Study: More Than Half a Trillion Dollars Spent on Welfare But Poverty Levels Unaffect

One thing people tend to overlook is the rise of robotics, automation of factory processes and so forth have also had the effect of displacing large amounts of workers.

Less technical workers are needed, just a few button pushers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite... just pointing out that advancing manufacturing technologies can and have negatively impacted the labor force. .

 

indydude

You are misinformed in regard to the US import of Canadian lumber: Most timber harvested in Canada is owned by the provinces rather than by private owners. Much of this (softwood or coniferous timber) is used for many purposes in addition to and other than producing lumber. It is very difficult to logically say that the very low “stumpage fee” is a “lowball” price since such is a very small percentage of the overall cost.

Have you considered the cost of transportation? Research that cost for a trailer load or even for a (rail) carload – it can be staggering. The tariffs imposed, which vary from producer to producer for some reason, are not so much as the extreme transportation costs in most cases.

Experience has taught me that home buyers have very often enslaved themselves to mortgage companies: buying or building homes they could barely make the payment on without consideration of utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc.

Your "simple small family homes" idea is a good one. The reason you haven’t heard of anything like it is that there seems to be a very limited market for “simple small” – buyers want bigger… bigger than they need and bigger than they can afford. Mortgage companies, and our government agencies guaranteeing home loans have, over the years, raised their minimum size requirements. Ok, call it a conspiracy. But, the home market is very much controllable by (buyer) demand – as it should be. If those complicated, over-priced designs didn’t sell, the market for them would soon disappear. I’m all too familiar with the residential construction market and its problems.

 

They do, and a much greater share at that. Well, maybe excluding GE, who is a major contributor to the Democrat party.

How does someone become entitled to receiving a share of something?

 

Indie

(26 lines later)

What a huge reply that says so little. Most of it is made up of rhetorical statements covered elsewhere anyway or obvious dodging of the criticisms levelled at your ideas.

I’ll make the observation again, you seem to dislike my ideas because they don’t fit in with your own even if you are unable to actually come up with any rational or reasonable counter arguments.
I dislike your ideas because as I’ve explained a length and often in detail you ideas seem flawed often deeply so and are therefore likely to make a bad situation worse, criticisms that you seem unable to address.

OK lets look at what you said more closely.

 

Indie

So my goal is what – this seems very confused - I have a gaol and goals and the goals is to bring about the goals which is one of my goals, can you try and explain what the hell you are going on about?

Actually it was you that called it unfair – in our discussion over advantage and disadvantage - having no rational counter arguments to what I’d explained you shrugged and declared that it was just how it was - that life was unfair.

But as I pointed out to you at the time – life doesn’t have to be so unfair, that the unfairness you accepted is structural not natural.

As to inequality in society as I’ve pointed out to you many times the neoliberal ideas that became dominate over the last 30 years or so have resulted in the real term incomes of the middle and lower groups to have stagnated or fall, while the wealth of the wealthy has increased hugely. It seems that everywhere neoliberal ideas have been followed increased inequality has increased.

Oh this made me laugh.

I’ve asked you many, many times maybe over a thousand times over the last 2 years to explain your ideas in the light of the criticisms thrown at them and it is like pulling teeth. You are extremely averse to debating honestly and this reply is a case in point, it’s yet another dodge.

Oh and another accusation one you thrown at me many times –that I twist or misconstrue what you say – the only problem is that you have NEVER been able to actually back that charge up with any evidence.

Again a dodge and I’ll reply the same as I’ve done all the many other times you’ve tried it – what ‘facts’ are you taking about and if you where more of an honest debater you’d explain your views when asked rather than answering with evasion. I often find that with the lack of explanation the only thing I have is what you imply.

And as I keep pointing out - I think that the best way to help the unemployed is to give them decent jobs with living wages and the prospect of bettering their condition. The problem as - I’ve explained at length – is that your ideas don’t seem to be aimed at that (criticisms you still refuse to address).

Yes you say that - BUT the problem is that as pointed out above in many examples of what you have said that is exactly what you seem to imply. Just saying that’s not your implication doesn’t address those many examples when that’s what you seem to imply. Why not explain your viewpoint behind such statements, as I’ve asked you to?

