Who Defines the Definers?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We’ve had the normal (!) eruption of the Karl Marx groupie in the comments, as always when that great inkstained evil man is mentioned, (“If I invite/A girl some night/To dine and exchange sparks/I just adore/Her asking for more/But my heart belongs to Marx).

His whole thing is about caring/not caring for the poor, and how caring for the poor is your Christian duty (All you Jewish and Buddhist believers who read this blog, not counting the pagans and the Atheists, shut up and do your Christian Duty.  Yes, this entire thing will be revisited later.) Nothing says “Christian Duty” like robing from Peter to give to Paul.  I mean, if it’s not Christian why do they use apostle names?  (Forgive me.  The flu-thing is much milder than in other people, but it has right now all gathered in my head.  This makes writing fiction easier – don’t ask – but non fiction harder.  So there will be snark.)

This is an old discussion, the fact that government is force; and at what point is it moral to use force to achieve even what is perceived as a great social good.  We all agree – and more on this later – that the poor and helpless should be helped.  Heck, I even help hopeless (non deserving poor in the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady mold) far more than I should, though eventually I cut off to preserve myself/my sanity/their lives.

But at which point does it become immoral to take from “the better off” to give to the worse off?  At what point do these words lack meaning?

One of our closer friends has made far less money than we have over most of our working lives (well, than Dan has.  My income is at best odd and irregular.)  However, since he’s single and rents a relatively “cheap” – he probably could get cheaper, it was rented when rents were double here in town – place, while we have kids, mortgage, more than one car, two boys to feed, clothe and pay medical expenses and educational expenses for (they were in advanced programs and using college text books, even in high school and, man, is that a racket) – he’s often had more disposable income than we did.  (Not right now.  Right now, I think we’re both all out.)  At least when it came to “I can go out and have a meal out” – which for us has descended to the vanishingly rare and grand occasion.  (Not to mention a meal out for us is four people.)

Yes, I know all these tables are adjusted for number of people – but not really.  There are other choices too.  We’ve been well-night broke, but you’d never tell from the house we lived in, and our lifestyle.  The house was consuming (still is…) all our disposable income, the clothes were from the thrift store, the furniture was bought often so bad that it was multiple pieces, and then I fixed it, and the elaborate gourmet meals were mostly composed of flour that I’d made interesting things from.  (My pocket book resents that carbs make my eczema erupt.  I could use cheap.)

If you looked from the outside, and ignored my worried/tired expression, you’d think we had the same income as our dual-income friends and way above the people who had the same income we had.

Were we poor?  Heck, on paper yeah.  Like, right after Robert was born and then again a dozen years ago, there were a few years we’d have qualified for assistance – but no one in their right mind would call us that.  Meanwhile there are people with far more than us, who clearly needed help.

What I’m trying to say is that when you’re a human being who knows other human beings, you can account for that.  I’m not saying the people who needed help while making more money than we did, didn’t need help, or sneering at them.

Poor is a combination of lack of money and lack of skills to make the most of the money you have.  We never had a lot of money, but we’re rich in skills, and in fact only twice in my life have I come close to worrying on the “house losing” scale – and both times Baen came to the rescue like a white knight.  And you guys wonder why I love that publisher – and even then we weren’t THAT close, but I could sort of see it from where I was.

But we’ve acquaintances and we’ve heard of people who’ve run into trouble on FAR MORE money and far more leeway.  They don’t have the skills, see.  And arguably money is easier to acquire.

All of which comes down to “the government is an awful implement to help the poor” – the government is very bad at evaluating poverty, and though there is often talk of helping the poor acquire skills – this is where Marx comes in – these skills inevitably end up being stuff like “being assertive” and not “how to dress for an interview” and “know your rights” not “show up to work on time and do the unpalatable till you become indispensable.

Even when it’s help of the “finding a job” and “training for new tech” kind, the government is very hapless at giving it.  Take my friend who is a QA in software.  When she became unemployed, her state required she attend classes on tooling up for new tech… for line QA in factories.  You see, that state is losing a lot of factory jobs, and QA is QA, right?  (Rolls eyes.)

This is because government is a large and blunt instrument.  It’s quite good at doing big things.

The eternal “we could put a man on the moon, how can we not make sure every child is fed” should give people a clue of the problem. For large, visible, group projects, the government is good (I didn’t say the best.  I know some of you are going to talk about million dollar hammers.  Let it go. It’s still relatively good.  All large institutions, corporations included, are clumsy.)

But when it comes to things like helping people with what they actually need, and not with what vast numbers of their neighbors need, the government sucks big hairy dust bunnies.  Because you can’t actuarize the human character or make tables for individual skills, hopes and aspirations.

When the government tries to give health care to the poor, you end up with everyone working part time, with no benefits, and doctors dropping out because they can’t work for that little and pay their student loans, and afford the malpractice insurance and—

Which brings us to “is caring for the poor a partisan issue”?  Well… only if caring for the poor is interpreted in terms of having the government do big programs.  But does that really care for the poor?  We have plenty of evidence it creates poor (see devaluation of money to pay for the various governmental boondoogles despoiling the middle class; see lost opportunities for investment and improvement due to tax rate; see fact that it takes two incomes to pay taxes AND have a middle class life) but not that it helps any.

What if we gave a governmental war on poverty and it only got worse?

There is – probably – a function for government – at the regional and local level – in helping the poor who have nowhere else to go.  As local, as close, as personal as possible, so that people aren’t getting their “skills” (which is not the skill they have) upgraded into useless skills, and so there is less room for the sort of stupid Marxism that seeks to “empower” – i.e. teach to talk back and refuse to do the boring parts of the tasks – the poor over teaching them to support themselves.  (Yes, a lot of tasks people have to do for money are unpleasant.  Look, guys, I’m living my dream job.  I’m literally the only one of my friend group growing up who is doing what she wanted to do when she grew up.  But today I could really use being in bed with chicken soup – but I’m doing this blog, the blog for PJM and then I’ll work on Through Fire.  I sometimes take a day off a month, if I can. Do I like that part of it?  Oh, heck, no.  I’d rather be out with the guys at the zoo or the art museum.  But I do what I have to do to pay the bills.

Socialists are fond of saying no one should do that “for money” as though people were entitled to money without doing anything.  The truth is that the birds and the animals all work for a living, and humans have to also, even if work is convincing a bureaucrat to finance them.  It’s a law of nature.)

But none of this is about “caring for the poor.”  I suspect in real terms, of putting my money on the line – and my time, and my emotional well being – I’ve helped a ton more poor than any ten socialists who are supposedly “bleeding hearts.”

This is about letting the other side define you.

I totally understand why people think we can create our opposition, because our opposition is in fact creating THEIR opposition: these hard core Christian fundamentalists (which is why my Marxist commenter tends to try to bring Jesus into things – because that will sure show us!) who don’t care for the poor, are ignorant and live in trailer parks, sleep with their sisters, in their big mansions, while twirling their moustaches, and refusing to help the poor.

The image is contradictory and fits absolutely no one, but they make the image stick to the point that people see – not themselves but – others on their side that way.  And then we get compassionate conservatism where “We need to care more for the poor.”

I care a great deal for the poor.  The poor we shall always have with us, because it’s a comparative measure, but I grew up middle class (and for the village maybe UPPER middle class) with no indoor bathroom and maybe half a dozen pieces of clothing, not counting underwear, and eating fish and vegetables because meat was for Sundays and sweets for VERY special occasions, so I’m here to tell you poverty is relative.

