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I don't buy unsupported Libertarian tripe such as that opinion piece.
America of the 19th century was rife with poverty, child labor, roving bands of street urchins and orphans, and repeated financial depressions and panics throwing millions out of work and into the streets time and time again. It was not the comman man's paradise these two would have you believe.
America before people started getting "free stuff"
Notice how people are suffering like poor people are supposed to
Perhaps you can show some reliable evidence that the writer is wrong?
You see, I am old enough to remember life in pre-entitlement America and I remember it just as he describes it.
The writers (there are two people's names on that piece) showed no evidence whatsoever to support their claims.
And your personal anecdote is worthless as evidence.
Well in the realm of worthless opinions then, it is two against one isn't it?
I don't buy unsupported Libertarian tripe such as that opinion piece.
America of the 19th century was rife with poverty, child labor, roving bands of street urchins and orphans, and repeated financial depressions and panics throwing millions out of work and into the streets time and time again. It was not the comman man's paradise these two would have you believe.
America before people started getting "free stuff"
Notice how people are suffering like poor people are supposed to
Who says they are suffering, other than you? Google 'sod house' and look how people lived on the Plains, happy to have a place of their own and the OPPORTUNITY to better themselves. They didn't consider that suffering.
There was a time in my life that I lived in a tent and worked day labor to feed myself, but I wasn't 'suffering'. I was doing what I had to do to survive the vicissitudes of life, and working for the GOAL of self-improvement. I certainly wasn't running to the government to give me money, food stamps and a Section 8 voucher.
I think the problem with a lot of you libs these days is you have NO IDEA what REAL suffering is, and the ideas of hard work and self-sacrifice are simply foreign to you. It's sad, really....
I don't buy unsupported Libertarian tripe such as that opinion piece.
America of the 19th century was rife with poverty, child labor, roving bands of street urchins and orphans, and repeated financial depressions and panics throwing millions out of work and into the streets time and time again. It was not the comman man's paradise these two would have you believe.
Perhaps you can show some reliable evidence that the writer is wrong?
You see, I am old enough to remember life in pre-entitlement America and I remember it just as he describes it.
The writers (there are two people's names on that piece) showed no evidence whatsoever to support their claims.
And your personal anecdote is worthless as evidence.
Well in the realm of worthless opinions then, it is two against one isn't it?
The point is that referring to a worthless unsupported opinion piece to support whatever you have to say demonstrates nothing.
Additionally, I have just provided data to back up my claims. So the Forbes opinion piece is soundly trounced.
The reasonable conclusion from these events is that the attempt to engineer the end of poverty with Federal poverty programs was in fact misconceived, unnecessary, and tragically counterproductive. The engine that had previously reduced poverty, and which in fact had drawn (and draws) people from all over the world to America, was in part turned off, at least for the target population which it was especially intended to help. The same engine continues to work for others, as people from India, Korea, Armenia, Egypt, etc. achieve financial success the old-fashioned way: starting businesses and working 16 hour days. On the other hand, it has proven extremely difficult to turn off the anti-poverty industry once it got entrenched in politics and bureaucracy. Cutting back on AFDC can easily be attacked as "starving children," even when the children then grow up in environments where honest paid work mostly doesn't even exist and where they are more likely to die by gunfire than by old age.
The poverty warrior interest group created by the War on Poverty continues to advocate precisely the same solutions, like job training, non-judgmental welfare payments, and more and more money, that may decisively be seen to have failed in the 70's. One wonders if a lot of this is not disingenuous. The May 1, 2000 Forbes magazine reports, "One [Chicago] alderman told law student Daniel Liljenquist that he didn't want his constituents going into business for themselves because it might lead them to believe they could become self-sufficient" [p. 88, "Strange Bedfellows"]. This is the frank peonage of the welfare state in a nutshell.
[The "welfare reform" reluctantly signed by President Clinton in 1996 recognizes the limits of what can be done by the Federal Government, but the myth is still perpetuated that something can and must be done by Government at some level to end poverty. Instead, what can and must be done is for Government to get out of the poverty business and for people to realize that poverty can be reduced only by the enterprise and industry of private individuals, both those who work hard for pay and those who invest capital in new business. That was a self-evident truth for most of American history, but it has now become corrupted into the idea of "welfare rights," that certain people have the right to be supported in the manner to which they have become accustomed by taxes on the labor and capital of others. That is a formula for parasitism and political rent-seeking, not for the end of poverty.
The persistence of false remedies in the face of the evidence may be seen in a Los Angeles Times article of October 6, 1997, "Promise of Reducing Poverty May Be Found Inside Marriage Vows," by Ronald Brownstein. First it is noted that the Census Bureau had just reported that the poverty rate for the country was still 13.7% -- higher than it was in 1990. This is then contrasted, however, with the statistic that only 5.6% of married families are below the poverty level. Furthermore, of married families where "at least one partner works full time, year-round, no matter how menial the job," the poverty rate is only 1.8%. On the other hand, "nearly one-third" of families headed by single women, and almost 14% of families headed by single men, are below the poverty level.
Too funny. You just harpooned your own argument. But hopefully you will read what you linked now and learn something from it.
