| > How about you act like a decent human being instead of making ridiculous strawman arguments against me? Love the calls for civility from the person proposing that anti-discrimination laws were bad. Also "the free baby market" isn't really a leap from any of these hardcore libertarian views. > In Western countries in general, social welfare spending is substantially higher now, as a percentage of GDP, than it was before the 1970s. Social democracy on the scale we have today is a relatively recent phenomenon. This has absolutely nothing to do with program expansion, it has to do with an aging population. It's an increased percentage of GDP because the population is skewing older:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs... > Regarding your claim that welfare reform has had "horrendous" consequences, it is overly narrow and simply assumes no broader and longer-term negative consequences from compulsory income redistribution. We can debate about how absurd it is to say that the 50% of the population who can't work (and would provide basically nil extra productivity to the labor force if they were unjustly forced to rejoin it) shouldn't have income redistributed to them, but I suspect this is a point of philosophy we'll never agree on. |
You say that as if saying anti-discrimination laws are wrong is uncivil. That is just whole different level of close-mindedness and intolerance to ideological unorthodoxy. I'm half-expecting you to call me a heretic.
You're completely missing the fact that I consider forcing (through threats of imprisonment) people to surrender their private property as a punishment for private discrimination to be extremely uncivil, due to its use of violence.
>Also "the free baby market" isn't really a leap from any of these hardcore libertarian views.
Deal with my arguments, not straw man arguments that you conjecture into existence.
>This has absolutely nothing to do with program expansion, it has to do with an aging population.
You clearly didn't read it.
Annual spending growth on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):
Pensions and retirement: 4.4%
Healthcare: 5.7%
Welfare: 4.1%
Annual economic growth over the time frame:
2.7%
Now that I've substantiated my claim that welfare AND social welfare spending have grown tremendously, you're trying to move the goalposts. You ridiculed me with your snarky put-down when I made the claim, and it turned out to be absolutely correct.
Your "but but" argument just shows how far your intellectual dishonesty goes.
>We can debate about how absurd it is to say that the 50% of the population who can't work (and would provide basically nil extra productivity to the labor force if they were unjustly forced to rejoin it) shouldn't have income redistributed to them,
Should we throw people in prison for not living up to your moral standards and giving to the poor?
You're ignoring this authoritarian aspect of what you're endorsing.