For me, at a governmental level, caring for the poor means creating a society so frigging wealthy that even the more “disadvantaged” are still richer than our middle class is now.  Which necessitates unleashing individual innovation and using individual “greed” to create more wealth – not shackling the producers and the innovators into giving their money to the government who mostly uses it to make more government.

On the personal level, things are different.  Helping the poor might be finding someone a job or having a “come to Jesus” (See!  See!  Fundamentalist fanatic, me!) talk with them, where you explain that sometimes you have to do unpalatable things in jobs, and you have to show up even if you don’t feel like it, and–  But those are things you can do only with people you know.   If the government does that, you get one size fits all. And the thing is one size fits all means one size fits none.

(And please don’t come to me about the capitalist dehumanization that requires people to show up at the same time every day regardless, and which treats humans as cogs in a machine.  Yes, yes, in heaven, in a perfect state, we all express ourselves all day long and get paid for that.  BUT – nota bene – whatever dehumanization the capitalists engage in is not half as bad as socialist dehumanization where you’re a cypher in a column and you have to obey the state’s every dictate and smile while the boot stomps on your face forever.  At least in capitalism, you get a better life for the surrender of a little of your individuality, and that surrender is limited.  The boss doesn’t really care if you guzzle slurpies on your time off, unless you are well… a swimsuit model.  And being a swimsuit model is YOUR choice.)

So, is it only one side that “cares for the poor” – well, no, it’s only one side uses the rhetoric that has worked so well for them since the French revolution, of weaponizing the poor to the get their – bourgeois – way.

Can we do better than that?  Probably.  If the Federal government stays out of it.  If we don’t accept the left’s definition of us.  If we stop thinking “well, I’m not like that, but other people on my side must be, otherwise why would they say that?”

They say that because it helps keeps their troops in line.  And because a preening “care about others” is part of what they get for voting “right” (Which means left.)

NOT because it touches on reality at any point.

It’s just they have the echo chamber of the media to show it, in entertainment and news and everything.  BUT that doesn’t make it true.  It just means they drink their own ink and spin further and further away from reality.  As this (UN)affordable care act thing is showing.

They can’t even see reality anymore.

Don’t be like them.  Don’t buy the lie.  Strive as much as you can to believe your lying eyes, and not the opposition’s pretty spin.

Their model has spun so far out it’s about to crash.  In the end, we win, they lose, because reality is hard and has sharp corners, and we’ve been getting hit with it for years.

And when the time comes, rebuild a society as individually free and as lacking in perverse incentives as you can; a society of equality under the law and rewards for work and innovation.

It’s the least we can do.  For the children.  Even the poor children.  PARTICULARLY the poor children.  The wealthier we can make the entire society, the less deprived they’ll be.  And the more universal our laws, the clearer their path to success.

Justice is not one size fits all, but laws should be.  And their function is to preserve our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

156 thoughts on “Who Defines the Definers?”

  4. First – this is why I absolutely loathe Stephen Colbert. The entire schtick is to portray a leftist parody of what conservatives are like, cherry picking idiotic statements – especially from sincere people who say unPC things and laughing at them for not knowing how to sound bite – and rarely, if ever, bringing out the substantial points to be made.

    “See? This is what those dumbasses think!”

    Defining us.

    Hell – Stuart occasionally has moments of honesty where he rips into Obama or CNN – though in the former he’d reversed himself within a week on Benghazi after the Romney debate.

    The boss doesn’t really care if you guzzle slurpies on your time off, unless you are well… a swimsuit model. And being a swimsuit model is YOUR choice.)

    Sadly, except where the bosses buy into social justice, and that what you do outside of company time still reflects on the company. See issues like PyCon and the twit who got offended over the joking use of “Dongle”. Or companies being hounded into firing people over things said on private twitter feeds.

    Like

    1. Stephen Colbert is nothing more than a modern minstrel show. A Democrat putting on ideological blackface and “parodying” culture he does not and cannot understand.

      Like

      1. Colbert’s always irritated me because I figured his schtick was to pretend to be Bill O’Reilly, which frankly wasn’t all that amusing to begin with when it was Bill O’Reilly pretending to be Bill O’Reilly.

        Like

  5. gooberment is force.

    Therefore it follows that the only thing that gooberment does well is that which requires the application of force.

    Some problems do not benefit, indeed, are made worse, by the application of force.

    Like

    1. Many leftists – especially pacifists – nominally believe the latter statement, but don’t apply it to the first, and think it’s perfectly OK to force people to behave the “right” way.

      Like

      1. Which used to be an outcry of “you can’t legislate morality!” and general fussing about thought police. Oh how things have changed.

        Like

        1. “you can’t legislate morality!” is still used but never against the Left, only against the so-called Religious Right.

          Like

          1. That’s done by defining “morality” ONLY as anything related to a traditional organized religion, instead of defining morality as “right and wrong”.

            I’ve had internet people explain to me AT LENGTH that this definition is entirely obvious.

            Like

  6. Mandatory charity blesses neither he who gives nor he who receives. My claws and fangs appear when the .gov *coughMichellecough* starts urging people to volunteer and to support the “correct” causes. I will happily stand in the cold and ring bells for the Salvation Army (in costume even!) because it’s the right thing to do. But the moment the government starts announcing that people are supposed to leave out canned goods for mail carriers to pick up, or that it’s better to spend [holiday] working for a cause than resting and being with your family, the .gov has corrupted the very basis of charity.

    Like

    1. In many places High School Students are required to “volunteer” so many hours, or else.

      talk to any of the non-profit organizations about this and you will find that they would rather not have the ‘added asistance’ of these “volunteers”, real volunteers are extremely vaulable, but forced ones are usually a net loss.

      Like

      1. I know. There was “an opportunity for community service hours” at the school where I sub last week. Granted, it is a church school, so there’s a slightly better than average argument for encouraging good works, but the PA announcements still stuck in my craw.

        Like

        1. What bothers me the most isn’t the requirement, because there are lots of dumb requirements in school. What bothers me is when a forced activity is called “volunteering” and participation in this forced activity is supposed to show kids how great it feels to “volunteer.”

          If the school is calling it “community service” hours instead of “volunteer” hours, then good on them.

          Like

            1. I vaguely remember when our school district started that nonsense. _Fortunately_ they did consider the possibility of actual volunteerism having already taken place. We filled out forms about some Boy Scout, church and community work and voila! I’d almost forgotten about all that. What the effect of _requiring_ those sorts of things would be? Probably an avoidance of anything remotely associated with “volunteerism.”

              Like

              1. Off hand I’d say the result is that people get their backs up every time they are asked to help out with anything, or asked to donate funds or goods outside their immediate circle. I got into a philosophical discussion that turned into a one-sided catfight in college (I refused to fight) when a student leader tried to get the administration to spring a “mandatory volunteering” requirement on us. That individual went on to have a long career with a quasi-religious NGO that is known for sticking its nose and other anatomical parts into places where they do not belong. (No, not the UN, yet.) How better to get people to stop helping than to force them to?

                Like

                1. “How better to get people to stop helping than to force them to?”

                  You can get “help” that way.

                  It’s slow, inefficient, costly in time and resources, and guaranteed to breed resentment, but a certain personality type thrives on controlling people that way. If you want to create an opposition right in your own backyard, that’s a good way to start.

                  Sometimes the “help” even learns useful skills, such as how to tie interesting knots. And the location of nearby trees with high, strong limbs.

