Should we help the poor pay off mortgages?

You may think a fishing rod is better than a fish but Democrats prefer the fish because it creates dependency and votes

 

Is a home a rod or a fish?

I see a home more as a tool that promotes success rather than the result of success... but that depends on the home, of course. Not everyone gets a mansion... and whats the difference between a mansion and not mansion?

 

When it comes to the government, "give them" quickly turns into "force them". Rather than enabling people or removing impediments it becomes a disability and an impediment in itself. And with politicians and ideologues, the "self-help" quickly turns into social engineering.

 

I am intrigued by it. Its a very complicated subject, and if we do this on a large scale, it will have not only economic impacts, but social and cultural ones as well, We need to beware of unintended consequences.

 

Absolutely. Im no econ wiz. I put this here for those more knowledgeable than I to do exactly that.

 

You use the term "social engineering" as a derogatory term. Of course it's social engineering if social engineering is using resources to help and encourage people to improve themselves.

As far as your other points about dependency, those are just ideological catch phrases. Most people if truly given the means will try to better themselves. Yes, there are people who feel disenfranchised to the point that they have a cultural mindset and cycles of poverty, drug use and other behavioral issues that must be broken before they can succeed, but saying help fosters dependency ignores the fact that the problems are largely rooted in the techniques of the past used to help the poorest among us, not some genetic behavioral flaw in the people that we've tried to help in the past.

 

of course it is. It calls to mind Hitler Stalin Mao FDR. American is about freedom. We don't want communists engineering our lives and destroying our families. Govt is only to protect our natural rights.

 

exactly, blacks for example were making huge progress in the 1950's, but that progress was arrested by the deadly and crippling liberal programs of the 1960's that were targeted at black. It is those deadly liberal programs that made our liberal inner cities more deadly than war zones. The solution is to end those deadly programs.

 

First, I guess I'm going to need to know how you define "social engineering".

Like other things, ideas like social engineering can be used for good or be used for bad. Hiroshima is an example of a technology was used to kill tens of thousands of people, does that mean "nuclear power" is bad. No, nuclear power and social engineering aren't bad, people are bad, these things are ideas and technologies that people can use for good or use for bad.

As far as "natural rights", beyond a definition, I don't believe this is something that exists in the real world. No one has "natural rights", they only have the rights they can negotiate with others. That's it.

You have no "natural right" to anything.

If a lion found you and decided you looked tasty, would you assert your "natural rights"? Does the lion care? Why should a human embrace the idea of rights as something external to you?

 

Can you be any vaguer?

 

What? Is this for realz?

I genuinely don't understand this. In my country, it's the opposite. The older the house, the more it's worth, and the more people want to buy it. New houses are considered cheap and nasty (unless architect designed one-offs).

There is very good reason for this, it's not just whim. Older houses are faaaaar better built, using faaaar superior materials. They have faaaar more integrity of design, and were built on the premise that beautification touches were standard (what we refer to as 'character'). Fireplaces didn't just do a job, they had to look good too - etc etc.

Compared to shoddily constructed (using cheap materials), architecturally abominable, and characterless new homes, there's no competition.

 

Yeah, I live in the US and I'd say, unless we're talking about the kinds of houses the 1% buys, older houses are not undesirable.

 

I agree with everything you say, but that is not what many buyers want in the US. They want a shoddily built but camera ready home that requires no work whatsoever moreso than a solidly built but older home that needs "upgrades" . When they get to the age they need a new roof or a major replacement, a great many buyers will simply walk away from them. Housing is increasing disposal. More people will end up buying already built homes because they are cheaper but even a lot of banks won't lend on property that needs any work unless the work is done before the purchase or the funds held in escrow to pay for the repairs because they do not want to be stuck with a house in foreclosure that they may have to put money/energy into. 30+ year old homes often end up becoming rental properties, at least in my area.

 

Would it not make more sense to help people become more productively contributing, independent, and self supporting members of the societies they live within?

 

Who decides what "improvements" people need? Who determines what mold everyone should fit? What about the people who do not want to fit into that mold?

Where are you going to get those "resources" you will use to "encourage" people to "improve" themselves? What if the people who are providing those resources don't like your selected "improvements"?

You will use the government to take resources from some people in order to force other people to do what you want them to do, whether they want to do it or not.

I think you have my post confused with another person's post.

You seem to think that everyone wants to better themselves, and those stuck in a bad situation are there not because of their own attitude but because of external social forces beyond their control. Basically, its societies fault, and if society just gives them a financial hand then they will climb out of their rut and succeed. That's LBJ's Great Society, his "war on poverty". It hasn't worked.

 

Who said anything about molds? Perhaps we disagree on the term "social engineering".

Is providing education to those that cannot afford it, "Social Engineering"?

Well that's just it, isn't it? In your mind, the people with money should be able to determine what the people without it get and do not get.

The irony of that statment is that people like you (correct me if I'm wrong here) want less government, but that's exactly what you advocate.

