Minimum wage earners can't afford to live anywhere in America

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by kazenatsu, Jul 15, 2021.

  1. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I disagree...all government funding is taxpayer money and all of it goes to support US citizens and business in myriad ways...
     
  2. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    This is not Nazi Germany...all people have rights to freedom of speech, of expression, and make their own decisions how they wish to live. Judging others is righteousness and arrogance...
     
  3. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you would be perfectly fine if someone receiving the various types of taxpayer funded welfare ultimately spent it all on heroin?

    Okay, I can agree with you. We need to let people "make their own decisions how they wish to live." And if they make poor life decisions, then that is their choice and they alone need to live with the consequences of their freely made choices. The taxpayer is not responsible and should not be required to pay for the poor choices of others.
     
  4. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) Exactly my point. People make their choices, and it's none of our business. Don't interfere, comment, or act.

    2) Yet you judge those who make the choice to be very wealthy. You also judge those who can't be @ssed even feeding themselves - by declaring them exempt from the obligations the rest of us have.
     
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  5. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    It's interesting to see someone simultaneously declare that peoples' freely made choices are none of our business, and also declare that we must interfere in freely made choices.

    I swear, these good folk NEVER think through the implications of their ideology.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2021
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  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Double standards.

    Anyway, there is something called Fabian Libertarianism, that seeks relative Libertarianism and individual free choice but with a little redistribution. Whether an imposed minimum wage actually really truly qualifies as moderate redistribution or a restriction on individual choice might be a matter of debate.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2021
  7. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    An imposed UBI would absolutely place restrictions on individual choice. It cannot exist without severe curtailment of 'independence'. It's not simply free money - it's a complete restructure of society.
     
  8. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    That would only be true if they'd actually thought it through.

    I don't believe the majority of Progressives have thought through their tropes for more than a pico-second.
     
  9. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    In bold above...WHO decides the definition of a poor choice?
     
  10. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I never said these things??
     
  11. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, philosophically speaking, it should be those who have money taken from them to provide support for those who are making the poor choices. In other words, if Person A's poor choices lead to Person B and Person C being required to give their hard earned money to Person A, then Person B and Person C have every right to judge Person A's bad decisions.

    Simply dumping money into Person A's lap to spend as they wish is a recipe for disaster. Much better would be limitations, direction, and education on how not to make poor choices, with ultimatums and penalties if the poor choices aren't corrected.
     
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  12. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    You need to find a different government system in which to live...can't imagine you are ever happy knowing all these lazy people are cheating and stealing from you...
     
  13. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Like I said, the system, and the people who make poor choices, would become better if those who make poor life decisions were given some guidance and direction and coaching instead of just dumping taxpayer money into their laps. So it isn't so much the "government system" that it is at fault, instead, it is the elected officials who have allowed things to get out of hand.

    It is a good thing that taxpaying citizens can discuss our opinions about how things could be made better, even if others disagree with those opinions. But instead of you discussing the topic with me, you are spending your time imagining that I can't be happy.
     
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  14. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Your thoughts are in la-la-land! You can never qualify/quantify the actions and intentions and decisions of tens of millions of Americans who receive various types of government support...it can't be done. One thing about problem solving is that when solutions are identified...the solutions MUST BE viable...and if not they are not solutions.

    BTW; your elected officials are your government system.
     
  15. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Does it result in your regress, rather than your progress? Does it damage your health? Does it threaten your security? Does it break a law? Does it waste money you could have saved?

    If yes, and you're now holding your hand out for tax payer dollars - it was a poor choice.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2021
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  16. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    If we keep "living in a system" which just dumps money upon an ever increasing number of people, what do you think is going to happen?

    What bizarre motive could you have for deliberately creating the disaster that will inevitably arise as a result, AND for being so invested in enabling the disintegration of all those lives?
     
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  17. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Of course you can. Mortgage lenders do it every day, and have always done it. All we need do is treat benefits as we do mortgages (without the requirement for a downpayment, obviously). The applicant should be required to demonstrate a history of financial responsibility and responsible behaviour. The systems for this kind of scrutiny already exist, in the tools and methods used by lenders.
     
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  18. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    Minimum wage earners can't afford to live anywhere??

    Well, isn't that why we have rent controls for the average folks and housing vouchers and section 8 housing for the poor?

    What more do you want?
     
  19. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    I would encourage you to read any number of studies on rent control in New York City.

    Rent control is a price ceiling and it caused the price of rents to increase, not decrease. On top of that, the way the law was written it allowed any number of abuses, most significant of which was family in a rent-controlled apartment would just pass it on to other family members with the result being the same family occupying a single apartment of 70-90 years.

    HUD Section 8 is the biggest tax-payer rip-off ever that soaked taxpayers for $TRILLIONs, unjustly enriched property owners and caused great difficulty in finding apartments.

    When Democrats originally wrote the law, it used a formula to determine the maximum amount of rent to be charged and the result was an apartment that would normally rent for $350/month gets billed to the taxpayers at $1,800/month.

    The Republicans amended the law in the 1990s under their "Contract with America" thing, but it still allows abuses.

    I teach guitar to a disabled vet who lives in an old hospital that was converted to 162 units. His annual recertification is in July and he was showing me taxpayers are billed $756/month. He only pays $280/month.

    The thing is, the apartments across the street, up and down the block and in that entire neighborhood rent for $325-$450/month.

    In other words, if fair-market rent were charged, HUD could house 262 people or more for the cost of 162 people (according to him, there are no married couples as nearly everyone is single/divorced/widowed or disabled.)

    These people have an agenda, which is government owns all housing and doles it out Soviet-style.
     
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  20. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    You're still hung up on judging others...not a solution to anything...
     
  21. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    You need a dose of hard reality...people have myriad issues in life and limited potential and a million other issues, right or wrong, and government can try to help them or just let them die in the streets...
     
  22. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Again...you're not in reality...more la-la-land...
     
  23. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Reality does not judge, my friend. It just imposes the laws of physics. Cause & Effect. Do a), and b) is likely. That's fact, not judgement.

    Disliking the 'effect' of the 'cause' you chose, means you have an issue with reality, not judgement.
     
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  24. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Yet mortgage lenders have been doing this forever. That's about as real as it gets.
     
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  25. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    The reality is that when we know what we must do to survive (be responsible, make good choices, live within our means, etc), and we still choose not to do those things, then it's we who need a hard dose of reality.

    And it won't be Govt 'letting them die in the streets', it will be the people who knew the rules of survival and chose to break them. They will kill themselves, wilfully and deliberately. Nothing to do with Govt.
     
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