                  Like

  7. “QA is QA, right?”
    Oy vey. As someone who has maverick-ed his way up from operating CNC machinery to being a manufacturing engineer that programs said machinery, I gotta tell you… the fact that the government CANNOT tell the difference between software QA and manufacturing QA is deeply troubling. And can only be achieved via that toxic combination of ignorance AND arrogance. The danger lies in government having coercive power TO make its’ ignorant arrogance manifest. From an Engineering perspective, the purpose of Federalism may well be to make positive feedback loops THAT more difficult to create.

    Like

  8. [I have a half written article on “scalability” and how that applies to government that I really need to finish up for you to post as a guest blog.]

    I’m convinced that in almost all cases the way to get someone out of poverty is not scalable because – at least here in the US and probably the rest of the developed world – poverty is mostly about things like poor impulse control and inability to plan/budget. It takes 1 on 1 levels of intervention (or close to it) to get someone to truly get how to plan properly – especially if they are adults and “educated” by the current “don’t hurt their delicate self-esteem” model of pedagogy.

    One of the good things about religions – pretty much any religion including Islam – is that a religion tends to have relatively simple rules that alleviate some likely avenues of poor impulse control and it also tends to talk about delayed gratification so much that even stupid people get the point that sometimes it is better to not splurge now but save up for a better future. Furthermore a priest (imam …) is able to know and guide his congregation and give advice at close to that 1 on 1 level that seems to be necessary. So assuming the priest is clueful he can get his flock out of the worst poverty by guiding them so they don’t make the bad decisions that keep them poor

    Like

    1. Yes.

      One problem with the idea of saving in our modern societies can be if you can’t trust that your savings will still exist (Cyprus…), or that you can get at them when you need them. You put money in the bank and even if it still there five years from now it will be worth less than it is now, and besides, as long as you have it you will probably not get assistance from government – which you can get if you have no money. And owning something can mean you will have less of a chance of getting help when you’d need it, so if you for example own property and hit hard times you can’t get government help before you have sold it and used up that money, but what if the market is such that you just can’t sell? (and then there are property taxes). The current, government run big systems sometimes (or should that be ‘often’?) rather encourage not trying than trying.

      Like

    2. Except that most ORGANIZED religions have abrogated both their work for the poor, and their teaching of ANYTHING, including anything about God and personal responsibility, in favor of big government (bureaucracies are bureaucracies, regardless of who is running them, or for whom — also see large corporations). “Charity begins at home” is valid, but it should work out from there to those around us, and even beyond. Look at the outpouring of generosity for the Philippine typhoon disaster, and the Indonesian tsunami before it. All bureaucracies do is siphon off a third or more of everything they take in, just to support the bureaucracy. Most of that is pure waste or pocket-lining.

      Like

      1. Most?

        While many of the most liberal religious organizations have done so, you’ll find plenty of religious organizations would continue to directly help the less fortunate and victims of disasters. Of course, that’s when the government is letting them. There have been cases where the government has interfered to the determent of those needing help.

        Like

      2. While some organized religions have abrogated their responsiblities, others have not. Their services have been outlawed. See for example various adoption services closing because of legal requirements to service same sex couples or clinics required to provide aboartion services.
        Also look at food bank and homeless shelters required to reject food donated the nutritional content of donated food can’t be assessed

        Like

        1. It has become almost impossible for us hunters to find places to donate game. Had a fascinating conversation about this yesterday with a district wildlife manager (as the DWM had two elk carcasses in hand confiscated as a result of a violation our party had witnessed) in Northern Colorado.

          Like

      3. Depends on what you consider organized religion. This is true of several national and international religious institutions (although not all). A lot of the local and regional ones still do a lot of both work for the poor and teaching however, and while some are unorganized, others are very organized. For example a couple weeks ago about 8 other guys and I went out on a Saturday and cut half a dozen cord of wood for an old couple in our congregation that can’t get their own wood any more, nor can they afford to buy it.

        More and more of the help is becoming informal because of regulations. We can show up and give food to someone we know needs it, but to run a food bank involves miles of red tape. This causes the “organization” to be informal. Instead of having an organized food drive and handing out food to the needy on the third Saturday of the month, now the pastor keeps track of who is needy and just mentions that he will be delivering food to such and such families next week, if you would like to help out you can drop any food you can spare off at his house and he will make sure they get it.

        Not only is the grey economy growing due to regulations, the charity is becoming greyer as well.

        Like

      4. Do you want to tell the Silver Brigade at our local St. VdP food bank— and all the various networks, each parish has one and they shuffle folks depending on where their ID says they’re from– that, or am I supposed to?

        Or the minimum of a dozen folks who work at the nearest St. VdP store, which is 100% volunteer?

        Pretty sure our Knights of Columbus is collecting for the outlets around the PI, since they always have folks there. I’ve seen what their “overhead” looks like, as well as Catholic Charities– both of them got my donations when I was in, because they had incredibly small overhead. (CC does get sucked into some bad political stuff, though, which is why they didn’t get my money this time.)

        And I write for multiple outlets that promote Catholic teaching, and then there’s folks like The American Papist, Catholic Answers and rather famously EWTN, and was invited to a couple of non-Catholic religious blogs as well. We’re part of the body, we’re teaching as we’re supposed to. Yeah, sometimes folks in the hierarchy screw up, or are subverted– we’re supposed to go around them. That’s why power is limited and responsibilities are spread out as much as possible.

        Like

        1. While not Catholic, I do support Saint Vincent de Paul. I’m not Seventh Day Adventist either, but the local Seventh Day Adventists run a food bank and two thrift shops (the proceeds of which go to keeping the food bank running, Thank you FDA, with the excess going to the needy, they are also volunteer run), and they get my support for the same reason. Both have very low overhead and very good throughput.

          The majority of my charity giving whenever possible, is labor, or actual physical substance, not cash. This way I feel that my giving is much less likely to be wasted on frivolities or lining some bureaucrats pockets.

          Like

          1. I am Catholic, but we don’t check registry, just home location to avoid double-dipping. I started getting involved when someone here mentioned how their lives had been hugely improved by it.

            Like

  9. My charity begins at home and spreads out from there, as I have resources available.
    For those illiterate philosophers who quote the Bible so often (they MUST me illiterate, since it’s obvious they’ve never read it!) I suggest applying the principles found in the book of Ruth. Even the beggars were expected to do their own gleaning at the rich man’s fields. And if someone starved, it was because they couldn’t bother to do it. Pride or laziness – it doesn’t matter the cause.
    I’ve never knowingly let someone go hungry if I became aware of it, but I’ve refused to provide funds to someone I distrusted. And then found I was right to distrust them.
    If the government doesn’t like my style of charity, let them provide their own. But not with my money.
    I’m reminded of the story told about Davy Crockett when he stumped for re-election. A farmer told him he wasn’t getting his vote because he and other congressmen voted to provide funds to help someone in DC whose boarding house burned down. The farmer wasn’t complaining about the charity, but the source of the funds. “Use your own money” he told Crockett.

    Like

  10. I recently read of the single mother with 2 young girls who was getting about $550 per month in “food stamps”, but with the recent cuts is now only getting $498 per month. She was crying how now she would no longer be able to afford the fresh Kiwi her daughter likes and would have to start buying packaged meat instead of getting custom cuts from the butcher.

    How many of you working folk are spending $498 a month on food for one adult and two little kids?

    Then there are the perverse incentives. From what I understand you do not qualify for any of these Federal welfare benefits if your total financial assets exceed $2000. So why should anyone poor ever try to save and invest for their future? If they even start to save, they would loose all their benefits. So saving and investing which are they keys to getting out of poverty are now bad things to do.

