Government-Enforced Generosity Almost Suppresses Genuine Charity
Overview
Bob Hurt discusses the concepts of government-enforced welfare, a kind of “bizarro compassion,” with Darryl. Bob proposes solutions to the chasm between broke and poor and shows the right perspective from which to view the issues.
Introduction
From: Joyce T
Sent: Thu, September 8, 2011 5:15:52 AM
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=5851 (this fired Darryl up)
From: Joseph B
That was VERY Interesting! (this really fired him up)
Darryl’s Position
From: Darryl H
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 11:16 AM
Subject: The difference between interesting and Bull Shit
Boys and Girls,
I do not know who all is on this list. I do not know who all, on this list, grew up poor. I do not know who all, on this list, is experiencing financial challenges now, or is concerned about their future.
But, I'm not buying the Heritage Foundation's claim that the difference between poor, and 'doing OK' is so small. I know better, and so should you.
I remember Claudia told me one time that she was poor. I said, "Darling, you live in a brand new condo, with brand new furniture, you have a closet full of silk dresses from Lord and Taylor, all your blue jeans have been dry-cleaned, there's a new cougar in the driveway, and just last month you put $1,500 on your credit card to have your AC repaired. You're not poor, you're broke."
The difference between poor and broke is BIG. When you're broke, a few months pay 'might' well set you 'right' again. When you're poor, you're fucked.
Yes, the poor may indeed have a refrigerator, but the only thing in it, is the light that comes on when you open the door hungry.
I could go on, but won't - shouldn't need to.
One thing for sure, if you are EVER given an opportunity to swap places with a poor person, don't. But, if you do, I want to see your video - see if the tune changes. It will, you know.
LaYaOil,
darryl
PS. Ever sleep under a bridge, in a drizzling winter rain, on an empty belly, and the only thing between living and freezing was an old damp greasy stinkey scratchy wool army blanket you got from Goodwill? dh
PSS. Me neither. dh
PSSS. May God bless the poor and homeless. Amen. dh
PSSSS. Father, help us avoid tuning a blind eye to those in need. Amen. dh
PSSSSS. "That which you do for the least of mine, you do for me." JC
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Bob Hurt Responds:
Darryl:
You do cast an interesting perspective on the matter, and you always have.
But I believe you missed the point by pressing so hard on the sympathy-because-I-coulda-been-there button.
· The Broke have no ready cash.
· The Poor have none either.
· The Broke expect some ready cash soon.
· The Poor don’t
· The Broke have the intellectual and physical resources to bring some cash in.
· The Poor don’t.
· The Broke don’t stay broke.
· The Poor do.
· A cure exists for Broke.
· Poor has no cure.
The vast majority of poor people at any time in history had every modern convenience the well-to-do had 8 to 15 years earlier. I mean vast, like over 90%. When only Danny Glover had that big cumbersome “portable” cell phone in the 1987 movie Lethal Weapon, most well-off people didn’t have one and no poor people had one. Now every poor person in America has a cell phone and 225 free minutes per month at government expense. They don’t need one except in emergencies, for they could always use the neighbor’s if they didn’t have one. And most of the poor abuse their cell phones, blabbing for fun instead of seeking employment.
America has a serious problem related to the differences between Poor and Broke – STUPIDITY.
Stupid people don’t have the raw intelligence to make it through high school, not even if they try their very best and study 4 hours every night. Their brains cannot and will not make rational decisions or evaluate relative importances to correct conclusions. So they won’t even bother studying because they put study so low on their priority list below basic urges like food, sex, booze, drugs, and hanging in the hood.
The stupid notoriously make stupid choices, which explains why others call them stupid. The stupid gravitate toward crime and welfare abuse to get by, so they end up legally or illegally mugging others for their sustenance. You might say that proves their condition doesn’t include stupidity. But those who tend toward crime usually get arrested, and so jails and prisons have huge, stupid populations.
For the majority of the mentally disabled who can’t graduate from high school, poverty has become not only a wrong and essentially unavoidable choice, but also an occupation. The hardest work of the poor in America consists of traveling to the food pantry or mailbox to get food or a welfare check, or actually walking down to the store to cash in some food stamps.
The rest of the poor, effectively stupid, who actually could find a well-enough-paying job if they tried, often suffer from substance abuse that wrecks their intellects and make them useless as family members or citizens. Or they have PTSD from the stress of warfare or life and cannot function normally. They become unproductive, and they end up legally mugging the more productive through Medicaid, and welfare or crime.
Aside from children, a few feckless people exist somewhere between vegetative and ambulatory who must become wards of the state or families, and absolutely cannot care for themselves, but I would not refer to them as poor so much as “boat anchors.” We don’t mean them when we say poor. So they don’t count in the discussion.
Generally, the poor have choices they can make to improve conditions, but because of mental or substance abuse-related handicaps, they always make wrong decisions. Some don’t even have the sense to apply for welfare. For those reasons, poverty has become the only way of life possible to them. We can empathize with them. We must care for them. But we need to rid the planet of them through benign eugenics programs.
