Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Friday, May 27. 2016

Government charity


Pretty much everybody agrees that government charity enables dependency and dysfunction. Pretty  much everybody also agrees that there are numbers of people who will not or can not attain functional independence.


Despite the perverse incentives, and many unpleasant side effects (including creating a permanent underclass and supporting fatherless families), such people require basic food and shelter provided by the productive classes. It's not 1800 anymore when everybody could find something useful to do on the farm.


Via Assistant Village Idiot, see Three Great Articles On Poverty, And Why I Disagree With All Of Them


The problem with a guaranteed minimum income is that, if people can not manage their life adaptively, they probably can not handle money adaptively either. Every day we see how foolish people can be with unearned money.


Somewhat related, Hope for Public Housing - The House GOP leadership tries to pass much-needed reforms.


Bread and circuses are the costs of civilization.


Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 15:59 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Children who are at risk can be adopted, placed in foster homes and perhaps we need to bring back orphanages. Certainly these are better options than not being cared for if the parents are missing or incompetent. But it has never made sense to me to pay people to have babies when they cannot take care of them. It should be obvious that if you do that it simply encourages the worst possible parents to have more children so they can get more money. A very counter productive policy...
#1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-05-27 18:30 (Reply)
Bread and circuses are distractors for declining civilizations.
#2 indyjonesouthere on 2016-05-27 18:49 (Reply)
It still seems even the bottom 20 or even 50 percent of the population (intelligence, skills, dependability, etc) needs money for food and shelter. Jobs for semi or non-skilled workers are rapidly disappearing. Jobs currently held by the middle class are also headed for the abyss. (why hire an American civil engineer at $60K per year when a Chinese engineer costs only $18K/yr). The Great War on poverty failed. I doubt we have the fortitude or will to do better in the future when toilets for trannies seems to be the most important social issue of the day.
#3 Mark on 2016-05-27 19:11 (Reply)
No, it's not the 1800's where everyone could find something useful to do on the farm.

However, it is the 2000's, and remembering the real minimum wage is zero, there are plenty of useful things anyone could find to do in America, paying far better than the real minimum wage, if the government would just get out of the way.
#4 Jim O'Neil (Link) on 2016-05-27 19:22 (Reply)
Well, we did trade good jobs for cheap goods, after all.
#5 Exasperated on 2016-05-27 20:47 (Reply)
A cost, not the, and the corruption is the reason for the bread and circus' not an effect.
#6 notquiteunBuckley on 2016-05-28 01:23 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.