    Like

    1. Yep. And if you have an application in for aid, and it takes them a while to process it such that you get “back pay” aid, then you have to spend that money really quickly or else your total financial assets will be too high and you’ll get taken off the program again.

      This is how you get people who are having a hard time getting by, then finally get approved for XYZ program, and then as soon as the “back pay” comes they book a flight acroos the country to Disneyland. Because they need to make the money go away STAT, and they’re discouraged from saving it. (Yes, I’ve seen it happen.)

      Like

        1. Well, now, that’d show foresight and planning, eh? Along with getting good clothes, good shoes, a decent interview suit, car repairs (new tires and brakes, at the least)… and that’s even before the yearly pass to the zoo, or a new laptop, splurges like that.

          Like

    2. I have a family of 4 (with two sasquatch boys who are taller than me) and the only reason my grocery bill exceeds $500 per month is because that’s including all the other things, like cleaning supplies, over-the-counter medicines, toiletries and such.

      Like

      1. There’s only one of me, but I can get by on about $80-100 a month. And usually less than that, since I often forget to eat.

        Like

      2. Same here and “special vet recommended food for cats who are dying by inches, which is about a third of our bill” And I have four adults, two of them young males, aka “leftover? What does that mean?”

        Like

        1. Mostly that you cook at home starting with raw foods and making good nutritious meals from scratch. Get stuck behind some food stamp queen some time and pay attention to what’s in their cart, often either prepared meals for the microwave, or luxury items from the store deli.
          Not entirely of course, but there is a definite change in attitude when it’s not really your own money.
          There was a news report recently about a surfer dude who spent his days on the beach and used his EBT card to purchase sushi and lobster which he used to pay back the owner of the place he was crashing. He was quite proud of himself for gaming the system into providing him the lifestyle he wanted. After all it was all gubmint money, not like it came out of anyone’s pockets.

          Like

          1. I’m not sure it’s *just* an attitude because it’s not your own money. Sarah talked about having skills. A whole lot of it, I think, is about having skills and it’s highly likely that when a person is on food stamps that part of the reason is a lack of skills. And then there are those of us who get by (far more expensively) without skills either, but we’re lucky enough to always manage to play catch-up. Now, I *can* cook, but it’s shocking to me how many people can’t fry an egg. (I tried to give fish to the pastor’s wife once and was told she didn’t know how to cook it. Fish! Pan + butter + salt + heat. Really!) Pancake Mix boggles my mind (2 or 3 ingredients instead of 4 or 5 and suddenly it’s too complicated?) OTOH, when was the last time I made a cake without a box mix? I can and I have done so and I remember that apple spice cake I made when I was 15 as a wondrous thing.

            Part of it is, I think, that we’re wealthy and we all, even really poor people, refuse to put up with the monotony of meals that previous generations thought normal. When people explain that they got by on brown rice and celery for years I admire them for it… but I don’t view it as some sort of minimum expectation and anything above which is wasting money on frivolities.

            The other part of it is time, bandwidth, and planning ahead. I also admire people who have weekly meal plans.

            Like

            1. Heh. I still feel guilty when I get a microwave meal for work (I think there was a thirty minute lunch I had, sometime in 1998…). And my cow-orkers get jealous when I show up with fried rice. Then they ask me how you make fried rice from scratch… *shakes head*

              I don’t own a microwave, or a dishwasher (*I’m* the dishwasher). Had to think twice before I bought a dryer, then managed to get one junked on the side of the road and get it working again. My food budget for just me is pretty similar to lonejanitor’s, but I also cook for my gaming group (they have to chip in, though), feed my godson who eats his weight in veggies twice a day but hates sugar (odd kid) on weekends, and so on. It does add up.

              Like Doug Irvin, most of my charity starts close and goes from there. Was talking with one of my cousins about that, and she happened to make the comment “well, it can’t be much. Not to be offensive, but you’re kind of poor.”

              Really? I own two vehicles and one house. I do all the repairs on about five, but two of those I get materials cost on. I eat *well,* if cheaply, and I don’t have to worry about where the next one’s going to come from. My bills get paid on time. I only have two debts, soon to be one, and that’s the house. Poor? I’m richer than I’d ever dreamed I could be, twenty five years ago. Not only that, I loan money- okay, okay, I throw money down a rat hole I’ve hung the sign “family” on, because sh!# happens and that’s what you do, when you can- you take care of your own. I also donate to charities- specific ones, like the farmers that lost all those cattle recently. This does not even remotely make me special. When I look at what some people are doing, I feel like a frigging piker.

              I know folks who’ve spent *years* living with their parents, collecting food stamps, and generally living off other people’s sweat. A couple of them recently got jobs, and are working their way to self sufficiency. If I was a bit stupider I’d be proud of me, for pushing them in this direction. I’m not. They did this for themselves and their families, to claw their way off the dole. It’s not easy, when you don’t have the skills (one poor guy couldn’t even change his own oil, I kid you not- the girl could burn water). Sure, they learned a few things since then. But it takes willpower to do that, and persistence to keep working at it until you gain those skills. That’s the kind of attitude I can respect.

              More dangerous than goobermint “charity” is the culture of victimhood. At least, I think so. I’ll have to think some more about that and do some research again- something about revolutions, strength, how victimhood and outrage are great big handles for psychological tool wielders to point the mob (or the individual) where they’ll do the most “good.”

              Like

            2. That’s what cookbooks are for. You read the recipe, you follow the directions, you get a dish.

              Maybe schools need home ec.

              (I’m reading a book about advertising in the 1920s. It has an example ad in which a woman confesses she knows a man won’t propose to her solely because she can’t cook. Fortunately, the friend can lend her a cookbook.)

              Like

              1. Schools need Home Economics, and Shop, History and Math, English grammar and literature, and Science, Government (with a thorough grounding in the constitution), and… really, what else? Teaching Latin and Greek so they can get into the classics would be a good idea, as would hunter’s ed and driver’s ed, but teaching kids the consequences and possibilities of working with a lathe (which takes math and some science), how to balance a budget, and how to cook in order to balance that budget, and they’d be far better off than they are now.

                Like

                  1. Definitely need to have an approved History book.

                    Oh! And I know some of the consequences of working with a lathe – I got hit in the head with pieces of a guy’s goblet he was turning when he cut through the wall of the bowl.

                    Like

                    3. Ooh, can we have a get-together with books like that, and we’ll call the party “A Bonfire of the Vanities”?

                      Like

                    4. I recall seeing a few tomes getting slipped into the back of the grad students’ bonfire at Flat State U (copies of a badly written post-modern history of Jazz-age NYC). I can state with some authority that the pages did not have any noticeable effect on the taste of the bratwurst and marshmallows. Disclaimer: I do not condone burning books that you do not own, nor do I generally encourage burning books that you have not read yourself.

                      Like

              2. That’s what cookbooks are for. You read the recipe, you follow the directions, you get a dish.

                A lot of folks can’t follow directions.

                I don’t mean fiddly directions, or approximation directions– I mean directions along the lines of “lather, rinse, repeat.”

                They freak out about words they’re not sure about, have no confidence– or have wrongheaded confidence that leads them to ignore the directions.

                When 90% of what you’re told is BS, this happens.

                (…I just realized I’m going to home school the kids and start teaching math in the “accounting” format, and chemistry with cooking and laundry, and science with home repairs. We already discussed how sunrise is similar to rainbows, but different because only some colors get scattered instead of all of them….)

