We need this word in the US.


Serious question: How do you take a country such as the US, which is extremely large and very diverse, in which existing social-welfare programs are necessary to some but relied upon as a "free ride" by others, and in which a large segment of the population exhibits very little work ethic and operates under the assumption that they are owed something by life and society as a whole, and transform it into a Swedish-style socialist utopia?

 

I lived in Sweden for two years, but I was 3 years old and can only speak to their wonderful local ice rinks and Pippi Longstrom (Longstockings) on the television. If you'd like to get a good look at "The Venezuela of America", just come to California. You'll see how all the wonderful socialist policies have left us with the highest taxes and highest percentage of people below the poverty line in all the United States. And billionaires. We've got lots. In fact, about 5,000 people in the state are responsible for the bulk of our income taxes (about 90 are billionaires). We're one dry year away from water rationing at any given time, and yet refuse to build new reservoirs. We instead wantonly pour our clean water into the ocean. I personally live less than 10 miles from a nuclear waste site--one that's situated 50 yards from highway 5 and 50 feet from the ocean, and 2 feet above the water line. Our state pension system will be over $500 billion underfunded within a couple of years (it could be now), and our highways are like Peruvian goat paths. In exchange for fixing our roads, our government has promised us a glorious "high speed rail" system. The $32 billion price tag has more than doubled, before even one mile of track has been laid. Estimates are that the final costs will be over $100 billion.

In short, our socialist overlords lie to us, steal our money and then give it to anyone who will promise to vote for them, and their version of "central planning" couldn't be more inefficient. All this in a state that is the bread basket to the world, with some of the most diverse geography of any state, and certainly the best climate--at least on the coast.

Whether California or Venezuela, socialism is a bust. You'd tire of it soon.

 

To be fair, having lived in North County for 8 years, SoCal folk have no idea how good their roads are as compared to the rest of the US. Ok, Phoenix might be *slightly* better (don't forget the speed cameras every 50 feet in Phoenix), but seriously, try driving in Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Boston, Philly, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. My daily commute is about one pothole short of storming the beach at Normandy on D-day.

The 5 in SD is truly one of the best stretches of interstate highway in the US, and the quality of PCH is the sort of thing that city planners out here in the middle-east dream about when they're coming down from their high.



Also, San Onofre Station is at LEAST 3 feet above the waterline.




EDIT: Hey, why does the Aussie Communist get all of SamNavy's guns? I want some!

 

If you are at all interested i'd be happy to take you shooting before I leave Illinois. Not giving guns away though. They are all coming with me when I leave.

 

Joe--seriously--they haven't fixed a road here since you left. Arizona, Nevada, Oregon all have glass-smooth roads compared to ours, and their gas is much less expensive and gives better gas mileage.

And you've missed another new 'feature'; the homeless. They're everywhere. And their hypodermic needles are everywhere. All the fires you heard about in L.A. were caused either by homeless or illegal immigrant encampments.

If my wife hadn't just poured her heart and soul into starting a charter school, I think we'd be gone. And since the local teacher's union HATES charter schools, they'll probably shut it down after year 5 and then we'll be gone...

 

MOTIVATION!

Make the bludgers work for their welfare!

ie. If you're physically/mentally capable and don't do some form of work that benefits society, whether it be construction, helping with community activities, etc, you don't get paid!

This makes constructive use of these individuals and helps to give them a skillset/mindset for permanent employment.
Also, some will find that they can get paid more for that same type of work in permanent employment so will move off of welfare.

As the middle class grows, there's more taxable income to provide free schooling/health/aged care.

 

EDIT: Responding to Cordy, not Lokiel:

It's all relative, man.



Serious question: why the heck is Mark Zuckerberg being called to testify before congress? So far as I understand the situation, it can basically be summarized as:


I mean, did I miss something?

 

but, but, but . . . it was used to help "Not My President!"

Seriously, flip the tables: if HRC had won, and data had been used from FB to help her do so, we would not even be having this conversation.

 

 

Serious response:

That can be difficult to implement, when a significant percentage of the voting populace are either these bludgers to whom we are referring, or are extremely sympathetic to their perceived plight. (Witness the number of young-but-voting-age Americans who are presently protesting against the First Amendment.)


