The Employment to Population Ratio

I don't recall suggesting the use of 'force' but politicians who employ increasing 'entitlements' as the means of winning elections do little to encourage people to become more personally responsible for their own lives.

A reasonable job as you define it may not exist for many people who might instead have to find two or more jobs to eliminate the need of government assistance. I didn't suggest relocation to acquire a minimum wage job, but only to accept a minimum wage job if that is all available where ones resides, while not eliminating the need of government assistance it would at least reduce the amount of assistance needed.

Like I've said before, it should be a local government problem, NOT a Federal government problem. All the Federal government does/can do is to subsidize the cost of the problems. The solution must be applied at the local level. If the population exceeds the employment needs of an area, Federal spending may very well allow those who are unable to find gainful employment to remain in place while the elimination of Federal spending requiring any assistance to be the result of local spending, with perhaps some State aid would likely have a much greater impact on finding a long term solution.

 

Right wingers have no problem with the USA giving away billions in aid to Israel and other countries throughout the world. Why not demand that those people exercise personal responsibility as well? While we're at it, let's end corporate welfare and force the wealthy to do the same.

 

All welfare spending results in corporate welfare.

 

Especially that of the military industrial complex.

 

No more, and perhaps a great deal less than welfare provided individuals. At least the military serves a purpose, and just try closing any military bases or manufacturing in Liberal States.

 

Welfare to the poor gets paid back in terms of taxes. Welfare to the rich such as through military bases overseas does nothing to benefit our society and violates the tenants of the teachings of our Founding Fathers.

 

Welfare to the poor does not get paid back, it continues to be provided at a cost to those who pay taxes, and primarily those who pay the most taxes who also benefit most from the welfare spending while keeping the middle class more or less stagnant else inflation would become an unsustainable problem.
While I would support reduction/removal of some of our military installations abroad, some of them provide a protective service that could not exist administered from elsewhere. If a military installation exists abroad NOT primarily for our own protection, then the costs should be borne by the Nation in which it exists if for their protection if they feel it needed. NATO comes to mind, and of course the UN. Most all the bases I served on in the past are now gone. I have no idea what you mean by "violates the tenants of the teachings of our Founding Fathers."

 

Temporary welfare gets paid back. If indeed it hasn't been prepaid.
Small periods of unemployment may cost less than the employment taxes of said unemployed person taken over time.

Long term unemployed. Welfare as a lifestyle. Doesn't get paid back.

 

The truth is that welfare NEVER gets paid back, as it is NOT provided as a repayable loan. Those who acquire it temporarily and find employment eliminating the need simply begin to pay taxes which reduces the income they have to live on as a portion of it goes to providing government with money to redistribute to welfare recipients.
But unemployment compensation is acquired by tax upon business while social security and Medicare benefits are acquired by tax upon both employee and employer. I wish they would change that to being paid solely by the employee with their wages increased by the amount the employer currently pays so that employees would see the full cost on their pay stubs.

 

NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN THREE CENTURIES!

Only if the money is spent and returns as sales taxation.

Welfare for the rich is mostly DoD spending on hardware. Still, it represents 54% of the National Discretionary Funding Budget (which means what's left when all the bills and interest on the debt has been paid).

Look, about our founding-fathers: They ALL lived at a time that is not even remotely similar to our lives today. At the end of the 17th century the "original Americans" became concerned about freeing themselves from the taxation of a British monarch (who was preoccupied with saving "his colonies" from the French king). He was a despot from a line of despots that had been "arranging" the sale of property in the US according to his whimsy and purely for himself (colonial taxation). An example of which is how the name "Pennsylvania" (which means "Penn's woods") came to be in the 17th century.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the south was adamant about keeping alive its sole real source of wealth - farming cotton. For which it needed a great number of field workers and the cheaper, the better. (We all know where they came from, don't we.)

We are now two-centuries later and still dragging into the current debate the "will of our founding fathers" to refute the fact that the US is afflicted with one of the most unfair Income Disparities of any developed nation on earth.