It is like those people that say ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ only to come out with a racist comment you seem to be saying ‘I don’t think the unemployed are lazy, but…I think the only way to get them to work is to punish them for being unemployed’

Again yet another dodge – first you obviously haven’t got a clue what your forced labourers would actually do even though I’ve asked you many times. Then you throw out yet another accusation and then you ask a question I’ve already covered.

TO REPEAT – The best way to help the unemployed is to give them decent jobs, real jobs with living wages and the prospect of bettering their condition. The problem as I’ve explained at length your ideas don’t seem to be aimed at that (criticisms you still refuse to address).

 

Indie

 

Indie

Didn’t you tell me it’s not all about you?

 

Indie

Hollow rhetoric. Thing is that in real terms the incomes of the middle and lower groups stagnate or fall while tax cuts and income hikes have vastly the wealth of a few, so wages have broadly fallen, the cost of employing people has dropped. The same neoliberal ideas that brought about this increase in inequality also encouraged the hollowing out of manufacturing and outsourcing. In most cases it was the corporate ‘private sector’ that pushed for the neoliberal policies.

Try - The Decline and Fall of the America Empire: Part One 1945-
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...?t=435209&f=36

Fall in top rate tax
1945 - 94%
1970 – 70%
1982 - 50%
1990 - 28%
2010 – 33%


Rise in top levels of pay
In the 1950’s CEO pay was 25-50 times that of an average worker that has risen to 300-500 times by 2007.
A bigger gap than any other developed nation.

Trade deficit
1960 – Trade surplus of 3.5 billion
2008 – Trade deficit of 690 billion
(The last time the US posted a trade surplus was in 1975)

Decline in manufacturing
1965 - Manufacturing accounted for 53% of the US’s economy.
2004 – It accounted for 9%
The Economist (10/1/2005) stated: “For the first time since the industrial revolution, fewer than 10% of American workers are now employed in manufacturing.”

The thing is that what the private sector does best is promote its interests even when that is to the detriment of all other sectors of society. That is why it has to be regulated to work for the benefit of all of society.

It seems to me that your forced labour idea is only likely to increase bureaucracy I mean you would need an army of new people to oversee this project,

 

Indie

Already covered in… Kicking global wealth out of the driving seat. http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=353922

The wealth sponsored ideas otherwise know as the ‘free market’ or ‘laissez faire’ doctrine, dictate that wages are a matter of supply and demand, so high wages are in less demand than low wages.

And in a financially globalised world we are told a worker in the US or Europe is in compete with the lowest paid worker on the planet.

The threat being that if ‘expensive’ western workers did not cut their wages then the ‘free market’ dictated that companies and the work would go elsewhere.

At the same time right wing politicians of the free market attacked other ‘handicaps’ on western economies in the same way, healthcare systems, welfare systems, social programmes even education systems we’ve been told have to be ‘competitive’ in a global economy.

Hinting that our societies would have to be able to ‘compete’ with places employees threaten to move to that had very rudimentary systems or none at all.

The thing is that people and workers fought for their wages and social benefits in a long, bitter and often dangerous struggle.

(For an American perspective on that struggle try – Who built America (two volumes) by the American Social History Project)

Wage rates and social programmes are part economic but they are also political, the actions of workers and people have forced systems to be more distributive and equal. Made them tax the rich, pay decent wages and protect people from exploitation.

We have laws against child labour but they make no sense from a purely economic viewpoint, why not exploit a labour force that might make up a third or more of a country’s population.

The thing is many of the places that wealth claims we should compete with have been denied those wage levels and social benefits (so in many child labour is exploited because it can be).

Basically neoliberal globalisation for the west was a con game based on short term thinking, consumerism, debt and the enrichment of a few to the detriment of other groups.

 

Bal:

Could you condense that to a single short post?

 

I can:you worship the rich and their greedy ways and can't/don't want to see it's now completely rigged in their favor. What you believe would be true--if it were the 50s-60s. It's all flying apart and you're a voice from the past.

 

Actually I'm just like you, a voice from the present, with the exception being that I can deal responsibly in an increasingly competitive world without having to find others to blame for hardships. Rather than complain about the wealth others possess, spend the time and effort in creating your own and everyone might benefit.

