Shorter Dan Popp
Posted on November 10th, 2009 by
Shorter Dann Popp, DependsAmerica
Get a job
- There would be no unemployment were it not for unemployment insurance.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
If you think I’m getting off the boat to look at those mangos, you’re crazy!
Always. Trust. The. Shorter.™
So this is the chicken and egg argument writ large: there would be no one looking for work if there was no one looking for work.
Lemme see if I can guess the logic of the piece: the taxes employers pay to the government to cover unemployment insurance is preventing employers from hiring more employees so that those people aren’t going to work.
Now, here’s the flaw in the ointment Popp-corn:
The taxes that a small employer pays to cover his entire population of workers is a fraction of the wages and benefits he would pay even one more worker.
In other words, if he needs another worker, he’s going to hire another worker, whether he has to pay an incremental amount more in taxes or not. And if he doesn’t need another worker, no matter how low his tax bracket is, you aren’t going to get him to shell out salary that he could be putting into his own pocket.
It’s as simple as that, sucker!
There you go again, employing logic. You know it’s lost on them.
i cn hz unemployment insurance?
“the taxes employers pay to the government to cover unemployment insurance is preventing employers from hiring more employees so that those people aren’t going to work.”
OMG it’s like you read his mind. Or article. Whatever.
That’s part of it, the other is the hoary old sentiment that people on unemployment would rather lay around and not-work than have a job and that if there were no unemployment insurance they’d be willing to take a lesser job to prevent themselves from starving. Lazy bastards.
It’s Scrooge all over again: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” only less entertaining. And without the subsequent enlightenment.
Dan’s last name is misspelled.
Does Mr. Poop do anything of value to society?
Could we eliminate his job to improve profits?
Would he be willing to take a job scooping his own name off sidewalks to pay his bills?
These questions burn.
A recent headline at HuffPo said something like it is more difficult now to get a job than at any time since the Great Depression.
I’m thinking there are a whole lot of people who would rather be gainfully employeed than collecting unemployment, which very quickly runs out and very rarely covers all the basic necessities.
Shoulda stayed in the boat.
What. A. Fucktard.
And of course, DanPoop forgets that the money people receive gets spent thereby fueling the engine that is the country’s (USA!1!!1!) economy, i.e. consumer spending.
Burning flaming stoopid owwie.
That’s part of it, the other is the hoary old sentiment that people on unemployment would rather lay around and not-work than have a job and that if there were no unemployment insurance they’d be willing to take a lesser job to prevent themselves from starving.
If that was true, then when welfare reform was passed in the nineties, there should have been a spike in unemployment.
After all, you had this sudden demand for jobs that didn’t exist.
None happened.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…
I haz nym-changing issues….
Well, yeah. It is. Jackass.
Shorter every Republican, all the time:
I GOT MINE.
I think one basic difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives would rather kill an entire program, whatever it is (welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, health care), if they believe that even 1% of the people who are receiving those benefits are somehow now deserving. That’s the only thing that dominates their thinking. Someone is getting something that they shouldn’t. And, it pisses them off. What happens to the other 99% doesn’t concern them.
Liberals, on the other hand, well…. We’re kind of human.
Crap. NOT deserving… Not “now deserving.” A typo like that changes the entire meaning.
Something tells me that the Sadly No crowd won’t like Dan Popp’s healthcare proposal either:
There are two kinds of people in the political world. One side accepts as fact that human beings respond to incentives (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain); and the other side believes that good intentions will conquer history, psychology, economics and any amount of bad judgment.
We accept that humans respond to incentives. Namely the incentive, if fucked over enough, for the poor to come to your house, kill you, kill your family, string you all up from lamp-posts with your own intestines and take all of your shit. It’s you dumb bastards that believe good intentions will stave off the proletarian revolution.
As if the mere possibility of becoming rich is solace for dying in the gutters.
I wonder if Danno is aware that he basically just said that there is no shortage of jobs, that anybody who really wants one can find one, that 10.2% unemployment is a myth and the economy is just fine. Sounds like a ringing endorsement of the Obama administration to me.
