It's time to end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and Public Education

Would the states be any different than the Federal government? Chances are, they would have some of the same help the Federal government gives. Believe it or not, many families do help their own, even though a person maybe receiving Federal help. I mean the government doesn't give so much that people are living the good life.

Instead of wanting to do away with everything. We should be trying to fix it. Social Security could fund it's self if we didn't let people on it that it was never meant to on it.. If we added one or two years on the retirement age. People are living longer. If we took the cap off where you stop paying into it. If you get a check, part goes to S.S. That would be just like a tax on the rich and they can afford it.

I would do something similar to what Roosevelt, did and have those that can work, work for Federal assistance. You can bet if they did that, many of these dead beats that are milking the system would rather get out and look for a job if they had to work for what little welfare pays.

 

Anything else imposes slavery. I'm not excusing an individuals shared responsibility concerning societal infrastructure, but personal needs are a personal responsibility( with exception of children's needs).

 

IMO, the federal government should remain to the duties it was given by the founders. Local issues need to remain local. The federal government is not capable of managing efficient charity. States do not have printing presses and generally abide to balanced budgets.

I'm all for states innovating ways to deal with social issues. I believe 50 states doing this would provide great solutions. Important is for citizens to be motivated to self-sustain.

 

Why do we need a Federal Education Dept? Every state has an Education Department. Let the Feds set the standard and the state follow it. Billions saved.

Do you know almost every Federal and state has a policy where each dept gets so much money each year? If they don't spend all the money allocated to them, they get cut the next year. Needless to say, the departments will find some reason to spend it, even if they don't need anything so they won't get cut. Why not encourage them to turn the extra back in without getting cut, by letting them have a party if they turn money back in? It not only would build moral, but save billions.

Why are we paying farmers not to grow crops when if we allowed them to grow as much as they want, buy it off them and use it for foreign aid instead of giving these countries cash. People are starving all over the world and we would only be paying once instead of twice and that would also keep the prices up in stores so farmers could make a living?

We just need to learn how to do things differently. We waste billions.

 

Did you know many of these land developers buy up acres of land to use for future development, but can get paid by the government not plant crops on it, even though they have no intention of growing anything?

 

Like I said, extreme tax cutting has made paying the bills hard. Medicare in part is so high now because of the rapid inflation of healthcare costs, which still must be solved on its own.

The system certainly needs reformed, but before anything happens we need COMPETENT GOVERNMENT. We are not the only country who has social programs and they work in others. Perhaps someone should take time to study norway, sweden, Switzerland, and Finland's government. It works very well and social programs ensure that old people aren't left to fend for themselves, students get an education for nothing, people have access to medical care etc. And going over to heritage foundation's conservative website they're more economically free then we are on the ranking.

 

I only the state's would actually do this.

 

Without this food prices would bottom so low that it wouldn't be profitable to farm here is the problem. The only other solution is for government price controls, which would probably just end up a disaster.

 

Lol...You're a penny ante thinker, kid. Your idea would only guarantee that the country would go down in flames with massive riots and destruction.
Why not just propose nuking the rest of the planet so that we don't have to waste our money on defense or telling the old or the sick to crawl away and die so that you people can keep your dough to buy more beer?
It's simple, cost effective and would prove, yet again, how darn exceptional Americans are.

 

I paid into all those thing for 42 years. I'll gladly take my money back with compound interest for each year by the average interest rate for each year for all 42 of them. My Dad paid taxes for my education, however since I never had children, I'll gladly take my money back with compound interest for each year by the average interest rate for each year for all 42 of them too. When can I expect my check?

 

Although, I'm by no means a libertarian/small gov advocate like the thread starter- I can agree with the skepticism concerning some of these things. The biggest problem was implementing them in the first place and then finding that, should they ever need to be renounced, they can't be. The reason why is simple- all of them build a form of reliance by the individual upon the State. Decades of them have had this outcome and decades more will simply build on that.

Restoring individual self-sufficiency is infinitely more difficult than taking it away- the implementation of these things was a one-way trip whether for right or wrong.

 

LOL, I was going to post exactly that. Repeating popular RW talk radio points is hardly "independent thinking".

 

Very relevant to this topic. I'm sorry that you were forced to pay into this fraud for so long, but that doesn't justify forcing me to subsidize your retirement.

[video=youtube;O_KJ0HXu7D0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_KJ0HXu7D0[/video]

 

well, IMHO you are half right.

 

Get rid of them? No. First this isn't politically possible to do. Second, outright ending it is not a good thing.

