“Republicans Hate Poor People:” County GOP apologizes for social media post

[Famous Mortimer]

Worded unbelievably badly, but the point itself (that Democrats have a political interest in keeping people poor) is not entirely false.

Lol, yes it is. Republicans despise the poor and want to do nothing to actually help them become successful. Just tell them to work harder and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, no actual help.

That is simply not true. Democratic welfare policies have clearly been a failure. We've spent trillions of dollars since LBJ's war on poverty was launched, and yet today the poverty rate is nearly the exact same. That's because the current welfare system essentially locks people in poverty, disincentivizes marriage (a proven alleviator of poverty), and discourages people from finding work by drastically cutting benefits as soon as people get a job (thus making work an economically unsound decision). If you really think the solution for poverty is throwing money at the same failed policies, you're crazy.

(Most) Republicans don't blame, or by any means despise, the poor for the poverty we see and recognize that it's a symptom of failed governmental policy.

I believe the best way to help alleviate poverty is to restructure the welfare system to encourage marriage, slow the decrease of benefits after employment is found, provide educational choice to poor parents so their children aren't locked in failing schools, encourage apprenticeships and more effective job training programs, and free up entrepreneurs from excessive taxes and regulations so they can hire more people (Thank you GOP).

Stop the smears and realize that there's no kindness to be found in supporting policies that keep people trapped in poverty.

Good comment. Too bad no one will listen. Especially not Republicans. As rightly observe the problem with welfare is that we take it away when people get a job or form a joint household. So the solution actually is MORE WELFARE, to give people welfare regardless of income or marriage status, ie a guaranteed basic income. The GOP will never get behind that. They only want to cut welfare. The Democrats will probably never get behind it either though, since they believe any program which gives to people regardless of circumstances, rather than rewarding them for being failures or rewarding them for being non-white, is inherently problematic. We're just screwed.

[Famous Mortimer]

Republicans hate the poor. Democrats love the poor but their love is contingent on them being poor.

[Famous Mortimer]

MasterJedi isn't making any points at all. He's literally just going "you're wrong, lol" and "you're stupid". He's not challenging your arguments in a meaningful way and he's not presenting his own arguments in a way that would win anyone over. There's no need to respond to him.

[Famous Mortimer]

The poverty rate did decline during the first few years of the War on Poverty. However, funding for the program was siphoned off by the need to pay for the Vietnam War. After the 1973 oil crisis, the War on Poverty was abandoned.

The war on poverty stopped working in the early 70s? That probably has something to do with the fact that that was when we started bringing in massive numbers of poor people from the third world each year, ensuring that even if the poor were somehow lifted out of poverty, they would be replaced (but more likely joined) by new impoverished people.

[Famous Mortimer]

Worded unbelievably badly, but the point itself (that Democrats have a political interest in keeping people poor) is not entirely false.

Lol, yes it is. Republicans despise the poor and want to do nothing to actually help them become successful. Just tell them to work harder and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, no actual help.

That is simply not true. Democratic welfare policies have clearly been a failure. We've spent trillions of dollars since LBJ's war on poverty was launched, and yet today the poverty rate is nearly the exact same. That's because the current welfare system essentially locks people in poverty, disincentivizes marriage (a proven alleviator of poverty), and discourages people from finding work by drastically cutting benefits as soon as people get a job (thus making work an economically unsound decision). If you really think the solution for poverty is throwing money at the same failed policies, you're crazy.

(Most) Republicans don't blame, or by any means despise, the poor for the poverty we see and recognize that it's a symptom of failed governmental policy.

I believe the best way to help alleviate poverty is to restructure the welfare system to encourage marriage, slow the decrease of benefits after employment is found, provide educational choice to poor parents so their children aren't locked in failing schools, encourage apprenticeships and more effective job training programs, and free up entrepreneurs from excessive taxes and regulations so they can hire more people (Thank you GOP).

Stop the smears and realize that there's no kindness to be found in supporting policies that keep people trapped in poverty.

