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I was recently talking to someone that works for a state Medicaid office and this is what I learned:

The way Medicaid works is that you get more money for having low birth weight children and because of that, a lot of women are intentionally smoking during pregnancy to cash in on the system even more so. Also, if you have a special needs child, the government gives you lifetime assistance, not just until the child grows up. So, instead of aborting children that would lead a life of suffering or place too large of a burden on the parents, these people are thinking "cha-ching!" whenever they find out their children could be at risk. We are encouraging deformities.

If these parents on welfare were forced to be responsible for their choices, they would think twice about giving birth to a child that's going to be codependent for the rest of his or her life. Instead, they are intentionally putting themselves at risk because not only is it not their burden, they actually benefit from it. There are other scams as well. Instead of getting married, these parasites just cohabitate so the money they receive isn't diminished by income from the spouse.

Also, instead of giving parents of special needs children 24/7 assistance, if you don't work and don't go to school, you only get 8 hours a day of assistance, enough to sleep and that's it. So time and time again these parents are complaining that "I got other kids to take care of too" and in most cases these children were born after the special needs child. That means that these people are counting on the government to take care of their children instead of thinking "Hey, this special needs child is going to take a lot of work, we better not have anymore". When the parasites realize that they can actually get more from working or going to school it's like an alien concept to them and they get what one observer calls a "deer in the headlights" look.

Wow, that's sad.

It's also why liberals are wrong.  So wrong.  Liberals think they are helping people, but really, they're only hindering them.  Give someone money, and they'll become dependent on it, not independent as the liberals would so like to proclaim.  Give someone money for having a deformed baby, and surprise surprise, people will find a way to "cheat the system".

And those mothers are so morally messed up as well.  But I wish the US wouldn't give them the means to screw up other people's lives for the sake of making themselves a few more dollars.

Liberals, take note!  This is what happens with your worldview and policies!

Citation needed.

https://www.cms.gov/HealthCareFinancingReview/downloads/04-05winterpg105.pdf

So yeah I looked through the first page of your lmgtfy and I couldn't find anything about this statement.

There's no data to back up what this guy was saying?

What exactly are you questioning? Their intentions? Only those women know their true intentions but it's more likely than not that they are gaming the system. Are you questioning that you get more money for low birth weight babies?

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10026.html

Please be more specific about what you want to know. Also, try looking around the web first since it's probably faster than waiting for me to do it for you.

You said it is true so you better provide the bacon for your evidence.

Which I'm more than willing to do. I was just pointing out that it might be quicker for you to use Google yourself instead of waiting for me to do it for you. I don't have some magical access to data that you don't. The burden of proof is on me and I never claimed otherwise.

Did you have some objection to the link I provided? Let's try to keep this conversation constructive.

Hell yeah, constructive is what we do, right?

A bit unclear on my part, I looked through the first page of results couldn't find anything to back up the latter half of your statement.



I can't find any valid data to back that statement up I'm going to have to call it an anecdote and thereby not fitting material to discard an entire political philosophy.

If I were president, I would make smoking during pregnancy a criminal offense.
Seriously, smoking during pregnancy? What kind of fucked up mothers do we have on this planet?

Well you're welcome to try and dissuade, or even stop if you feel it's morally imperative, mothers from smoking, but do not try to drag me into it through use of government force.  Perhaps I am unconvinced by the statistics put out by government organizations regarding smoking and birth defects.  In any event, you stopping this harm does not justify forcing me to help you.

It seems that the first page returned by Google is a different one now. Here's what I was trying to point you to: https://www.cms.gov/HealthCareFinancingReview/downloads/04-05winterpg105.pdf

"Findings indicate that pregnant women with deliveries paid by Medicaid are more than twice as likely to smoke as privately insured women..."

Satisfied?

Correlation is not causation. Medicaid women are poorer and less educated which correlated with smoking.

people with low enough income to qualify for medicaid are more likely to smoke period, pregnant or not.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105550/among-americans-smoking-decreases-income-increases.aspx

low-income women also have higher rates of unintended pregnancies.

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/05/04/index.html

That's because losers are more likely to smoke than those who are successful enough to afford insurance. The limit for getting benefits for low weight is 2 pounds, 10 ounces, which is less than half the lower end of normal children (6 to 9 pounds). Smoking during pregnancy only lowers the weight by 4 ounces on average.

