Have you changed your vote?

[smoothmoniker]

... and yet every speech since then has laid out the ways in which he thinks government SHOULD solve all of your problems. Doesn't count.

[BigV]

From here:

Originally Posted by Barak Obama

What -- what is that American promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now.

If you withhold your vote until that condition is met, sm, you'll never vote. I appreciate the spirit, though.

I think in every case I've seen like the one you describe, the individuals are relating personal stories, and the candidate replies to the larger public, transforming the question (and the corresponding answer) to the closest match to some public policy he espouses. Each candidate is in the business of saying yes. Even when it is pronounced "no" they're implicitly saying yes, I'll do that for you.

Saying, "that sucks, but it's not the government's job to fix that problem" is not going to happen. People want government to fix stuff, by action or restraint. You might well see that arrangement of slyly edited out of context quotes assembled into a self incriminating mashup by each worthy opponent. But neither one will tell any voter "Grow up, I'm not your mommy or daddy."

[Pico and ME]

I believe that a society should provide a safety net for those who fall through the cracks. What about the elderly who cannot afford healthcare...should they just go off into the woods and die? What about single mothers rasing their children on minimum wage? Should their children be deprived of adequate nutrition and healthcare...because government should not have to solve that problem?

[Juniper]

The trouble is, these politicians SAY this is the way things should be, then go and do the opposite. Doh.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Juniper

The trouble is, these politicians SAY this is the way things should be, then go and do the opposite. Doh.

That's because the truth is always unpalatable to some (regardless whch camp you're in) and because the soundbite media culture trims down anything any politician says into a devastating body blow to their campaign. They have to paint a picture that fits within fairly narrow confines.

Fundamental problems require fundamental solutions, big ideas. Unfortunately big ideas are about as dangerous a thing for a politician to express as one can possibly imagine. If what you have to say is logical and sensible, it matters not one jot. By the time the media have finished with the words that came out of your mouth, they've turned you into a dangerous communist, or a self-serving oligarch.

Individual people are pretty damn smart. Taken as a body, they make up the public and the public isn't smart, it's easily manipulated. It's easily manipulated, because it exists (by its nature) in the public sphere, and the public sphere is the media's demesne. The 24 hour news channel is King, in the realm where public opinion is formed. And the political world defers to it absolutely. It has to, It's not about the ideas, now. It's about navigating the path to the White house, trying to simultaneously inspire with change whilst reassuring with continuity.

This is the price of mass engagement in the public sphere. Big ideas get spun out into the media, where heavily biased news shows use them to create moral panic at the prospect of the other side's candidate winning. With each campaign team complicit in creating this destructive environment by throwing as much dirt as they can dig on the other (overtly or covertly taking said dirt to the public), they have effectively trapped themselves in very narrow pass. Too many concepts have become politically suicidal even to contemplate.

People don't want big ideas. We might think we do. We might even crave them. We want leaders who are capable of solving our most pressing national problems and leading us into stability and prosperity. The trouble is that requires big ideas. It requires political bravery. We don't like big ideas, we fight them. We don't like brave politicians, we don't elect them.

Unsurprisingly we (on both sides of the pond) have elected more and more craven and self-serving politicians and fewer and fewer brave politicians (or maybe I am being unfair) to high offices.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

I believe that a society should provide a safety net for those who fall through the cracks. What about the elderly who cannot afford healthcare...should they just go off into the woods and die? What about single mothers rasing their children on minimum wage? Should their children be deprived of adequate nutrition and healthcare...because government should not have to solve that problem?

Why are single women who make minimum wage having children? And why does it become the government's responsibility?

[Pico and ME]

How do you propose stopping these women from having children?

I was grabbing for any examples.

In a smaller community people can easily band together to provide assistance for those among them in need. But in our larger society that is much harder to do...so what happens to those still in need?

[lookout123]

Single shot to the back of the head?

[HungLikeJesus]

Sorry P&ME, I was just giving you a hard time.

(My mom was single with three kids under the age of 5 and no real job skills.)

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

How do you propose stopping these women from having children?

I was grabbing for any examples.

In a smaller community people can easily band together to provide assistance for those among them in need. But in our larger society that is much harder to do...so what happens to those still in need?

The problem comes in when being needy becomes a lifestyle. The difficult issue is how to help those in temporary need without helping those who could be helping themselves.

Then there are some people who can never help themselves -- the severely retarded, the insane, the crippled. How do you help them without providing dole for the guy who has a 'bad back'.

[Shawnee123]

And how do you fairly help the single mother who lost a husband, or he up and left, or he just never cared to be in the picture, without aiding the professional child-bearers? You can't. So, in helping those truly in need you will always have the system players. No one with any heart at all wants to see a kid suffer because their parents are numnuts. For some, the children are a pawn in the game to get more for themselves.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

And how do you fairly help the single mother who lost a husband, or he up and left, or he just never cared to be in the picture, without aiding the professional child-bearers? You can't.