That’s the only thing that dominates their thinking. Someone is getting something that they shouldn’t.
Zeppo, that’s exactly right. In fact, their entire political stance is based on punishing the tiny proportion of supposed naughty people: abstinence only, abortion, prison vs rehabilitation/social justice, unemployment benefits, health care, international relations, everything. They’re desperate to make sure that anyone who might even think of taking advantage gits what’s comin’ to ’em, even if millions of innocents suffer in the process.
Miserable bastards.
So in our economic system, 5% unemployment is considered “structural,” necessary for the system to work, but somehow getting rid of unemployment compensation would change this? And of course it’s OK to build unemployment into the system but not to build in a safety net.
How do Republicans love the Bible so much without seeming to understand the whole “fellow man” and “least of us” bits?
“Let those poor go to the prisons and the workhouses; and if they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
– McConservative Intilektul. Forever and Always, 1792 – to present.
Somebody on McNeil News Hour last week said there are 6 unemployed people looking for work for every open position. There was also a guy who’d been looking for a job as a waiter for over a year.
They’re desperate to make sure that anyone who might even think of taking advantage gits what’s comin’ to ‘em, even if millions of innocents suffer in the process
Also, those “millions of innocents” are an abstraction that conservatives aren’t willing to give much thought to, other than telling them to eat their bootstraps or something.
If it weren’t for health insurance nobody’d ever break their leg, either. People respond to incentives.
I wonder how Poppyhead would characterize workers’ compensation/disability insurance:
“Lazy bum got his hand caught in a three-ton press on purpose.”
“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”
What I also find really bizarre is that somehow being a day trader is somehow respectable. Short selling is just a tool to make money. It’s all legal, of course. But what does buy and selling stocks and other financial instruments solely for the purpose of manipulating the system and pulling out as much wealth as you can really add to the overall good? I, personally, detest that our economic system is set up like that. I pisses me off that people (like a friend of mine) can amass a pretty substantial sum of money just by understanding how to game the system. Is that wealth that was pulled out of the system somehow deserved by someone sitting at a computer or Blackberry for several hours a day? But some poor slob who can’t find a job in his/her field is somehow deserving of his/her fate, and should suffer accordingly?
And the people who can’t find jobs usually have kids, too. You know, the ones that are so precious that every single sperm/egg combination must be protected to the bitter end, even to the extent of killing doctors?
This is really an insane country right now….
I’d say it’s the very existence of unemployment insurance that has so far staved off the eating of the rich and the forcible-potlaching of their gilded mansions.
One side accepts as fact that human beings respond to incentives (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain); and the other side believes that good intentions will conquer history, psychology, economics and any amount of bad judgment.
Ooh, ooh, I know this one: I have an incentive to have a magic sparkle pony, because that would give me pleasure, so I’ll, uh, just get one, right?
And those good intentions that will conquer history, psychology, economics and any amount of bad judgement, those’ll be the intentions that privatised everything over the last 20-odd years despite overwhelming evidence that it made things worse, and kept up with the policies of the IMF and World Bank despite overwhelming evidence that it made things worse, and thought that walloping the bejeezus out of small countries would make them subservient forever and good capitalist client states despite overwhelming evidence, and so forth, yes? And still supports abstinence only education, despite overwhelming…
You get the picture. And as Sarcastro said, if you make things scary enough for the poor, they’ll be desperate enough to do some truly desperate things, like stealing portable things from smug oiks like Dan Poop.
Honestly, the idea that unemployed people have no incentive to get a job if they get paid benefits makes me so mad I could spit. I’m unemployed-ish at the moment, and it sucks mightily. I’ve applied for 11 jobs just in the past 6 days. And aside from the fact that welfare is scarcely a princely sum, the constant rejection is pretty devastating for the self-esteem.
Personally, I’d be happy to let whoever wants to coast along on benefits for the rest of their lives, if it meant a slightly less unpleasant experience for those who want to work (which is most people, I think). This crap about having to punish everyone just to catch the few who might be riding the system is like a crap teacher keeping the whole class in after school: collective punishment is unjust and unproductive, and makes me very cranky indeed.