Now that I've given you the proper facts I suppose you'll have no problem finding the sources with Google.

That's only the partial definition. Here's the complete definition (http://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/disability_trends/glossary.html).


So, children can also qualify if they are up to 4 pounds 6.5 ounces.


The average person also has one testicle and one ovary. While true, it's misleading.


I had no problem finding the source with Google. I don't see what the big problem is. Of course, it's still your job to back up your claim with evidence but it's not that hard to find public information. Anyways, here's the only website Google could find that mentions a "4 ounces on average" statistic: http://thefunkymonk.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/the-effect-of-smoking-and-the-birth-weight-of-newborns/

Your source is some guy's blog. I don't think that's very credible.

Actually, I used this for that number: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11125982

That's a relief. Did you want to respond to the rest of my post?

Did you want to show us where it says that people on welfare start smoking or smoke more if they're pregnant?

That's a red herring. The fact that they don't stop smoking while pregnant can be considered starting smoking or smoking more compared to what the average woman would be doing without Medicaid.


If you want to claim that they are smoking more because they are poor rather than because they are on Medicaid. You need to back that up. There's clearly a correlation between Medicaid and smoking during pregnancy. Can you show the same correlation with poverty, with and without Medicaid?

Smoking is bad imo, and people and fetuses will be healthier if they aren't exposed. Are you going to put women in prison? Take their time and money? Now it seems like you are damaging people and fetuses to me. I am not going to hurt you over it, that won't help. People want to do good when they can figure out how and if you want to make things better, help them.

That's just stupid.

This is just stupid too. Everybody knows (or at least should know) that there's a correlation between low income and smoking, and between low income and being on Medicaid. If you by any chance don't it's trivial to find tons of information about it with Google. You are the one making a totally new claim which you are obviously unable to document.

Nevertheless, the question remains, are these women on Medicaid smoking during pregnancy because they are on Medicaid, because they are poor or a mixture of both? If it's a mixture, what's the proportions? You can say what you want about what "everybody knows" but unless you can back it up, it's just idle speculation.

OP: Welfare is deforming children!

Posters: [Citation needed]

OP: Well, there's an incentive...and these correlations...um...

Posters: GTFO

I wonder how many posters in this thread actually know anyone on welfare who has children.

The OP has a point. The incentive is crystal clear. It's impossible to know how many women change their decisions with the help of such incentives, but certainly in a population of 300million there may be some. Some women hate the idea of quitting smoking during pregnancy, if you add a financial benefit for them not to, it may change their mind, why not?

Anyways, I believe there are worse consequences of welfare than this one particularly.

If you are among those who think state welfare is fundamental in helping those in greater need, you should consider watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwTDKt_k9kQ

What's your point?

If you care about children donate!!!  :)

Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing.

I hear statists are immune to confirmation bias and are completely incapable of forming fallacious arguments!

The thing that disgusts me the most about so much of our modern welfare program in the US, as a liberal, is that it does not actively encourage escaping from it. If you make more than a certain point, you lose your benefits, and these numbers are often ridiculously low. I'd much prefer expanding programs like America Works and EIC, where the more you make the more you earn until you are weaned off of it.

That and I think irresponsible parents ought to get vasectomies and tied tubes rather than be allowed another child, but I have to wonder how politically feasible that is.


He's mixing in the entire welfare budget and assigning the money only to those who were actually on the TANF.

Doesn't quite work that way, according to his own source (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2005_US_total#usgs30240).

The welfare budget includes
- Unemployment
- Child tax credits that exceed liability
- EIC that exceeds liability (which pretty much means you have a child)
- Food assistance programs (now feeding 43 million people, most of whom are working)
- etc.

I think that's an honest mistake on his part, as if he were really dishonest he'd note that the figure doesn't actually include Medicaid (at $260 billion).

That $664 billion did not go to two million people. It went to something closer to sixty million people (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2009/8e.html). Or more. The biggest programs are health care, unemployment and food assistance, and in many cases there isn't going to be overlap.

Or about $11,000 per recipient, on average, at the most.

