Morality

[Vincent Butler]

lolwut?

The American welfare state is at an all-time low. It used to be bigger back in the 60's and 70's, at which time you had social mobility at levels equal to a standard European country.

But then Reagan came along and slashed the welfare state, which also slashed your social mobility. No president(including Obama) has made any serious attempt to rebuild the welfare state you built up after ww2, and so social mobility in the US remains low.

More people are on food stamps then ever before, and President Obama has spent more money in his terms in office then the rest of the Presidents combined, or darned near close to it. And it certainly hasn't gone to defense or securing our borders. Really, we both can find sources to prove our points, it all depends on where you look. And the people at the top stay at the top, regardless. Many of the people at the bottom don't climb because they are content to receive a government check. The middle is where the movement always is, regardless. And before the Great Depression, poor people at least moved up into the middle class. With the increased social spending comes increased taxes, which leads to increased prices, which leads to reduced spending, which means to economic slowdown. As HoreTore mentioned his taxes, I will point out again that over half his income goes to the government. Again, if you don't mind that, fine. Move to Europe. Or stay there, as most people posting here seem to be there. Let us have our country with reduced welfare. Most Americans are cool with that. Welfare is just vote-buying anymore. "Why should I work, the government pays me not to work? I will keep voting the ones who support my laziness." That is not what America was built on. That attitude would not have carved the greatest economic and military superpower the world has ever seen, and that attitude is responsible for the decline in American greatness. I would like to see America return to her former superpower status, not the paper tiger that we have become.
Just a point, our "poverty level" is not poverty.

Let them hate, provided that they fear. Caligula

[Vincent Butler]

Vincent Butler, would you mind clearly showing who you quote. You are just quoting sentences, and it at times gets hard to understand just who you are answering.

Saw that you quoted me way earlier, but as my name wasn't there, I just skimmed it and missed to reply.

Cheers :)

Right, I am guilty of taking the easy route and copying lines instead of replying with quote. Is there a way to reference somebody without using the "Reply with Quote", how do I identify them?

[Ironside]

More people are on food stamps then ever before, and President Obama has spent more money in his terms in office then the rest of the Presidents combined, or darned near close to it.

That is because of the economic crisis. Obama ran with the lowest taxes in 60 years 2008 and 2009 (yes seriously), as a part of the stimulus package, that was voted in during Bush (IIRC Obama approved though).

I'll leave this link here. For those interested, St. Louis Fed (FRED) got a really good graph system for stuff like this.

Short version. The big expenses are pensions (I'm sure you've heard the Republicans calling for cutting that one) and the spiraling medical costs, with Medicare (old people) being larger than Medicaid (poor people). The goverment costs for medicin is about 45% of your total medical costs, and is comparable to the average western NHS system in percentage of GDP. I'm sure that touching this one and talking about medical cost reforms will be met with a calm, understanding debate.

Mostly, it's the people above 65 (medicare covers disabled people as well, so it's not only retirees), that cost about 40% of your total budget (2013 numbers). Lazy people indeed. Add military at about 18%. Food stamps are about 2% (indeed record high) and lingers at its crisis level, even if unemplyment has gone down.

Just a point, our "poverty level" is not poverty.

Being poor in the US is being objectivly poorer than being poor in several countries that has less GDP/capita.

[a completely inoffensive name]

That attitude would not have carved the greatest economic and military superpower the world has ever seen, and that attitude is responsible for the decline in American greatness. I would like to see America return to her former superpower status, not the paper tiger that we have become.
Just a point, our "poverty level" is not poverty.

America was built by slaves for 400 years and then abused labor for another 100. You don't really know any poor because welfare queens are a made up sound byte by Reagan.

[Kadagar_AV]

Right, I am guilty of taking the easy route and copying lines instead of replying with quote. Is there a way to reference somebody without using the "Reply with Quote", how do I identify them?

You can as you say reply with quote... You also have a multi quote button bottom right.

