Almalieque wrote:
None of that changes my point. Unless you believe that the government should NEVER spend money on anything, then you're agreeing that the government should spend money on something.
Correct. Government must spend money on some things.
Quote:
You just disagree on what that something is and how it should be spent. So, there is no fundamental difference in the structure of your argument from the argument that you are countering.
I disagree on the methodology we use to determine whether to spend money on something. While that will often result in disagreements on what we spend money on, it's critically important to note that methodology difference. It's not just "You like A and I like B, so you fight to fund A, while I fight to fund B". It's "You like A, so you fight to fund A, but I think we should fund whatever meets <some qualifying criteria> and B happens to meet it while A does not". This does result in the same outward argument (fund A versus fund B), but you would be completely wrong to claim that I hate A and like B because that's not how I'm making my determination. That's how *you* are making yours, and you're making the mistake of assuming I'm doing the same thing, just in reverse.
Does that make sense?
Quote:
So you care less what the money is spent on and more on the actual amount that is spent?
I don't think you can express this in terms of more or less. They are two different aspects of the issue. I care about the amount spent (on anything) when assessing the harm that spending causes me. I care about what it's spent on when assessing whether or not to spend money on something in the first place. While not a complete example, one way to look at it is that I first ask "is this something government should be doing?". If the answer is "no", then we should not spend money doing it. No matter how small the amount. If the answer is "yes", then the question of "how much" to spend, and some kind of assessment of cost versus reward can be made.
I guess where I run into this the most is when someone makes an argument like "You're ok with spending $600B/year on the military, so why aren't you ok with spending just $5M/year on NPR?". The relative cost isn't the issue here. It's that there is no need at all for our government to be subsidizing radio content. I'd oppose spending that money even if it were just $5/year.
Quote:
I understand your argument. Helping a single person, does indeed help society as a whole, especially if that single person can be multiple different people.
Helping a single person sometimes helps society as a whole. Sometimes it does not. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, we have to actually look at the specific thing we're thinking about spending money on. Just assuming that any time we spend money helping someone it helps us all is a cheap way to avoid making that assessment IMO.
Quote:
The problem with your argument, ignoring the fact that helping one person helps all, is that "society = majority = white male = you". So, your argument essentially becomes, "how does DACA, SNAP, etc. affect me?
Except that white males are hardly a majority. Heck,
males aren't a majority. But ignoring that, it's irrelevant. The number of "me's" in society is going to be statistically consistent with the makeup of society. So, if each person is looking at how a policy affects "me", the net effect will reflect how that policy affects the whole of society. The difference here is that I'm talking about indirect benefit, not direct benefit. Direct benefit is when the funding goes directly to you. So $100 on an EBT card is a direct benefit to the recipient of that card. Indirect benefit is when the funding goes to someone else, but the effect on that person/group has a positive benefit for you. So, for example, if we spend money on education and the result is a higher percentage of people with marketable skills, and thus a higher percentage of people who are earning a living versus stealing, then this may benefit me by decreasing the rate of theft.
The reason this makes a huge difference is that the indirect benefit (well, harm avoidance really) can often be realized by *not* doing something. For example, we could argue that if we raise taxes on businesses, this will slow down their rate of profits, which will slow down their rate of growth, which will slow down the rate at which they create new jobs. This will have a negative indirect effect on us all by increasing unemployment and a host of attendant problems that creates. Since direct benefits always require spending money, which always require generating tax revenue in some way, it's really important to realize that there is a harm effect that occurs every time we do that.
Quote:
This is why you believe this sort of logic is reduced to gaining votes.
Sure. But there's a difference between gaining votes by saying "If you vote for me, I will enact an economic policy which will increase job creation and increase every citizen's odds of living a better life via gainful employment" and "If you vote for me, I'll increase your welfare payments by $200/month". Once again, it's the critical difference between direct and indirect benefit. It's ok to try to improve things, in general, for everyone. It's a terrible idea to direct benefits to targeted groups of people in return for their political support. And if you don't think that's exactly what the Democrats are doing every time they run a scary ad about how if the GOP candidate wins election he'll cut their <welfare/medicare/foodstamps/college_loan> funding you are totally naive. That's exactly what they are doing. They don't come out and say "vote for me and I'll give you money", they just say "if you don't vote for me, you wont get money". But the net effect is the same.
And it's still a terrible way to govern.
Quote:
First, you have to admit that is part of politics on both sides. Surely you realize that politicians propose laws that benefits their donors. Why do you think the NRA has so much muscle? The problem with your claim (as many on the right) is that you only acknowledge the problem on the left with the financially challenged, but not on the right with the financially wealthy.
Again, the difference isn't about whether I like the rich or the poor, and which group I support. It's that helping the poor (as the left wants to do it) constitutes spending money. Helping the rich isn't really helping them. It's just not hurting them (and costs us zero). That's a massive difference that you are ignoring in favor of the very "You choose to help x, while I choose to help y" argument I've been saying is wrong.
Quote:
As for the "you must hate group x if you don't fund group x", that has less to do with funding and more to do with priorities. If there were a proposed budget where those groups were a priority and it just so happens that less money has to be awarded in order to maintain other parts of the budget, then there wouldn't be a problem. However, when you say corporations are people, proposing and using a number of tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes and then deride the poor on SNAP, it's no longer about the funding, but personal.
Except it's about the funding. I keep saying this, and you keep ignoring it. The difference between those is that in one case, you're calling it help to *not* take money from someone, but in the other you're calling it harm to *not* give them money. The reality is doing nothing at all should be the neutral position. We're neither helping, nor hurting either group. When you give the poor benefits, you are helping them. If you don't give them benefits, you are not hurting them. You're just not helping them. When you tax the rich, you are hurting them. If you don't tax the rich (or just tax them less), you are not helping them. You are just not hurting them (or you are hurting them less).
You are not treating the two groups the same. You are starting with a massive skew against the rich and towards the poor, and accusing me of treating them differently (or making it "personal") because I don't do that. Again though, it's you who are treating them differently based on who they are, not me. It's just funny to me because you're basically proving my point. You are engaging in exactly the type of projection I'm talking about. You are taking a position based on the "who" involved, and thus assume that I am too. But if I arrive at a different conclusion than you, it's not because I'm basing it on the "who" involved as well, but choosing the opposite "who" to benefit, but that your position is so incredibly skewed that merely not taking "who" into account at all looks like opposite skew to you.
This is why I mentioned base funding concepts from the beginning. Because if you don't keep the starting point in mind, you can't see how far you are away from it. And I think that's how people get lost in these relative hurt/help arguments.