 

Any time I competed--I WON. I've been voluntarily poor and conversly I've made 120,000 a year. Doesn't have anything to do with what's gone wrong in this country. I was born in '39,brother and I can see the changes plainly from money was "falling off the trees", our pols working together to actually get things done, factories going overseas,the rich paying 90% over a certain amount and taking it in stride, to what we have now. The "old ways" don't count nearly as much as they did. I never could have believed the polarization that has happened,the crooks that fouled up the whole world economy if someone had told me this would happen.

 

I've been away from this thread for a while, but I'm home sick from work today so I have some time to respond to bals post.

Is payment not motivation enough? That's what motivates me to work.

That is obviously the main objective. How would you propose we do that? Making it harder for small businesses to grow, as the current administration is trying to do, is not the answer. So un till we figure out how to create sustainable jobs with living wages, it would benefit society if long term welfare recipients were required to put in a helping hand.

If the betterment of their own communities is punishment, then yes.

But to me, your approach is simplistic and prejudiced. -'People are not working so it has to be at the fault of someone else. Therefore we need to give them more money, and provide them with awesome jobs because the cannot do anything on their own.'

Not all of them of course, but a good number of them are.

The answers to this question are endless, and cannot be answered by one person.

That would depend entirely on what you would consider a 'living wage.'

I would assume that more often than not they are not qualified for any skilled position. Could they be trained? Some of them, yes. But why should tax payers pay for their education when millions of Americans do it on their own everyday. There are tons of programs in place already for low income citizens to go to school practically free of cost. It's their own responsibility to utilize those programs. It's not the governments responsibility to hold their hands throughout life.

in some cases, yes. Other cases, no. You might be hard pressed to find an employer willing to hire someone with no qualifications and then relocate that person. It's the individual's responsibility to find the best location for themselves, to have the best chance at landing the job they want for the wages they feel they deserve.

Lol if it were only that easy Bal. Its not that I don't want to fix it, it's that I respect the complexity of the problem and understand that it cannot be fixed by simply waving a magical democratic wand. No two cases are going to be the same. And by saying "let's find out why they don't have a job, and fix it," you seem to be living in a fantasy land where all the problems in society are black and white. It's not that easy.


And to clarify......I'm not talking about requiring a full work week. Which would by all means hinder their employment search. I'm only proposing, let's say, 10 hours a week. Or even ten hours every two weeks. I don't think that's too much to ask. And it may have been missed when I said it earlier, that this would only apply to able bodied LONG TERM welfare recipients. People that have been collecting welfare, food stamps, housing, etc. for extended periods of time.

 

Instead of bailing out the banks,the money should have been used to start up similar programs as the WPA and CCC camps as Roosevelt did, that employed millions in a hard time (like now)and include the folks on welfare. Work on infrastructure,maintaining parks,cleanup of freeways,(since some morons still litter instead of depositing their trash where it belongs) and anything else that would help society. That way,the truly lazy would not be able to fake it and those willing to work would be paid.

 

Bullshit you just took the money you made here and split the country.

 

I suggested that, but Balbus compares that to slavery, forcing people to do some work to acquire their needs.

 

I sure did. I worked and earned the money I have, paid taxes on it and still pay taxes each year for which I receive no benefits at all. I simply exercised a freedom that assured my ability to live within my means after retiring, and did the same during my working years, moving to where employment could be found.

 

Robots taking jobs was a fear spread around decades ago. In the meantime we didnt have that fear realized because the corps. just moved the whole factory overseas. Hows that for negatively impacting the labor force? Maybe if our fears of advanced technologies, like robots, didnt block robotics, the factories would still be here with plenty of jobs building, fixing and programming the robots. There are huge satelite economies that form from advance technologies, like robotics.
I thought the same thing about robots 'taking' jobs. I think the unions started that line of reasoning but now I see the use of automation and robots and see the economies behind them and the jobs created around them.
There are good jobs, right now, for those who can repair and install and program robots and automation lines and CNC machines. US students and workers need to train to fill these jobs.
Germany and other 1st world economies are keeping strong and competitive with advanced manufacturing.
The thing is this: the higher quality and precision realized by the use of advanced technology will beat the abundant cheap labor of 3rd world manufacturing economies.