Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Seriously? Why not at least make an attempt to understand what I'm saying before attacking me for saying it?
I understand you just fine.
1.
You think , given a choice, people would rather not work than work.
If working versus not working results in the same short term outcome, yes. Most people would choose not to work. Are you saying you disagree with this?
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2. You think that people are happier with being on some form of welfare than with work.
False. I didn't say that, didn't imply that, and don't agree with that. I'm saying that most people, if given a way to receive the same pay without having to work for it, will make that choice. It's not about "happier".
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3. You think that Wal-Mart greeter type jobs are all "starter jobs" apparently unable to understand that in many parts of the country they are the only type jobs.
I didn't say this.
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4. You think that everyone is totally able to become a CEO or professor or engineer etc, when in fact a great part of our society in wholly incapable of ever achieving those positions.
I didn't say this.
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5. You think people working 40 hours a week don't deserve a living (ie. not poverty wage) pay for their work [SEE: #3]
I didn't say this either.
The one thing you got right is the one thing that I don't think anyone can really refute. Can you? What you did after that was make wild associative assumptions about my position based on the assumption that anyone who opposes welfare must hate poor people, so you may as well assume that I hold a bunch of positions aligned with hating poor people. None of which I hold, btw.
Try reading what I'm actually writing without spinning off on assumptive tangents. I'm trying to get people to challenge the assumption that "welfare==good for poor people", but I'm running right into the brick wall of people who believe that so strongly that anyone making the argument that welfare isn't necessarily good for poor people must hate poor people that they can't or wont actually read what I'm writing.
Stop. Take a deep breath. Drop any assumptions you have about whether I like or hate poor people. Then read what I wrote and my reasoning behind it. You'll find that my motivations isn't hatred for poor people, but that I believe there are better ways to help the poor than to give them free money. I don't oppose welfare because I want poor people to suffer, but because I don't think welfare helps them in the long run. I want to have a system that helps poor people not be poor anymore. Welfare doesn't do that. It makes poverty more comfortable for the poor (thus arguably improving their immediate condition), but at the expense of making it harder for them to not be poor anymore.
I value helping people not be poor anymore higher than making their poverty more bearable.
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6. You think a used Lexus is a "starter car for the poor".
I *really* never said that. I said that a used Lexus is a starter car for high-working to low-middle class. Um... Which it kinda is. It's the car that people who want a "luxury car", but can't afford an actual luxury car buy. Um... But whatever.
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So, there are two options here (vis-Ã -vis the "attack"):
a. Your weren't born poor (as you claim), or
b. You were, but suffered some horrible brain trauma that made you lose all memory of that past, replacing it with one that just by pure coincidence is a neo-cons' wet dream.
Or c. I was poor, realized that getting a job was a way to have money and not be poor anymore, and continued doing that until I wasn't poor anymore. And now I look at people who are in the same boat as I was in being told that they can't succeed and that their efforts mean nothing and that the only way they can get by is with government assistance and I try my hardest to convince them otherwise. Because I know that those things aren't true, and if they sit on their butts either unemployed or in a low paying dead end job relying on government assistance to get them by because some rich white guilty liberal told them they aren't capable of doing more, then all they ever will be is poor. And it wont be because they couldn't succeed, but because they allowed someone to convince them not to try.