So, uh, count me in as undecided on the whole unemployment insurance thing. On the one hand, the poor don’t have to slaughter the rich for food. On the other, the poor aren’t slaughtering the rich for food.
Jonah would never ask if there were no prisons or workhouses with so many vegetables in them.
I thought this column sounded familiar; he lifted it from the Sermon on the Mount.
Leaving aside the insanity of supposing that the unemployed have the magical ability to make the owners of the means of production create new jobs for their benefit, because, well, that stupid just burns too damn much,
Actually, no, teh stupid still burns too much.
There are two kinds of people in this world; the kind that divides people into two groups, and. . .that other kind.
This fucktard’s a day trader and has the nerve to spew shit like this? I mean, I’m not surprised, but let’s face it – guy’s a parasite pretty much by definition: he creates absolutely fuck all and lives off the work of others. Telemarketers and three-card monte dealers are paragons of civic virtue by comparison.
As Realist Ronald Reagan put it,
“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”“That strapping young buck has his eyes on that welfare queen’s Cadillac.”I thought this column sounded familiar; he lifted it from the Sermon on the Mount.
Just because he goes to church doesn’t means he listens.
Also, he could have an advanced copy of the ConservaBible, which drops the Sermon on the Mount hoohah completely. Too.
Also, those “millions of innocents” are an abstraction that conservatives aren’t willing to give much thought to, other than telling them to eat their bootstraps or something.
To be honest, I don’t think they believe in the millions of innocents. I think they see the world as an extended episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle: there’s Boris and Natasha, the cartoon villains with nefarious plans, there’s the well-meaning attempts to pull a rabbit out of a hat which never work, and there’s basically a two-dimensional world where everything’s clear-cut and everyone of a certain type is eeevullll.
And the bootstrap thing: from what I’ve seen, it’s rarely if ever someone who actually did pull themselves up by their own bootstraps who says that sort of crap. Generally, people who’ve seen the harsher sides of life have more compassion and understanding: it’s mostly those who’ve glided through their own lives in a comfortable bubble who think that anyone else could do it too.
And the people who can’t find jobs usually have kids, too. You know, the ones that are so precious that every single sperm/egg combination must be protected to the bitter end, even to the extent of killing doctors?
Don’t those kids have bootstraps too? Sheesh, everyone expects a free ride these days…
So in our economic system, 5% unemployment is considered “structural,” necessary for the system to work, but somehow getting rid of unemployment compensation would change this? And of course it’s OK to build unemployment into the system but not to build in a safety net.
This is so important, and always blithely ignored by the right: when unemployment gets “too low”, the Fed takes action TO INCREASE IT.
Hee-ho!
there are 6 unemployed people looking for work for every open position
Well, there you go. It’s those guys who’re at fault! Get rid of those six guys and everything’ll be hunky-dory.
Mewonders (like methinks but more speculative) whether or not Mr. Poop has every, you know, actually collected unemployment. Bet not, though he certainly should if you catch my drift.
There are two types of people: those who agree with me, and those who don’t. Since I assume that everyone reading agrees with me, I will use the first-person plural. We live in a world called “reality.”
That’s right. It’s just myself and all the imagined people who agree with me, strolling around reality. I can’t begin to understand what they are talking about and don’t want to.
It’s just myself and all the imagined people who agree with me, strolling around reality.
There you have it, Objectivism in ten million fewer words than Ayn Rand needed to express it.
Lord knows I’d NEVER take a $50,000 a year job when I can pull in $441 dollars a WEEK!!!! Eff werkin!
…I’d say it’s the very existence of unemployment insurance that has so far staved off the eating of the rich and the forcible-potlaching of their gilded mansions.
I’ll go you one further. This employment insurance is, like the stimulus, one of the main pillars of our economy right now. Imagine, 10% of the population unable to buy ANYTHING…not groceries, not gasoline, not clothing. Since the wingnut argument is predicated on not caring about human issues like starvation or dignity, and since it can’t comprehend a world in which social injustice may create societal instability, let’s set those aside for a while. On a purely economic level, if 10% of the population had no purchasing power whatsoever, what would that do to local economies? What would a 10% reduction in revenue for local economies do to state economies? The federal economy?
