As I am the one presently debating POD and the only one to really post any source material on this thread, I can only assume this is an underhanded critique of my claims; which I will now address accordingly.
Drlee wrote:The problem with arguing that welfare incentivizes people not to work easily fails on many levels POD.
This was not my argument as I only argued that welfare incentivizes the behavior it either explicitly or implicitly subsidizes after the pattern of logically derived economic laws.
Drlee wrote:1. It tyrannizes individuals in defense of a theory. For example. If Mitt Romney's parents had never taken welfare he would, in all likelihood not be a US Senator now. Likewise with Oprah and J.K. Rowling. Both immensely successful billionaires and both crediting welfare for its help in getting them jump started.
Anecdotal and irrelevant. There are also successful black republicans who credit being exposed to welfare as children as the reason for being tea-partiers who oppose all welfare. This sort of argument is just as relevant as the one your presented.
Drlee wrote:2. These kinds of figures assume a level playing field to start with. We all know it is not. You can talk about race, location, disability or ability none of which are reflected in the numbers. For example. A rural white kid in a tiny town in Nebraska whose parents lost their jobs when the one factory in town closes down is disadvantaged in ways different from the inner city black kid but no less needy of assistance.
No, the statistics are not meant to take into account the almost infinite amount of variable that occur on the individual level, but that's not the point. The stats given by me in this thread are only intended to confirm what could have been predicted by economic laws.
For instance, women may be single mothers for a whole host of reasons; however, those reasons are irrelevant to the statistical fact that single-motherhood skyrocketed in correlation to its subsidization by welfare, as could have been predicted.
The individual circumstances of those individual women are irrelevant to that point.
Drlee wrote:3. Figures like those presented are disingenuous in the first place. They are rarely presented by someone honestly looking for solutions to poverty, racism and disenfranchisement. They are presented by people seeking to characterize the poor and disadvantaged as slothful, lazy or dishonest. They wish to show welfare recipients as somehow naughty. Their clear intention is to somehow rationalize the decision not to help the underclasses for either racist or selfish reasons.
Fallacy of Presumption; Assigning Motives.Likewise a
Red-Herring; as the motives of the one arguing are irrelevant to the validity or invalidity of his claims. This being, ultimately, an emotional argument.
In point of fact, I would actually argue that people seeking out welfare instead of market alternatives are acting rationally based on a cost-benefit analysis. Welfare dependency is (from a short-term perspective) a very rational thing to pursue. That is hardly a negative characterization; even if I find the practice ignoble on a personal level.
Drlee wrote:The louder they protest their innocence of this, the more obvious it is that they are doing it. The same tables and "studies" are used, almost entirely by the right, to argue against affirmative action and other forms of relief aimed specifically at common forms of need.
Fallacy;
Poisoning The Well.
Your argument here is basically that if someone denies the claim that he is being racist (according to your fallacy of presumption); that automatically makes him racist (poisoning the well); likewise, you have implied that simply using these statistics implies a rightwing racist agenda (also a poisoning of the well).
These are not very nice things to say about people.
Drlee wrote:4. It is a clear attempt to classify all forms of relief as a one-size-fits-all solution. It encourages the reader to consider, for example, food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicare as all the same thing serving the same purpose. They are not and they do not.
Some may do that, but the question here is whether or not subsidizing a behavior will lead to that behavior's increase. This is incontrivertable irrespective of questions of policy.
Drlee wrote:5. They ignore the fact that these programs are a powerful and direct subsidy to business. They frequently off-load the expense of health care, day care, and even daily living to the government when, if we really did have a free enterprise system, these expenses would naturally be covered by employers in the form of salaries consistent with filling all of these needs. The argument against a minimum wage on principle assumes that the marketplace imagines a robust middle class. While there are some of us posting here who remember when it did, it most decidedly does not now. (Enter a diatribe about immigration workplace enforcement here if you like positing that employers are simply not willing to pay the "going rate" for labor.)
"Naturally" as term here is a bit of a speculation; businesses would only provide such if there were a competitive necessity to do so. I don't really see how minimum wage is relevant either to this conversation as its not really a subsidy per say.
Drlee wrote:6. Never forget that these folks assume that the rural white guy I mentioned earlier, deprived of help and facing a nonexistent job market will take to the road in search of a job rather than take to the streets in search of a political solution. And that when the road takes him to Chicago where he arrives poor, moves into a poor neighborhood and challenges the inner city folks there already facing an underpaid or scarce job market he will exacerbate these problems spurring a response from the folks already struggling there. So looking at this issue, that poor, white country girl is no different economically from the poor, brown Guatemalan immigrant arriving at our Southern border. Will he not displace workers already there and drive down wages even further. The factory down the road now having to applicants for the same job both of which have the further problem of no public aid to give them options for education, training and relocation? (I have a sore side today so please do not consider private charity as a solution. It is not and never will be.)
What an interesting and irrelevant rant.
Drlee wrote:So I do not reject the "tables, facts and figures" as inaccurate representations of what they set out to prove. Rather I consider them so shallow as to be useless in the debate at all.
Well of course you would! Your entire speculation as to what I am setting out to prove is false to the point of slanderous libel and based soley on presumption. However, if you actually read what people such as myself were purporting to use the data to prove, you would see no such boogeymen behind this poster.
Do subsidises for a behavior promote or lead to an increase in that behavior? Yes.
This is my only claim and the stats can be used fairly in support of that claim and they have been.