If you want to direct someone, you can just write their names in bold. Seems like some work, but when you get used to it it will be second nature :)

[Vincent Butler]

That is because of the economic crisis. Obama ran with the lowest taxes in 60 years 2008 and 2009 (yes seriously), as a part of the stimulus package, that was voted in during Bush (IIRC Obama approved though).

I'll leave this link here. For those interested, St. Louis Fed (FRED) got a really good graph system for stuff like this. ...
Being poor in the US is being objectivly poorer than being poor in several countries that has less GDP/capita.

Ironside, is Social Security part of that, do you know? As to the unemployment coming down, it depends on which number you look at. You have the U3 number, those unemployed looking for work, and that is the one that is dropping. The U6 is the number of total unemployed, and last I knew, it was above 10%. Just keep in mind the media was screaming at Bush for 5% unemployment, yet had no problems with 8% under Obama.

[Ironside]

Ironside, is Social Security part of that, do you know? As to the unemployment coming down, it depends on which number you look at. You have the U3 number, those unemployed looking for work, and that is the one that is dropping. The U6 is the number of total unemployed, and last I knew, it was above 10%. Just keep in mind the media was screaming at Bush for 5% unemployment, yet had no problems with 8% under Obama.

Social security is pretty much the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) federal program. So pensions, veteran's aid and disabillity. I haven't dug down the specifics, but pensions are the vast majority of it. Unemployment insurence isn't part of is and is back to pre-crisis levels since this years (with the higher unemployment).

For the unemployment, this graph covers it. So you can't talk about U6 and 5% under Bush. It was the worst economic crisis since the great depression, the numbers are improving and the US is recovering above average. That's why Obama gets way more leeway than Bush.

[Vincent Butler]

Social security is pretty much the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) federal program. So pensions, veteran's aid and disabillity. I haven't dug down the specifics, but pensions are the vast majority of it. Unemployment insurence isn't part of is and is back to pre-crisis levels since this years (with the higher unemployment).

For the unemployment, this graph covers it. So you can't talk about U6 and 5% under Bush. It was the worst economic crisis since the great depression, the numbers are improving and the US is recovering above average. That's why Obama gets way more leeway than Bush.

Hardly recovering, despite what our media says. Notice the spike is after the Democrats took both houses of Congress. Now I am aware that to some degree the change in an economy in a new administration is related to the previous administration, not always totally the case. If our economy were on the mend, less people would be on food stamps. Why would we be needing to extend unemployment benefits? Those "stimulus packages" only stimulated the wallets of some fat cats and worthless studies. We are still in a recession, though our media would have people believe otherwise because their primary role now is to protect Obama and his agenda (I mean, our economy shrank the first quarter of the year, and not just because of the weather). And boy does he need their help. Look at Bush and the media only on the attack against him, and look at Obama and the media trying to keep him afloat. But I digress, many of those jobs gained are part-time or government. And outside of hot air, the government doesn't produce anything, it simply takes money (maybe that is what's causing global warming). Government adds nothing to the economy, though it provides necessary services such as military and law enforcement. The bottom line is, to quote Reagan, government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. If you like your setup in Sweden, fine. You can keep it. That link you gave had some interesting graphs, by the way.

[Husar]

If the Republicans didn't promise to let them starve in the streets then maybe people on foodstamps wouldn't have to vote against them. Has that ever ocurred to you or do you just blame Obama for making them dependent right away?

And Reagan founded the EPA, he was a pinko librul greenthumbo hippie.

[a completely inoffensive name]

And Reagan founded the EPA, he was a pinko librul greenthumbo hippie.

Nixon did. There is nothing redeeming about Reagan, trust me.

[Husar]

Nixon did. There is nothing redeeming about Reagan, trust me.

