News From The War On The Poor

Not everyone has family, and not everyone who does has family that can be relied on. Basing social service programs around a model that most of the population doesn't fit is irresponsible.

Grant money in science is notoriously obnoxious to get. I don't know where you're getting your examples, but talk to a grant writer for five minutes and see what their opinion of the funding process is. The really dumb stuff is almost always privately funded (or not funded at all, grad student projects and the like).

Improving our sources of food is not a worthless endeavor.

I'm all about cleaning up government waste, but there are more obvious sources than social services and an already thin science grant budget.

Things exists that can be cut.
Example. A

I bet if a sane person sat down with the big black book of crap the government spends money on. The deficit would disappear in a day.

Where did this population come from without family?


Perhaps we get our deficit to zero and then worry about our overabundance of food? You read that right, we actually have an overabundance of food. Not counting the food that gets wasted. The government literally pays farmers (a lot) not to plant fields.

Edit. While I'm on the subsidy kick.. They could cut subsidizing in half and that would be a rather big chunk of change and also help out the economy and possibly create some more jobs.

But again, that 39.6% is only for the income you earn OVER $413k. That doesn't mean that $413k is taxed at 39.6%, only the income you earn after that 413k. So if you make 600k in a year, only 187k is taxed at 39.6%

How much of your tax dollars do you think goes to help people with "depression" and on those studies? Do you have any idea how much of the budget would be cut if we removed that entirely?

Went and found a number for you:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-much-of-your-tax-money-went-to-science-26970787/?no-ist

About 2% of the entire federal budget is on science. That's ALL SCIENCE, including things like cancer research, triage for military, etc. Considering we run about a 10% deficit, and you guys would probably agree that a lot of that science is useful, cutting such funding would have absolutely no impact on the budget.

That's about controlling prices, not supply.


Read what I said. People don't always have it. Last of their line, what they have is unreliable or not in a position to help, etc. There's an awful lot of American families struggling financially as it is, and people want to shift more burdens to them? Basing social services around the notion that people have family to rely on is negligent at best.

I mean, if you don't want to fund it, then say so; that's a policy decision. But don't say it'll be fine because "family should take care of each other", when that's not how a lot of families work at all, through lack of desire or lack of ability.

It is about both actually. Not to mention I brought it up as a thing that could be cut from the budget.

I did you said.
Now that I read it again, it sounds like you want to do away with social service programs and maybe start anew?.

/confused

What's wrong with providing mental health services to people that need it? Seems like an amazing use of tax money to me.

And the last two posters are prime examples of why we need ample funding for mental health services.

What a nice post.

We have a subpar system for mental health and a society which looks down on getting help. What could go wrong!

May as well lock this thread up.

Thanks Reagan!

NAFTA: A Response to the Unions of America

Depends on which portion of the population we're talking about. People seem to think that "1% is super rich but that's not true at all. "1%" is just the successful upper middle class, true wealth doesn't start appearing until you hit 0.001% and doesn't get extreme until you've added another zero or two onto that number. Making $500K gross isn't wealthy, making $1M gross isn't even wealthy, it's not until your talking $10M or more gross that things get unbalanced. This is because how we attribute and perceive wealth changes. To ordinary people the paycheck they get from working is their idea of "wealth". I work 40 hours, I make X amount of money. For wealthy people, it's passive income dominates, they get paid because of wise decisions they or their parents made. Then for truly wealthy, it's passive income from trusts and other non-standard sources like foundations. They get taxed on whatever is dispersed from that trust to them but not on what the trust earns. So while an ordinary person views this as them "earning money", it's not treated like that because it's locked into the trust and not dispersed. Foundations get even murkier because you can attribute estate expenses, essentially rent / utility bills / food / ect.. to the foundation and not to the person. The foundation pays those expenses based on rules written up during it's inception and operates under a different tax code more similar to a non-profit then an ordinary person. In essence the wealthy person doesn't own their home, their car, their cloths or anything, the foundation owns them and allows the person to use them. Those foundations operate similar to trusts in that they have a board of directors / regents / ect.. that makes decisions about the trust / foundation, usually with the head of the family as the primary director / executive agency.

Ordinary people don't understand the nuances and their jealousy drives them to desire to steal from the wealthy. Government have a long history of stealing from successful merchants, all the way back to Egyptian times. Thus it's natural for the heads of wealthy families to seek to protect their family's future from government theft using any and all methods available.

Some interesting quotes from Margaret Thatcher

Screw that, I'm voting for Bernie. Gonna go to free college, party all day and night, receive all my entitlements. Then get a part time job making 15 bucks an hour and retire off the man when I'm 40!

Why try? The Government will take care of me.

Please elaborate, Dr. KN.

You hear that everyone? Other countries do it! What could go wrong!?!

Maybe a more educated and healthier populace, something a government would never want!

I will admit that not everybody who's on Medicare/Medicaid has family to support on, but I will not admit that the percentage of elderly people who don't is over 50% (the definition of most).

Like these?

Teaching a lion to walk on a treadmill: $856k
Sweedish massages for rabbits: $387k

Although it's a partisan source, at least it shows who's funding what. Many of these are funded by the US government....

I'm the same way, but seriously, we could spend the money on curing cancer or beating the disease known as "California."

You are correct. However, making $413k a year is easy for me, and every dollar over that is taxed at 43.4% (39.6 + 3.8% Obamacare). Most of my income is taxed at the highest rate. Which makes me consider my income taxed at the highest rate, which it is.

Personally speaking, I would rather we lower the defense budget and increase the science budget (but place guidelines and actually follow them) myself. Again, I'm not advocating that we cut social services or science funding, I just want smart decisions from an organization that prides itself for being stupid as ***.

Please stop pretending to know a single thing about science funding. Putting a lion on a treadmill helps understand the energetics of the animal which gives insight into the energy needs of populations for conservation purposes, and animal, like those rabbits, are sometimes proxies for people since the regulations for human test subjects are so much more strict.

The government funds a wide range of studies because many have no immediate monetary appeal or potentially will never be capitalized on at all. And no, this money is NOT easy to get.

So, to you, those studies take precedence over research for curing cancer, AIDS, or any other deadly disease.

We may already fund said research, but I'm sure those researchers could use the money used to give rabbits those massages.

Tell me again why rabbit massages are more important to human society than curing cancer.

Where the *** did I say anything like that? Disease research is well-funded by private organizations and receives its share of federal funding as well. There are problems to solve other than cancer and more to research than just disease.

Even your own link explained the rabbit massages:

And now I want to become a rabbit massage therapist THANKS

But why rabbits? I mean its a Swedish Massage. Why can't they just do that on humans and see if it helps them recover from an illness?