Their procreation by clinically insipid parents ought to become a crime every bit as evil and unconscionable as injecting people at random with a serum that makes them stupid for life. Someday civilized societies will sterilize their defective and degenerate people of this kind so that they cannot procreate, no matter what. And that will become the most enlightened government mandate of the millennium when it happens because it will pretty much cure the problem of the “poor.”
Continuing to feed and care for the chronically poor essentially constitutes a criminal enterprise, not altruism, when doing it through government welfare. It sticks up and robs those who have resources, forcing them to contribute their sustenance to the so-called poor. This becomes socially insane and civilizationally suicidal when doing it to the exclusion of the eugenics program I suggested. Adults with IQ below 90 have no business coming into existence except in an agrarian or manufacturing society with no machines to do farm or factory work. We no longer have such a society, so we have no excuse for actually cultivating and encouraging the procreation of degenerate, inferior, stupid people.
On top of all this, we voters do not insist on programs that will make sterilization and work for others the main conditions for obtaining welfare for subsistence. People who receive undeserved largess from government ought to
· Work daily in an organized and personal enterprise to help others. By personal, I mean they ought to do physical work to care for needy and suffering people, if trustworthy, getting to know them in the process, and also work in group activities under supervision. THEN, after doing 4 hours in a day of such work, the prospective recipient of welfare may collect that day’s portion of welfare, or have some held in an account to accrue for month’s end payments of necessary expenses for living.
· Submit to sterilization for the duration of welfare. Violent criminals ought to suffer permanent sterilization if only we had a trustworthy police and trial system. People whom society cannot trust to feed and care for themselves should have no power to procreate.
Sensible citizens ought frankly to face the foregoing facts and take action, BENIGN action, to cure the problems. We have people occupying powerful leadership positions in government who suffer from such myopia on the foregoing realities and pragmatisms, that they will not even discuss them sincerely. Worst of all, they press heavily and dishonestly on people’s sympathies, implying that productive, sensible folk ought to suffer lifetime involuntary servitude (in violation of the 13th Amendment) to feed, clothe, house, medicate, educate, train, and suffer crime and other abuse from the chronically, professionally POOR. THAT makes no sense on this planet or any other planet that I can imagine.
I intend no personal assault, Darryl, on your sympathetic feelings for the POOR. But I do wonder at your unwillingness ever to propound a single benign and practical solution to their very curable problem which you have raised more than once. You seem to want to suggest that no solution worthy of contemplation exists, and yet I have suggested two very good solutions: sterilization of the stupid, and requirement or daily toil in exchange for subsistence.
Maybe if you think really hard, you can come up with some even better ones OTHER than to continue bleeding productive people against their will to support the poor.
You have suggested with your conundrum that we all ponder, contemplate, and muse over the problem of poverty. I have done my part. Now why don’t you do yours? YOU suggest some solutions that DON’T consist of ROBBING the productive at gunpoint to provide subsistence for the poor.
Now, I have shown you the difference between interesting (your poverty dilemma) and bullshit (continuing to rob the productive without curing the cause of the poverty). NO difference exists. Both constitute bullshit. I see and have prescribed workable, cheap cures for the poverty. I have done this repeatedly over the years. You just keep citing the same old problem, but no cures.
Would you care to explain why?
One more thing, Darryl:
At the end of your comments you bring up God, Jesus etc., apparently to encourage compassion for the poor. That cannot become the issue here. Nobody doubts that all should feel compassion. But you ought to note that Jesus never forced others to feel compassion or behave compassionately, nor did he punish them for failing to do so.
You didn’t bother to bring this up or to analyze Jesus’ reasoning. People should love one another and serve one another unselfishly and lovingly. But they should NOT point a gun or use government power to FORCE others to pretend to behave lovingly and compassionately toward the needy, for such does not comply with the meaning of “Compassion,” “Love,” or “Sincerity.”
· Love – the DESIRE to do good to others
· Compassion – sympathy for the suffering of others that motivates one to demonstrate unselfish loving service to them.
· Sincerity constitutes the prime ingredient in both love and compassion. It means genuine and without falseness of hypocrisy. One must Talk the Think and Walk the Talk in order to fulfill the obligation of sincerity in either love or compassion.
Do you see anything about FORCE AT GUNPOINT in any of these meanings? No? Why not? Because Love and Compassion constitute voluntary yearnings or desires. Neither any person nor any government can or should use real or threatened physical or other FORCE to cause someone to feel love or compassion. Any associated behavior against one’s compunctions deprives the behavior of sincerity, love, and compassion, makes it phony, and converts it to extortion, robbery, or legalized plunder, not true or genuine generosity or charity.
This should explain to all but the most obtuse why government welfare constitutes a crime against humanity and forms the very soul of evil because it has hypocrisy at its base.