Oops, my mistake. I couldn't even tell you what President 5 to 15 did or who they were.
Wasn't it Reagan who personally went to Berlin, punched Stalin on the nose and tore down that wall?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Oops, my mistake. I couldn't even tell you what President 5 to 15 did or who they were.
Wasn't it Reagan who personally went to Berlin, punched Stalin on the nose and tore down that wall?

Nah, he got confused and went to a McDonalds instead.

[Vincent Butler]

Oops, my mistake. I couldn't even tell you what President 5 to 15 did or who they were.
Wasn't it Reagan who personally went to Berlin, punched Stalin on the nose and tore down that wall?

I thought Reagan hit the Nuke button instead of Nurse (for those who know Spitting Image).

Um, Husar, and you are not the only mentioning it, the media likes to give Republicans this image. Where is anybody wanting people to starve in the streets(unless you are being sarcastic, hard to tell on a forum)? The American media paints conservatives as racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes. Might I point out the the Democrats were the ones opposing the civil rights movement. Conservatives are the ones who don't make race an issue in anything. As to the sexism…well, the left is jealous, after all, we have Sarah Palin, Mia Love, Carrie Prejean, Ann Coulter…who do they have, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi? The left-wing media is the one who is always talking about race. Technically, we are all the same race, human, even the skin color is the same color, just varying shades of that color. But in Europe, Democrat is something else than here, there are multiple Democrat parties in Europe, I am familiar with the Christian Democrat party in the Netherlands, I think that is Geert Wilders and his group. I don't know what you have in Germany, probably lot more parties than here, at least Holland does. And not just political parties. Europeans party better than Americans, at least I am assuming the Dutch are not alone in that regard. Always cheese and knakwurst and coffee and Spa Appel and Cassis…now I want to visit Holland again. I can at least find imported Stroopwaffels here.

[HoreTore]

The above post is made by someone unaware of the Southern Strategy.

But meh, in economic terms, I don't see the repiblicans as some evil boogeyman. I just see them as ideologically blind and unaware of actual reality.

'Christian Democracy' is a European ideological movement by the way, sort of a centrist blend of religious(mostly progressive) and democratic values. They usually favour a degree of wealth redistribution(socialist style) and conservative values(anti-abortion, focus on family, etc).

Actually, if the Socialist Left Party didn't exist, I would probably vote for KRF, the norwegian christian democrat party. I would hold my nose when looking at their social policies, but I like their economics(with one exception, I actually like it more than the economic policy of the Socialist Left party).

[Husar]

So Republican only complain about too much tax-funding for food stamps because they would rather spend that money on charities helping the poor? Or is the idea to give more money to google so they can hire all these former steel workers who cannot afford a reeducation and let them program the newest web trends?

I don't quite get the idea I'm afraid.

[rory_20_uk]

I think that these are the ideas:

charities will be better at doing the aid than the government will be (on that they might be right... although the provision will be very patchy).

Everyone's idea is always that in the West everyone can be reskilled to do the high power, high tech jobs in the knowledge economy and if only we did something then this would happen.

Retraining is great - and for some people will work. But the question is always - to do what? The era of mass well paying blue collar jobs is practically dead as between automation and competition from abroad there's just not the number. Or pretend that those who struggled at school will be much better at learning academic concepts with a 20 year break.

The UK's logic is that graduates are paid more. Therefore if everyone was a graduate, everyone would earn more. Oh, graduate salaries are dropping? How could that be?

[Ironside]

The above post is made by someone unaware of the Southern Strategy.

But meh, in economic terms, I don't see the repiblicans as some evil boogeyman. I just see them as ideologically blind and unaware of actual reality.

Short version of the southern strategy. Nixon decided to appeal to the Democrat south to win the election. It succeeded, while the Democrats decided to win the now disenfranchised voters that didn't like the new Republicans. This caused a political shift.
That's why the Republicans win the south nowadays.

