Droopy wrote:Already answered, on several occasions.
Then it should be remarkably easy to provide a link or two.
I never made that claim, so nothing is required here. I've been very clear about those who don't work, those who work, and the kind of corporate capitalist rent-seeking that is complicit in this whole system of everybody looting everybody else. The 47% are a demographic who, on average, recieve more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. Some of them are the underclass, who pay virtually no taxes, and some are the long term unemployed, but, as I've been clear about before, its the incentives and mindset this relationship to government creates, not whether one works or not, that is at the core of the critique.
Care to make an intellectually substantive statement or argument, Beastie?
Droopy said:
And this is where you're argument falls on its face. I am not a part of that demographic. I landed my first job a 16. I am now almost 54. In that time, I used welfare benefits for around three years or so (but not continuously during that time, this is a total, and does not represent unbroken continuity).The "takers," - the so-called 47% of the population who are permanently or semi-permanently, over much or the totality of their lifetimes - Julia, in other words - receiving some form of government assistance, benefits, or government checks on a continual basis, and who receive on average, more in government transfers from their fellow citizens than they pay in taxes, is the problem. Some people receiving some help sometimes, here and there, in some ways, was never the problem (although the central, federal government's role in such a safety net is a fundamental problem).
viewtopic.php?p=662183#p662183Please explain how 47% of the population receive some form of government assistance, benefits, or government checks on a continual basis. Please explain how YOU, who have never paid federal income taxes, have paid more into the system than you've taken out in assistance, benefits, or government checks, while the 47% have taken more than they've given. And please explain how you working a job at 16 and working throughout most of your adult life makes YOU different than the 47%.
Please explain precisely what formula you've used to determine you've paid more back in taxes than you've used in your lifetime, even without paying federal income taxes. I assume that formula takes all the services that government provides into consideration, as well. Roads, armies, health and safety inspections, police, clean water, etc. etc. Please explain how this formula took all this into account and provided a way to determine what it would cost YOU to provide those services for yourself without the government providing it for you.
The funny thing is that you may be right that 47% of the population receives more than it gives in terms of benefits and services. In fact, you're very likely right. But it's funny because you're delusional to insist that you're not part of that 47%. YOU are the underclass who pays virtually no taxes and yet you imagine otherwise. Do you think that the "other" working poor somehow don't have to pay FICA, for example? How do they pay "virtually no taxes" and yet you, who has never made more than 24,000 a year which is barely above the official poverty line, pays more taxes than you receive back in benefits and services, much less your own past welfare?
