And no, it is not about “The politics of poverty, safety nets” as the Concord Monitor would have you believe from their Op-Ed title:
Editorial: The politics of poverty, safety nets
It goes on to talk about the “puzzling” question of why people would “vote against their own self-interest” – the hubris of Progressives that just can’t seem to get that a lot of people don’t have a hankering to be “taken care of” at the expense of them making their own decisions. Progressives seem to believe that if they provide for everyone’s needs, they should be seeing the gratitude – and they can’t believe the lack therof. Note to Progressives – true adults hate the idea of being “kept” or reduced to being treated as children that are unable to care for themselves
It meanders around the political votes of states – and THEN gets to the heart of what I believe is the truth of the matter:
“These voters are consciously opting against a Democratic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people – especially the undeserving benefit-recipients in their midst,” MacGillis wrote. To hear a neighbor on disability boast about dragging his monster buck out of the woods is to become an opponent of the program and the party that backs it.
Translation: I’m living off the dole and look at these great things I can do in my copious free time – sorry you can’t join me because, well, somebody’s got to work to pay the taxes that Govt takes from you in order to give to me! Thanks, dude!”
The vast majority of people receiving public support need it, at least temporarily. Though New Hampshire is a rich state, 8.3 percent of its residents – and 11 percent of its children – live in poverty. Forty percent of the students at Concord’s high school and middle school would qualify for free or reduced lunches.
I think most of us have no problem that a helping hand be available but given thatsince the 1960s when the Great Society started, $20 Trillion hasn’t budged the poverty rate much more than an iota or so. All that money and no real results? Of course people get ticked – why take our money with no benefits?
Sidenote: btw, every time I see those stats about poverty, I grit my math teeth; they just grate on me as I know that games are being played for eligibility for free lunches – and then used again to show how sad things are.
I dare say that the old fashioned mutual aid societies were far more effective and financially efficient efficient – they were not only invested on getting measurable results but able to cut their losses when they saw that their good money was turned to bad when someone decided to game the system. Govt is too big to fail, so it seems, so politicians and bureaucrats will continue programs far into the future when their failure end point actually happened well in the past. But I digress:
Despite a willingness to work hard, some recipients lack the physical or mental ability to hold more than a low-income job. Jobs in industry, especially the high-paying union jobs that allowed large numbers of high school dropouts and grads to earn a middle-class wage, are gone.
Ah! The lamentations of a Progressive that doesn’t wish to move forward but pines for a past that never existed. The height of the union jobs is now 60 years ago but still they cry about it but never reflect on WHY they have proven to be economically unviable wherever competition exists (e.g, not in government where most union jobs now exist).
To ensure that the social safety net survives, those in it and those who’ve climbed up from it need to vote. Doing everything possible to eliminate fraud and the perception that many receiving help are unworthy of it will strengthen, not weaken, the net. What’s also missing, now that unions no longer play a big role, is an everyday educational and support presence in the lives of the poor and lower middle class, a role Democrats played long ago.
The CM touches on the right point but then slides right past it. We who DO rail against the welfare state see it more than just in economic terms – it IS about fairness. A hand out and not a hammock it should be – but Progressives fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo and then only wish to absorb more people into that soft white enclosure – we will keep you “safe” but only if you do it OUR way and if you vote our way.
Look, I’ve written quite a bit on what we saw coming through our daycare portal and the stories we heard. We hear the Democrat politicians promising to “give” voters a lot – and never mention that to fulfill FDR’s Second Bill of Rights that none should experience privation, other people must be made to serve them involuntarily – this is the hallmark, now, of the Land of the Free? That we can compel others to provide for ME! Such a country!