The Republicans are in a identity crisis. Currently they're the not-Obama party. The Tea party is ideologically blind and strong enough to influence the rest of the party. Lower taxes with a proper plan is something I would disagree with, but a valid choise, but currently it has the same reality base as Taxed Enough Already, when the taxes were the lowest in 60 years.
Some of the creep is also the worse parts of the Republican social policies.

Hardly recovering, despite what our media says. Notice the spike is after the Democrats took both houses of Congress. Now I am aware that to some degree the change in an economy in a new administration is related to the previous administration, not always totally the case. If our economy were on the mend, less people would be on food stamps. Why would we be needing to extend unemployment benefits? Those "stimulus packages" only stimulated the wallets of some fat cats and worthless studies.

I agree that's not been a good recovery and the wealth accumulation at the top 1% (hi, not working tickle down effect) will probably cause another crash within the next decade.

It's hard to determine exactly how it would've been without the stimulus packages, although crashing banks would've been felt much harder. It can be worth noticing the difference in the banking strategy. A lot of it was taken from a similar situation in Sweden, early 1990-ies. One huge difference is that the goverment here bought the banks needing money. They kept them for years, to get the banks to recover from the toxic investments and then sold them off for a profit.

Gives a bit different feel of rewarding giving money to cover up for a major loss doesn't it?

[HoreTore]

I think that these are the ideas:

charities will be better at doing the aid than the government will be (on that they might be right... although the provision will be very patchy).

You believe have a gazillion tiny organizations working with everything from soup kitchens to rescuing puppies, with a zillion different ideas on how to do things(a hefty number of which will be absolutely idiotic) with spotty and fluctuating funding(a million one day, ten bucks on the other), is going to be a step up from the welfare state?

Further, a welfare state can allocate funds according to need. Charities will provide on a moral basis. Who wants to give something to that slutty single mom? If she had kept her legs shut none of this would've happened, you know...

[rory_20_uk]

You believe have a gazillion tiny organizations working with everything from soup kitchens to rescuing puppies, with a zillion different ideas on how to do things(a hefty number of which will be absolutely idiotic) with spotty and fluctuating funding(a million one day, ten bucks on the other), is going to be a step up from the welfare state?

Further, a welfare state can allocate funds according to need. Charities will provide on a moral basis. Who wants to give something to that slutty single mom? If she had kept her legs shut none of this would've happened, you know...

Firstly, if the government were providing the money, there would not be fluctuating funds.
Secondly, many different ways of approaching things is both better and worse than the monolithic state approach - state workers don't care about what they are doing, merely getting the salary. Like the good old Social Services who after the child died merely stated that in essence the paperwork was all in order - so what's the problem?

The welfare state allocate funds according to its definition of need which can be just as arbitary as a charity - whilst wasting a lot of money on deciding which people fit which category. And many charities give to all based on need, regardless of morals.

There is no clear cut with one being right and the other wrong.

[Beskar]

state workers don't care about what they are doing, merely getting the salary.

If they are those like that, then they are clearly in the wrong job. The only non-carers seem to be upper-management and political/professional-careerists. Working in a public sector job, I know from personal experience and those who I work with, are generally under valued and they give more than what they get asked to do in the private sector at a lower cost. Only advantages in the past, was that there was more job security in return, opposed to the whimsical private sector. (With strangling of budgets and cuts, this disappeared for public sector too)

[rory_20_uk]

I worked for many years in hospitals and have had interactions with other state organs. The concern has almost always been doing what the job requires rather than what is "right" or even "morally correct". The driving factor was a constant job. My favourite one was when we had to do a "child safety" course as GPs. The course organiser couldn't understand my point when I said that the massive number of man hours that was being expended on this (a day training annually for all GPs, trainees and nurses) for there to have been no difference in the death rate in a decade: results? What does that matter - it is the process that we have to do!

I agree that training has been much better - both in house and external courses since I started in the Private sector... because they want me to be good at my job, not keep a seat warm and fill up the Organogram as the metric of success is not forms shuffled into the correct pile.

