With Border Crossings at a Trickle, Why Build a Mexico Wall?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stephen_C
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes, I lived in NC for a while and had a friend whose DH would not work even though he was able bodied because it was more lucrative to stay home and collect unemployment… true! They had five kids to raise…
 
MonteRCMS said:
I love your fake phoney name calling.
Click to expand...
They are the biggest group of welfare recipients by far. We subsidize parts B and D of medicare to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year. That is money from general tax revenue, not the medicare payroll tax. So that is pure income redistribution and income redistribution is welfare. So why should working people be forced to subsidize the healthcare of people who are easily able to pay their own way?
 
Stinkcat, you should start a separate thread about this. This thread is about immigration.
 
I actually brought up welfare recipients, because welfare restricts the ability of recipients to do work on the side, so to speak. But in many areas, these are the people who used to do the work currently done by illegal and transient immigrants.

Benefits for retirees may or may not be a form of welfare, but it is currently not considered welfare from a legislative point of view. I am not proposing that poor 80-year-old pensioners go out and pick strawberries.

So, two different subjects.
 
Last edited:
Annie said:
I actually brought up welfare recipients, because welfare restricts the ability of recipients to do work on the side, so to speak. But in many areas, these are the people who used to do the work currently done by illegal and transient immigrants.

Benefits for retirees may or may not be a form of welfare, but it is currently not considered welfare from a legislative point of view. I am not proposing that poor 80-year-old pensioners go out and pick strawberries.

So, two different subjects.
Click to expand...
Actually, according to the government social security is a welfare program. There is no dispute about that. While an 80 year old may not be able to pick strawberries, most 65 year olds can. There are plenty of jobs they can do, it is just that if you can get the dole for doing nothing, why work? And it is the dole, because social security is an income redistribution program.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
Actually, according to the government social security is a welfare program. There is no dispute about that.
Click to expand...
The term that’s usually used it that it’s an entitlement program.

It’s the correct term in that people are legally “entitled” to it, but it has negative connotations (suggesting that recipients have an unreasonable “sense of entitlement”).
stinkcat_14 said:
While an 80 year old may not be able to pick strawberries, most 65 year olds can. There are plenty of jobs they can do, it is just that if you can get the dole for doing nothing, why work? And it is the dole, because social security is an income redistribution program.
Click to expand...
But, Social Security recipients were forced to pay into the system.

It wouldn’t be fair to say, “Mr. 65-year-old, you shouldn’t collect Social Security” when he’s paid into the system with the expectation of receiving something.
 
1,600 illegal border crossers have been arrested since April alone. Doesn’t seem like a “trickle” to me.
 
signit said:
It wouldn’t be fair to say, “Mr. 65-year-old, you shouldn’t collect Social Security” when he’s paid into the system with the expectation of receiving something.
Click to expand...
The problem is that fairness is a bad criteria for running an economy. We all have self serving ideas of what is fair. During the Bush years the government implemented Medicare part D. The beneficiaries never paid a cent for that program, yet they got subsidized prescription drugs. I am sure they all thought that was fair.
 
I don’t know that the government counts Social Security as welfare, but people in general do not.

My point is that welfare recipients ( not including Social Security recipients) don’t take On n seasonal work vbecause it would interfere with their benefits, which they need all year round. If we restructured welfare, we could incentivize recipients to work rather than disincentivize.
 
Annie said:
I don’t know that the government counts Social Security as welfare, but people in general do not.
Click to expand...
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get someone to understand something when their government check depends on them not understanding it.
 
When people talk about something, they use generally agreed upon language. You have been on a one-person crusade for a few years that I know of to change the language.

I receive no government checks, so I don’t have a reason to misunderstand.
 
I may receive a small government check when I am eligible, but the reality is I will probably have to work through most of my “retirement.”

I understand what you are saying, and I disagree with what you are saying, but my point right now is that the two are considered separate programs for the purpose of discussing policy, and almost everyone in the US will understand what I am saying as I intend it, using the words I am using.

I think welfare rules should encourage people to work, not discourage them. Why you had to drag your hobby horse of how Social Security is welfare, I don’t know, because it is totally unrelated to what I was saying using language commonly used in the US.
 
Raxus said:
1,600 illegal border crossers have been arrested since April alone. Doesn’t seem like a “trickle” to me.
Click to expand...
You just have to manipulate your statistics, like they did in the OP article.
Pick a denominator that’s irrelevant to the issue but makes the flow look really small.

1,600 is just a half a person per kilometer!!!
Seems really impractical to build a long wall for just a half a person, doesn’t it??

edit - I also thought that figure was the increase attributed to the additional help from the National Guard.
 
Last edited:
Raxus said:
1,600 illegal border crossers have been arrested since April alone. Doesn’t seem like a “trickle” to me.
Click to expand...
and as soon as the word would get out we are not building the wall after all, the flood of those crossing illegally would once again resume.
i would say the title of the thread of the title is fake news in order to win opposition to the wall.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top