As wealth accumulated in the hands of fewer people, the less the economic decisions of the greater number of people matter.

What evolves is a neo feudal, private state, which inevitably seeks to choke the public state in order to replace it.

It is no coincidence that the super rich so often tend toward libertarianism: they see themselves as the cream of the crop and want to govern the unwashed masses.

Their approach to do this is to privatize everything and reduce the size of government to where they can wrap their claws around its neck and control it.

That's what's happening now.

The government isn't "elites ruling over us", it is us, collectively, self-governing: inherently it is us standing against the desires of the Kochs, and those like them, becoming a feudal state.

This is why I don't argue politics anymore. People don't understand that the government does not have to take anything from anyone in order to have money to spend on the things.

But that's another, much longer conversation.

I've probably covered every conceivable question you might have about my last claim in this thread.

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...xplain-to-me-how-this-is-a-good-thing.499686/

I'll just say this. The US is a monetary sovereign, it can create money. Collecting money in taxes does not add to the amount of money the federal government has to spend and more than giving Tiger Woods his own autograph (cuz they are worth money ya know!) add to the amount of money he has.

Perhaps....

I don't care if everyone wants to improve their situation. Clearly, it's virtually impossible to find anything everyone wants to do. What I do care about is that there are a lot of people that do want to, or if given the chance would change their lives or at least the lives of their children if given a chance.

The fact that LBJ's "war on poverty" hasn't worked means that there is no way to help those in the bottom 1/2 of the economy succeed? Imagine if entrepreneurs stopped trying to achieve their goals the first time they failed. LOL

 

Social engineering is when the government manipulates people into doing what the government wants people to do.

Don't be naïve, the government does not simply engage in "providing education". The govt dictates what education people will receive, most recently it will demand children be taught about diversity, LGBT lifestyles, gender is all in your mind, firearms are bad, Thomas Jefferson and Columbus were evil, religion even as an academic subject should be banned from school, and the entire South was a bunch of traitorous slave owners. It will decide that whole language is good and phonics is bad, that difficult boys have ADD and must be drugged. The govt will decide that govt run public schools are the only acceptable form of education and parents are not qualified to home school their children, religious schools must not be supported in any way, and school choice must never be allowed.

Now you are just making stuff up.

"In your mind, the people with money should be able to determine what the people without it get and do not get." I never stated that, never even hinted it. In fact, I stated the exact opposite. Go reread what I posted about social engineering - social engineering is essentially people with money (those that control the govt) determining what people without money should do.

Wrong again. Learn to read and think. The war on poverty in all of its top-down government mandated glory has failed, so the obvious conclusion is that top-down govt dictated forms of "welfare" is the wrong approach. Of course, that idea is anathema to people who can only believe that the government is the only solution.

 

That just kept nagging at me. Don't you realize that politics is all about money? If the govt doesn't have to take from anybody, then why does govt take so much from so many? Are you that naïve?

 

This thread should have been a poll question.
My response to the question posed in the title is NO.

 

Because people aren't taught economics alongside math and English.

Now, to be clear, the government does have to collect taxes, but not because it needs the money. The government has created and spent $73 trillion dollars into the economy since 1980. Without taxes to remove most of that money, milk would be $15 a gallon.

In as few words as possible....Here's how you might want to think about it:

Of people who are living, who's autograph do you think is worth the most?

Now, imagine that you owed that person money, do you think that you could offer to repay them by giving them back their own autograph? The autograph has value, right? So why wouldn't it have value if you gave it back to its creator?

This is very similar to the relationship between US dollars and our government, just like Tiger Woods can create his own autograph, the US government can create its own dollars and just like Tigers autograph would be affected by the number of people that have them, the number of dollars in circulation can affect the value of other dollars. Thus taxes is about limiting inflation, not so the government can "earn income".

 

taxes are about fiscal policy while inflation is about monetary policy. Taxes are used to pay for govt programs: military SS etc. Now do you understand?

 

The gubermint refused to allow them to build a house they could afford, or a yurt, on their own land in proximity to jobs, to subsidize the market value of the wealthy overlords and prevent the Real Estate “principle of regression.” The gubermint to prevent the Real Estate “principle of regression,” and other racist reasons, zoned the poor into poor communities to subsidize the wealth of others; see lawsuit charging zoning laws were racially discriminatory, which was dropped by the NAACP the year of the Community Reinvestment Act. The gubermint by their laws has pushed the poor into paying the mortgage of the landlords, either through rent or a mortgage babysitting a doctors house due to a housing bubble, so the landlords can live in zoned communities with their market value subsidized by the gubermint zoning out the poor.

Babysitting a doctor’s house:

"WILLIS: A truck driver, Bernita saved up $14,000 to close on a six-bedroom house. Purchase price -- $180 grand. She thought she got a deal on her first loan, a two-year adjustable rate mortgage at 8.375 percent. Her monthly payments -- $1,200." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/28/siu.01.html

 

Government does not have to collect taxes? How would it pay for the military then?