Job security is utterly non-existent. I've done three jobs in two years and my company is about to be bought out and moved too far to commute - so off I go again. It is more extreme than I'd like / have planned but if nothing else I'm not complacent and very aware that the one thing I need to be is adaptable.

[Viking]

Morality is in practice a social function.

Whether you believe your morals are objective or not, the results will be very similar: for each moral value you hold, some people will agree with you, others won't.

Even when you agree with another person on a universal source for moral authority, this fact will not change. That is because interpretation and perspective is king.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Morality is in practice a social function.

Whether you believe your morals are objective or not, the results will be very similar: for each moral value you hold, some people will agree with you, others won't.

Even when you agree with another person on a universal source for moral authority, this fact will not change. That is because interpretation and perspective is king.

Why does it have to labelled a social function just because people disagree? Why can't it be something that we simply have not figured out yet?

[Montmorency]

Why can't it be something that we simply have not figured out yet?

Something, something, something - verily.

Praise be to God.

[Hax]

I am familiar with the Christian Democrat party in the Netherlands, I think that is Geert Wilders and his group

Well you're wrong.

Geert Wilders is the leader of the Freedom Pary, the Christian Democrat party is led by a man called Sybrand Buma.

[Viking]

Why does it have to labelled a social function just because people disagree? Why can't it be something that we simply have not figured out yet?

What do you suppose there is to figure out?

I can see lots of things that could need to be figured out, but those are all relative: e.g. given premises x, y and z - which generalised (non-trivial) conclusions can we make about them?

The example above is a mathematical-like approach to philosophy; the application of rigid logic on well-defined (or as well-defined as possible) premises. I suppose there could be some interesting generalised discoveries that could be made like that; though, I also suppose at least some of them should have been found by now if they existed (which they also might have been; I am not that terribly well-read on the subject).

They would still be of the relative type, though - the premises are everything. There are things to say about the selection of premises, too, of course; and the real world might introduce some interesting de facto restrictions and effects compared to a theoretical model of the world.

[a completely inoffensive name]

What do you suppose there is to figure out?

I can see lots of things that could need to be figured out, but those are all relative: e.g. given premises x, y and z - which generalised (non-trivial) conclusions can we make about them?

The example above is a mathematical-like approach to philosophy; the application of rigid logic on well-defined (or as well-defined as possible) premises. I suppose there could be some interesting generalised discoveries that could be made like that; though, I also suppose at least some of them should have been found by now if they existed (which they also might have been; I am not that terribly well-read on the subject).

They would still be of the relative type, though - the premises are everything. There are things to say about the selection of premises, too, of course; and the real world might introduce some interesting de facto restrictions and effects compared to a theoretical model of the world.

My view is that every behavior consists of two extremes and a middle. Morality is always keeping to the middle. I don't personally care for debating who is right in a clash of conflicts because in my opinion intellectualism taken to an extreme is a vice. I am not a smart man and I am sure someone somewhere can always break down my views in detail and show what an illogical fool I am for thinking my ways and premises are objectively better than any other culture. But Western culture is the only one so far that I could live freely in if I was homosexual. So I take it as I see it and always leave myself open to correction and critical examination about flaws in Western society (always something to improve) but never doubting its foundation (secular government, human rights, free speech).

[HopAlongBunny]

What we suffer from in these uncertain times is a lack of truthiness:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health..._messages.html

[Vincent Butler]

Well you're wrong.

Geert Wilders is the leader of the Freedom Pary, the Christian Democrat party is led by a man called Sybrand Buma.

OK, thanks for correcting me.

[Viking]

My view is that every behavior consists of two extremes and a middle. Morality is always keeping to the middle.

What do you mean by this? Given the choice between chopping off all 4 or none of the limbs of a thief, chopping off 2 is the moral option?

I don't personally care for debating who is right in a clash of conflicts because in my opinion intellectualism taken to an extreme is a vice.

Do you have an example of 'intellectualism taken to an extreme'?