goggles99

The difference here is that charities can easily be replaced or you can choose a different one. There would definitely be oversight to expose problems and shut down fraudsters.

>I cannot see how this would not lead to a very disproportional distribution of welfare. Very few people, I guess, would rather give their money to rehabilitated murderers or sex offenders than to orphans or abused women for example.

You would be surprised. Sure those like you would give it to orphans and widows. Also, charities generally don't "turn down" people because they just got out of jail. If fact, I suppose that it could be mandated that they don't.

There are easy common sense rules for all these types of concerns.

I also encourage you to personally meed and observe those being served by WSS, see the ineffectiveness and vicious cycle these people are trapped in.

Spending has ramped up dramatically in these areas and yet the results are either not improved or worse...

What would you consider "adequately funding" our social programs.

More government(especially federal) is not the answer. Your type is always saying, just a bit more, just a bit bigger, even when things get even worse you think a bigger government can fix it.

How blind you are not to see that the government often caused the problem to begin with.

You have a logical point but I think everyone understood what I was saying just fine - so your point does not apply to the reality and context of the situation. Some might say you are "trolling" myself, I think that you are just very anal.

>...is fundamentally flawed. The theoretical efficiency of competitive markets is intimately tied to the assumption that both the benefits and costs are known to and born by the participants in the decision making processes, aligning rational self-interest with efficient decision making. In the charities competing for money from givers to provide services to those in need, the features which make markets theoretically efficient do not apply.

Your argument may again carry weight by logical reasoning, but that is your fallacy. The competition would be maintained by the citizens emotional and humane (these are not logical things) drive to see the money coming out of their pocket actually directly and effectively help someone in a meaningful and lasting manner. That is what the competition is all about.

>That's because bad news is good for selling media (the perception that the world is a dangerous place and you need to keep consuming the media source from which you got that impression to know where the next imminent danger is very useful to holding an audience, independently of any connection it has to real circumstances), not because lives aren't turned around by welfare and other social services.

You missed my point. I was merely stating this example because the majority of people never see any tax dollars taken from their paycheck helping a fellow citizen. They never see any emotional or inspiring linked good come of it. The majority see what is in their local community and what is on the news. They have no natural connection to the needy. This is a very bad thing IMO.

But most people doing this are still experiencing a net negative. You might donate $1000 to save $200 off your taxes. This is a rather small incentive.

>No, you would have charities spending this money on advertising and gimmicks to get their share of your dollar. Some charities today spend large proportions of their budgets advertising and engaging in lawsuits (e.g. Susan B Komen)

Fine, but these organizations would not last. People want results, not more/better commercials. Did you not read my whole post? I mentioned that these orgs would be performance analyzed and all the data published. All their financial records would be public.

>What the government does is use it's uniquely large scale to help people. Education, healthcare, housing, welfare - for many countries in the world, having the government provide these services results in an relatively efficient system. I for one would rather pay the Medicare Levy in Australia than pay for private healthcare in the US - last time I was living there, the US system left me about $1500 worse off, and that was a year without any medical mishaps.

It is far from efficient, even if it was - the greatest benefit would be humanizing citizens (this would naturally branch into and benefit many other facets of society). Also I am talking about welfare/social services here, not medical services.

With this system, people are going to be watching things a bit closer. They are personally vested in this whole process.

I never said that there would be no rules or regulations. If fact, I mentioned that the government would be needed for this purpose. I don't claim that there would be no abuses, but I can't see how it could possibly be as riddled with abuse as our current system. I think with the taxpaying citizens personally involved, they will demand a high level of adherence and enforcement. They will also feel a greater sense of personal violation when someone they know abuses the system. I know several people who claim that they know so and so who are collecting welfare and making all kinds of money under the table. If they feel a personal with that money and that system, they are more likely to report that person or at least discourage them. Likewise, the fraudster is going to feel more pressure by the whole movement to avoid committing the abuse.

Almost everyone wants to help needy people. Most are just too busy, don't want to see that part of society, or don't know how to get involved.

If someone that you knew said that you could pay $1000 less in taxes next year if you looked through a list of families that needed help and wrote a check to them for $1000, how many people do yo think would refuse?

Do you think that they would spend more than 30 seconds randomly looking through the list for the person they will be helping?

