dagblog - Comments for "Why Cutting Benefits Helps Nobody"

Hey Mike, it's Mike.

Orion — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:42:37 +0000

In reply to Why Cutting Benefits Helps Nobody

Hey Mike, it's Mike.

I remember when I was working at Heritage, my roommate, who is still my friend, said that "the best way to get someone out of poverty is to make it uncomfortable for him to be in it." Typical right wing speak but a couple years later I heard him bemoan that "profit" is more important than people to many when we talked about pharmaceutical drugs. I think that Reagan era libertarian speak is losing its value and had value in a small window of time.

You heard people playing the "welfare queen" card the most during the 1980s and 1990s - times of epic opportunity and wealth in this country. Politicians traditionally are socialists - they usually were left wing or right wing socialists. American politicians before the Reagan era were often times for socialism - the like of George Wallace or Theodore Bilbo were all for public universities and entitlements as long as they were beneficial to whites only.

Needless to say, we still have the weak social infrastructure we built during the good times. It shouldn't fall on individuals to make sure people aren't begging or starving. It would not take a whole lot of cash to create a basic minimum income and insure that everyone has their base needs taken care of, with work there to provide their secondary needs. We should have mental institutions where people who are a threat to themselves or others can cool off. We should back off from various international crisis so that needs at home can be taken care of. We should bring back regulations so that pharmaceutical companies do not market towards children. We had alot of these things before the Reagan era, you know, and they worked fine.

Contrary to popular belief, social programs don't harm the economy. People are going to feel much more confident about themselves and their prospects for employment if they have money in their pocket - George W. Bush understood this in the wrong way with his tax cuts - and in the case of the minimum wage, they'll feel more confident in working if they know that their work will earn some cash.

That's very cool! I was

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 03:08:53 +0000

In reply to I remember when it began with

That's very cool! I was looking in the search results area, so I didn't even see the right-hand feature at first. I suppose the book was featured in the newsletter too.

I remember when it began with

Ramona — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:27:36 +0000

In reply to I was also surprised by the

I remember when it began with some fanfare, but I confess I haven't been watching to see how it developed until now. Joe Conason is the editor and I'm glad to see you made it there! Google "National Memo" and if you do it soon enough you might just see what all the fuss is about. They gave great play to your book and it looks like it was part of their weekend push. Congratulations!

I was also surprised by the

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:00:25 +0000

In reply to Why Cutting Benefits Helps Nobody

I was also surprised by the existence of such a professional liberal site that I'd never heard of. My Amazon rank is up today, almost as high as it was the first week after all the press. I don't think there's been much recent press except for National Memo mention, so I assume it must have pretty good reach.

The answer, I think, is

Verified Atheist — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 14:24:22 +0000

In reply to Why Cutting Benefits Helps Nobody

The answer, I think, is friends, neighbors and families. When the state falls down, people step up to fill the gap.

Unfortunately, this works best if you happen to already belong to a advantaged socioeconomic group.

I believe that the term of

jollyroger — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:48:00 +0000

In reply to Why Cutting Benefits Helps Nobody

I believe that the term of art for this intervention is "doubling (tripling??) up".

As a corollary to the re-purposing of basements into "spare rooms", the contraction in household formations causes grey hairs to sprout on the heads of construction company executives, and is a millstone around the neck of an economy struggling to recover from even a mere cyclical downturn, let alone a financial apocalypse.