A fact testified by this bit of research by the UofCal of "who gets what in terms of income that creates wealth":
*Here (since the inception of the Income Tax) -


*And here (focusing on a more recent history):


Period - one cannot escape the results of research by qualified scholars such as Piketty and Saez. Unless of course, you are deaf, dumb and blind ...

 

Good point! You get alot of whining about welfare policies for ideological reasons. The whine ignores it's importance for capitalism, from fiscal stabilisation to improving employer-employee job matches.

The same people will underplay economic rent seeking through the military industrial complex. They also ignore how it corrupts policy making, such that policy according to the 'national security' public good is not maintained.

It arguably goes back to failed supply side economics. There is a general naivety which ultimately goes ' poor money bad, rich money good'

 

We've gone through this multiple times on this forum. Anyone who knows the very basic teachings of the USA's establishment would know that our Founders taught no standing army and no foreign entanglements. If they were here today they would be the first ones to demand that those foreign bases be closed and other reforms.

 

The simple answer to all of this is to worry about ourselves and not others. Whether others get government assistance, whether it is by fraud or not, no matter where the programs are administered, this is between government and those seeking government assistance. When government, at ALL levels, is providing assistance to well over 100 million Americans, there is going to be error/fraud rates that are impossible, and certainly not practical, to solve. There is a system in place for all of these programs and they work well. If you do not believe they work well, then please provide some metrics to support your contentions...

 

The "enemy" was quite different then from now. Comparisons of political thinking then and now are perfectly useless. The world is quite a different place since 1776.

I am not sure about the foreign bases - but for as long as a potential enemy wants to stir-the-shat around the world either (as an international power) we need to be there sooner rather than later. (Militarily.) Putin is set to overstay his presidency of Russia once again, so he's going to be around for another 5-years. That's all badness for the US.

The two major contender armies (with sufficient military means) are China and Russia. China is an economic might to contend with, whilst Russia a military might. Europe does not believe as well that they should be the "only show in town".

To do so creates an invitation for aggressors to simply expand - because they see no reason not to do so ...

PS: Frankly, I don't think Donald Dork's enhancing import tariffs on just two items imported from China was enough. China can still shipwreck international trade on a great many products both basic and sophisticated that it sets its mind to do. China is not a fair-player in the game, and should never be trusted. The US should increase tariffs on more Chinese low labor-cost goods shipped to the US, which will give other countries (Vietnam, Thailand, etc.) an incentive to replace the Chinese export at cheaper prices.

 

.Piketty's data was completely refuted by many economists, which led to Piketty publicly retracting them. He then came up with new sets of data that were also refuted.

 

What a load of drivel. You don't encourage external dynamic comparative advantage by imposing tariffs on a third party. Some frankly ridiculous econpmic comments on this forum.

 

That isn't quite true is it? See, for example, this paper:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09538259.2017.1255439

 

Have we? You and I? Where?

Some relevant quotes in support of your claim would be appreciated.
But our Constitution, created by our Founders clearly states in Article 1, Section 8 "To provide and maintain a Navy", and ANY rational person would clearly recognize the changes which have taken place since our Constitution was originally written has resulted in the need of a standing Army and Air Force as military offenses can initiate much much more quickly today, and the war would be over before you could create a defensive military response from scratch.

I highly doubt a single one of them would concur with your opinion, but they each would probably be asking "What the Hell happened to the government we created?"

