Do you think there could be a second Great Depression?

[LizzieMaine]

I think the example of the first Great Depression is instructive. Private charity, private altruism were *utterly incapable* of dealing with a crisis of that magnitude -- far too many people were, literally, reduced to eating garbage to survive. There's no reason whatever to think they'd be any more capable or any more *willing* to deal with an even greater crash in our own time, and given the degradation of human nature over the last thirty years or so, there's probably good reason to think they'd rather just round up the poor people and shoot them.

 

[William Stratford]

Yes, but it's the common man acting as a group, where you will find people with conflicting interests. I like to think we get a little of the effect of Rawls' veil of ignorance that way.

That does not require a govt though; people acting together in the "little platoons" of civil society can achieve the same result.

I think the example of the first Great Depression is instructive. Private charity, private altruism were *utterly incapable* of dealing with a crisis of that magnitude -- far too many people were, literally, reduced to eating garbage to survive. There's no reason whatever to think they'd be any more capable or any more *willing* to deal with an even greater crash in our own time, and given the degradation of human nature over the last thirty years or so, there's probably good reason to think they'd rather just round up the poor people and shoot them.

Looking at contemporary society, I would tend to agree (as "noblesse oblige" has been all but wiped from the land by a pincer attack from Capitalism on one side and Socialism on the other). That said, I similarly do not see govt as able to meet the needs of the people during a crash - too many have for too long bought into Public Choice that in the event of a crash they will not give a monkey's about the poor either.

 

[Undertow]

...and given the degradation of human nature over the last thirty years or so, there's probably good reason to think they'd rather just round up the poor people and shoot them.

That or convince them they should only work for borrowing-benefits at the company store. Or wait...maybe they're already setting us up for that...
:flock:

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Second American Civil War anyone? Because unfortunately that's where I think this country is headed.

 

[AmateisGal]

Second American Civil War anyone? Because unfortunately that's where I think this country is headed.

I seriously don't think that's too far off the mark...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Only it won't be a war between states. It'll be a class war. In fact, we're already soaking in it.

Remember the Spirit of '37!

 

[AmateisGal]

Only it won't be a war between states. It'll be a class war. In fact, we're already soaking in it.

Bingo.

 

[vitanola]

Bear in mind that seventy cents out every tax dollar that government spends on welfare programs (or anything else for that matter) is eaten away by "administrative overhead."

That is simply untrue.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Federal "Administrative Overhead" for the SNAP (Food Stamp) program in FY2011 were 4.7% including employment and training services. State administrative costs were an addtional 3.9%. 91.4% of the funds directly reach the beneficiaries. I know of precious few charities with this record.

The CBO claims 2.2% overhead on the Medicare/Medicaid program, far, far less than the 14 to 30% reported by the insurance industry itself. In 2006, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, an insurance industry lobbying group, estimated that Medicare overhead was actually 5.6%, when the costs of collecting the taxes were included, but it turns out that their figures assumed that the entire cost of administering the FICA program was to be charged to Medicare/Medicaid. The actual figure, with the costs of collection figured in would be somewhere between 2.2% and 5.6%. Again, far better than the the figures reported by the industry itself.

According to the CBO, the Housing Voucher program (commonly known as "Section Eight") gets 90.9% of its funding to its target, rent for low income tenants. This has been confirmed by the Office of Management and Budget. The program is administered almost entirely at the state level, and so there is some duplication of effort in the fifty administrative centers.

The OMB has determined that 92.8 percent of spending went for benefit payments to beneficiaries in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, with administrative costs accounting for the remaining 7.2 percent. That figure includes the federal government’s own administrative costs (5.2 percent) as well as the costs of the states’ Disability Determination Services (2.0 percent), which are reimbursed by the federal government.

0.9 percent of federal spending for the school lunch and breakfast programs went for federal administrative costs, while 1.6 percent went for federal support for state administrative costs. The rest, 97.5 percent, went to schools to subsidize their costs in operating the school meals programs.

Over 99 percent of Earned Income Tax Credit dollars went directly to households receiving the EITC, with the IRS estimating that its administrative costs amounted to less than 1 percent of EITC.

Not much like the mythical "70%", is it?

 

[vitanola]

Only it won't be a war between states. It'll be a class war. In fact, we're already soaking in it.

Remember the Spirit of '37!

The other side remembers it, and the Spirit of '86, and of '92, and of '94. It does not appear as if they intend to repeat their mistakes.

 

[Flicka]

That does not require a govt though; people acting together in the "little platoons" of civil society can achieve the same result.

Absolutely, if those little 'platoons' were held together by the same sort of binding, structural rules you would find in a country's constitution. But then, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are that it actually is a duck.

