Nick M said:
I call it moral decay. Things like cranking out babies when people can't pay rent now. And then pilfering the taxpayers to pick up the slack.
But we have allowed the government to create a situation where it's possible to sit home on your ass and do so. And get a your rent paid. And get your food paid for. And get your healthcare paid for.
It goes back to what a I said. The system rewards failure and punishes success. I'll give you a perfect example:
I've worked my ass off through the years. I earn a legitimate living. I'm a citizen. I've never been accused of, let alone convicted of, a crime. My reward for this? Due to my success level, I get a 35% federal income tax. Plus state tax. By the time you take those huge chunks off the top, combine them with all the embedded taxes (i.e. - the increased cost of goods and services that businesses charge you directly) I'm dumping upwards of 50% of my income into the government. Two years ago I got out of my 4500 sq/ft house, and moved to a brand new 3000 sq/ft house. This house was in the $250K range. Very affordable from my perspective.
On the other side of town there is a subdivision built by the exact same builder who built my home. They are of about the same type, and are all $200K to 250K homes. In my subdivison, we are almost 100% owner lived in. In the other subdivision the bulk of them were bought up by a developer who rents them out. Signs all over the place "Section 8 OK!". You drive through that neighborhood and it's surreal. $250K homes with broken down old junk cars in the driveways, unkempt lawns, kids in raggedy old clothes running all over the place.
The reason for this? Subsidized rent. That's what section 8 is. You pay a portion of your rent, the government picks up the balance. This is called the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
In 1998, the Housing Choice Voucher program consumed 36 percent of the governments Housing & Urban Development (HUD) budget. Today, it absorbs nearly 60 percent.That budget was 31.5 BILLION dollars in the fiscal year 2005. That means we, the people who pay the taxes, in 2005 ALONE paid out 18.8 BILLION dollars of our money to give people the ability to live in places they can't afford on their own.
This program is a failure from a "hand up, not a hand out" perspective. While many families stay less than five years in assisted housing, a larger percentage stay 5 years and more. And the stats show that it is likely that those families that do stay at least five years will end up staying up to 10 years.
So the reward for failure is assistance. The reward for success, punishment.
You wonder why many people do nothing but sit around and pump out more children? They get a bigger check for each one that they have.
Nick M said:
Of course, people are an asset, but some (many) need to be far more responsible.
I disagree. People
CAN be an asset, but more often than not under our current system, they are a liability.
There are ways to fix this, and I'm not going to go into them in detail here, the links I quoted at the beginning of this thread cover them in depth.
Simply put, neither the Democrats or Republicans have the integrity to fix these problems. They are whores who sell out to whatever buys them votes.
I'll ask the question again - Can you honestly say either of the following is true?
If I vote for Republicans, they will not screw me over when they get into office.
-or-
If I vote for Democrats, they will not screw me over when they get into office.
My answer to both is a resounding NO.
Time for a change folks, voting for someone you know is going to sell you out the second they get elected is insanity. Start using your head.
I think the big difference between you and I Nick is you want to legislate morality, force people to be "good". I find that unrealistic. It's not going to work. I want to let them choose what they do, but also have them accept the consequences of that choice.
You call it moral decay. With the implication that you can legislate some morality back into people. I call that silly. They aren't going to stop doing this because you tell them it is wrong Nick. They will stop doing it when they can't get a free ride anymore.
