The Crew Forum Politics Thread (Read Before You Post)

Not to knock on any of those profession. I appreciate those who serve in any of them. But security guards also risk their lives for even less money/benefits. Farmers and machinist risk at least limb, if not life. Etc., etc.

Yes, oddly enough US military installations have private security forces. It's called "force protection" and is mainly to free up troops for operations instead of sentry duty.

so your not a fan of welfare?

I have no problem whatsoever with 1) food stamps, 2) medicaid, and 3) public housing. I feel that there should be tighter controls on them that there currently are, but in concept no problems at all.

You will never convince me of the righteousness of just handing someone a check every month that they 'earned' by simply being alive.

What he said.

I'm in favor of helping poor people but only for a limited time. Private charities could probably cover most of the need but then you'd have what Alfred P Doolittle called the "undeserving poor". They rely on government because it's usually non-judgmental. Thus the present efforts by the Obama administration to rewrite the welfare reform law of 1996.

There's people out there who don't want a job because the job would pay less than their welfare check pays. (Nevermind the fact that there may be a way for them to have a job AND collect welfare checks.)

Both this and HardHatMike's comments seem to be pervasive beliefs in the US about our "welfare" system. Nobody ever just "gets a check for just being alive" - the disparate forms of welfare payments we provide to people often require a lot of work to obtain. And yes, people fore-go some lower paying (in relation to their previous job) work opportunities in order to continue to receive temporary unemployment benefits. And a large percentage of minimum wage workers qualify for food stamps (which says something about our minimum wage). But the way Kryptonite seems to be framing it - and the belief that I find pervasive in America - is this means "welfare" will produce a class of people receiving government checks who are better off than those earning paychecks. I don't see any evidence for that.

Rolling Stone's recent article on homelessness in the US deals a lot with how our social safety net provides money and benefits to US citizens - http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-sharp-sudden-decline-of-americas-middle-class-20120622

Never mind that most minimum wage workers are kids working their first jobs, are people working seasonal jobs, or are people working for supplemental income.

Just a question, but what is your experience with people that are in the lower-middle class? I own a business where I generally hire unskilled labor. I had a certain gentleman working for me for almost 8 months when I got a letter from the IRS wondering why I was working a 14 year old 40 hours a week. Turns out, the person I hired was working under his grandson's SSN in order to collect not only his government disability checks but his early SS retirement money. In addition to working 40 hours a week at $12 an hour. As a laborer.

I have more stories like this if you need further proof that our systems of social support are being seriously abused.

Please tell me this person now gets his accommodations paid for by the government in the form of 10' x 10' living space.

"Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly-paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 23 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over." -> http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm
So about half of 4 million workers making at or below minimum wage are over the age of 25. Contrast that with near 50 million on food stamps right now (http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm), and neither of our points are correct (i can't find anything saying half of 2 million people are earning minimum wage as side jobs to other work).

I shouldn't have said minimum wage - I meant people earning low hourly wages who qualify for food stamps (i'm thinking of folks blessed with walmart jobs)

Nope. His listed address was the White Castle on the corner of Wilson and Broad so no luck there and the family wouldn't turn him in. As far as I know he continued on with a job under another SSN.

Mmmm... White Castle...

Well, I did offer 3 sources for minimum wage workers, only one of which was "kids". The second one admittedly overlaps the first, but then there's the third, which is basically people working part-time for one reason or another (including second jobs). You focused on one of those. In essence, my point has been made.

I've heard a lot of this sort of argument before, but this is the first time I've heard of Biology, Earth Sciences and Geometry being put on the chopping block. It is significant that even timon19 disagrees with you here.

This is the stuff that scares me. People perceive us to be falling behind in the "important stuff", so the reaction is to list 'unimportant stuff' that can be gotten rid of. Apparently if you aren't designing bridges, growing food or being the proverbial 'businessman' you are some sort of elite dilettante, a leech on society who sits back and ponders abstract things to no tangible purpose. Apparently it is the fault of anthropology, sociology and psychology that economics, business and math are 'behind in the country. I think that is totally false. The former have nothing at all to do with it. They are being scapegoated, pure and simple.

Focusing myopically on business and economics to the further exclusion of all else is emphatically NOT the way forward. Can education in those areas be improved? Definitely, and they should be. There is plenty of room in secondary school curricula for improvement. But is it necessary to curtail education in other areas you don't value or understand in order to do so? Absolutely not.

Economics, Biology, Earth Sciences, Geometry, Forign Languages, Band, etc. are probably being de-emphasized because they are not covered on the standardized tests everyone has to take and pass. Failure means everyone from the administration to the teachers may end up losing their jobs. So all the teaching is focused on how to get the students to pass tests.

What I consider useful is not to knock on any of the sciences or math subjects. However, throughout a year, I ask what skills/information am I most likely to use. Government and economics are used far more often that most of the sciences and upper math. yet the amount required isn't reflected by use to the majority of the population. Just because I state economics is more used than biology does not mean that I don't hold any value to those subjects or find those that work in those fields as useless. That is not close to what I said and putting words in my mouth. I merely used the subjects of sciences and math for comparison since they are required credits, while economic/finance are not.

Sorry, it's Fox News, but holy crap.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...dream-suggests-nobody-achieves-success-alone/

He thinks the tail wags the dog.

This mentality goes along with, "everybody get a gold star." I can't believe this, honestly. I voted for Obama in 2008.

He is outright saying that we control you and you should be so lucky we have allowed you to exist. Is he serious?

Here is another example of our benevolent government allowing us to exist on this measly tract of land. Sorry, Fox News again.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-taxes-rise-in-2013-to-reset-debate-with-gop/

I voted for Obama in 2008. I will not be voting for Obama in 2012. Why? He is the worst thing that has ever happened in this country since I have been alive. I truly believe that he is so narcissistic that he really thinks he knows is best for us. Scary stuff. Government is getting bigger by the day and there is no end in sight. It is time to shitcan the federal expansion and the put the powers back to the states.

You want Jim Crow back? You racist!

Political ads on TV don't sway me to one person or another. They make me not want to vote at all.

What about quotes in context?

They don't exist in politics.