by--it was very common for people to rent out rooms in their homes (we see that far less frequently today, it seems to me), and extended families lived together in much smaller homes than we have today. Vacations were more rare, shorter, and more local. That's the way much of the world still lives, and that's where we're headed, too, as we compete in the global marketplace and that competition drives down wages here (and improves them in some very poor areas--this whole thing is a net positive for the world). There are no laws (wage supports/minimum wage laws, tariffs, taxes, etc) that can prevent this, but some can accelerate it. So, in this environment, I'll turn your implicit question around: is it right for the government to provide a standard of living to people who are not working that is higher than the standard of living of someone who works? If so, then we're saying it's okay to take taxes paid by a poor family and give the money to a more wealthy welfare recipient. Aside from basic fairness issues, I think we can see what behavior that will incentivize.
Let's turn this around. Who has more powerful incentives to see to it that she does not bear a child- some 24 year old law student with an IQ of 115, or some 24 year old welfare client with an IQ of 115?
A valid point. I'd argue that in either case "Daddy" should be paying some bills. If Mom doesn't want to press for child support, then that's her business (if she's awarded child support, she should get the full support of the government in her claims against him). But if Mom gets a nickel in government assistance ("welfare," food stamps, EITC, etc) because of his kid, now it's everyone's business to recover damages from Daddy. If Daddy's broke, he can work on the government farm nights and weekends to help pay us back. Momma's raising the kid, we're paying for much of it, he shouldn't be out carousing with his pals without consequence.
