Every single time we try to make any headway on spending cuts the left accuses of us actually being murderers.
It's time to tone out the drama queens and get to work. Social Security should be, at a minimum, partially privatized for people currently under 40. The retirement age, at a minimum should be raised to 67.
Medicare needs to be reformed in order to save it long term. If that means making some short term cuts, then I support it.
A lot of these anti-poverty programs have not worked and likely will continue to not work. More liberal and progressive cities have continuously funneled money to poorer communities on the local and state levels and it has very rarely yielded the results they would like to see.
This piece from the Foundation for Economic Education sums up a lot of why the War on Poverty has failed:https://fee.org/articles/why-the-war-on-poverty-failed/Specifically this line rings true on how the debate on poverty is handled by liberals:
"For the activists, welfare programs did not involve complex relationships and intractable problems about which honest people could disagree. They were simple moral imperatives, and anyone who opposed them was seen as selfish and insensitive. (This dogmatic view has by no means disappeared from so-called liberal circles.)"
I also like this section (I'm sure I'll get called a heartless demon, but whatever):
"
The simple economic theory of poverty led to a single underlying principle for welfare programs. Since the needy just lacked goods and services to become productive members of the community, it followed that all you had to do was give them these things.
You didn’t have to see that they stopped engaging in the behavior that plunged them into neediness. You didn’t have to ask them to apply themselves, or to work, or to save, or to stop using drugs, or to stop having babies they couldn’t support, or to make any other kind of effort to improve themselves. In other words, the welfare programs the war-on-poverty activists designed embodied something-for-nothing giving, or what we usually call 'handouts.'"
This is not to say that most poor people are like this (because they aren't) but to simplistically imply that we can just throw money at diverse, impoverished populations is ridiculous and dangerous.
There is no such thing as an average poor person, just like there's no such thing as an average middle class person. There is a ton of diversity within income brackets. Different reasons why they are poor or why they aren't poor.
I agree, private charity isn't enough on its own to bring people out of poverty (which goes against the conclusion of the article I linked but I'm under no obligation to agree with every point). Just like anti-poverty programs fail to do the same.
There needs to be a nuance. A mix of personal responsibility, a mix of private charity, and a limited but decently funded set of programs that aim to help people get out of short-term situations instead of throwing money at them.
Just like the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, imo, has failed and it failed for similar reasons: The federal government and overzealous/ambitious legislators try to simplify the problem. Each State knows its problems better than the federal government. Those state and local governments are the best equipped to attempt to solve a lot of these issues, I think.
More importantly, the state and local governments can more easily see if these programs are working or not. Sometimes certain people are less motivated to do anything about their financial situation, regardless of whether or not they get government aid. There has to be standards for certain programs, to ensure that people are actually bettering their lives (more importantly: aren't wasting taxpayers' money).
Just allowing people to qualify for programs or government aid and than not caring if they follow through or not is a horrendous way to implement any sort of policy.
This article lists some examples of how government programs failed to even abide by their own set of standards, I'll just talk about one in specifics.
1. Manpower Development Research Corporation: "To implement this goal, attendance standards were announced: no more than three unexcused absences or five unexcused latenesses in the first ten weeks of training class. Reporter Ken Auletta attended one of these courses in New York City and discovered that even these modest rules were not being applied. Students were allowed to come and go as they wished, even to sleep or read the newspaper in class.6 The trainer in charge explained that if the rules were applied, 'we’d lose just about everyone in the class.'"
This mentality is exactly why anti-poverty programs fail. The program shouldn't aim to keep a room full but to only get people who actually want to lift themselves out of poverty Also, Some Democrats need to realize that accusing people of being satanic or murderers is not going to get anyone to change their opinions. Grow the f**k up and actually argue for what policy alternatives you believe in. You are not above debating the other side.
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