Article

2008-05-02 Europe

Sweden should look to US for welfare solutions

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Posted by tipper 2008-05-02 04:53|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 Actually, Clinton followed the Scandies when he championed welfare reform. However, GOP leverage caused him to add Time limits on benefits caused recipients to seek training so as to increase employability. The trouble in Scandanavia is: they allowed a large class of demanding immigrants - Muslims - who resist life off the dole. In addition, where they settle, crime explodes. The Scandies didn't need to use time limits before; now they are essential.

Implementation problem: Scandie academia and media are under strict obligation to portray Islamic culture in relativistic terms. A teacher can be terminated for basing Arab scientific notions - as they are - on pilferage from Greco-Roman civilization. In Sweden, Western Civilization is taught as an exploiter entity that owes everything to the ancestors of the parasitic class of new immigrants.

Jens Orback, a Swedish Cabinet Minister, said on a radio program, "We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be towards us." Cultural relativism in action.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/07/let-them-eat-kebab-new-marie.html

Posted by McZoid 2008-05-02 05:23|| 2008-05-02 05:23|| Front Page Top

#2 As far as welfare goes, reform works well up to a very particular point: food. Every other type of welfare reform works well, but there should be an abundance of low cost and free food at all times.

The logic is downright twilight zone, however.

To start with, food welfare is not a system, but two. It is the flip side of the immense and amazing, but very managed American agribusiness system. In many ways, agribusiness is everywhere as much as the military industrial complex. It is enormous beyond belief. It actually transcends the free market, a point few understand.

Even marginal overages and shortages in agribusiness translates to billions of dollars, and unlike just about anything else, shortages are intolerable, so the system must overproduce.

This means that mountains of excess food can either be expensively stored for a while, be given away, or rot.

Was the government to directly provide food to the poor, as much as they wanted, and just out of the excess, they would be eating a 10,000 calorie a day diet. And there would still be huge amounts of food left over.

After all of that, then consider what food welfare accomplishes. It gives people the energy they need to work or do anything. If you take it away, like animals, they have to spend all their free time trying to get food, instead of working. Taking it away not only doesn't motivate, it makes their leaving poverty harder.

That is why other types of welfare reform work. Because they take away inessential things, like money and housing. And taking them away does motivate. If you don't have them, your life will be uncomfortable.

But you have to have food. It is more important than work. And since we can either give it to you, or it will rot anyway, why not?

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-05-02 14:38|| 2008-05-02 14:38|| Front Page Top

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