The government largely only cares about that family in terms of employment and re-election. They are nothing but a number in a database somewhere. Most people don't even know the level of suffering some people right here in the good ol USA go through on a daily basis. The more money that one has, the more insulated from that reality they are. This will provide a window at least.

This illustration does not exactly follow the original concept, but hopefully you get the idea of an individual vs govt.

Where on earth did you get "new form of government" and "revolution" from? I am merely suggesting that social services be reformed heavily. This is certainly something that could be evaluated on a small scale (state level perhaps). I do realize that while the concept is simple, the implementation would be far more complex.

Everyone here keeps coming up with all these wild reasons of why this is a bad idea. Funny thing is, almost all their reasons (such as corruption, fraud, ETC.) already exist in the system today. I am not saying that there would not be any regulations, oversight, ETC. I am also not saying that there wold never be abuses. All I am saying is that the government is certainly not the best at getting this type of job done and tax money going to the poor and people not even seeing it happen is dehumanizing us.

Please have a better argument than semantics and proper English usage. Everyone knows what I am talking about.

Also, if this is forced labor, so if mandatory tax filing, mandatory Obamacare ETC.

Every study on the subject has consistently found that giving creates a sense of happiness and fulfillment. These feelings more often than not encourage the givers to give more, to encourage others to give and to also give their time and efforts (not just money) to help others. It increases their humanity.

Why would people giving to someone of their choice (the receivers are of course qualified recipients) and seeing the good it does that person VS the government taking the money out of your pocket, wasting half of it and spending the other half on programs that under perform cause more trouble?

I may very well be wrong here, but I don't think someone with your opinion has ever given directly to a needy person...

What if you could take the percentage of taxes that you spend every year and choose whom to help with it. Of course those who were receiving it would have to fulfill certain requirements, but wow what a concept. How about deducting some amount from that mandatory contribution of the person were to volunteer in the community?

We would have charities all over the place competing for this money, competition would produce far better results than the abysmal record of the state/federal social services. Many people may even give the money as cash to some people - personally. Have government oversight review and publish how well any charitable organization is doing at helping people become self reliant financially and socially (this will separate the wheat from the chaff).

People may actually become caring and have empathy for these people that they are helping. When people help others, they become happier people. Many people may even donate more money on top of the required amount and volunteer or switch careers to one that helps those in need.

Imaging that. That is something that no government could ever accomplish.

The government really de-humanizes people. It takes our money and does some things to help people. We never see this happen directly. The government keeps the bums and beggars out of sight so we never even see them. The government jails drug attics and other impoverished criminals so we never see them either.

All we ever see from the media is bad news. We never see lives being turned around from welfare or other social services.

My money says that once people start taking care of each other, their humanity will grow 1000% ala the Grinch.

Government entities in my experience are the most wasteful and ineffective organizations that I have ever seen. Couple that with the teachers unions and who is actually surprised that the education system gets worse every year?

No government agency would survive if it were a private company. The quality and quantity of work that it produces and for the huge sums of money that it costs/wastes - would cause it to go belly up in a matter of months.

There has got to be a better way.

Imagine if Steve Jobs followed this path. Imaging if everyone did. Does financial success while doing something arduous for 40 years make for happiness? This seems counter intuitive.

We would have no innovation if there was no passion. We wouldn't even have electricity...

Child care definitely means someone else caring for you child wither it be a nanny, pre-school, day-care, after school care ETC.

I agree with you about the parent staying at home bit. I really think that most people could still do it (like my wife and I do), but they would have to live frugally and not listen to the women's lib Hollywood+Media+peers who are telling them that they are losers if they don't get a career outside of the home and leave the child rearing to a stranger (This sounds so wrong but that is ultimately what they are saying).

Quality of life should not be measured by wealth because wealth will never buy you happiness and never will raise your kids as well as you could have done it.

I just went to Verizon and chose a free SmartPhone (Droid 4) with a 500MB data plan. It was $80/mo 2 yr contract

I can buy that phone outright (brand new) for $300.

If I go to PagePlus (Verizon MVNO) and sign up for their $1200 Minute, $3000 Text/MMS 500MB $30/mo plan here is what I paid after two years.

Verizon - $80 * 24 = $1,920

PagePlus - $30 * 24 + $300 (phone) + $50 roaming (average usage cost for 2 yrs) = $1,020

And what did I get for my $900 difference? (That is $37.50/mo BTW) A big "Verizon" label on my phone, and a two year contract.