Eliminating fraud will never happen – the programs are too big and the bureaucracies are too invested to ever make it more efficient and cost effective. And the perception will not change as we see neighbors, other townfolk, and strangers one the dole do things and buy things (e.g., grocery store) that we’d never buy for ourselves, yet these folkscan pay for it with “formerly our” money. I understand the resentment and it grows when we see Democrat politicians refuse to draw lines about what can be provided by the welfare programs (e.g., remember out stories on Obamaphones or MA Gov Patrick getting caught on providing cars to those on welfare)? And not once did they mention the growing problem of intergenerational welfare – where mom begats daughter birthing granddaughter and onward – always willing to “just get along”. Those that absolutely refuse to work.
If the Monitor really wants to effect change, they’d be advocating for changes that would limit welfare instead of always wanting to increase it. Make it uncomfortable for those that can really work. Run those kinds of stories showing the abuses instead of just wailing against conservatives. Advocate, too, to get rid of the “cliff” support features that those on welfare run into as they try to go up the ladder – those penalties that make it clear that it is far more advantageous to stay off the economic ladder instead of taking the standard of living hits on the lower rungs.
After all, those dastardly conservatives want you to do the impossible: be self-sufficient. CM, help make that change instead of knitting the hammock all the time and perhaps you’d change opinions – like your own.
The full editorial:
Editorial: The politics of poverty, safety nets
Sunday, November 29, 2015Last Sunday, “What Turned My Blue State Red,” the lead story in the Week in Review section of the New York Times, was by former Monitor reporter and New Hampshire presidential primary veteran Alec MacGillis. Once reliably Democratic states like Kentucky and West Virginia, MacGillis found, began voting Republican – and the switch began before the collapse of the coal mining industry.
The more a state’s residents rely on government benefits like food stamps, the more pronounced the tilt to the right was. The phenomenon can be found across the south and, somewhat startlingly, in Maine, the state with the second highest percentage – after Kentucky – of residents on food stamps in the nation. Mainers have twice elected Paul LePage, a blustering, uncouth avowed dismantler of the social safety net, as their governor.
In theory, the more a state benefits from government programs the more strongly it should support the party most willing to confer those benefits – Democrats. So why don’t they? Why do people who’ve been helped by their government oppose the very programs that helped them and their families, and vote for candidates who wanted to reduce or abolish them?
MacGillis found a few reasons. They don’t explain the whole story, but they’re certainly a big part of it, a part that can be seen at work in New Hampshire. First, only a small percentage of the poor and near poor vote at all. There are lots of reasons for that, including Republican efforts to make voting harder in the name of fraud prevention, and the feeling of powerlessness that comes with being poor.
In the 2014 midterm election, 65 percent of Hopkinton’s registered voters went to the polls. In Stewartstown, one of the state’s poorest communities, the turnout was 41 percent.
Move one step up the five-step economic ladder and many more people vote, but they now vote for Republicans far more than they once did. Chalk that up to human nature. People who’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps (think presidential candidate and one-time food stamp recipient Ben Carson) expect others to do the same. Having worked very hard, they resent welfare recipients who won’t and above all those who cheat the system. Welfare fraud is rare, but its effect on voting patterns is large.
“These voters are consciously opting against a Democratic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people – especially the undeserving benefit-recipients in their midst,” MacGillis wrote. To hear a neighbor on disability boast about dragging his monster buck out of the woods is to become an opponent of the program and the party that backs it.
The vast majority of people receiving public support need it, at least temporarily. Though New Hampshire is a rich state, 8.3 percent of its residents – and 11 percent of its children – live in poverty. Forty percent of the students at Concord’s high school and middle school would qualify for free or reduced lunches.
Despite a willingness to work hard, some recipients lack the physical or mental ability to hold more than a low-income job.
Jobs in industry, especially the high-paying union jobs that allowed large numbers of high school dropouts and grads to earn a middle-class wage, are gone.
To ensure that the social safety net survives, those in it and those who’ve climbed up from it need to vote. Doing everything possible to eliminate fraud and the perception that many receiving help are unworthy of it will strengthen, not weaken, the net. What’s also missing, now that unions no longer play a big role, is an everyday educational and support presence in the lives of the poor and lower middle class, a role Democrats played long ago.
