Texas Senate approves drug testing for welfare

BipolarFuk

Demoted
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
11,464
Yeah it is pretty annoying to be behind someone using WIC if they don't know what they can get with it or the cashier is a newb and doesn't know wtf is going on.
 

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
First serious political debate of the new board!

:towel

And I'm not even involved.
 

Jiggyfly

Banned
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
9,220
Thank you for pointing out another way in which our welfare system is easily abused. Maybe we should just get rid of the whole thing... It would certainly help our economy out significantly.
No it would not,

What is going to replace the money the retailers are getting from these programs?

That would be a significant hit to a lot of retailers and small stores bottom lines.
 
Last edited:

Jiggyfly

Banned
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
9,220
So nobody wants to discuss how easy it is to pass the initial test and still use these funds to toke afterwards.
 

EZ22

The One Who Knocks
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
1,255
Meanwhile, smoke all the cigs and drink all the beers you want.

:lol at this retarded "victory".
 

Kbrown

Not So New Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
2,155
No it would not,

What is going to replace the money the retailers are getting from these programs?

That would be a significant hit to a lot of retailers and small stores bottom lines.
Maybe the taxes they no longer have to pay in?

I am not for eliminating welfare altogether, but it does not stimulate the economy.
 

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
No it would not,

What is going to replace the money the retailers are getting from these programs?

That would be a significant hit to a lot of retailers and small stores bottom lines.
You are ignorant as to what causes economic growth. The retailers are the ones paying the taxes that are then handed out to those people on social programs. When they hand it back over to the retailers, uh, well that's pretty much not any different than letting the retailers keep it in the first place.
 
Last edited:

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
Maybe the taxes they no longer have to pay in?

I am not for eliminating welfare altogether, but it does not stimulate the economy.
:lol

You would think that would be obvious.

Hey, I have an idea to solve this recession that we are in. Why don't we just take all of Walmart's money and give it to the lower classes? Then they can use that money at... oh, no where, because Walmart is now out of business.
 

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
That would be a significant hit to a lot of retailers and small stores bottom lines.
Long term this isn't true at all. I'm not in the mood to give a detailed economics lesson right now, but suffice it to say welfare programs shrink an economies overall productivity.
 

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
Long term this isn't true at all. I'm not in the mood to give a detailed economics lesson right now, but suffice it to say welfare programs shrink an economies overall productivity.
I'll do it!

Creation is what creates economic growth. Think about it if you were to take the concept of "money" out of the equation. Think about it as if we were in a barter system (ultimately, that's all that money is, it is merely a representation of our labor or the goods we would trade with each other).

How do we become better off? It's when someones goes and chops down some trees and turns those trees into a house. It's when someone cuts the wool off a sheep and turns it into clothes. It's when someone goes out into a field and turns the plants into food. This is, at it's most basic level, how we get "goods."

The more of these things we produce, the richer we are as a society. Money is merely the paper representation of those goods. The total goods owned by our society dictates how wealthy we are.

So you can take all the money you want away from the rich people and give it to the poor people, but at the end of the day, it only helps the economy if it leads to the creation of some good that contributes to our wealth. It only helps the economy if more houses, or more clothes, are produced. We then have a "wealth" of extra "things" that cover our needs. When we have so much of these extra things that our needs are more than met, we can begin to trade those extra things for recreational items (like TVs, or computers, or iPods).

The problem with giving money to poor people is that, while it may be the moral thing to do in a well-off society as a safety net for those who are less fortunate, those poor people generally just pay their rent and buy food with that money. Past that, they buy consumable goods that depreciate in value. Then the money ends up back in the hands of the rich people who it was taxed from and nothing in the system has really changed except that a rich man provided housing or food for a poor man and everyone stayed in the exact same situation in terms of wealth, at the end of the day. The poor person never got ahead, the rich man ended up with the money again. Society was not improved.

For the poor person to improve his standing long term in this cycle, there has to be an upswing in production that creates excess "things" that then become easily available to him. So real economic growth will come when our country opens new plants, or has a cutting edge breakthrough in some kind of scientific product, or does SOMETHING besides be a service economy.
 