Good comment. Too bad no one will listen. Especially not Republicans. As rightly observe the problem with welfare is that we take it away when people get a job or form a joint household. So the solution actually is MORE WELFARE, to give people welfare regardless of income or marriage status, ie a guaranteed basic income. The GOP will never get behind that. They only want to cut welfare. The Democrats will probably never get behind it either though, since they believe any program which gives to people regardless of circumstances, rather than rewarding them for being failures or rewarding them for being non-white, is inherently problematic. We're just screwed.

I don't think the solution is more welfare but rather a far slower reduction in benefits once people find employment. The point of welfare should be to eliminate the need for its own existence. I do think Republican politicians attack the problem backwards. We should focus on the marriage incenvtives, work encentives, job training, and educational opportunity FIRST and then make cuts to the system once people have started to get themselves out of poverty. Cuts should be the final step, not the first.

You're being vague. "Cuts should be the final step" Cuts to the program? Or cuts to personal benefits? I agree with your implication that cuts to personal benefits should come later but that means people get benefits for longer, ie more welfare will be given out by the government. Incentivizing good behavior like family formation and getting a job is simply not compatible with GOP orthodoxy because the GOP does not believe the government should offer positive incentives ever. Democrats = incentives to failure/Republicans = no incentives one way or the other.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also rofl at "give business more opportunities". Seriously? They've been doing perfectly fine; the provlem is they give dividends to their  shareholders before their workers.

Really? Does that apply to the enormous number of small businesses who aren't public (thus having no shareholders) but were paying the top individual rate before tax reform? Encouraging small business growth is a great way to provide more opportunity to the economically disadvantaged.

Big corporations provide better pay and more stability than small businesses. They also tend to provide better service to customers as well. Support for small business over big business on both the left and right is based on sentimentality more than anything else. Also, it's just not economically feasible to have everyone have their own businesses, unless you are advocating for the Democratic version of the future where the only jobs are food trucks and everyone is just selling tacos to each other and there's no other economic activity.

[Famous Mortimer]

Worded unbelievably badly, but the point itself (that Democrats have a political interest in keeping people poor) is not entirely false.

Lol, yes it is. Republicans despise the poor and want to do nothing to actually help them become successful. Just tell them to work harder and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, no actual help.

That is simply not true. Democratic welfare policies have clearly been a failure. We've spent trillions of dollars since LBJ's war on poverty was launched, and yet today the poverty rate is nearly the exact same. That's because the current welfare system essentially locks people in poverty, disincentivizes marriage (a proven alleviator of poverty), and discourages people from finding work by drastically cutting benefits as soon as people get a job (thus making work an economically unsound decision). If you really think the solution for poverty is throwing money at the same failed policies, you're crazy.

(Most) Republicans don't blame, or by any means despise, the poor for the poverty we see and recognize that it's a symptom of failed governmental policy.

I believe the best way to help alleviate poverty is to restructure the welfare system to encourage marriage, slow the decrease of benefits after employment is found, provide educational choice to poor parents so their children aren't locked in failing schools, encourage apprenticeships and more effective job training programs, and free up entrepreneurs from excessive taxes and regulations so they can hire more people (Thank you GOP).

Stop the smears and realize that there's no kindness to be found in supporting policies that keep people trapped in poverty.

Good comment. Too bad no one will listen. Especially not Republicans. As rightly observe the problem with welfare is that we take it away when people get a job or form a joint household. So the solution actually is MORE WELFARE, to give people welfare regardless of income or marriage status, ie a guaranteed basic income. The GOP will never get behind that. They only want to cut welfare. The Democrats will probably never get behind it either though, since they believe any program which gives to people regardless of circumstances, rather than rewarding them for being failures or rewarding them for being non-white, is inherently problematic. We're just screwed.

I don't think the solution is more welfare but rather a far slower reduction in benefits once people find employment. The point of welfare should be to eliminate the need for its own existence. I do think Republican politicians attack the problem backwards. We should focus on the marriage incenvtives, work encentives, job training, and educational opportunity FIRST and then make cuts to the system once people have started to get themselves out of poverty. Cuts should be the final step, not the first.