 

[William Stratford]

Absolutely, if those little 'platoons' were held together by the same sort of binding, structural rules you would find in a country's constitution. But then, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are that it actually is a duck.

They are - peer pressure existed a long time before government appeared. The thing that weakens peer pressure is mobility - when people can move around where-ever they like, they can leave a community whose rules they have broken and set up somewhere else (until they break the new rules and move on again). The biggest enemy of social cohesion is such mobility. Only when you have little chance of "escape" do you have to make an effort to stick to the rules. Where there is an easy out, many people choose to take it...

The anonymity of the internet is somewhat similar, as people can be abusive (troll), get banned from somewhere, and then pop up with a whole new identity to start again.

Society falls apart when the people in it become insulated from each other, whether by mobility, anonymity or a level of power that makes them independent. It is organic inter-dependency that promotes social cohesion. If you have to enforce it mechanically, from a State, you are fighting against the tide (usually because such a society is addicted to the power of the things that are also pulling it apart).

 

[Flicka]

It still quacks, though, only without the added benefits of the right to a fair trial and other such trifles that I, personally, value very much.

I fear we shall never agree. It makes me no leSs certain I'm right, though.

ETA: not that I may not be leds, I just don't know what it means.

 

[William Stratford]

It still quacks, though, only without the added benefits of the right to a fair trial and other such trifles that I, personally, value very much.

That is a presumption born as much of both pro-Statist (and past-hating pro-progressivist) propaganda as it is anything else - the standard line that people in the past were fools or monsters whilst "we" modern folk are all sophisticated and superior to them both morally and practically. The right to a fair trial is no more a product of state government than of pre-state communities. The govt is no more able to be unbiased than any other gathering or group of people.

Fair trials (for example) come about primarily when people care about their neighbours, and secondarily, if that care is not present, as a practical self-servicing end as one day it could be they too on trial. Such does not need a state government.

But yes, I doubt that we will be finding agreement here.

 

[Flicka]

That is a presumption born as much of both pro-Statist (and past-hating pro-progressivist) propaganda as it is anything else - the standard line that people in the past were fools or monsters whilst "we" modern folk are all sophisticated and superior to them both morally and practically.

No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that people - of any place and any era - are, not monsters, but inherently selfish. Actually, you are the one who claim that modern man would, if free from the burden of State, behave in a way very different from the way empirism tells us people usually do. That may be so, but looking around me, I see no evidence of it. However, maybe you feel that injustices are unusal in groups where there is no government present? In that case, I simply have to assume we've not read the same anthropology and history books.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think, unfortunately, that for most of humanity laws, and the weight of potential sanction under them, are the only glue that holds on the veneer of civilization. People refrain from stealing not because they have a moral objection to theft, but because they're afraid of what will happen to them if they get caught. Remove the laws -- remove the State -- and all hell breaks loose. Anarchy only works in the imagination of fifteen-year-old boys -- and we all know how "Lord Of The Flies" turns out.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As the middle class continues to ride for a catastrophic fall, here's an article from a few years back that cuts to the heart of a lot of the problem: just because modern society thinks it can ignore the working class doesn't mean they aren't there. This guy seems to be one of the very few middle-class types I've come across who truly seems to get it.

 

[Angus Forbes]

I was floored when I read the essayist's take on "All in the family," (AITF) where he mentions its realistic depiction of material circumstances, or some such thing. In actuality, AITF was a hateful, despicable portrayal of working-class Whites (not to mention a new low, for the time, in the quality of TV programming). Growing up in Baltimore I met a lot of guys with roughly the same social position as Archie Bunker. Believe me, in real life they were good men almost universally, and had virtually none of Archie's supposed characteristics. AITF was simply hateful.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I was floored when I read the essayist's take on "All in the family," (AITF) where he mentions its realistic depiction of material circumstances, or some such thing. In actuality, AITF was a hateful, despicable portrayal of working-class Whites (not to mention a new low, for the time, in the quality of TV programming). Growing up in Baltimore I met a lot of guys with roughly the same social position as Archie Bunker. Believe me, in real life they were good men almost universally, and had virtually none of Archie's supposed characteristics. AITF was simply hateful.

I know Lizzie and I commented on this someplace. I love the show and disagree with you. Strongly. Maybe I can find my posts.

 

[Angus Forbes]

Edit -- Whoops, I mis-read your comment, PSG . . . please disregard my fleeting response if you saw it. Thanks -- AF

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Edit -- Whoops, I mis-read your comment, PSG . . . please disregard my fleeting response if you saw it. Thanks -- AF

No problem! I did a search but am getting too many threads to sort through. Still looking.