I think we can do a lot better than we've been doing.

Limit support to two children born during or after receiving ADC.
Limit support to five years. (If you can't get a GED and a job after five years, then there are other issues).

This is off-the-cuff. But I think this or something similar would greatly reduce the pcbs.

[DanaC]

So, in helping those truly in need you will always have the system players.

This is a really important point. Whilst you can write the rules and forge the system in such a way as to minimise the risk of freeloaders taking what is meant as a safety net, there is no way to stop it entirely. I think that's something you need to decide, as a society, if you are prepared to accept or not. The price of helping those who need it, is that you will almost certainly end up helping those who don't.

We've ploughed money and resources into the system to try and stop benefit fraud. We've made it harder and harder to access help and brought in more and more processes by which recipients prove themselves to be in need and doing everything they're supposed to do. The end result of that is we spend more on fighing fraud than we lose to that fraud in the first place. Meanwhile the genuine claimants have been stigmatised and humiliated by our attempts to root out the freeloaders.

We consistently choose short term populism over effective management of the system to the detriment of all. It is unpopular to tell people that freeloaders are an inherent part of the benefits system and that by far the most sensible strategy is to put in place enough scrutiny to prevent mass abuse, but not to waste public money trying to make it watertight. It is right and sensible to investigate and prosecute the woman who's lied and said she lives alone, claiming help with rent and living expenses whilst her partner runs his own business and earns thousands a month. It is not right and sensible (in my mind) to spend public money every November, chasing down some single mum who's got herself a cash in hand part-time Christmas job to pay for presents for her kids.

Personally, I'd really rather take the risk that someone is taking the piss and working on a building site whilst pretending he's not working, than make some guy who's had a nervous breakdown and isn't coping jump through hoop after hoop and go through processes and schemes which seem designed to humiliate and accuse.

People in desperate and unhappy cirumstances are likely to find it more difficult to make good/useful decisions about their lives. The reason people become 'comfortable' with unemployment, is not because being unemployed is comfortable. It's the exact opposite. If people are engaged in a permanently adversarial relationship with the state (interviews where people feel accused and humiliated and have to justify themselves to 'trainers' who talk to them like they're 5; compulsory courses that are badly run and make no real attempt to help people; 'community service' that is actually working a job for the pittance the state gives them; forced into jobs that they aren't suited to), it promotes a kind of siege mentality, a cutting off from the working world. That can very quickly become generational if an area suddenly loses its main industry in a time of high unemployment overall.

Once that adversarial relationship is setup it becomes very difficult for the state to help that person. They meanwhile become less able to help themselves, by making useful decisions the more desperately poor they become. If you feel like your life is closing in, it's very tempting to just shut down the outside and shrink your horizons to fit the room. Shut down your horizons to fit your little community of equally poor friends. Within your horizon you may be comfortable. If you feel like there isn't really a way in to that other, wider world for you (for whatever reason), then you will seek to be comfortable and 'successful' within the confines of your world. Shrink that world further and you just shrink those horizons further. Demonise those who live in that world, and that cannot help but feed into their sense of self, making them even less likely to break out.

We built the dependency culture in the UK, not by being too generous, but by being too cruel. We stripped away benefits just as people most needed them (during the recession and massive unemployment). We brutalised an entire generation of (particularly northern) youngsters in areas where there really was nothing for them. We lived by the motto "there is no such thing as society" for 13 years and whilst that built us a huge and really quite prosperous middle class, it also created an underclass. We have systematically failed to understand the driving forces which maintain that underclass in those areas where it remains entrenched.

More carrot, less stick and a dignified starting point. That's how people start making better decisions for themselves.



Logic dictates that faced with such a situation people should try and find a job and get out of it. Psychology and logic aren't always aligned, however, and when dealing with people it's probably worth playing to psychology rather more than to logic.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by dar512

Then there are some people who can never help themselves -- the severely retarded, the insane, the crippled. How do you help them without providing dole for the guy who has a 'bad back'.

I would think that private charities, run by real people with real common sense, would do a better job than impersonal government workers whos hands are tied by red tape.

If the state did a better job at all the private shit it involves itself in it would make sense to leave it up to them... but really, look around...

[lookout123]

I absolutely agree with you Jinx. Private organizations can tell free loaders "no. now fuck off and get a job". Government can't because everytime we have a guideline to take care of some issue, we have a lobbyist and a politician using anecdotal evidence to stretch the boundaries to cover THEIR idea. Then another lobbyist and pol using...