                Like

                2. “We already discussed how sunrise is similar to rainbows, but different because only some colors get scattered instead of all of them”

                  Gee, what i always notice — on a clear day — is that it’s all the colors of the rainbow and in the same order. The green band does tend to be narrow. . . .

                  Like

    3. I spend maybe about 80 to a 120 euros a month, single adult and now two cats and the exact amount depending on what other expenses I have that month, but I eat mostly paleo or low carb which are not the cheapest ways to eat.

      And yes, saving and investing are bad in this country too for those who are living on the edge, because having something just means it will take until you have used that until you start getting the benefits if you fall from that edge. So it seems smarter to enjoy what you have now, and then live on those benefits if you have to, than scrimp now and then have to keep on scrimping on your own expense for a while before you can get them if you fall.

      Like

      1. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t have to forbid a man to fish. All you have to do is keep giving him fish and he has no reason to learn.

        Like

        1. But they do it. I wrote that thinking of a Canadian friend of mine who once worried about making too much with his art in one month because it might threaten his benefits.

          Like

        2. But they do it. I wrote that thinking of a Canadian friend of mine who once worried about making too much with his art in one month because it might threaten his benefits.

          (Sorry for the repeat. I tried to finally get a “Gravitar” picture, which forced me to get a wordpress account, and with that logged in, suddenly I’m “Awaiting Moderation”. So apparently I have three or four ways to log in to post, but only the one not associated with any account system works. (my e-mail, WordPress, Twitter, and I have a Facebook I’ve never tried to use))

          Like

    6. Oh here’s a story you’ll love. It was presented as someone to pity.

      A woman worked for the state. A political brouhaha meant their paychecks were delayed a week (or two, I forget). She “had” to go on food stamps. She was distressed at the contempt at a store at which she had shopped for seven years — like it was her fault!

      If she had saved one buck a week during those seven years, she could have paid for her own groceries.

      Like

      1. Yep, it was her fault. Also, having a steady job for seven years and not being able to eat out of the pantry for two weeks? It’d be a hardship on us because we’d have to use the powdered creamer or sweetened condensed milk in tea instead of fresh milk, and I wouldn’t have my salads in the second week, oh woe is me *hand-staple-forehead*.

        So, no food in the house? Also her fault.

        Not taking the responsibility to prepare? Also her fault.

        ..and you’re telling me the food stamp applications go through so fast she was shopping before the week/two weeks were up? Unlike every other thing in trying to deal with this government? Grrrrrrrrrrr….

        Like

        1. While I don’t agree that the story is one of someone to pity (because it was temporary, she KNEW it was temporary, and got paid back), I don’t really agree with the assessment of how unprepared she was, because we don’t know her circumstances.

          I have had the same job for 6 years, I am making about 25% more than when I was hired, and yet I cannot build up my pantry beyond immediate needs, because of the circumstances of my wife’s health problems, plus my younger son’s difficulties.

          Now, if we know that the woman has been blowing her money on vacations and luxuries, that’s different, but without that knowledge? I just can’t condemn her.

          Like

          1. Wayne, if you are a Christian, you are without a doubt a better and more thoughtful one than I am. On the continuum between “before you criticize anyone, walk a mile in their shoes” and “don’t be so openminded your brains fall out”, you are definitely more optimistic and kindhearted.

            I believe the people who are truly hobbled by circumstances beyond their control are the exceptions, not the rule, and that the culture of praising victimhood and denigrating responsibility has produced a great many more people who ruin their own lives through short-sighted and bad choices than people actually deserving of charity, much less pity.

            But then, I may come from a harsher culture: I am used to people who fail to prepare being killed – and even people who do prepare being killed when luck runs out. I have plenty of sympathy for the woman whose husband died of an arterial tear right in the middle of sword practice, and pity for the man who was climbing a peak when a bad storm trapped him in, and the blizzard-spawned avalanche took out his camp with no survivors.

            The ability to feel sorry, however, for people who trap themselves with their own bad choices and refusal to deal with reality is an artifact of an extremely rich culture with a margin for survival so wide its members forget that there’s even an edge to it. When a young teacher from the Lower 48 who teaches that guns are evil goes jogging alone while starving wolves have been attacking the village’s dogs, it’s sad that she condemned the village to having no teacher, and the adults to cleaning up what the wolves left of her carcass, but I have no pity left to spare for her. When an idiot rich kid comes up from California to be “one with nature” and we never do find his bones (we lose about 20 people a year we never find), there’s no pity left for him, either, nor for the moaning and wailing parents who encouraged him to “be free.”

            Down here in the Lower 48, I’ve run into quite a few people who truly believe that when they do stupid things and get themselves into trouble, I have to “respect their life choices.” I do have to respect their right to make a choice, but that’s by no means a mandate to respect the choices they have made.

            Like

            1. I don’t think we’re as far apart in opinion as it may seem. However, I have a habit of saying things (which seem perfectly justified at the time) that later turn out to have been extremely inconsiderate in hindsight, so I’ve had my nose rubbed in the “try to see alternate explanations” department a lot.

              I find it likely that your assessment is correct, however, based on the description of the reaction she had. *I* would have been apologetic in the face of the “contempt” she received (if, in fact, it really was contempt), and am usually suspicious when someone gets all butthurt in the fashion described. My comment was primarily due to the fact that it was a second-hand account, and I might have been less sympathetic if I had seen it firsthand.

              Like

          2. Yes, if I was face to face (even online) with her, I would have said that she might have had circumstances that would prevent saving — but will she save the paycheck once she gets it to prevent it’s happening again?

            The thing was that it was presented as an example of a thing to pity without giving any reason why she had saved nothing. It was presumed without question that any interruption in money flow — even any delay — was something that would justify going on the dole, that there was no person for whom saving was possible.

            Like

        3. I have to agree with Dorothy– I always squirrel away a can or two in case of running out of money … and need food or other emergencies like earthquakes. Also– extras for every reason and every season.

          It was because we canned all our food growing up and couldn’t afford to buy much. Plus we were too proud to go to a food pantry (yes, there were some food places in the 70s)… Also thrift clothes or we made them. So no– I don’t pity her at all either.

          Like

  11. Many of us believe we have a duty to help Paul when he’s down and out. I don’t know of any good argument for why we would have a duty to rob Peter to help Paul when he’s down and out. We don’t even have that right, let alone that duty. Is it OK for me to rob a bank if I want to use the money to pay for my neighbor’s baby’s operation?

    The charitable impulse in society wouldn’t keep getting so wrapped around the axle if we’d all remember this simple rule: It’s not charity if you’re not giving your own money.

    Like

  12. Re Christian duty. Jesus said very clearly to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to give to God what is God’s. He did not advocate robbing God (or anyone else) to give to Caesar to do what Caesar thought was God’s work.

    And the good Mother Teresa, whom everyone even Mohammedans and atheists (except Hitchens) admired, advocated charity beginning at your own supper table and going out from there. Can’t get a better contemporary example than that.

    So when a leftoid throws a Christian duty carp at me, I just pick it up, slit open its belly, and toss it back with a smile.

    Have nice day y’all. Get well soon, Sarah.

    Like

    1. Mother Teresa’s mother had probably about as much money as Sarah’s family in her childhood, but thought it was her duty to make sure everybody in their (Albanian) village got fed. There’s always been a fair number of people like this, who are always taking food out to poor friends to eat, or having poor friends over for dinner.

      But as you can see, the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree!

