Why is "People Welfare" (social programs like Health Care) Bad. While "Corporate Welfare" is Good?

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Accordingly, if a violation of common decency, or even of the law, is counter-productive to a GOP political campaign, only then might decency and the law be a constraint. Otherwise, anything goes, so long as it enhances the prospects of political success. Common decency and the law be damned.

At a time when the national GDP is soaring, one in five children lives in deep poverty, one might expect that a public effort to curtail welfare would focus on cutting big handouts to rich corporations, not small supports for poor individuals. But somehow the invocations of the need for stand-on-your-own-two-feet responsibility do not apply to large corporations....Show more

Actually both types of welfare are bad. The thing though is that corporate welfare usually KEEPS jobs in the United States and helps people. Social welfare programs with no incentive to move to a paying job does nothing but drain tax payer money.

You are really out of touch with things and really mad about freightliner moving it's plant. Look at how many Korean, European, and Japanese automotive and tire manufacturers have set up plants in the United States all non-union with good wages and better quality than the American Unions put out....Show more

"Welfare" is always good, its first root meaning... well... "good". One site explains the word's origin's thus:

"Originally welfare meant the state or condition of how well one was doing, of one’s happiness, good fortune or prosperity." [1]

Asking pardon for my semantics, I will continue in the sense that the word is now meant. Of course, "welfare" now means to give in order to maintain the condition of "good fortune or prosperity". In practice, it means first to take from some in order to give to the welfare recipients though it need not be so. My church has a welfare committee that discreetly distributes voluntary donations to people in need.

I believe that state welfare goes much more to the corporations and the rich - the people with direct political influence - than it does to the poor. While I appreciate your acceptance of social programs, those programs are mostly useful to the political elite as appeasement to the people over whom they rule. As long as people believe that they are getting something good out of government or that it can be reformed to give them something good, they will continue to support it. If "people welfare" recipients realized how little of the nation's wealth went to them, they might rise up in revolt to demand justice. But they continue to allow their passive obedience to be bought.

The common element in all state programs is that claims by the state to vast amounts of wealth are widely accepted. The state calls in those claims and distributes the wealth. It should be no surprise that the favorites of the state's officers get the largest share. They attempt to buy the rest of us with modest programs that too often result in dependency. Many people on welfare believe that they could not survive without the state's assistance. So they are twice duped. First, the state robs them. Then it returns a fraction of what it stole while convincing the victims that they indebted to the state's officials for their support.

I am completely against state welfare for the rich. Many of them know just what they are doing. Few of them deserve a dime of what they get. I am sympathetic to assisting the poor. No matter how we organize society, there will probably always be people in need of assistance. We should help them. And if we do so voluntarily, we will avoid establishing the mechanism by which the wealthy enrich themselves at our expense.

In short, I argue that "people welfare" and "corporate welfare" are two sides of the same coin. They both rely upon the uncontested ability of the state's officers to lay claim to the nation's wealth with little apparent limit. You could never abolish welfare for the privileged as long as you allow the funding of welfare for the poor to be compulsory....Show more

State Capitalism is bad.

Free-Enterprise Capitalism is good. Until the neighborhood bullies show up and turn it into a State Capitalist tyranny....Show more

Just like the book says, "Four legs good, two legs bad." Until it's the other way around. Ibid: "All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."...Show more