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Originally Posted by dc_dux
The black middle class grew as a result of both the civil rights laws and social safety net programs.
Children who do not go to school hungry (through food stamp/nutrition programs) or have access to early leaning programs (like Head Start) or a better living environment (through housing assistance programs) are more likely to learn and succeed.
Sgle mothers who are given assistance (through AFDC/TANF) while they (and many young unemployed black males) learn a skill (through CETA and other federal job training programs) are far more likely to succeed.
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Not if the family structure has been gutted by dependency. There are so many studies on this that I could use then as kindling and have plenty left over. Plenty of poor people succeed in school without govt help, starting with my own parents. The key wasn't that the govt was giving them stuff - the key was that they had intact and supportive family. (Just so you understand, I'm not advocating letting people starve, but there's a difference between supporting charity and creating an entrenched bureaucracy with an interest in its own perpetuation.)
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
Medicaid had a dramatic impact on the health of millions of children and families living in poverty. Medicare has significantly improved the quality of life for millions of seniors.
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Well, you don't know what the health outcomes would be without Medicare/aid. What I can tell you for certain is that the availability of free govt money for health care has thrown the pricing structure of health care so far out of whack that we now have a crisis. Subsidies as an economic matter will almost always result in higher prices. And Medicaid is the program that ate state govt, and is a regular generator of extreme corruption and fraud. If we got the govt out of the health care business I can guarantee you that prices would go down and access would be pretty much unaffected (in fact, I think we should make noncatastrophic health insurance illegal, so that you pay for your own treatment. That's guaranteed to keep prices low. But that's a post for another day.) I can also tell you that I have a lot of friends who are doctors, and to a wo/man, they all say that they could drop prices significantly and work fewer hours and still make the same living if they didn't have the mountains of paperwork and regulations to deal with. So who really benefits from the programs? Answer: bureaucrats and public sector unions - the kinds of people who provide political support for legislators who appropriate tax money.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
I raised the issue of blacks in goverment jobs because you suggessted that government work wasnt real work: Governments don't create jobs. Not real ones, anyway....(#77) |
OK, touche, you picked up on some infelicitous wording from me. Look, working in an office is honorable work, whether for the govt or anyone else. So yes, govt jobs are real jobs in the sense that people work and do stuff and earn money for it. But let's not pretend that govt jobs are economically productive or creative the way private sector jobs are. They don't create wealth, they just shuffle it around. I'm not arguing against shuffling it around here - there is a place for some amount of shuffling, that's what we have govt for - but govt jobs don't create wealth or new economic opportunities. They are at best symbiotic to the economy.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
It is a matter of perspective...you appear to focus on the negative outcomes of the Great Society programs...I acknowledged that there were abuses and unintended consquences...however, those who benefited far outweigh those negative outcomes.
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Depends what you're measuring, for what purpose and over what time frame. I think it's fairly demonstrable that govt giving stuff away has almost always made problems worse by making them economically feasible - if the govt subsidizes something, it is sure to get more of it. You can't outthink the law of unintended consequences. That's what my post that I linked to above is about.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
I have read many analyses of the social progams and their impacts on the poor, working class, and seniors... and based on what I read here, I think you minimize the substantial positive benefits of those programs.
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I think you are falling into a fallacy of comparing programs temporally instead of as against alternative scenarios. As I said before, the best social program for kids is an intact family and the best social program for adults is a job. Creating new bureaucracies is not a recipe for benefitting anyone except public sector union bosses. There are very few people (mainly the handicapped) for whom the only alternative to govt support is misery.
Ther'es lots more I can write but I think that's enough for now. Back to work.