I routinely encounter educated adults who claim it’s unfair that they’ve paid taxes their entire lives only to receive nothing when people living on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, or disability get everything provided. It is astonishing to me that people think that they are missing out on that life. While I’m sure fraud exists, living off the system is not glamorous or the path most choose intentionally. How can anyone, unemployable and with a disability, support themselves on $900/month? This isn’t big money. We can argue about the role of government vs charity. But I just don’t get that attitude, that need to tighten the screws on what in many cases is someone’s only option.
There's been at least a half-century of Republican propaganda demonizing the poor who rely on these services.
It started getting particularly nasty with Reagan's "welfare queens" campaign, which focused on a woman incarcerated for egregious fraud and portrayed her case as if it were the norm, playing not only on fears that welfare was rife with fraud and abuse but also on prejudices against women and non-whites.
To this day, many people envision the welfare system as creating a class of people living luxurious lives off the taxpayer's dime without having to do any work themselves. That this is a far more accurate description of the very representatives still benefiting from such propaganda is a salient historical irony.
And you think that's why this exists? Currently you see a lot of clips on Youtube and ... complaining about taxes. At first I thought ... it's one of those campaigns (ie. Elon Musk is definitely pushing the idea on twitter). But not entirely. It's not some rich guy complaining, or an accountant offering their (paid) help or some extremely bad advice, but "influencers". Same with talking to Uber drivers.
I've realized the underlying issue is not demonization. The underlying issue is that the tax levels in a number of states make it impossible for quite a large number of individuals to have these "jobs", in a lot of cases when they can't (or more likely: won't) do other jobs, and their conclusion is "tax is forcing me onto welfare".
And with European taxes that apparently punish freelancers it's even worse. This is less true that it appears, European states just hide taxes by making employers pay them and having laws that forbid employers from including them on the payslips, but freelancers of course pay both the employer and employee taxes, because otherwise companies would make everyone work as freelancer. Now I'm 100% sure that this was indeed an attempt by states to hide taxes and it's backfiring a bit in this way. If you take this calculation into account, French income tax can be up to 68% (WTF ... of course, that's if you're making a million per year or so. Even a senior in IT in France would only pay maybe 55%)
And I guess it's not entirely untrue that people are being forced out of jobs because of these taxes ... but. Well, I'm not sure what to think about this.
„Man muß das Geld dort nehmen, wo es zu finden ist – bei den Armen. Zwar haben sie wenig, aber sie sind zahlreich.“
―Ettore Petrolini
- https://gutezitate.com/zitat/138869
Everytime I see an argument of "Those heartless Republicans/Libertarians/Conservatives just don't care about the poor who have NO OTHER CHOICE", there's never any data to back it up. It's just a way to use people's empathy to manipulate them.
I spent a decade working with people that were physically and intellectually disabled and got to see first hand of all the ways that the families took as much advantage of government programs as they possibly could. The organization that I worked for had the primary purpose of getting families more resources from welfare programs. I don't blame them nor am I hugely angry at them because the current system we have keeps people dependant on receiving welfare. Why would someone risk getting a minimum wage job if them receiving income puts their foodtamps, free cell phone plan, reduced rent prices, free transportation, free healthcare, etc at risk?
Government welfare is a cancer that holllows out and keeps people down and ensures that individuals and families don't fix their lives and just keep feeding their bad habits.
Yes, there are a small minority that are in brutal situations our of pure chance, but the mass majority are not that.
California has spent billions on homelessness, yet the issue is worse than it has ever been.
The USA has spent billions on welfare, yet the problem is worse than it has ever been.
When does the problem get solved?
It may not work for you but I had years of chronic heartburn. While sick with covid in 2020, I stopped consuming coffee and alcohol. It took a few months and for the long covid symptoms to subside, and then no more heartburn. At all. I felt really dumb that I never connected it to coffee before. I didn’t experience direct symptoms from coffee and I didn’t consume an excess amount. But it definitely was the cause.
The kind of coffee you drink can make a huge difference as well. Filter coffee is typically larger in volume so there’s more acidic liquids going in to trigger your heartburn. Compared to espresso which is usually a smaller volume. It can be a huge difference in heartburn between coffee types.
I'm a couple weeks into giving up coffee because of heartburn, and yeah, this tracks... unfortunately. I've replaced heartburn with heartache (having given up a beverage I've enjoyed daily for over 20 years).
Good luck, my friend. I’m right there with you. It’s not the physical effects but the rituals and the social connections that I miss. I felt the same with coffee as I did with smoking, which I quit about 20 years ago. It’s remarkable how much these simple vice shape our daily lives.
Yup. Discovered me and my dad have ADHD at pretty much the same time. In our case (very stimulant sensitive) we had to quit coffee to use ADHD meds. While I eventually switched to Inka (a roasted grain coffee substitute) when I saw how my heart results get better without coffee, he still struggles.
