Max Sawicky wrote:
> "Corporate welfare" is not very well defined. If
> it's spending programs, as a share of the budget
> it's very small.
What about tax relief? The arms dealers get $60B per year in breaks. Comapnies can write off stock options. Plus, the amount paid by government for R&D is significant. While it is small compared to the GDP, it is significant in how much it contributes to the actual content of the GDP, no? If companies paid this out of their pockets, that's $60B that could go for other programs. How does $60B stack up against welfare?
> The key issue in my view is whether reformers
> will have a better model of how to provide
> assistance. When the shit hits the fan,
> rather than patch up the system, be prepared
> to propose something different that is effective
> and politically robust.
The system has to be able to adapt to local needs. The notion that you can create a template at the federal level and have it apply to every case at the local level is ridiculous. Adaptability has to be built into the entrie program. Of course, you'd like to say, leave it to the case worker's discretion but so many people made political hay out of a few bad judgments that they tried to institute more and more micromanagement from above. That does not work. Of course, by that time the programs may be run by private corporations anyway, so this will be all just blather.
> What isn't going to fly is any variation of
> income as a right.
Income may not be a right but the notion that society has an obligation to help people will still exist won't it? The question is not about peeple's innate laziness, as Rousseau put it (I'm paraphrasing horribly), but about motivating people to work for their own and others' good. The conditions must exist for people to attain their natural level of talent and imagination. I guess the Marxist critique of capitalist society is that capitalism does not provide these conditions. Isn't it interesting that the father of Total Quality Management, Deming, believed it to be a fact that everyone wants to work--and do a good job. The problem is, they do not have the tools and the processes available to do that. I'm thinking that Marx and Deming would not be too far apart in sharing this view.
> Income support is only
> going to happen if it is combined with work
> and other responsibilities of some type.
I hear conservatives talk about "responsibilities" all the time. What exactly does it mean to be responsible in this sense? Why is it somehow more responsible to kick people off welfare, while encouraging and facilitating the piracy of other nations' economies? chuck miller
-- http://www.users.uswest.net/~bautiste/index.htm