So, $260 billion went to nearly sixty million persons in 2005, for health care.
$50 billion went to nearly forty million persons in 2005, for food assistance.
~$20 billion went to the two million families on the TANF program the guy quoted, or about ten thousand per family.
~$40 billion went to the seven million people who are on supplemental security income.
~$50 billion went to EIC and Child credits that exceeded tax liability. This is just about everyone in poverty with a child, so tens of millions, probably.
~$65 billion went to Unemployment
~$20 billion went to worker's comp

That's just for the number of beneficiaries. His efficiency argument is even worse since the codes for direct payments are given in his source. Some of the descriptions are a bit excessively vague but in the worst possible case scenario we're looking at ~80% efficiency for government welfare outside of Medicaid. Most of the overhead, if it's there, is in the E79 code. I would like to know what's going on with that, but it's not a $300 billion question.

I think this article is a real eye-opener to anyone who thinks welfare, as currently implemented in the US, is a good idea....

http://mises.org/daily/3822

It's much worse if you're childless. And even worse if you're self employed.

Those hike points you see there aren't an accident - they're designed, usually, to kick in once someone gets full time work at the prevailing wage. It saves the states money, but the net effect of course is to make people choose between being more productive and continue receiving a service that they may have legitimate need for.

Paying military retirements is welfare in the most socialist form. The US military is voluntary, not conscripted. They should invest in 401Ks like the rest of the working stiffs. We can't even pay our teachers a retirement anymore and they protect our future from idiocracy. Welfare is deforming children indeed!

This is in no way an authoritative publication. For all I know it could be completely fabricated. Until it is ethically and properly structured for scientific publication and review you are seeriosly undermining your argument by referencing this as data.  Call me crazy but I think education on the cost and consequences of smoking while pregnant and an adequate support structure for quiting smoking would be a more rational and equitable approach.

I'm not using that link as a source. I was accusing someone else of doing so. They denied it, however. I suggest that you read the thread again since you're taking comments out of context as well as attributing arguments to the wrong parties.

Sorry misunderstood.  I am still unpersuaded by you argument.

Do you plan on telling me why?

Your lack of through supporting evidence and use of emotive character attacks on the subjects you so disdain betray your biases.  It appears you are looking for validation of your oversimplified and possibly irrationally cruel beliefs.  Your characterization of these people as parasites and subsequent dehumanization does nothing to help the situation.  This fleeting indiscretion is forgivable but I certainly will not validate your belief.

I have provided evidence though. Women receiving government medical care smoke during pregnancy at higher rates. Claiming I'm biased is nothing more than an ad hominem. It doesn't matter why I believe what I believe if I'm right. If I believe that 2+2=4 because I'm biased does that suddenly mean that 2+2=5? No.


There's nothing cruel about not wanting to encourage children to be deformed. I would say that's the opposite of cruelty.


What else do you call someone that receives stolen money to live off of instead of obtaining money in a legitimate manner?


I'm not looking for validation. I'm looking for accuracy. If you've got some rational argument to make then please do so and let's leave the emotionally charged language out of this.

First of all the only article you cited states that early medical intervention and education as a goal and supports the premise that the difference in smoking rates could be attributed to a disparity in education and support structure.  I find your very premises unjust under modern ethical systems that take into account modern cognitive neural biology, psychology, and current human knowledge.  In particular the your insistence on an inflexible objectivist construct the consequence of which leads you to see these people as parasites.  Demoralizing this group is counterproductive to your goal "not wanting to encourage children to be deformed" and it can be construed that you are coming from a position of privileged in rights theory.  An yeah "I am mad bro"

If you are unaware of some of the consequences of demonizing/harshly punishing underprivileged and/or ignorant humans you might want to start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monster_Study

Some of it, perhaps, but all of it? I find that unlikely.

I consider myself a Liberal (or Libertarian, depending on context), and I have no idea what you are talking about. The Principle of Liberty does not concern giving free money to anyone. People can do that if they want to, but that's their choice, not a collective liberal idea.

I don't know what definition you use, but over here, liberals oppose arbitrary wealth redistribution by the state unless it is considered fair and necessary.

How is theft ever fair? How is theft ever necessary unless you're starving?

Spartans thrown their defect children's in the sea. That was, no doubt, make the survives children's  very healthy.
What do you suggest? How we should behave ?
How we should interfere in these ?

It hardly ever is, that's why I'm more of a Libertarian than a Liberal.

However, what you accused "Liberals" of doesn't even sound Liberal. Maybe you refer to a certain party, such as Japan's LDP, which is Liberal only in name?

