Joe_Cavalry All Day Every Day

I skip two full meals and all snacks, or for the duration of approximately 24 hours, on the first Sunday of every month. Is that consistent enough for you?

Furthermore, my family had never had much money, we forwent a very large amount of luxuries, and bought secondhand, made ourselves, or picked up free stuff from acquaintances. We have never purchased a television since I was born, and the one we did use for most of my childhood was already old to begin with. We owned 1 working computer most of my childhood, and that computer was Black and white until we upgraded towards my teen years (I forget if it was a gift or if we bought it). Only very recently have we acquired enough computers for every family member, and most of those were acquired used, many of which were old when we got them. All monitors are still CRT except my personally purchased laptop. We never owned a game console either, and were subscribed to satellite TV for only about 1 year before finances dictated we cancel.

Were it not for assistance from our church's food pantry which is funded entirely from charitable donations, we would undoubtedly have gone hungry very often. As luck would have it, we have never been for the want of the basic necessities, for which I am thankful, but we have never lived a luxurious life either.

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A free market however, one free from governmental intervention regulation, and exclusive taxes, WOULD solve most problems America faces today.

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Unfortunately, as the case may be, government has created a system of catch-22 on our economy. Welfare is necessary because of the excessive tax and regulation on business, preventing people from setting up home businesses for themselves. And because welfare is necessary, it is thus required to further tax and regulate business for economic balance in favor of the welfare recipients.

You can't have one without the other, but both are unnecessary, however, the removal of one or both of them will cause such great economic turmoil and upheaval that further use of the same is absolutely necessary to prevent a meltdown.

Because we as society are obsessed with not falling down, we will continue to run headlong into the ocean and ultimately drown.

If we would but abolish it all, and start over, the grand economic reset would result in greater power and freedom and liberty and quality of life overall. We would have to nurse some broken limbs, and suffer a few growth pangs, but overall it would be the most ideal solution. Again as I said however, we as society are obsessed with avoiding this necessary pain, and as such will continue to suffer in increasing increments until we either destroy ourselves, or finally get it in our heads to change things for the better.

People spend all the money they make on frivolities, and non-essentials, and drive themselves deep into credit debt to live luxuriously, they don't prepare for hard times, and then when those hard times occur, they DON'T lower their standard of living any, but require everyone else who DID prepare themselves and retained a sustainable standard of living, to bail them out and let them keep paying their unnecessary bills while mooching food, medical care, and other benefits off the rest of us. I'm sorry, I do NOT agree with that.

The 1930s was actually getting better until the New Deal came and halted all economic growth. Charity didn't cut it? I think it could have, it just wasn't given the chance. Not to mention charity only provides for Essentials and at least necessary level for them, so obviously it's not going to be favored by people who like living a life of luxury and refuse to lower their standard of living even when faced with hard times.

Have you ever heard the phrase "give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime"? Handouts are giving people fish, leaving them perpetually dependent on the system to provide for their needs. And that's entirely the POINT of welfare. If everyone is dependent on the system giving them stuff, then the people will ONLY vote for the party that offers those handouts, NEVER for anyone who will cut them back. By doing this, a party can ensure they FOREVER retain the governing power.

The best thing that could be done for the poor, is to provide an economic environment where it is Simple, Easy, and Cheap, to provide for themselves. Like being able to start a personal business without needing a massive loan to acquire assets and pay all the licensing, and attorney fees, as well as pay off all the other government fees. Or being able to buy a basic house without having to pay a massively inflated price due to all the regulations requiring particular specifications and inspections during the building process.

Why can't the poor do this? Because Government has stuffed their grubby hands into the very act of living itself, thinking to protect us from ourselves, when in actuality all it does is make life harder to live, and more difficult to climb upwards.

I say again, welfare is not about helping the poor, it's about keeping the poor so dependent they can never lift themselves up out of their poverty. It is about creating an endless voting block that will always vote to retain their "privileges" of welfare, and EXPAND them, thereby ensuring the party that gives out the goodies remains perpetually in power. It is about Social Redistribution of Wealth to reform government into a socialist or fascist oligarchy where the political elite have complete control over the populous and retain them in poverty so uprising is nearly impossible. When all is said and done, welfare is about nothing more than ensuring perpetual power.

I know my language. Not much for engineering though. Took me a little while to figure it out though, this was one I hadn't encountered before. Amusing.

It doesn't matter how refined or efficient the tape structure is reformed into being, it will always be accomplishing LESS per dollar than a private charity.

Why not just donate to private charities, church charities, or, better yet, donate directly to the poor in your local area? Why does Government need to get involved? It's not it's place, it's not it's purpose, and all it does do HARM to it's recipients.

It creates a class of dependents (by design) to keep re-electing people who hand out benefits and goodies and permit them to perpetually retain power and wealth over the populous.

The red tape only ensures that LESS money actually makes it into the hands of those who actually need it. When you are taxed 1 dollar to pay for welfare, about 60 cents of that actually goes to the needy. The rest goes to bureaucratic and administrative functions. Adding more red tape only ensures that less of that 1 dollar actually makes it to the needy. Rather than 60 cents, with extra red tape, now 40 cents only reaches the poor, or even 30 cents. The remaining 70 cents pays for the salaries and government retirement and medical benefits of the administrative workers, as well as the excessive amount of paperclips and printer ink, and form papers necessary to "ensure the red tape is being enforced."

And yet people who don't need it get it anyway, and when the department has a budget surplus, they offer the remaining food stamp stuff out for free to anyone who wants it to ensure they meet their quota required to get another budget increase next year.

You'd do far better just to walk into a city and hand out that money to people who look like they're in need, but government won't let you do that, they'll tax you anyway, so even if you do choose to contribute charitably, you end up with less money for yourself overall, and poor remain poor, while government has a party with your cash.

No, the point of welfare is to create a class of perpetual dependents that will always vote for more benefits, ensuring the enduring perpetuity of the power of the political party that hands those benefits out.

It is also a method by which to steal the private property of the independent citizens and ensure they are perpetually forced to work to sustain themselves, never amounting to anything in their lives.

The point of CHARITY is to help the needy sustain themselves enough to work back into independence, if possible. Welfare doesn't do that, nor has it ever been intended to.

And if someone is NOT paying taxes, and yet still ends up on the receiving end of handouts, that is immoral and wrong.

I should neither have to pay for handouts from government, nor have to accept them. I'd rather live in destitution, working to feed myself out of nature and off my own labor, than accept handouts.

What's amusing is that people get all excited about getting their government hand-outs, when it's their own money that paid for it. If you hadn't had to pay those taxes, you would have been able to use that money you just got handed out to you, as well as all the money that was filtered through the numerous bureaucrats' salaries and waste, on yourself in a better manner than the government.

I'm gunna have to agree with this. Sex is the most efficient manner in which a male and a female bond together.

Granted, it should only be done within the bounds of marriage, where there's enough stability and commitment to assume that the relationship isn't just about sex.

Quite an amusing read, I must say. I wasn't sure where it was going but, then Hilarious punchline.