Should we stop helping poor people all together entirely?

According to the Right Wing, helping poor people only makes them poorer and less likely to provide for themselves. I just seen a quote Benjamin Franklin on this very subject,

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." —Ben Franklin

"the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer"
Based on this logic, surely we should stop helping poor people? I mean afterall, Franklin himself said the less we do for them the more they do for themselves. Sounds like a absolutely brilliant idea to tell the poor to go (*)(*)(*)(*) themselves, eh? The only thing im really curious about is how many people really believe this and how many just say this to lower taxes on the rich and take away the help we give to the poor. I would say the poor white conservatives REALLY believe this, but the rich white conservatives telling poor white people to believe this, dont truly believe it, they just say it to lower taxes on themselves and strip the small amount of benefits the poor have from under their feet. Its blatant propaganda, and it couldnt be anymore obvious. The only reason people fall for it is because they are raised from birth in the South to believe all of this, luckily my Conservative parents moved to a liberal Mexican city so I was raised around liberals and was not indoctrinated into believing right wing mythology about Capitalism, but make no mistake I dont think im better than anyone else, if I was raised in Kansas Missouri like the rest of my family I would be a Bible Thumping Racist Conservative too, no doubt about it.

The point of this thread is to get Right Wingers to admit not only do they not want to help poor people, but they think helping poor people will make them....poorer......

 

Yes, helping them too much only enables them and the more comfortable they are the less likely they will be to get out of their situation.

Its like having a toothache. When the pain is only mild you may put off going to the dentist because you have more important things to do but when that tooth is absolutely killing you then you make it a priority to change your situation by going to the dentist.

Certainly some help should be provided to those who fall on bad times. Unemployment benefits are fine but only for short periods to help people over a bad patch. Welfare should be there to help a mother who found herself in a bad situation but only temporarily. There should definitely be cut off times so people can make the preparations they need to for when it runs out.

Ask a liberal how long people should get benefits and they will say indefinitely or as long as someone needs it. As we can see, this does not work to motivate people to take charge of their situation and move on, it only enables them to stay complacent.

 

So than you disagree with Bejamin Franklin here eh?

"the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

According to this logic, even if they are unemployed, the less we do for them the more they will do for themselves.......You dont truly believe this do you? I dont think you do based on what you said, but it seems you never refuted what Franklin said but rather refuted what I said. Yes, I do want to help them much more than just a small temporary thing and I suppose you can criticize me for that, thats fine and dandy, but why dont you criticize the right wingers like Franklin who think we shouldnt help them AT ALL whatsoever? Seems your attention is focused on one side of the spectrum rather than the other, which leads me to believe you agree with the view that we shouldnt help them at all more than the view we should help them a lot.

 

Lots of ways to enslave people under the cloak of being compassionate and caring.

 

Of course, we should let them starve and die and decrease the surplus population.

 

Who is this "Right Wing", and do you have a link to verify that he or she said that?

Now as Franklin said, "the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." To counter, you think that rather than leading the poor out of poverty, we should make them "easy in poverty"? The "Right Wing"'s solution isn't to cut them off, the solution is to take measures to help those in need cease to be in need.

When you truly care about people you don't do nice things to make you feel good, you do things to help them. The Aunt who spoils her nephew rotten isn't doing anything good for him, she's making herself feel good. In contrast, the Aunt who helps teach her nephew things, and takes him to/from and pays for Boy Scouts or other such programs, does good for the nephew's sake.

And that is the difference. Liberals want to give poor people immediate aid, because it makes liberal feel good to see it done. Conservatives prefer to see those in need cease to need help, and become self-sustaining. You tell me, between the two, which really cares about the poor.

 

We'd say Benjamin Franklin knew quite a bit more than you know. Seeing as how he was one of America's founding fathers and is on the $100 bill, it looks like you are promoting un-American ideas when you reject his wisdom.

 

The way you feel about poor people is the way I feel about rich people. Why are we coddling them so much? Why do we give them so much of our time and energy? Why is our whole economy and culture geared toward meeting their needs and wants and whims?

 

It sounds correct [may be because I'm a Right Winger].

In Italy we say that if you give a fish to a poor guy, that guy will eat it and that's all. Tomorrow he will need something else to eat ...
What about teaching him to fish and to build handmade tools to fish? He will have to eat also tomorrow [if he learns to fish, of course].

 

If the false choice were the only real choice--the garbage we have v. nothing--I would go with nothing.

 

The National Parks Service put up signs saying-------------------Dont feed the animals it makes them lazy and dependent!!!!!

 

If Franklin said we should do nothing, which I don't think he did, then yes, he would be wrong.

Helping in a minimal fashion as I stated before would be acceptable but there must be a defined limit to that help. Now if people want to pay a portion of their money in taxes to be used as an insurance policy that would be fine but it should not come from taxpayer dollars.

Conservatives are not against helping, we are against indefinite help.

 

I have no issue with removing welfare for the rich also.

That is something the Tea Party also pushes for. No welfare, or very little, for anyone, at least when it comes from taxpayer dollars. This most definitely includes corporate bailouts.

 

My signature explains that perfectly, the last quote.

 

Are you equating humans with animals?

 

We should stop allowing the Democratic Party to buy votes in exchange for the smallpox infected blankets of permanent dependency. We should create minimal state safety nets to feed and house people locally and temporarily, and rely on local charity generally to provide local solutions as it did a fine job of in the past.

Anyone who says there has ever been any material privation leading to starvation and death in the streets in this country is a stone liar. It never happened. Even in the depths of the Depression it didn't happen.

 

Poor people should be helped with:

Socialised medicine, housing, education, unemployment cash ( ie: not food stamps)

That is the way forward

 

No, just poor people.

 

perhaps not, but that's generally the definition of right-wing Utopia......

 

Right, they didnt starve to death because they were either killed working due to lack of regulation or died of disease beforehand due to lack of healthcare. So good job, Bravo.

 

Stop helping the poor? Seems you're a little late to the tea party.....

 

should really be an effort to avoid poverty in the first place, and introducing some form of hard line Socialism would be a good start, but with the use of modern technology this time around.

 

What are you doing, Manifest? You deny their property right in the first place - but your solution is to ally with the state and steal back some of that property once its already been allocated?

Go back and fix the problem you see to begin with: private ownership of the means of production.

 

To be honest, I think the general liberal mindset cares more about sticking it to the rich than helping the poor. The only poor people they seem to care about are the ones who vote for their candidates.

Case in point, Mississippi

It is the most poverty stricken state in the US, yet I hear more hate towards Mississippi coming from liberal leaning people than I do conservative leaning people.. Not to say conservatives are any more compassionate for the poor, just like the liberals, they care more about the poor person's voting tendency than their actual living conditions.

These people don't really care about the poor, all they care about is gaining political power. If you really want to help the poor, then start backing policies for a minimum standard of living. Don't take the health insurance companies' side, provide a more accessible healthcare system, the ACA is the only national healthcare system in the world that mandates people to buy from private companies without taking the profit out of the standard/mandated coverage

does that sound like a system with the poor in mind? how about the fact that the insurance industry invested hundreds of millions advocating for the ACA, or the fact that a single payer system would save us over half a trillion dollars a year, and benefit the poor a lot more?

you could also back a plan for payed maternity leave rather than making up your own numbers on equal pay for equal work

a minimum income would be more sufficient than a welfare system that cuts people off when they begin to make more money, thus leaving them better off making less

When a so called liberals begins advocating for these things rather than basing their entire argument on the conditions of the rich, then I'll believe they really do care about the poor

 

Why because they have the real money required to buy off our government at all levels