Look I'm a libertarian. One of the most fundamental things in politics that I realize is that any such government program reduces efficiency and causes some real net loss to the public as a whole, but these are cost-sacrifices that the public is willing to make. Think of it like this: when an individual consumer decides to shop at a co-op, generally a locally owned and environmentally friendly store, they pay extra but they are willing to because they know that they are supporting local and they are supporting an environmentally friendly business. They get less bang for their buck, but they find that the sacrifice (dollar-value) is worth the benefit (supporting local businesses and the environment).

Likewise, we as a society on a large scale decide that we are willing to make certain sacrifices. For example, we sacrifice some of our tax dollars to support public schools - and that value, that everyone deserves an education, is one we're willing to make a sacrifice (dollar-value) for. The issue there, as a libertarian-Republican, is the minimizing the sacrifice and maximizing the benefit. If we had a voucher system and less stringent federal requirements then we could offer better education outcomes at lower costs.

A similar situation is with providing for the general public welfare. We as a society have decided that we don't want to see anyone starving on the streets, and that we don't want anyone in dire need to go without medical care, and so we have made a sacrifice (dollar-value). But that value that society has taken, the value in having no one go without basic needs, is one worth having. Again, as a libertarian-Republican, I would just prefer that we do it in a more efficient way that reduces the costs and maximizes the benefit. One major downside to our system is that it discourages productivity by ending benefits at a cutoff point. While I'm not an enormous fan of it, I find that Finland's system is actually better than ours because it eliminates the negative byproducts of our system. What they do is they calculate the minimum costs for survival, to pay for food & housing, and they make a check for that amount to every citizen, no matter how rich or poor. With such a system we could phase out most of our entitlement programs.

 

You're nuts if you think charity will actually take up the slack.

 

The myth that the poor can only be taken care of through coercion causes the left to believe they hold a moral high ground. Sadly, belief in this myth will probably hold up even when programs like Social Security collapse under their own weight.

 

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight, if that is the case why do we still even have these programs? Everyone should be doing fine on the generous charity donations they receive instead of applying for foodstamps and such.

 

That line of thinking isn't very useful when looking at any government program. The government isn't like a business that has to preserve it's own wealth. The government has taken a huge share of the economy and is using it to subsidize voters. Charities give a lot in the US even with high taxes in place and a perception that the government safety net is already "helping" the poor.

I'm guessing that you're a liberal and probably agree with me that the amount of spending towards the military is insanely high. So by your line of thinking, why do we have such a bloated military industrial complex if it wasn't absolutely necessary to keep us "safe"? Surely the government would have cut back by now if we could have gotten by with less spending in that area.

 

What extreme tax cutting? FICA taxes have only increased since inception. Anyone who looks at these programs critically would see they are poorly designed and very poorly managed by government. Just like Bernie Madoff, the government has improperly used dedicated funds to fund other spending. Private fund managers would be jailed for this(like Madoff). Privatization would end this. Privatization would allow higher returns and nesteggs to pass to heirs. Privatization would eliminate generational theft. Privatization would end dependency promotion by government.

 

States and communities would do what has to be done. Additionally, individuals would be more motivated to self sustain. This is how Switzerland deals with welfare.

 

We now have very unstable situation in our society, you really can't imagine what will these mad protesters do if we will end medicare, welfare and other social benefits? Be sure that it will be worse than in Detroit '67

 

And when the poor have nothing to lose but armed combat or worse all decide to start voting, what will you do then, I vote in my best interest that is oddly promote the economy so tax paying people increase and I keep my benefits (Medicaid, SNAP and SSI) and others likely will as well. Reforms could be done but no one will get the original posters idea through they need to keep the poor under control like me. I may be in a power wheelchair and disabled but I can use the vote the franchise granted me as a citizen and that is a weapon.

 

We would like to have your check for you as soon as possible. Let's just check your account balance to see how much you're owed.

Uh-oh.

It seems there's a bit of a problem with your account. It appears you've done nothing but help yourself to a lot of checks. You are massively overdrawn. You seem to have taken out 19 trillion dollars more than you paid in.

When can we be expecting payment?

 

We could give all that stuff too, but people wouldn't live like they do today. To provide all those things require money from taxes and the more they tax, the less you have to spend. How many people in those countries have homes, cars, boats, televisions and etc. like we have here? I would bet life is quite different there than here. Not saying they aren't happy as we are here, but I bet life is quite different there. So depends on what kind of life we want to lead. There is no free lunch no matter what they say.