One of the greatest problems facing any sort of entitlement reform, at least from what I've seen in the US, is that if a politician proposes scaling back or eliminating any sort or social welfare program, the immediate response is "The government is trying to take away my [thing being discussed]!"

The key point to notice here is that [thing] is assumed to be "mine." Eg, it's something that the recipients (and those sympathetic to them) consider to be something to which they are entitled, bordering on a fundamental right.

Try to scale back rent control or Section 8 vouchers in NYC? "Government trying to take away my home!" No, the government isn't taking away anything that's "yours," merely decreasing the amount of money that they take from other people and give to you.

But of course that's not how things are interpreted in the Court of Public Opinion.



So, I go back to the serious question: I get what the end goal is, but how would you actually implement such a policy in the US?

 

I can't believe you just said that. That is the exact opposite of "free". They pay for every krona of it.

All the answers come to boil down to a lot of people dying. Short of actual zombies or a meteor strike doing the job, I'm not sure how the US is gonna legistlate it's way out of what we've done. Socialist utopia I am not intersted in... even in a well-working system, you are one politician away from "V for Vendetta".

 

Hmm. If only we knew someone who had access to nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them...


(Note to NSA / FBI / Dept. of the Navy: just kidding.)

 

Are you aware of Congress's need to showboat? It's all Kabuki theater. That being said, the absolute power Facebook has over social media and Google has over searches is very, very scary. One tweak of an algorithm can skew the totality of what a person sees, or of who other people can reach. If you're "shadow-banned" because the uber-libs in Silicon valley feel triggered by your words, Facebook and Google can effectively influence votes without the plebes even knowing that they've been played. The scale of this issue can't be overemphasized.

 

Agreed.

This situation has existed pretty much since the invention of written language circa 4,000 BC. Ever since then, some elite group or another (merchants, the church, governments, librarians, media corporations, easily-bribed forum moderators, etc) have exercised a disproportionately large control over the dissemination of knowledge and information.

People are acting like this is a new thing, and that puzzles me.


But that's not the issue here. From what I can tell, Congress is upset that information which people voluntarily posted about themselves on the internet was read by someone.

That's... kind of how the internet is supposed to work.

 

Originally Posted by lokiel"free" was definitely the wrong word, I should have written:

"Yes taxes are high, but people are free from worrying about needing to set aside their own private funds for education, health and aged care; people work hard because they know it's for their own benefit."

I believe in welfare for those that genuinely NEED it permanently or for a limited amount of time, a government should care for its people, but those who exploit it should have it terminated immediately, that's not what welfare was intended for.

Here's one of my real pet peeves:
In Australia, when they planned to change welfare payments in the form of food vouchers and cash rather than cash alone to ensure that a known portion of it would be spent of food, there was a huge uproar over this with the common complaint being "No-one should be able to tell me how to spend my money!".
That REALLY pissed me off, it's not "their money", it's "my money". It's money that the government gives them from taxpayers so that they can survive, not money that they should be able to spend on cigarettes and non-essentials.

When people can live on welfare alone without needing to do anything for it and get used to it, why would they ever change?

People who unjustifiably remain on welfare need hardship and motivation to change - unfortunately "Bleeding Heart Liberals" currently prevent this.

 

So, Che Lokiel, tell us how you feel about Trump making people work for their welfare? It's very Swedish, ya?

And I'm going to be that guy and say that as long as people are glued to their phones waiting for the next social media post so they can re-post, re-tweet, like, share, or whatever....... Things are not going to get better for the average Joe whether on welfare or not.

You can't give a **** about yourself if all you ever do is care about what everybody else is doing! And since social media is clearly being controlled/manipulated, people will only care about the content on social media. My totally unsolicited, uninformed opinion although I do walk around with my eyes open.

 

Det skulle vara den första förnuftiga saken som han sagt länge.

 

He didn't say it. He done did it. Well he done did it through E.O. so who knows what the results shall be

 

nope. just really advance AI.

 

Regardless of what Congress thought was the main question, THIS is the main question. It should be plain as a flashing neon sign.