      Like

  13. For me the issue of Marxists (and their ilk) and the poor is brutally simple. No matter what Marxists/Socialists/Progressives SAY, it is clear that they hate and despise the poor. In any society where they have their way the poor are driven into either government housing that I wouldn’t use to store offal, or shanty-towns. Every Socialists/Marxist/Progressive government I have ever seen takes sadistic pleasure in requiring the lower classes to navigate a bureaucracy that makes Kafka look optimistic. Marxists/Socialists/Progressives always, no matter what they may say, end up pestering the poor to live every minute of their horrid lives according to the whims of the Marxists/Socialists/Progressives.

    Marxists either hate the poor, or wish they were Medieval Aristocrats, or both.

    Like

    1. And from my admittedly somewhat scant experience with the better educated/credentialed here: the more extreme a Marxist somebody seems to be the more likely it seems they will act sort of, shall we say, snooty towards the less well credentialed individuals. I mean, since somebody who hasn’t gotten a nice job and good pay and lots of letters behind her name can’t obviously know what she is talking about even when she is talking about her personal experiences, so it would be much better if she was just quiet and listened when they talk (hey, a blue collar worker here, while the people I know are mostly university educated, and while my personal friends haven’t done anything like that I have gotten it a few times, during the years, from some of the people they mix with… and even the nicer ones often seem sort of surprised if they find out what kind of books I like to read. :D)

      Like

      1. I’ve noticed this too. The older I get, the more interesting the “undereducated” people get … and vice versa.

        Like

      2. The opposite also holds true, I have to watch myself or I have a knee-jerk reaction to immediately believe anyone who is highly educated doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about.

        Like

      3. The vast majority of people who go through college have little need for a college education. Universities have, historically, been places of scholarship and sources of secure employment for those whose opinions are pleasing to one elite or another. Most people have scant use for scholarship, and (as we are seeing) there is only so much room for opinionated pillocks in any society. The sciences and engineering disciplines provide needed certifications. The arts and humanities are about qualifying to pursue the next higher degree.

        The Western Intellectual Class, like various other aristocracies before it, is a self selected elite of fatuous jackasses whose claims to the moral high ground would be funnier if people didn’t take them seriously. The genuine scholars mostly keep their heads down on matters not touching their actual scholarship.

        I’d be willing to give Gnome(sic) Chomsky a hearing on Linguistics, where he has a reputation for genuine insight. On politics and economics he is as unqualified to pontificate as a celibate monk would be on the subject of sex.

        Like

    2. What they are pleased to call sexual liberation is the break down of the family to avoid having one of Tocqueville’s mediating institutions interfere with the power of the state.

      Like

        1. I thought it meant “someone else pays the price”? (in theory, a lot of the prices can’t be shifted)

          Not that the two are exclusive, now that I think of it.

          Like

  14. All of which comes down to “the government is an awful implement to help the poor” – the government is very bad at evaluating poverty, and though there is often talk of helping the poor acquire skills – this is where Marx comes in – these skills inevitably end up being stuff like “being assertive” and not “how to dress for an interview” and “know your rights” not “show up to work on time and do the unpalatable till you become indispensable.

    Or “give them more money for food, force places to carry Accepted Food and force everyone to buy an apple with lunch” rather than “teach people basic cooking skills, including how to pack a lunch the kid actually wants to eat.”

    Like

  15. Sarah, I had a sudden thought re your “carbs hate me” thing and budget.

    This may be stupid sounding, but do you have friends who hunt? Partridge season is open for another 3 weeks, and pheasant season opens tomorrow as does quail. Rabbit season is open until the end of Feb, as is goose. You just missed turkey.

    Late plains deer (east of I-25) are open the first 2 1/2 weeks of December.

    If you do have friends who hunt, it may be possible to arrange for you to fill the freezer substantially cheaper.

    This, of course, presumes that you and Dan and the boys do NOT hunt, but I’ve never heard you suggest that you do.

    -_ Rick

    Like

    1. [blockquote]Late plains deer (east of I-25) are open the first 2 1/2 weeks of December.[/blockquote]

      If anyone in the Colorado area needs a deer tag purchased for purposes of culling the hooved rodents that infest our plains and forests, I’ll spring for one.

      Like

      1. We don’t hunt. The guys don’t because they never learned/tried it, and I don’t because deer aren’t the size of barns, and aren’t likely to let me sneak up on them and shoot them point blank.
        I don’t understand the idea someone would hunt and give me their deer? Seems odd.

        Like

        1. Oh, it works quite well. Hunting is fun, you see, but most people don’t have space for more than fifty pounds of meat in the freezer at once… so if they get one deer, they start giving away the stuff that they don’t cook as often (roasts, usually), so they have room for another… or hope they can give away the second.

          I loaned a muzzleloader to a friend, and in return, if/when he gets a deer, I will gook and split the meals with him. (His son already got one, so now I’ve got my fingers crossed for another. Yay cheap meat!)

          Back at home, ah, in Alaska, I often benefited from successful hunts, as I’d get the older moose and caribou roasts, and salmon, as a friend or neighbor scrambled to clear the deep freezer for the tasty new meat.

          Like

        2. I have a fifties-era beach lifestyle cookbook (published in the early sixties), Life, Loves, and Meat Loaf, and one of the author’s recommendations is “Hunt or acquire friends who are successful hunters. This is second in importance to the Barefoot Gourmet only to fishing or knowing successful fishers.”

          Fascinating and odd book.

          Like

        3. People who like to hunt like to hunt. The amount of venison that can be stored in ones freezer or eaten by one family is limited. My brother _loves_ hunting but once he has _his_ deer or two, he’s stuck. Our freezer and the freezers of some other friends benefit from this. The same is true during dove season and quail and pheasant, not to mention geese…

          Nationally, food banks get thousands of pounds of venison donated each year, most of it processed into either roasts or ground meat. Last year hunters donated 50,000 pounds of venison to food banks in Pennsylvania alone. One deer can easily generate 200 meals for a food bank.

          In Kansas deer populations are high enough that a single hunter can get up to five permits for anterless deer plus an “either sex” permit… pretty much no one wants six deer worth of meat in their freezer. Kansas sees about 1200 deer donated each year. Most people I know would rather donate to a friend (or get a small $ for butchering and ammo) than give it away to strangers.

          Similarly, in a good year (which this isn’t) brother Bill will harvest ten pheasant and daily bag limits on Canada geese in KS is six birds and for light geese twenty… again, how many geese do you want in your freezer.

          Not all hunters hit their limits, but for some who have invested a long time in planting deer attractants and putting out salt licks, in making pond areas inviting to ducks and geese, and encouraging quail and pheasant populations on private property, this can be more like “harvesting” than hunting.

          So, ask around and have Dan ask. Many hunters have extra to share.

          Like

        4. Some folks enjoy hunting, or go for trophies. You don’t want to waste the meat, but it’s so nice to be able to hand it off.

          I don’t get it, either, but some of my favorite memories are making jerky out of an entire deer. (Minus the liver, which dad loves and my throat still tightens at the thought of. More for him!)