You're being vague. "Cuts should be the final step" Cuts to the program? Or cuts to personal benefits? I agree with your implication that cuts to personal benefits should come later but that means people get benefits for longer, ie more welfare will be given out by the government. Incentivizing good behavior like family formation and getting a job is simply not compatible with GOP orthodoxy because the GOP does not believe the government should offer positive incentives ever. Democrats = incentives to failure/Republicans = no incentives one way or the other.

I meant cuts to personal benefits. Also, I disagree with your assertion about Republicans not accepting any positives incentives. The recent tax reform reduced the marriage penalty for most earners and of course increased the child tax credit. Those are positive incentives. With welfare policies, we're already spending the money, we just need to restructure HOW it's being spent.

Well the Child Tax Credit goes to people who have children out of wedlock too so it's not really incentivizing positive behavior.  It's a typical Democratic welfare program which rewards people for messing up their lives. The Republicans support it because they need some bad welfare programs to exist so they can point them as evidence that welfare is unconditionally bad.

[Famous Mortimer]

Democrats support means tested welfare because they fetishize failure. Republicans support means tested welfare (although not as enthusiastically as Democrats) because they want welfare to be associated with failure.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also rofl at "give business more opportunities". Seriously? They've been doing perfectly fine; the provlem is they give dividends to their  shareholders before their workers.

Really? Does that apply to the enormous number of small businesses who aren't public (thus having no shareholders) but were paying the top individual rate before tax reform? Encouraging small business growth is a great way to provide more opportunity to the economically disadvantaged.

Big corporations provide better pay and more stability than small businesses. They also tend to provide better service to customers as well. Support for small business over big business on both the left and right is based on sentimentality more than anything else. Also, it's just not economically feasible to have everyone have their own businesses, unless you are advocating for the Democratic version of the future where the only jobs are food trucks and everyone is just selling tacos to each other and there's no other economic activity.

I'd say support for small business comes from the fact that they employ 120 million people, create 2/3rds of new jobs, and contribute 9 trillion dollars to America's GDP. Any effective reform of business taxation has to focus on small business; it's in no way simply based on sentimentality.

Big businesses would step in to fill the void if those small businesses didn't exist, and they would likely do a better job doing what the small businesses were doing in most cases.

[Famous Mortimer]

Worded unbelievably badly, but the point itself (that Democrats have a political interest in keeping people poor) is not entirely false.

Lol, yes it is. Republicans despise the poor and want to do nothing to actually help them become successful. Just tell them to work harder and pull themselves up by the bootstraps, no actual help.

That is simply not true. Democratic welfare policies have clearly been a failure. We've spent trillions of dollars since LBJ's war on poverty was launched, and yet today the poverty rate is nearly the exact same. That's because the current welfare system essentially locks people in poverty, disincentivizes marriage (a proven alleviator of poverty), and discourages people from finding work by drastically cutting benefits as soon as people get a job (thus making work an economically unsound decision). If you really think the solution for poverty is throwing money at the same failed policies, you're crazy.

(Most) Republicans don't blame, or by any means despise, the poor for the poverty we see and recognize that it's a symptom of failed governmental policy.

I believe the best way to help alleviate poverty is to restructure the welfare system to encourage marriage, slow the decrease of benefits after employment is found, provide educational choice to poor parents so their children aren't locked in failing schools, encourage apprenticeships and more effective job training programs, and free up entrepreneurs from excessive taxes and regulations so they can hire more people (Thank you GOP).

Stop the smears and realize that there's no kindness to be found in supporting policies that keep people trapped in poverty.

Then why do you favor policies that concentrate income among the wealthy.  To get people out of poverty we need to have policies that grow the economy by increasing consumption and it ain't the wealthy who consume; it's the lower classes (and lower middle classes).  In the midst of an economy doing well enough that having sufficient capital to expand businesses was not a problem, the GOP passed a tax cut whose primary effects are to bloat the debt and let the rich expand their portfolios rather than their businesses.

Republican: Democratic policies don't work.

Democrat: Ah ha! Neither do Republican policies though!

Great. So we've established that neither party has policies that do anything to fight poverty.