The truth in this point suggests that those who would legislate welfare in fact loathe and want to steal from the productive members of society who have demonstrated sufficient intelligence, responsibility, and ability to evolve the power to contribute their sustenance to others. The politicians behind welfare feel jealous and envious of the wealth of others and want to force those others to become relatively impoverished in order to support the so-called needy. This remains true even though many needy, through sloth, greed, criminal intent, and the like, contrive not to produce what they could if sincere and industrious.
Such politicians do not tax themselves into relative poverty. They make themselves into oligarchs who would change the law for the sake of forcing the able to support the less able.
For further understanding, one must confess the truth of genuine social welfare programs administered by churches and communities for their poor and less able. Those who generously give of their own sustenance for such support of others do it out of love and goodness, not because of government or church force.
At the same time, such donors typically know or at least know of the prospective recipients of their gifts. Deacons, community leaders, and better-off neighbors typically know which of their fellows suffer from lack or hardship, and feel compassion for them as a consequence. Some shirkers receive from that generosity. However, the donors and leaders complain against donating to those who abuse the gift such as by spending the money on drugs, booze, gambling, prostitutes, lavish and profligate excesses, or other vices. Such abuses diminish as a consequence of the complaints and reduced charity. Local welfare recipients begin to exercise more responsibility as a result. They typically cannot fool local church deacons and civic leaders, so they behave better in order to obtain the community’s largess.
The widespread government welfare system never properly administers the money or properly requires honorable and appreciative behavior from recipients. So, much abuse and waste occurs. And Government collects much of the welfare money through taxes that impose severe hardships on the less needy, but STILL needy, lower middle class families that struggle to put food on the table and pay monthly living and medical expenses.
Above all other points here stands the core reality that most Americans of means have generous spirits and give abundantly to good causes, particularly people in need. See the incredible proof of this in United Way, Red Cross, 9-11, Christian and other religious and secular charities, and other donation programs. The nation has never needed to employ real or threatened government force to harvest massive voluntary contributions for helping others. Donors keep donating in spite of the widespread government Robin Hood programs robbin’ from the haves and givin’ to the alleged have-nots.
In other words, America does not have an even remote need for enforced welfare. Therefore, legislating it constitutes an egregious crime against the people of the land.
I guarantee you that JESUS CHRIST WOULD NEVER ENDORCE ENFORCED CHARITY in any form, including government welfare. And if you read both the Bible and Urantia Book, you will find that he never did endorse it. I have guaranteed it on both the basis of logic and the history of Jesus’ teachings.
Note finally that Government has numerous ways of coercing people to support charities, though the people of America have never needed such coercion as a motive to give to support the needy.
Government provides lavish tax deductions for money people give to charities or spend on government’s ideal projects. I consider this utterly crooked, but not as crooked as enforced welfare. Government says “we won’t tax you on contributions you make to OUR choice of charities.” Like I said: crooked. Why? Because government collects tax at gunpoint. If you don’t give to those charities it will force you to pay a corresponding tax, often enough to put you in a higher tax bracket. So, it remains an abusive mechanism of robbing from the haves to give to the haven’ts.
Darryl, I have done my best to explain why your invocation of the names of God and Jesus amounts to greater bullshit than any of your prior comments. You have clearly sought to use them to evoke and prey on guilt and sympathy against a selfishness that you only presume exists in those who hate the enforced welfare system. In reality you know that Americans generally have a generous nature and most give to charity. You surely must know that most would give even more if government did not rob them blind for that very purpose.
Thus, your invocation of God and Jesus in this matter constitutes a transparently obvious philosophic fraud, typical political speechmaking. Why? Because enforced welfare, no matter how justified, amounts to nothing more than a colossal scheme of plunder legalized by government having sufficient weaponry to enforce it. As I have already shown, God and Jesus have nothing to do with legal plunder, PERIOD. They want voluntary first-person compassion, not enforced third-person Bizarro-compassion.
By this commentary I do not mean to insult you, hurt your feelings, or demean your honorable notions promoting generous charity. You have shown substantial generosity in your life time. I know for a fact that you walk the talk, and you talk the think of such generosity. I admire you for that.
I do mean to offer you an incentive for straightening out your thinking on this matter of legal plunder and enforced welfare. We have discussed this for decades, you always insisting on the socialist angle of forcing every productive earner to become the keeper of unproductive citizens. At first I thought you might have done it merely to antagonize, as you have done since your 6th year of life. A decade or so ago I began to wonder whether alcohol had fuzzied your mind somehow. Now I wonder whether you have a psychological kink like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a remnant of the abuse you suffered as a child, or maybe you can’t help just wanting to get even with me somehow, such as by completely discounting logic, history, and common sense when discussing such issues with me.
America has many pressing problems that your fine intellect and sensitivity to the human condition could help solve in noble, benign ways if you only decided to apply yourself to discovering means that do not promote or require legal plunder for their implementation.
Bob Hurt bh Blog1 •Blog2 • Email • Law • Donate f t
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