[mothballed]

If you're asking me personally, on this topic? Wide open borders, not even a wall, zero employment eligibility checks, but no welfare. Only way to win is to also benefit others in voluntary trade or seek voluntary charity. I have no problem with "illegal" immigrants, only those who purposefully target and drain the coffers of Americans by popping in for a citizen-baby and then run every public benefit available with their anchor baby.

Part of the reason why immigrants were so successful and beneficial in the 1870-1920 era boom was that labor was so badly needed in the burgeoning age of industry. But really, the other half is there was no other option -- you did something productive or you were completely fucked.

[skulk]

I'm asking you, is this really such a big problem that it requires getting rid of welfare? Is the US financially in trouble because it pays out welfare to undeserving layabouts? I seriously doubt it.

[mothballed]

Yes im absolutely certain the broken redistribution system is one of the most pressing problems in US, but of course its not the only one. Not because recipients dont "deserve" a living but rather it poisons the productive and it provides the wrong incentives to recipients while conditioning them to depend on a bloated government that now has total leverage on their life (and of course, virtually assured votes to whoever are bribing recipients with OPM redistributed away from the big bad other voter), all while speed running towards a ruinous national debt even if they deserved the moon and stars and were paid it.

[skulk]

Well, I do agree that the redistribution system is absolutely broken. Most welfare recipients do in fact work (and benefit others) but our capitalist redistribution system has decided that they don't deserve to live with dignity, leaving the centrally planned redistribution system to pick up the slack.

[mothballed]

The fallacy here is you're trying to frame things in terms of "deserving." An African child deserves life and wealth as much as an American one. A guy slaving 16 hours a day ripping shingles off of roofs "deserves" a mansion and high-dollar escorts as much as the playboy heir of some mega-corp. Some starving African child probably deserves to rip the computer/tablet/phone you're writing this with out of your hand and sell it for a bucket of rice to feed his family. Play this fallacy out to its extension and the whole thing collapses in any system that's attempted to roll out the "deserve" system beyond a pretty constrained fraction of its GDP, and then both the deserving and undeserving end up worse off.

[skulk]

You're fixating on the word deserve in my post, but that's got nothing to do with my point. I'm saying that the market has decided that it doesn't have to pay a living wage since the government picks up the bill to keep things going. I think that's perverse.

[mothballed]

I'm confused whether you want more welfare, or you're trying to ban jobs below a certain "living" wage floor (which are probably mostly occupied by the poorer).

There is a somewhat intermediate of this, proposed by Milton Friedman, called the negative income tax. I can't say I'm sold on the idea but it does solve some of the problems of the local maximums encountered that keep people trapped in the welfare system and from trying to get more lucrative income.