Last edited:

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
You are ignorant as to what causes economic growth. The retailers are the ones paying the taxes that are then handed out to those people on social programs. When they hand it back over to the retailers, uh, well that's pretty much not any different than letting the retailers keep it in the first place.
Sadly a lot of American's don't understand economics at all and think a lot like Jiggy.

When you have government handouts you basically take a chunk out of an economy's productivity because instead of those people being forced to produce a good or service to earn things they don't have to do anything. Less people producing a good or service means the shrinking of an economy. Of course that is a very simplistic way of describing a very complex process.
 

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
Sadly a lot of American's don't understand economics at all and think a lot like Jiggy.

When you have government handouts you basically take a chunk out of an economy's productivity because instead of those people being forced to produce a good or service to earn things they don't have to do anything. Less people producing a good or service means the shrinking of an economy. Of course that is a very simplistic way of describing a very complex process.
Exactly what I was getting at in my longer post. Production of things increases our wealth, which is what grows the economy.

The entire concept of Keynesian economics is based on the idea that wealth (in the form of dollars) has stagnated in the bank accounts of the rich people and it proposes to "get things moving" by re-distributing it to areas where it will be put back into motion. So they tax the rich, and it becomes government money. The government, under FDR when this concept was getting popular, would sometimes even just pay people to do nothing jobs, like dig ditches and fill them back up. The poor person would collect a paycheck. Then he'd spend the money on the basic necessities he needed to live (food, shelter).

What a charitable thing. Except... oops... now that he just paid his landlord, who is rich, guess where the money is? In the landlord's bank account again. What happened in this whole transaction? A ditch was built and then filled back up. We are literally in the same exact spot as before the taxation. Which is why Keynesianism is a colossal failure as an economy GROWER an only ever works in a time of plenty on the back of actual economic growth that happened before it's policies were implemented.

In order to be wealthy, we have to have an excess of the things that we need. If the government was really interested in eliminating poverty, it would push something that could generate a production of things, which could then be sold for profit. If a plant opened, and all those people went to work making a widget, then we'd have a lot of production of widgets that we could sell to increase our wealth. As I said before, the wealth comes from the combination of labor with natural resources to create something that is better than the resource was in it's natural state. The more production (ie the more people producing things) the better we will be.
 

boozeman

28 Years And Counting...
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
121,750
Just chiming in...haven't read the comments....I approve.
 

Genghis Khan

The worst version of myself
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
37,486
I'll do it!

Creation is what creates economic growth. Think about it if you were to take the concept of "money" out of the equation. Think about it as if we were in a barter system (ultimately, that's all that money is, it is merely a representation of our labor or the goods we would trade with each other).

How do we become better off? It's when someones goes and chops down some trees and turns those trees into a house. It's when someone cuts the wool off a sheep and turns it into clothes. It's when someone goes out into a field and turns the plants into food. This is, at it's most basic level, how we get "goods."

The more of these things we produce, the richer we are as a society. Money is merely the paper representation of those goods. The total goods owned by our society dictates how wealthy we are.

So you can take all the money you want away from the rich people and give it to the poor people, but at the end of the day, it only helps the economy if it leads to the creation of some good that contributes to our wealth. It only helps the economy if more houses, or more clothes, are produced. We then have a "wealth" of extra "things" that cover our needs. When we have so much of these extra things that our needs are more than met, we can begin to trade those extra things for recreational items (like TVs, or computers, or iPods).

The problem with giving money to poor people is that, while it may be the moral thing to do in a well-off society as a safety net for those who are less fortunate, those poor people generally just pay their rent and buy food with that money. Past that, they buy consumable goods that depreciate in value. Then the money ends up back in the hands of the rich people who it was taxed from and nothing in the system has really changed except that a rich man provided housing or food for a poor man and everyone stayed in the exact same situation in terms of wealth, at the end of the day. The poor person never got ahead, the rich man ended up with the money again. Society was not improved.

For the poor person to improve his standing long term in this cycle, there has to be an upswing in production that creates excess "things" that then become easily available to him. So real economic growth will come when our country opens new plants, or has a cutting edge breakthrough in some kind of scientific product, or does SOMETHING besides be a service economy.

Very well said. I kills me that this basic common sense is lost on so many people.
 
Top Bottom