Where does the $$ come from? Wealth transfer.Originally Posted by blues
Who gets to decide? Bureaucrats, pandering to the electorate.
Recipe for:
A. Success
B: Failure
C: Socialism (aka Never Worked, Anywhere, Ever)
When you try stuff like this with 100 or 1,000 people, you don't see the same marketplace disruption that would occur when you roll this out universally. We have lots of good examples of what happens to the marketplace when the government gives away "free" stuff (see my earlier post). The news likes to call some of them "Bubbles".
Also.... The fact that folks like me want to see government get out of the charity business does not mean that I'm "blaming" people for being <name your reason>... That's just BS. The same kind of shouting-down and name-calling and whatever-baiting that the left does when they meet someone who disagrees with them.
Reality.... There are MANY types and causes of poverty. From unfortunate circumstances (illness, catastrophe) to generations-long cycles of hopelessness or bad decisions passed on from parent to child. My parents, fortunately for me, took a long-term view of their situation. I ate a lot of offal (some of it still on my menu... Chicken Frickazee made with stomachs and hearts, not breasts... Pitcha... mmm) and wore "skips" until the soles were gone). My immigrant grandparents arrived penniless, my parents did better and I'm working had every day to make sure my kids understand that history and value what sacrifices were made for them. My kids have each spent hundreds of hours volunteering.
When you're hungry and jobless and living in whatever bad situation, you are rarely without choices, however. Some of those are hard choices. Some of them require help from others. Poverty in America is a place, not a caste. Every situation is different, which is why a government-run bureaucracy is incapable of providing a long term solution, beyond handouts and staving off catastrophe. Government will never be a way for the masses below the poverty line to rise up. In many ways, government can be an impediment and a disincentive.
There are many people incapable of rising out of their situation without help. We have some excellent local charities that help people who don't know how, or are unable, to help themselves. Other charities get involved with folks who need a hand up. Job-seeking advice, workplace clothing, a safe place to live to escape a bad domestic situation. Other organizations provide help for people with physical and behavioral disabilities. IMO, the solution for poverty is LOCAL. Government helped create much of the current locked-in problem of generational poverty, and only government can bring the rules, incentives and funding to unwind things. But the direction needs to be LESS givernment (intentional misspelling), not more. Transferring wealth from earners to non-earners in the name of equality, or decency or whatever cover name you want to give it is simply putting a mask on Socialism. You'll never change peoples hearts and minds about getting personally, individually, locally involved in solving poverty and valuing the people affected by poverty through government mandate or by sticking the forceful hand of government in their pockets to transfer wealth to people under the false flag of progressivist "decency". I'd wager that the vast majority of Americans would help a neighbor in need. But if you want people to keep giving, they'll want to see that neighbor using that help in a way that the giver believes makes it worth giving.
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