(12-14-2021 10:12 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(12-14-2021 09:55 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(12-14-2021 09:44 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-14-2021 09:06 AM)MerseyOwl Wrote:  

(12-14-2021 08:04 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  But here's the thing. Are they really getting a better deal?
Is giving them a subsistence level existence, coupled with rules and regulations that basically trap them in that subsistence level, really a better deal? Or would increased opportunities to advance above subsistence level be better? Do you give them better council housing, or more and greater opportunities to move out of council housing to something better?

Why are you attempting to apply logic and reason to the general populace?
You poor idealistic naive fool. (I know you're not.)
There are always ways to game the system. And always individuals that can't see beyond the next benefit check.

But this is what pisses me off. You could design a more comprehensive welfare safety net around universal private health care (the Bismarck model) and either Milton Friedman's negative income tax or the Boortz-Linder prebate/prefund, for less money than the government is spending today, and you can pitch it to the public in a way that they can understand using some variation of Ross Perot's PowerPoints. I mean, how hard is it to explain that a way off the welfare plantation and around the poverty trap is a good idea for the poor. And it would put the middle class way ahead of where they are now.

And you could pay for it with flat income taxes and a consumption tax. If you did personal and corporate income taxes at a flat 15%, a consumption tax at 15%, and social security tax at 15% with no salary cap, you would bail out social security and raise enough money to balance the budget and start paying down the debt. And you would make the USA very much a low-tax jurisdiction (it's not now) and thus a primo destination for investment and growth going forward.

You would have a win-win for just about everybody--except the bureaucrat administrators sitting on their asses in DC, because this system would run almost in automatic. Real estate values in northern Virginia and southern Maryland would plummet, but oh well. It would seem to me that this ought to be the new calling card for the republicans, but they don't seem to get it.

It's not just bureaucrats who would would lose. Real losers would include the entire grievance industry (including most of the Democratic Party), whose business model, leitmotif, and raison d'être is to spread (and cash in on) the gospel of victimhood.

To be fair, the Republican Party has caught up to the Democratic Party in terms of relying on the grievance industry and victimhood to maintain power.

In what ways? What grievances. The closest I can come up with are the fear that Democrats are going to take guns away. Hardly a grievance if they still have their guns.