Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

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AgnosticBoy
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Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #1

Post by AgnosticBoy »

When I brought up a point about Welfare and Food stamps (EBT) being a form.of suppression, one member proudly stated the following:
koko wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2020 5:18 pm Never got corporate welfare so it never helped me in any way. However, I do survive on food stamps. That EBT card sure is a life saver for me.
You have to ask these people if they have 2 legs and hands then why not get a real job??

What does this say when Blacks complain about lacking opportunity for success but yet some are proud of getting handouts (food stamps and welfare), handouts that keep them in poor conditions.


Is it fair to say that Blacks looking for handouts are lazy?

Is laziness a way to success?

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Mithrae
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Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #11

Post by Mithrae »

AgnosticBoy wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:25 pm Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food. -- (No mention of NOT WORKING or being on food stamps in that passage).
Again, most able-bodied SNAP recipients are workers. It's best to try to avoid letting political or racial prejudices blind one to real facts, when they are pointed out.

I'm actually glad you mentioned this verse; I'm not sure that ancient Hebrew mythology is particularly relevant to the discussion, but it's a convenient lead-in to the big picture/political discussion, as distinct from the smaller/racial focus. You're quoting it as if it were a good thing, but actually in that story the necessity of work is handed down as a curse. There's really nothing inherently good or laudable about selling your body to Walmart, Ford, Apple or the like, is there? Given half a chance kings and corporations would still have us working sixty plus hours a week on bare starvation wages, spreading propaganda chastizing all those "lazy" people who want to work a mere fifty or forty hours and demonizing any kind of suggestion that people have a basic right to a decent minimum standard of living.

Do you think that people have a basic right to a decent minimum standard of living, or not?
Do you think that we collectively and as individuals should aim to labour less, or more?

The story of the Garden of Eden is one of intelligence (knowledge of good and evil, increased pain in childbirth due to big brains), agriculture (fruit from the tree, the curse of working the ground for food) and hence ultimately of civilization; a sort of nostalgic allegory for the (comparatively) carefree innocence of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, or to a lesser extent the kind of nomadic pastoralism of Abel and Abraham. Benjamin Franklin - largely adopting the view common to his times that (poor) people should be "led or driven" to work for wealthier employers, landlords or nobles - nevertheless noted that, given half a chance such as the relatively open lands of the American colonies, that scenario is very far from the ideal:
  • The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labour appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians, in their present way of living, almost all their Wants are supplied by the spontaneous Productions of Nature, with the addition of very little labour, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labour when Game is so plenty, they visit us frequently, and see the advantages that Arts, Sciences, and compact Society procure us, they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never shewn any Inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts; When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger Brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness.

    Though they have few but natural wants and those easily supplied. But with us are infinite Artificial wants, no less craving than those of Nature, and much more difficult to satisfy; so that I am apt to imagine that close Societies subsisting by Labour and Arts, arose first not from choice, but from necessity: When numbers being driven by war from their hunting grounds and prevented by seas or by other nations were crowded together into some narrow Territories, which without labour would not afford them Food.
Maybe this seems like I'm rambling, but I think a coherent political philosophy is important to having a reasonable opinion about the rights and obligations between individuals and society, and a crucial point is this: The necessity of selling our labour to others is an unwanted condition imposed upon us by the demographic momentum of consecutive prior generations. Hebrew mythology notwithstanding, it's not actually a curse of God, and certainly not a command from God (in fact according to Matthew 6 Jesus seemingly advocated a partial kind of 'back to the garden' lifestyle like the birds and flowers, explicitly commanding his followers to work for God instead of money and trust in Him for their daily bread!). Work is indeed a necessity - and in the right circumstances can even be a fulfilling way to spend part of our time - but since it is for the most part an unwanted imposition, it seems quite obvious that we should not be pining for a return to sixty or eighty hour working weeks... instead we should be aiming, arguably as individuals and certainly as a society, to reduce that imposition on our liberty even further, as much as feasible. Corporate propaganda notwithstanding.

Prior to Covid, countries like the USA and Australia generally had unemployment rates around 4-8%. What do you imagine would happen if the 'full-time' working week were reduced even further, from 40 hours to 30? Consumer demand and the need for labour would not decrease, and for most jobs employers would prefer not to pay overtime; so odds are that the overwhelming majority of unemployed or under-employed people would find it far easier to get adequate work while full-time workers would enjoy more time for rest and relaxation. Personally I think that management of the full-time working week (along with minimum wages) is more ideal as a primary approach than individual welfare, so that more or less everyone really can have gainful employment: But arguably there are risks of unexpected consequences from tinkering with the economy like that, so a more conservative approach is to just maintain the status quo and merely help with financial support of those who aren't fortunate enough to find adequate work, so that they can at least maintain some kind of basic standard of living.

But judging by your reply to Otseng, neither of those is a vision of society which you share: Your answer is to work more, not less. If one full-time job isn't enough to meet the demands imposed upon you by demographic momentum and current policies, just get another one from the magical job wizard! Simple! And if the job wizard isn't available for everyone who needs him, I suppose before too long there'll at least be a few civil service jobs opening up to clean out of the gutters all the corpses of those who've frozen and starved...? In other threads we have already discussed the rather obvious problems of an undue emphasis on punitive policing (especially in the USA), and now in this thread you seem to be advocating a purely punitive approach - arguing that there should be no upside whatsoever to law-abiding membership in society, no safety net for those that the system fails.