          Like

        5. There are those of us who think an exposure to hunting and fishing for the pot is part of a proper childhood education. Like learning to drive the parents may not be the best of teachers/exemplars (.though if not why not?) The skills include aspects of learning to see and to observe.(you see but you do not observe)

          Like

    2. I’m not so sure about that. I grew up being poor. Poor is the condition you’re in when there’s not enough of anything for everyone, so either everyone does with less, or some get left out entirely. Being broke means not having enough money. Being poor means having only two changes of clothing, not enough food for everyone to eat as much as they NEEDED, living and working on the edge of life. Later in life, after I turned eight or so, things had reached the point where we were “impoverished”, but not “poor”. There wasn’t enough money for luxuries, but enough for daily existence. There was ALWAYS food on the table, but that’s because we raised most of it ourselves — both livestock (pigs, chickens, rabbits, and cows) and garden (vegetable garden, plum trees, blackberry vines, fig trees, and later, pears and pecans — they take longer to reach maturity). We also hunted, fished, and foraged on “public” land, or private land open to us. We also bought some vegetables “by the bushel” and canned them, as well as canning stuff from our garden, and what we foraged. Technically, we were “middle class” — Dad had a good, well-paying job, and after I was 12, Mom worked. We also provided some level of support for my Dad’s parents, and at least ten or twelve other family members, even if it was just “something from the garden”.

      When I got married (2/66), my gross Air Force pay jumped from $98/mo. to the astounding sum of $185/month. My wife HAD to work until I had enough rank, and enough income, that she could stay home. Now I’m retired, and have enough income that I shouldn’t be strapped for money. Due to the poor economy (I can’t really express what I feel — this is a family blog), I have to support not only my wife and I, but a fourth child, and to supplement the incomes of all three of my adult children in some way or another. I also give to local charities, either cash or other donations. Right now, I’m trying to scrape together enough money to replace the top-of-the-line computer I bought – in 2002, along with the printer I bought at the same time. It’ll take awhile, but eventually I’ll be able to do it.

      Like

      1. I understand where you’re coming from. I rarely mention this, but I know well the taste of government cheese. (I actually miss the cheese, too. You could get a sack of rice and a wheel of cheese, and mom would get 5-gallon cans of oil, and sacks of beans, until moors y christianos – white rice and black beans – tastes of home and nostalgia. Arroz con pollo, in which the only pollo involved was the broth, fat, and the scraps boiled off the well-picked-over carcass, is pure comfort food. But do you know how expensive it is to try to buy a whole round of cheddar if it’s not coming off the back of the surplus farm goods truck? I can’t afford it!)

        I have a hate-hate relationship with business suits, because a nice (and tiny) lady donated some to the church one year, and they gave them to my mother… and those five suits, with their scratchy, scratchy wool that the satin lining did not completely cover, were my school clothes for two years and some until I grew out of them. Because I had nice suits, mom decreed I had to wear nice shoes and hose, like a young lady ought to anyway. So I remember standing in the snow, shivering as it melted on the top of my feet, swearing I’d never wear a skirt again when I grew up. (So much for that. But at least the current job requires PPE and a Class III safety vest, so I can wear jeans.)

        And yet, we were never poor. Mi mama fondly remembers growing up listening to rain on the tin roof, with a house spider that lived in its patch of dirt and roamed around eating the bugs (and if there weren’t enough, it’d come take a chunk out of the humans), and wheedling until she got paid for odd jobs in American dollars, so she could join the other kids mobbing the tankers coming into the docks, waving money at the sailors and buying real, non-waxy chocolate fresh from the freezer. To have gringo chocolate, which melted in the sun’s heat almost as soon as you unwrapped it – now that was luxury. And even then, she was well off by local standards – so to live in Los Estados Unidos, where there was not a revolucion every few months, the cops were mostly not corrupt, you didn’t need an internal passport to travel, and the water out of the tap was always drinkable and the electricidad always there if you could pay the bill, and all the children were expected to go to school, and could read anything at the library? She raised us richer than Croesus, and we’d better mind our table manners, as we were of good blood and not peasants. We just didn’t have any money.

        There were other children, who could afford the in-fashion clothes, who were “poor” at my school. They were, in fact, encouraged to be ‘poor but proud.’ And as we grew up, I wanted to be an astronaut. They wanted to get pregnant by their 16th birthday, so they could get their own apartment, their own car, and their “own WIC check that their mother had been stealing from them all these years.” Well, I didn’t get to be an astronaut, but it has been a great adventure. The poor kids? They got what they wanted, and they’re still there, raising another ‘poor but proud’ generation to aspire (?!?) to the same.

        Like

        1. While we would have qualified for assistance when I was growing up, we never took it. Some friends however ran the local food bank, and the did used to bring us items they couldn’t distribute. Either outdated or damaged, or they simply had more than there were people coming to get them, so they gave it away rather than throwing it away. Cheese was a luxury growing up, we usually only had it when our friends from the food bank dropped off government cheese. Soup and toasted cheese sandwiches may be deemed ‘poor peoples food’, but that is only true if a) you make your own cheese or b) it is government cheese given to you. Now we never went hungry, but meat, potatoes, and vegetables was our ‘free food.’ We grew and/or butchered it ourselves, with the exception of seed and possibly a hunting license and tag it was all labor, no cash. I don’t consider myself poor now or then, but I certainly couldn’t afford to eat the way I do if I had to buy it all at grocery store.

          Like

      2. Right now, I’m trying to scrape together enough money to replace the top-of-the-line computer I bought – in 2002, along with the printer I bought at the same time. It’ll take awhile, but eventually I’ll be able to do it.

        Ask your kids if they know anybody who builds gaming rigs– or, if you know any reservists, see if they know someone? The stuff that made a “decent gaming rig” five years ago is a very nice computer now, but usually has to be put together from bargain sites. (My “new gaming computer” would be about eight hundred bucks, but cost about three fifty when you include the upgrades.)

        Like

        1. And if you need it put together, Mike, Dan does that. When he had more time, he bought parts/got them free at garage sales, and either gave the computers to kids we knew or “sold” them on craigslist for $25. It was a hobby. Right now he doesn’t have time, but…

          Like

        2. The laptop I use I bought off ebay in 2009 for ~250. It’s a Dell D420. Now being “In the industry” I have a pile o other stuff at home, but with the exception of a few tables they’re all over 3 years old at this point.

          Like

  17. Ya see Sarah, you’re wrong. Welfare IS charity. No, no , no. Threatening to put a gun in someone’s face and haul them off to jail if they don’t pay for it is NOT extortion. Because uhhh… uhh… We said so. And stuff. See? I told you it made sense.

    Like

  18. The question before us today is not, do care for the poor.

    The question is whether we will have our freedom.

    For decades, in the name of ‘caring’ or ‘security’ or protecting ‘weak and helpless’, you know ‘for the children’, we have been reducing the amount of freedom we have.

    Yet using the kindest interpretation possible, the level of poverty remains the same and our degree of security has been not increased.

    Are people existing under federally subsidized ‘charity’ relieved of their poverty? Are they more secure in their lives? Tell it to the people that riot when their EBT cards glitch. Tell it to the people whose freedom has been curtailed.

    There are two kinds of people that have to be taken care of. Children and Slaves. (For the sake of argument, invalids of various causes are generally treated like children)

    If you love you children you should teach them to grow up, take care of themselves, and be adults. If you want slaves you do not.

    I expect to hear the objection: “We ain’t slaves. Can’t make us work in the fields.”

    That’s right. I expect you to vote to keep your Masters in Power and you in poverty. Being poor is just lacking of money. Poverty is a condition of the soul.

    The incentives are perverse. We are being asked to sacrifice more of our freedom by the very people who directly benefit from our increased sacrifice. I’m not talking about the poor, I’m talking those ‘Good Men” who want to take care of us and provide for all of our needs. Whether you like it or not.

    Like

    2. Without the freedom to associate and run our own economic activities there will be precious little left over to care for the poor no matter the system for doing it. What’s worse is that a lack of economic freedom will predispose us to government solutions for caring for the poor which is itself less efficient.

