[ModernMech]

Yup, what’s more, is that people who are not trying to help have inserted themselves into the money flow.

Take the intensive case management for instance. If you are severely disabled and in need of assistance, the state will pay for a case manager to help you with life.

Case managers are paid $7 an hour when alone, $14 with a client. When they are with a client, they are instructed to do mostly paperwork. The goal here is to not actually help people, but to fill out paperwork in proximity to them to collect state funds, while paying social workers peanuts without benefits. So the case manager helping the impoverished is herself, financially insecure.

So where is all the money going?

A company manages the case managers, and they pocket the bulk of state funds. The management, board, and directors all live in very large houses and drive very expensive cars. Case managers drive 2002 Honda Accords without AC or a radio. Clients live in squalor, just happy to have someone doing their paperwork nearby. This is the American caste system.

So I think you can see, even when we fund social services, the money still ends up in the hands of the wealthy. It’s just what capitalism is designed to do.

[indymike]

> It’s just what capitalism is designed to do.

Capitalism is simply allowing private citizens to own, in part or full, the means of production such as farms and businesses. I'm not sure that capitalism is responsible for a decision about dispersing government money to create terrible jobs resulting in mismanagement and horrible customer service.

> money still ends up in the hands of the wealthy

I think the definition of wealthy requires money end up in someone's hands.

[fuzzfactor]

>simply allowing private citizens to own, in part or full, the means of production such as farms and businesses.

To me this is just free enterprise and private property rights.

Capitalism is more like when the strength of the capital itself gives it a significant or outsized influence compared to the fundamental enterprise and private ownership interest.

Usually when Other People's Money is involved in ways where a chain of resources & debt is built that can influence enterprise and ownership in ways that might not take place otherwise.

Both positive and negative outcomes can be leveraged or exaggerated, for instance in the case of a benevolent capitalist compared to a greedy one.

Edit: not my downvote, bump back up from me

[indymike]

> To me this is just free enterprise and private property rights.

Capitalism is just a system which allows private citizens to own the means of production.

Everything else is just people trying to overload a word to create a savior or boogey man.

Thank you for the vote correction.

[none_to_remain]

So you latch on to the outsourced part and complain about capitalism, or we could latch on to the government-funded part and complain about socialism.

I think more than capitalism v. socialism here the problem is that we are governed by filth who are looting public treasuries for themselves and their buddies.

[lr4444lr]

That's not how I read his comment at all: if the government grants are not doled out with oversight, it's entirely rational for greedy actors to minimize the dollars ultimately reaching the intended targets.

[prottog]

> we are governed by filth who are looting public treasuries for themselves and their buddies.

Hence the conservative ideal of smaller government with limited powers, so that there is both less to loot from as well as a lesser ability for those in power to direct those treasures to themselves.

[HarryHirsch]

And then it's put into practice and it looks like Alabama, they are running the natural experiment in Alabama since 1901, the 1901 constitution and its impacts on the state are well-known.

To get any kind of local tax raised, the local authority has to go through the oligarch-controlled legislature in Montgomery, where it would be shot down. And like that you end up with county roads on a 70-year replacement schedule.

[ModernMech]

I'm focusing on the bad actors, who are the ones extracting all of the money from the system as profit. That's what makes this dysfunctional. If they were gone, the people trying to help would have more resources. Notably, these people hold titles associated with the artifices of capitalism. The social worker doesn't need a board of directors. She knows what needs to be done. It's the board of directors who need the social worker -- not to fix anything, but to do the appearance of work while they collect rent checks from the government. It's disgusting.

We can imagine this enterprise organized another way which actually helps people. Fewer Ferrari dealerships would make sales, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.