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Comment by throwawaytwit9 | Hacker News Reader

I routinely encounter educated adults who claim it’s unfair that they’ve paid taxes their entire lives only to receive nothing when people living on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, or disability get everything provided. It is astonishing to me that people think that they are missing out on that life. While I’m sure fraud exists, living off the system is not glamorous or the path most choose intentionally. How can anyone, unemployable and with a disability, support themselves on $900/month? This isn’t big money. We can argue about the role of government vs charity. But I just don’t get that attitude, that need to tighten the screws on what in many cases is someone’s only option.

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There's been at least a half-century of Republican propaganda demonizing the poor who rely on these services.

It started getting particularly nasty with Reagan's "welfare queens" campaign, which focused on a woman incarcerated for egregious fraud and portrayed her case as if it were the norm, playing not only on fears that welfare was rife with fraud and abuse but also on prejudices against women and non-whites.

To this day, many people envision the welfare system as creating a class of people living luxurious lives off the taxpayer's dime without having to do any work themselves. That this is a far more accurate description of the very representatives still benefiting from such propaganda is a salient historical irony.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen See: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/20/255819681...

> Republican propaganda demonizing the poor who rely on these services.

Collaborators like Bill Clinton didn’t exactly help matters either.

And you think that's why this exists? Currently you see a lot of clips on Youtube and ... complaining about taxes. At first I thought ... it's one of those campaigns (ie. Elon Musk is definitely pushing the idea on twitter). But not entirely. It's not some rich guy complaining, or an accountant offering their (paid) help or some extremely bad advice, but "influencers". Same with talking to Uber drivers.

I've realized the underlying issue is not demonization. The underlying issue is that the tax levels in a number of states make it impossible for quite a large number of individuals to have these "jobs", in a lot of cases when they can't (or more likely: won't) do other jobs, and their conclusion is "tax is forcing me onto welfare".

And with European taxes that apparently punish freelancers it's even worse. This is less true that it appears, European states just hide taxes by making employers pay them and having laws that forbid employers from including them on the payslips, but freelancers of course pay both the employer and employee taxes, because otherwise companies would make everyone work as freelancer. Now I'm 100% sure that this was indeed an attempt by states to hide taxes and it's backfiring a bit in this way. If you take this calculation into account, French income tax can be up to 68% (WTF ... of course, that's if you're making a million per year or so. Even a senior in IT in France would only pay maybe 55%)

And I guess it's not entirely untrue that people are being forced out of jobs because of these taxes ... but. Well, I'm not sure what to think about this.

> But I just don’t get that attitude, that need to tighten the screws on what in many cases is someone’s only option.

They look at upsides, but don't look at downsides. A case of "grass is always greener on the other side". Plus maybe small lack of empathy.

> Plus maybe small lack of empathy.

Small? More like utter lack of empathy and full-blown Sociopathy.

„Man muß das Geld dort nehmen, wo es zu finden ist – bei den Armen. Zwar haben sie wenig, aber sie sind zahlreich.“ ―Ettore Petrolini - https://gutezitate.com/zitat/138869

Translation:

“One must take money where it is to be found—from the poor. True, they have little, but they are numerous."

Very right.

You might find the documentary Waging a Living eye-opening - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971968

Everytime I see an argument of "Those heartless Republicans/Libertarians/Conservatives just don't care about the poor who have NO OTHER CHOICE", there's never any data to back it up. It's just a way to use people's empathy to manipulate them.

I spent a decade working with people that were physically and intellectually disabled and got to see first hand of all the ways that the families took as much advantage of government programs as they possibly could. The organization that I worked for had the primary purpose of getting families more resources from welfare programs. I don't blame them nor am I hugely angry at them because the current system we have keeps people dependant on receiving welfare. Why would someone risk getting a minimum wage job if them receiving income puts their foodtamps, free cell phone plan, reduced rent prices, free transportation, free healthcare, etc at risk?

Government welfare is a cancer that holllows out and keeps people down and ensures that individuals and families don't fix their lives and just keep feeding their bad habits.

Yes, there are a small minority that are in brutal situations our of pure chance, but the mass majority are not that.

quite amazing… you start with

> …there's never any data to back it up…

then amazingly conclude with:

> … but the mass majority are not that

without any data! bravo mate, bravo!!!

yea okay, sure. ignore the data. solving homelessness esp as it relates to disability is cheaper than incarceration

California has spent billions on homelessness, yet the issue is worse than it has ever been. The USA has spent billions on welfare, yet the problem is worse than it has ever been. When does the problem get solved?

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