 

Allow, or rather require each local government to provide the metrics on a periodic basis and I think only then could we begin to resolve the issues relative to helping those in need both efficiently and effectively. And the only way to begin reducing the fraud in such programs is to move the costs to where the help is being provided rather than simply redistribution of money from one place to another. The costs of maintaining a local community should be primarily borne within the community. It should be the duty and responsibility of each individual State to provide additional assistance to local governments within the State either in the form of a charitable gift or a repayable loan as determined to be beneficial. Any Federal monetary assistance to a State, with few exceptions such as a natural disaster, should be provided solely as a repayable loan.
If, as you claim, government at ALL levels is providing assistance to well over 100 million Americans, where can the numbers be found relative to each local community? The fact that the number is over 30% of the population, alone makes me feel it needs to be looked at more closely.
It is my opinion that you are much more likely to find things, waste, fraud, corruption, employment, etc. by actively looking for them. Of course in the instances where they become undeniably obvious we can console ourselves by claiming "well that's just a single instance and a small amount relative to the total."

 

Bollocks!

Piketty has not refuted the conclusions. His web-site - World & Income Database - is up and running. Access it.

Yes, he generated a LOT of polemic with his conclusions. That is considered goodness, but given that no other economist has tried to replicate the research and found distinctly different conclusions, the site (linked above) is the most valid instrument to date regarding Comparative National Income of Countries.

Moreover, given the analysis of World Billionaires, it is evident that a very thin "crowd of individuals" are enjoying the benefits of the sweat of millions of their compatriots. The smarter ones are setting up their own companies in the US and obtaining national citizenship.

But, if your a Central American - born in the US but of Central American parents - your a "dreamer".

Right, for better or for worse, they "dream" about becoming a member of one of the most Unfair Nations on Earth as regards its national distribution of Wealth. (See that picture painted amply well by this WikiPedia article: Income inequality in the United States - where the statistical proof of Income & Wealth Unfairness in the US is impressive.)

Why? Because anything would be better than going back to the misery from which they migrated north* ...

*In fact, many are migrating even further north to Canada, which is accepting them with open arms! And there is no requirement there to bring a megabuck to open a company and get citizenship.

 

Production has already begun to shift to Vietnam a little bit, as costs of living along the China's coastal provinces are rising. However, in many of these cases it is Chinese companies setting up the factories in Vietnam. So the solution could be a little complicated.

I see what you're saying, but it might be that eliminating the competition might create an environment for their industries to incubate and, perhaps, eventually result in cheaper prices.

 

The infant industry hypothesis only provides a rationale for the host country to use industrial policy which is typically inconsistent with multilateral trade agreement. It gives no excuse for the US to 'play pretend' that it's tariffs are anything but distortionary

 

Yes, I have French friends here of Vietnamese origin who fled the country to settle in France. They're children are going back to create a start-up because of the very much lower labor-costs. (And they must do it in English, because the Vietnamese no longer speak French in what was once a French colony.)

What France and the US did to that country ... it's amazing that the Vietnamese themselves bear no grudge against either France or the US. But, I am told that the Vietnamese (at a personal level) never mention it ...

Let's not forget that China's break-out from communism towards capitalism started in the early 1990s. We are now almost more than three decades beyond that "historic internal revolution".

China has matured and its people are asking for more money in the pocket. It's only natural those who succeed most should want to get the hell out. It is entirely possible that China has already seen in the past its "glory years". The future is going to be more difficult.

Setting up a business in Canada or the US is (for the moment) not forbidden by the Chinese government. But setting one up in Vietnam is much closer to China, and that though may have weighed in solving any "Where-to-invest-as-long-as-it's-cheaper" riddle ...

 

Where are the metrics that are driving your position? What percent of Americans are frauding food stamps? What percent on SSI? What percent on SS? What percent on unemployment? If we don't know the metrics for these and other questions then how do we know we have a problem? Just because 100+ Americans are receiving some form of government assistance does not mean there is significant fraud. Each of these programs takes baby-steps to solve fraud issues so the current systems work fine...

 

The $272 billion swindle - Health-care fraud - The Economist
https://www.economist.com/.../21603078-why-thieves-love-americas-health-care-syste..
ay 31, 2014 - No one knows for sure how much of that is embezzled, but in 2012 Donald Berwick, a former head of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Andrew Hackbarth of the RAND Corporation, estimated that fraud (and the extra rules and inspections required to fight it) added as much as $98 ...