Arbitrary redistribution of money is what I know as "left" politics, with communism being the extreme branch of it. More state power, a large set of rules on who gets money or support, those are the properties of such politics. Together with "right" politics, which have society set cultural norms, one gets a 2D map of political orientation, with anarchism being the origin and the Nazis quite far away from it. I'd find myself at ~10% "left" and almost zero "right". (Yes, it's not very intuitive to have left orthogonal to right, but I didn't name those political orientations! *shrugs*)

Anyways, it's common to call the direction away from those "left" or "right" politics Liberal. That's why quite some people might be confused at that post from earlier.

I haven't used that word in this thread.

Can you give some examples of types of scenarios when theft is morally acceptable?

@bitcoin2cash: Oh, sorry, I mistook you for a different user. So many people around, I should keep better track!



A discussion on this will dance around the definition of "theft". If all types of taxes are theft, we leave the commonly accepted terminology, but this seems to be the definition at hand. Let's take a clear example. IMO, those are situations in which a Tragedy of the Commons eradicates an entire system unless it changes rules.

Say, a medium-sized comet is known to just barely get close enough to hit the Earth, and someone finds a way to divert it for an operation that costs 10^12 €. I think the correct course of action is to cut a suitable fraction of all productivity on the planet and use it to divert the comet.

Now, this would mean forcefully taking the money from those who try to avoid paying, hoping that others will do so first. But otherwise, the system punishes those saving the Earth by giving them a disadvantage, which I find an unacceptable result.

Some people just have no idea about the magnitude of educational disparity in this county.  A high school near me regularly graduates students who can't read past a 6th grade level.  No child left behind has made things worse.  The county recently removed F's from the grading scale.  Failing is no longer possible, but that's just a technacality since previously when a teacher felt a student should be failed, the principal would give them a choice between passing the student and losing their job.  Tying funding to pass/fail rates has just decoupled those rates from educational success.

The United States was founded on the idea that the Federal Government should do very little in our country. The Founding Fathers opposed greatly large government spending project, save for the creation of a National Military. That is it. In fact, for the first hundred years of our country, they opposed almost every spending project on the Federal Scale, because it made no sense, and in no way was within the bounds of the United States Constitution. It was not until the Progressives took power in the early 20th century that massive spending projects were created. People like FDR, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson drastically expanded the Federal Government's power to suddenly be the supporter of the poor and needy. Not as a way to help said poor, but as a way to gain control of power in the United States. They do not care about the low class, or the needy. They only want to bring people under their wing and gain control. It is all a sham. After all, the number one recipient of welfare are minorities in this country (not racist, it's a fact). All these progressive presidents were racists, activly working against giving blacks freedoms, and treating them racially inferior to them. They do not care, they are only trying to gain power.


Citations avail. upon request.

That's up for debate.  the constitutional signatories were hardly a unified ideological group and had varying interpretations of the document, such as the loose interpretation from hamilton and adams, versus the strict interpretation by madison and jefferson.

which does absolutely nothing to support your initial contention:


it only makes the case (that is, makes it further: it is a fact long known) that poor people smoke more, and smoking is a difficult addiction (by many accounts, the most difficult) to break.

you get all your news and opinions from fox, don't you?

If we give money to low birth weight babies, mothers will smoke because it will earn them more money?  Do you really think this is how people who receive welfare think?

What's the alternative to a welfare safety net?  People bootstraping their way into a job with 9%+ unemployeement and a down economy?  Should they just give up and die/be homeless?

Of all of the things the government spends their money on, I would much rather pay and extra $200 in taxes to feed poor Americans than 50%+ of my tax money going towards bombing other countries.

Yes.


Charity.


If you want to give your money away then you're welcome to do so. I'm all for charity. In fact, I would donate to a charity that had certain requirements, such as working at a job, going to school, etc.

What's your stance on unemployment?

All charity and welfare is suppression without exchange.  A man who receives without giving back quickly loses his self worth.  Sure, help them out, but find what they can offer you.  People aren't cogs that just need spun up.  There are deeper psychological issues that need consideration.

FRom my point of view the name of this topic is abcolutly true.
I have lots of examples when after graduating you let go from your famil house. You face with such kinds of conditioind wich make you brain works and start to earn money by youself

And you can keep the balance.

More than welfare what is deforming people is McDonals and chipstons of and sugar in whatever they drink.

I guess fast food is deforming people much more than welfare, and I would not call fast food wellfare :)