      Like

  19. As noted by others here, handouts can actually hurt people in the long run.

    The example of not saving or not getting a better job because it would put them over the arbitrary threshold and cut off their benefits is one example.

    But another one is what “foreign aid” frequently does to the country that’s receiving it.

    even if you ignore the corruption that frequently happens, or the power that the people who are distributing the aid aquire, the ‘free goods’ compete with local goods, and no local farmer can produce food at a price that people will buy when they can get free handouts.

    There are times for massive food shipments (the current situation in the Philippines is a perfect example), but if the shipments extend too long, it can destroy the local economy, making things much worse over time.

    Like

    1. Or, as we call it for short “Africa” — btw, did you email me/ I’m chary of opening anything in an email, so please confirm so I know it’s you and your computer isn’t taken over by a spam zombie.

      Like

      1. And you’ll note that over the last decade or so as many African nations have had more trade and less aid they’ve improved enormously

        Like

    2. A third thing it does is reverse the incentives. A country normally wants a rich populace for taxes. Foreign aid means you want them poor, to justify your grants.

      Like

  20. Another example of ‘assistance’ resulting in negative results is the minimum wage laws.

    Back when I was just out of high school, I was working at Radio Shack, and after a while there I got a promotion from simple salesman to “Computer Specialist”. A couple months later, the minimum wage went up, and as a result, with my added work and responsibilities, I was now only making $0.05/hour more than the plain salesman position.

    Talk about a way to discourage someone from working harder.

    Like

    1. In some situations, working poor earning $29k is materially superior to middle class earning $50k. The subsidies are that high. In the literature this is called the poverty trap.

      Like

  22. The best way to deal with socialists, communists, marxists and other sorts of progressives is to shoot them in the back of the head once (to each according to their needs) and bury their bodies in a shallow grave in the desert so the coyotes can dig them up and desecrate the bodies.

    And no, if the coyotes ain’t any smarter than to eat a communist that there is darwin in action.

    Like

    1. You will enjoy the Hobson story “Baba Makosh”, in the free Kindle sample of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine this month. Communists die in terrible ways, without it going so far as to be a grossout. So I guess it’s a feelgood story.

      Like

      2. I don’t care how they die, I don’t even really care if they die, as long as they go somewhere where the don’t bother people.

        Like

  23. Unfortunately, history teaches The Poor Can Only Ever Be Weaponized — the same people who aren’t good at handling money are the same people who buy into agitprop, esp. of the “it’s not *your* fault” variety. (In short: They’re Fucking Stupid — “you can’t fix Stupid”, and because of all the Fucking they’re doing, they’re frumping up ever-increasing numbers of Stupids.)

    The only viable solution, then, is to weaponize the poor first, and direct them against one’s foes — preferably in a manner which leads to extremely high body-counts. “Dead men don’t hump; dead women don’t get pregnant; death is the most-reliable form of birth-control.” [Heydrich, _Conspiracy_]

    It’s unpleasant — but watch any nature show, and you’ll learn: Reality is invariably unpleasant. (This is why Urbanite Leftists fail — they are disconnected from the fundamentals of reality. “All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.” [Goethe])

    Like

  24. Maybe it’s just because I’m old, cranky, have arthritic joints that give me grief, but I have no time for those who choose not to work. Whether it’s because they have a degree in comparative religion or Aztec art and won’t take a job that’s “beneath them”, or others who view actually toiling every day to earn their bread as beneath them all I can say is life’s a female canine, then you die. For those who have truly fallen on hard times and need a hand, I believe in charity. That being said 99 weeks of unemployment on the government isn’t charity, and paying one’s taxes isn’t donating to charity. I’ve never seen the Salvation Army come with armed people demanding money from anyone like the government can and will do if you don’t cough up on tax day. For those who are physically or mentally handicapped and can’t work or provide for themselves either charity or some form of aid is only the Christian thing to do.

    As for the Marxists who want to redistribute what workers have earned to those who haven’t or don’t work they need a sound flogging a nice job cleaning dairy barns or horse stalls. If those are in short supply there are other equally tempting jobs I’m sure. Most Marxists have never worked a day in their lives and somehow view it as beneath the dignity of their supposedly superior intellects. Please refer to the reference above to female canines, there’s my sympathy for you.

    No I won’t be back to see if anyone is offended by my comments because I don’t really care for infantile whining.

    Like

          2. Oh lawdy. I just had one of those mental images you should not have before your third cup of black tea in the morning. I’ll just say: a black-clad domme wielding copies of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman while ordering the male sub to recite the equations for the Laffer curve. Only after he gets it right can he go back to reading “Das Kapital.”

            Like

            1. ….Oh, am I ever so glad I put the tea cup down before I read your comment. Delightful, ma’am! Delightful!

              Like

              1. But wouldn’t that be prostitution?

                Not that there’s anything wrong with…well, yeah, there is.

                Like

  28. Recently a fake Jimmy Carter quote has been going viral. “If you don’t want your tax dollars to help the poor—then stop saying that you want a country based on Christian Values, because you don’t.”

    The thing is, the bible is actually pretty clear what forced giving means. Forced giving is what Judas tried to implement—because he controlled the money.

    When Judas berates Mary for spending money on Jesus instead of on the poor, it’s not because he wants her to give to the poor. It’s because he wants her to give to him.

    Like

  29. Poverty may be partly the intersection of skill and money, but I think there’s at least a third element: judgment.
    Being able to estimate the potential consequences of your actions (or the actions of others) is vital, and I don’t think it’s quite accurate to label it as a skill, because I’ve met too many people entirely incapable of acquiring it.
    It’s perfectly possible to have useful skills, a good income, and yet still be poor. Mainly, due to choices that were not at all thought out.

    Like

    1. Oh, people are capable of acquiring judgement, providing they’re not institutionally insane, mentally retarded. or so burned out from drugs that they’re physically incapable of learning. They sure don’t want to, but the alternative is dying, they’re remarkably quick learners.

      The most basic reason to follow the law? So the cops with the guns (or the homeowners with the shotguns) don’t shoot you. No matter how poor the judgement of any person may be on other matters, they’re pretty quick to figure out that the business end of a .45 in their face means they should stop whatever they’re doing.

      Now, going from “If you don’t cut that out, right now, I’m going to kill you” to “I really ought to cook some ramen instead of ordering pizza so I can pay for gas and electricity in the middle of the winter” takes a lot of hard knocks if they’ve never been taught the way, but they learn. Very few people in the Lower 48 actually starve, freeze, or die of dehydration.

      Like

  30. Pingback: IMAO » Blog Archive » Helping – The Government Stinks at It

  31. No need to pooh-pooh “Christian duty”. Before the West took over the world’s cultures, Christian charity really was unique. Early in the last century the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore explained it thus:

    “As before, the genius of India has taken from her aggressors the most spiritually significant principle of their culture and fashioned of it a new message of hope for mankind. There is in Christianity the great doctrine that God became man in order to save humanity by taking the burden of its sin and suffering on Himself, here in this very world, not waiting for the next. That the starving must be fed, the ragged clad, has been emphasized by Christianity as no other religion has done. Charity, benevolence, and the like, no doubt have an important place in the religions of our country as well, but there they are in practice circumscribed within much narrower limits, and are only partially inspired by love of man. And to our great good fortune, Gandhiji was able to receive this teaching of Christ in a living way. It was fortunate that he had not to learn of Christianity through professional experts, but should have found in Tolstoi a teacher who realized the value of non-violence through the multifarious experience of his own life struggles. For it was this great gift from Europe that our country had all along been awaiting.

    Like

Comments are closed.