bounty44
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quote:
ORIGINAL: slvemike4u
quote:
ORIGINAL: JVoV
The US government doesn't usually stand in the way of NGO's. Our leaders encourage volunteerism and charity every chance they get.
If NGO's haven't been able to end poverty with the government's help, they sure as hell wouldn't be able to without it. (And vice versa)
That much should be pretty obvious to anyone....not blinded by ideology or accustomed to finding answers to todays issues by reading the bible.
your ignorance of and contempt for the bible front and center, jesus said "the poor you will always have with you..." argue with him.
so there is no "ending" of poverty. the question isn't one of ending poverty, but rather, what is the best response to it to help the people who find themselves in it.
my contention wasn't that government shouldn't be involved, it was that to the extent they are, it effects what others do. and its not that government gets in the way of others by purposely/consciously stopping them---I see it like this:
consider you are poor---you have a choice of turning to welfare and food stamps and other government aid or you could turn to your family or the local church or your neighbors or local charity. many, if not most, will choose the government route and one reason they do, is because of the impersonal nature of the source.
consider that the government provides less, but there is still need. those needs could be, might be, and should be, met by the sources ive mentioned above but they wont be to the extent they might be, so long as the government is doing it.
but, for those of you whose god is government, and cannot see the human condition being helped apart from government, know that there are many of us who don't buy into your paradigm, which has perpetually been a failure.
"The War on Poverty After 50 Years"
quote:
In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began...Today, government spends 16 times more, adjusting for inflation, on means-tested welfare or anti-poverty programs than it did when the War on Poverty started. But as welfare spending soared, the decline in poverty came to a grinding halt. As Chart 2 shows, the more the government spent, the less progress against poverty was made...Although President Johnson intended the War on Poverty to increase Americans’ capacity for self-support, exactly the opposite has occurred. The vast expansion of the welfare state has dramatically weakened the capacity for self-sufficiency among many Americans by eroding the work ethic and undermining family structure....This lack of progress in building self-sufficiency is due in major part to the welfare system itself. Welfare wages war on social capital, breaking down the habits and norms that lead to self-reliance, especially those of marriage and work. It thereby generates a pattern of increasing intergenerational dependence. The welfare state is self-perpetuating: By undermining productive social norms, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-poverty-after-50-years
but then, results don't really matter to liberals compared to the feeling they get from promoting government "do gooding."
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RE: Kansans can't spend cash assistance on bras or undies - 
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