You could get two plans and phones from PagePlus and still pay less.

I realize that there are other factors like level of customer service, and no roaming charges that VZW and ATT die-hards will tell you about. Well, in my experience, the service is no better and most people almost never use roaming service while using a Verizon MVNO. I would say that i have only spent around $20 in the last two years from roaming.

Other factiods: Have Verizon or ATT and want to change your plan options (Minutes, Data amount ETC)? Sure - that will require a new two year contract. Don't want a new phone. Well you will still be paying the same regardless. Break the contract and you will still pay the same penalty. This seems to refute your claim that you are just paying back a subsidy.

Want a new phone with your new contract? OK, choose a "free" one from a list whose retail prices have a $150-$200 difference in price. Are you going to pay less per month if you opt for the cheaper (3g) free one? If your statement was true you should.

Windows has 20x (probably more) good games than linux, is as stable, comes already loaded on almost every machine you buy, has a far larger choice of other apps, Everyone is used to the windows experience (although win 8 changes that), and maybe most importantly - it has a user base that is 20x that of desktop Linux (you won't be able to play most of your friends in a Linux exclusive game today).

The claim in this article may be true someday, but today is not that day. Linux has a LOT more ground to make up before this article/premise can actually hold water.

Kids who go to day care with other older, talking kids should be brilliant.

I am sure that there are many other no-brainier situations when kids hear more words and have more conversations and are not smarter as well.

Why do these big scientific articles like this always seem so trivially flawed and ridiculous? Is is just me?

There is no way to really getting around learning hardware. Who is going to write the hardware interface drivers or driver/JavaScript bridge.

Power consumption will rule out the possibility of many portable devices, loss of performance will rule out many options as well as will latency caused by the garbage collected (non real time) nature.

Unfairly? Most of these people or their parents snuck into this country, breaking the law. They knew full well the down side. How is this unfair? Isn't it more unfair that taxpayers have to pay their medical and education bills? and no they don't save the average person enough money on produce and services to make up the difference - this is a lie propagated by the handful of wealthy persons who actually benefit from their presence.

How can people be so blind?

"If you poll the majority of Americans, they want to get something done" (speaking on the illegal immigration situation)

Yeah Mark, you know darn well that most Americans want the borders secure, illegals deported. In other words - The public largely wants the laws of the country actually enforced (wow what a notion).

If you want more of a comparison of how wasteful (non efficient) and ineffective public schools are - just compare them to equivalent private schools. They turn out better test scores and spend around 25% that of public schools per student.

Are you saying that a poor kid does not start to realize that they are poor by their own observations pretty early on? Mom, can we eat at that restaurant. Mom, why don't we get a car like other people have? Mom, why don't we have a telephone like people on TV do? Why am I wearing worn out clothes, socks and shoes? Why do we eat lentils, rice or beans for every meal? ETC...

I grew up poor and knew we were poor from very early on. Not because anyone stigmatized me either. It was blatantly obvious. If everyone else around me and on TV had was in the exact same financial circumstances that we lived in.

Even in your case, I don't see the point of your statement. Is it to place blame on the haves for persecuting the have nots? This is America. I realize that being poor may negatively affect social status among peers, but I don't consider this a limitation. Look at immigrants/refugees. Not only do they act, look, eat, smell and talk differently. They are also minorities and poor. They have far less going for them at first glance. They are stigmatized for a host of reasons.

A deeper look reveals that they have two assets that most inner city kids do not have. A strong determination to work hard/succeed and a strong family presence to reinforce and encourage that determination.

My guess is that if you had a strong full family with a father at home who taught you kids to believe in yourselves and not to listen to naysayers things would have been much different in your life (even if you still were dirt poor)

Why do I think that? Because that is my story. There are popular poor kids and there are unpopular rich kids. Same with fat kids, skinny kids, athletic, clumsy, ugly, handsome ETC. The biggest determining factor is how much self confidence they have. When people truly believe in themselves, they will rise to the top. Their peers will believe as they do. That they are valuable to others.

The government "nanny" will continue to try to replace God and family, but it will never even come close to succeeding. The more the government tries, the worse things get. No amount of money will ever replace what a child gets from being reared in a good healthy and loving family.

Nothing will ever keep a family together like a true belief and faith in God can. Broken families are a result of selfishness. The government does nothing but promote more selfishness.