That's a pretty harsh authoritarian kind of worldview, but I think that it's often held by people simply accepting what they've been taught rather than really thinking through the implications. Maybe my rambling will provide an alternative angle to think about things :)

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otseng
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Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #12

Post by otseng »

AgnosticBoy wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:12 pm Why do you use the word "might" otseng? If you're able to work, or are able to increase your hours but are unwilling to then it is laziness.
Why the focus on my use of the word "might"? The main point I'm making is that it's erroneous to suggest everyone who is on welfare is lazy. Even if there are people who are lazy (which I don't deny), you can't generalize it to everyone.
It is only mathematically impossible if you're considering a standard full time job, but if you go beyond that by working overtime or even a 2nd job then it is not impossible.
And that is what people are doing in order to survive. But, there's no way to expect everyone to do be able to do that, even if they are the most industrious and diligent people.

To me, this is fundamentally an economic problem that is the result of inflationary policies of the federal reserve. Since 1917, the dollar has lost over 96% of its purchasing power. So, it is getting progressively harder and harder to make ends meet. A single average wage earner in 1917 could support a family. Then families found they needed to have both husband and wife working. Now, having multiple jobs are needed. Of course the CEOs and banking executives are doing fine since they get funding from the government and the fed, which is a just a rich person's form of SNAP.
I can tell you examples after examples of people, esp. of Blacks, who worked hard to become nurses, law enforcement, managers. They don't depend on Food Stamps and Welfare. In fact, if you work for a good company then health insurance is usually already included.
Of course. The world is not comprised of extremes where either everyone is lazy or everyone is successful. There will be people who are a mix in a variety of situations in all economic stratas.
When people give EXCUSES, then that is consistent with laziness. When Blacks have a choice to go to school, vote, and work, and they choose not to then that is laziness.
Sure, there are many people who are lazy. Probably the vast majority of people are lazy and it's not exclusive to those who are on welfare.

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Mithrae
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Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #13

Post by Mithrae »

otseng wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:48 am Sure, there are many people who are lazy. Probably the vast majority of people are lazy and it's not exclusive to those who are on welfare.
Interestingly, I'm not sure that that the lazy few are a detriment to a welfare system at all, except at very low unemployment rates (or extremely generous welfare rates which make it more than a lazy few). When employers are receiving dozens if not hundreds of applications for advertised positions, that's good for them since it means they can hopefully pick the best candidate. If AgnosticBoy could magically convert the few who are lazily applying just to meet the requirements of a jobseeker payment into motivated go-getters, one of them might get the job: But that would just mean that someone else misses out.

There's no social upside to magically ensuring that no-one is lazy, unless there is a real shortage of labour. On the other hand for those who've lost a prior job due to bad luck and are already motivated to find another, it's good if some of their competition aren't too keen.

koko

Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #14

Post by koko »

Since the vast majority of welfare and food stamp recipients are white, I would supposed it follows that these oppress whites even more.

Funny, though, I never hear them complaining about the hand outs they get. And I never see/hear corporate welfare queens complain about the trillions they get from the government.

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Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #15

Post by otseng »

Mithrae wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:59 am
otseng wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:48 am Sure, there are many people who are lazy. Probably the vast majority of people are lazy and it's not exclusive to those who are on welfare.
Interestingly, I'm not sure that that the lazy few are a detriment to a welfare system at all, except at very low unemployment rates (or extremely generous welfare rates which make it more than a lazy few).
One thing that is a problem is the entitlement mentality that has permeated society. I'm not too concerned about the poor getting government assistance. I'm more concerned about those who are not poor that expect handouts from the government. When corporations, banks, too-big-to-fail companies, and stock owners that expect for the Federal Reserve to keep their stocks going up get handouts, bailouts, tax exemptions, loans that don't need to be paid back, etc, it exacerbates the wealth inequality, piles on even more massive national debate, and steals from everyone's money through inflation. These people I classify as lazy who just expect the government to just keep bailing them out.

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Re: Welfare and Food stamps is a way to suppress Blacks

Post #16

Post by Purple Knight »

The corporate welfare thing is actually a really good point. Nobody seems to think these sorts of handouts oppress anyone. The more they're given, the higher they rise, and the higher they rise, the more money they can make by using what they already have. These are the best of the best and one would be insane to call them dependent on anyone.

This is an example wherein handouts clearly help the recipients, making them less dependent, not hurt them or make them more dependent. You can't look at this and then say the mere act of providing handouts creates the dependency when all it does to the corporate giants is make them more self-sufficient and powerful.

I'm not arguing that welfare doesn't create dependency, but to argue that it does, you wouldn't be able to make the case that handouts themselves inherently cause the dependency.

Perhaps the truth is that society is purely competitive, so anything that pushes someone over the hump, so to speak, and allows them to outcompete others, can be helpful, but giving any amount of money is pointless if the recipient is still at the bottom.

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