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right.
I can take all kinds of potshots at all the stupid and evil shit the government does, and often do. But it also has gotten some things right, and reducing human misery is one of them.
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right.
I can take all kinds of potshots at all the stupid and evil shit the government does, and often do. But it also has gotten some things right, and reducing human misery is one of them.
Sigh. You just linked an article that disputes everything you are saying here--an article you linked as support for your position. If you had read it you would see why poverty rates are coming down and it has little or nothing to do with any government program..
You sir, based on what you have posted so far, don't have a clue about anything, you continue to parrot the standard leftist assigned talking points, and seem determined not to educate yourself. What a pity.
And it's still funny that you so absolutely trashed your own argument with what you linked.
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right.
I can take all kinds of potshots at all the stupid and evil shit the government does, and often do. But it also has gotten some things right, and reducing human misery is one of them.
Sigh. You just linked an article that disputes everything you are saying here--an article you linked as support for your position. If you had read it you would see why poverty rates are coming down and it has little or nothing to do with any government program..
You sir, based on what you have posted so far, don't have a clue about anything, you continue to parrot the standard leftist assigned talking points, and seem determined not to educate yourself. What a pity.
And it's still funny that you so absolutely trashed your own argument with what you linked.
Not at all. I used the actual statistics. The part you quoted was the writer's opinion. He ignored the fact that poverty was through the roof before labor laws and government social programs were constructed, and does not even address the poverty issue until those years after poverty had leveled out at a much lower rate than before government intervention. Then he blames the government for the fact that the poverty level has evened out at a much lower rate than where it had been a century earlier!
His data refutes his opinion.
If you were homeless in Chicago in 1933, for example, you could find shelter at one of the city’s 614 YMCAs, or one of its 89 Salvation Army barracks, or one of its 75 Goodwill Industries dormitories.
“In fact,” writes Trattner, “so rapidly did private agencies multiply that before long America’s larger cities had what to many people was an embarrassing number of them. Charity directories took as many as 100 pages to list and describe the numerous voluntary agencies that sought to alleviate misery, and combat every imaginable emergency.”
Sigh. You just linked an article that disputes everything you are saying here--an article you linked as support for your position. If you had read it you would see why poverty rates are coming down and it has little or nothing to do with any government program..
You sir, based on what you have posted so far, don't have a clue about anything, you continue to parrot the standard leftist assigned talking points, and seem determined not to educate yourself. What a pity.
And it's still funny that you so absolutely trashed your own argument with what you linked.
Not at all. I used the actual statistics. The part you quoted was the writer's opinion. He ignored the fact that poverty was through the roof before labor laws and government social programs were constructed, and does not even address the poverty issue until those years after poverty had leveled out at a much lower rate than before government intervention. Then he blames the government for the fact that the poverty level has evened out at a much lower rate than where it had been a century earlier!
His data refutes his opinion.
So where is the evidence that his opinion is wrong? I now have three opinions--my source, your source, and myself--all pronounced worthless by you--against your opinion that you haven't supported with anything but you seem to think is the only one with merit.
(Lord give me strength to refrain from arguing with numbnuts and engaging in exercises of futility.)
Not at all. I used the actual statistics. The part you quoted was the writer's opinion. He ignored the fact that poverty was through the roof before labor laws and government social programs were constructed, and does not even address the poverty issue until those years after poverty had leveled out at a much lower rate than before government intervention. Then he blames the government for the fact that the poverty level has evened out at a much lower rate than where it had been a century earlier!
His data refutes his opinion.
So where is the evidence that his opinion is wrong? I now have three opinions--my source, your source, and myself--all pronounced worthless by you--against your opinion that you haven't supported with anything but you seem to think is the only one with merit.
(Lord give me strength to refrain from arguing with numbnuts and engaging in exercises of futility.)
I have provided data. Not opinion. Do you think the 19th century was a libertarian utopia with 40 percent poverty, more frequent and longer lasting recessions and panics, and significant numbers of children working?
Do you see an EMBARRASSING number of shelters as a GOOD thing?
Does really this strike you as society humming along nicely?
(Lord give me strength from idiots who think the past was bountiful and utopian)
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right..
I can take all kinds of potshots at all the stupid and evil shit the government does, and often do. But it also has gotten some things right, and reducing human misery is one of them.
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right..
Wrong, dipshit. LBJ's poverty programs didn't start until almost the end of the 1960s. That's when declines in poverty bottomed out. In other words, the war on poverty stopped any further reductions in the poverty rate.
So what did the federal government do to reduce poverty?
Since the Great Depression, we have a depression/recession every 4-8 years. How is that an improvement?
I can take all kinds of potshots at all the stupid and evil shit the government does, and often do. But it also has gotten some things right, and reducing human misery is one of them.
The federal government has never gotten anything right, and I do mean anything.
What I have shown is that today we have far, far less poverty, virtually no child labor, and far less frequent and much shorter recessions than the imaginary la-la land of utopia the two Forbes' crackheads conjured up in their delerious imaginations.
So the federal government must be doing something right..
Since the Great Depression, we have a depression/recession every 4-8 years. How is that an improvement?