He recently quit meds for some time due to unwanted symptoms and told me how he was away with some friends and deeply relished being able to normally drink coffee again.
This is an absurd argument. It reads as a self serving rationalization of cultural appropriation. They didn’t value what they had and can’t be trusted with it today. As if the only option is to give objects back to poor or corrupt governments. Even if true that doesn’t mean people are undeserving of their past. How about strengthening local non-governmental institutions to care for these objects?
>As if the only option is to give objects back to poor or corrupt governments. Even if true that doesn’t mean people are undeserving of their past. How about strengthening local non-governmental institutions to care for these objects?
Right, and if that doesn't work, or until that works, is it morally objectionable to hold on to those objects? Is it truly the right thing to return items to governments that can't guarantee their safety or don't hold those items to the same values? What's the better choice here? Preserving anthropological history of mankind or respecting the wishes of hereditary descendants? What if they don't give a shit about their past? Does the rest of the world need to be deprived of the history of humanity because the current, local, inhabitants don't care for their own? Your solution is to teach them to care, which is hilariously just as colonialist and culturally "appropriatiative" as the person you're replying to.
>Your solution is to teach them to care, which is hilariously just as colonialist and culturally "appropriatiative" as the person you're replying to.
Don’t put words in my mouth. There is an obvious difference between imposing one’s views and capacity building.
EDIT: As in financial support, advising governance structures, conservation training. Supporting institutions who already deeply care.
>What if they don't give a shit about their past?
Is that really the case?
Last time I checked Greece was keenly interested it’s past and wanted their antiquities back.
While Rishi was saying they were a “huge asset” to the UK. Please :eyeroll:
>As in financial support, advising governance structures, conservation training. Supporting institutions who already deeply care.
IS literally teaching them how to care. But whatever
>Is that really the case?
Yeah. Consider any country in the ME that sees artifacts prior to the Prophet Muhammad's existence heresy. Destruction of artifacts in Iraq. Destruction of artifacts in Syria. Afghanistan famously rid itself of Buddhist statues and artifacts in the not-too-distant past.
Even in the Western world, countries regularly deface and destroy statues and historical sites because prior political beliefs and mores run contrary to today's moral standards. Here's a fairly recent example:
>"After years of controversy, the society will remove all human names for bird species, including those linked to people with racist histories.
>Their goal is to create a more inclusive environment for bird-watching fans.
>Seventy to 80 birds will be renamed.
>"Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the 1800s, clouded by racism and misogyny, don't work for us today, and the time has come for us to transform this process and redirect the focus to the birds, where it belongs,"
Is literally erasing the history of people who studied and catalogued these bird species because their moral standards don't fit with our current worldviews today.
Does it belong to specific groups of people alive today, or does it belong to humanity as a whole?
If I’m interested in Chinese history should I be forced to go to communist China? If I’m interested in Assyrian history should I be forced to risk my life and head to Iraq?
The custodians of historical objects have a moral obligation to ensure that they are displayed for the benefit of as many humans as possible, and that is certainly something that could be improved.
The enforcement of inter-civilization property rights across time is in my opinion a not a moral obligation.
This is the ultimate question. Who owns an object that is so old that the chain of ownership can't be easily reconstructed? Is it the country that controls the land where it was created? Is it the country that owns the land where it was last legally held? Do we apply modern laws or the laws of the time when determining this?
Or is it the descendants of the culture that created it? Is this the cultural descendants? Is it the literal descendants of the people living in the area where it was created, at the time it was created?
There are almost certainly more people of British descent living in the United States today than there are living in Great Britain. Should the United States demand a larger share of our cultural history from Great Britain?
At some point we have to realize that any method we pick is going to, in large part, be arbitrary.
>BIO-CAT, Inc. -- a Virginia-based biotech company specializing in breakthrough enzyme product development -- has announced a global partnership with Kerry, the Taste & Nutrition company and their BIO-CAT Microbials, LLC probiotic products division. Effective June 2021, Kerry will lead the sales, marketing, and distribution of BIO-CAT's proprietary probiotic strain, OPTI-BIOME MB40®.
>OPTI-BIOME MB40® (Bacillus subtilis ATCC122264) is a non-GMO, highly-stable probiotic strain that the company says is an ideal ingredient for a wide array of dietary supplements and other related uses.
… non-GMO? How do you manage that? Is a culture considered non-GMO as long as you’re just pipetting colonies around and hoping for the them to be stressed the right way to evolve something useful?
Yeah right. Because smart people can always control the circumstances of their life like an illness, elder care, affordable housing, change in market conditions, etc.
That’s not the point. Dignity and respect. Going in a different direction? Fine. Make cuts. But, no one deserves to be treated as disposable playthings. Zero communication and unreasonable demands create anxiety. Contrast this to stripe. I fail to see how one’s income determines the respect they should receive.
reply