The short-sightedness and total lack of informed – let alone enlightened – self-interest is mind-boggling.
But such is wingnuttus americana. The only species of animal in existence that will literally starve itself to death if it keeps somebody else from getting a piece of the pie.
You know who else agrees with Mr. Popp (sounds like a bubble bath)?
Craig T. Nelson, that’s who.
when unemployment gets “too low”, the Fed takes action TO INCREASE IT.
But it ain’t Dan’s problem, thus not really a problem… silly laborers, producing is for schmucks.
I believe it was Realist Ben Franklin who said “I never said half the shit people say I said.”
I thought that was that other great American philosopher, Yogi Berra.
You know, Bogie never said, “Play it again, Sam.”
It’s true.
Dan’s Day Job when not sucking the teat of Wingnut Welfare.
I thought that was that other great American philosopher, Yogi Berra.
That was “I never said half the shit people say I said, it’s too crowded.”
Dan’s Day Job when not sucking the teat of Wingnut Welfare.
He’s funny.
If it weren’t for health insurance nobody’d ever break their leg, either. People respond to incentives.
The New Testament is on your side. Look at that beggar, just lying around, taking the easy option… Jesus comes along, drops the false sympathy, tells him to get up and walk.
Compassionate conservatism in action!
…And no one would be unemployed if employers didn’t have pesky unions and minimum wage, either…
Jerkoffs.
…those who want to work (which is most people, I think).
Yes, and the proof of this, incomprehensible to the wingnut mind, is that unemployment is at ~10%, not 100%.
Besides, under the wingnut view, what accounts for fluctuations in the unemployment rate? Is it just that, all of a sudden, an additional 5% of the population decides to become freeloaders?
“And those friggin’ food banks! If it weren’t for them, people would grow their own food on the sidewalk.
“‘Course, we got laws passed against hungry people being visible out in public in a lot of cities…. Ah, screw ’em! They’d find a way if they weren’t lazy freeloaders!”
Regan: Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.” Ouch, Ron — that’s harsh!
There are always people who game the system, are con-artists, thieves and so on. And most of them are Republicans.
Oh. Well, then, what did Mark Twain say? He said something about something, once, right?
O.K., here’s another difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives seem to suffer from a congenital lack of imagination which would enable them to see themselves in the same circumstances other people are in. When they get in trouble, yep, where’s the government? But when thousands of people are trapped and drowing in New Orleans? Hey, they deserved it.
Another example, Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary. She’s a lesbian, and Dick is all pro-gay rights and stuff. At least somewhat. But if he didn’t have a gay person in his immediate family, do you think he would give a rat’s ass about the rights of gay people? Absolutely not.
I sure am not getting a lot of work done today.
Mark Twain said something about the weather once. And the president. I’m not exactly sure WHICH president, but it was probably one of them.
I really HATE this guy Poop, and his Deepends too.
“There are two kinds of people in the political world. One side accepts as fact that human beings respond to incentives (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain); and the other side believes that good intentions will conquer history, psychology, economics and any amount of bad judgment.”
There are 2 kinds of people, those who divide humans into 2 types and those who roll their eyes when the 1st type start talking, if you can call sputtering clichéd bigoted truisms & insults “talking”.
There are three kinds of people in the world: Absurdists, and everyone else.
And there would be no health problems if it weren’t for health insurance!
People like Poopmeister Dan here believe that everyone in the world is just like them. That is, humanity is depraved, lazy, and completely lacking empathy as a natural state of being because that’s HIS natural state of being. The concept that other people with different circumstances, education, environment, and sexual histories (that is to say, a sexual history) exist is so utterly preposterous to the conservative mindset that it makes them spiral into a metaphorical toilet flush of pearl-clutching and race-baiting.
So you have to jail a thousand innocents rather than let one guilty man go free because those innocents are probably assholes anyway.
Oh, and unlike Rescrew America, which doesn’t allow comments, Dan’s site allows you to email him.
I sent him along this article about starvation deaths during the Great Depression. The south was particularly hard hit BTW.
Dan never sussed out that this song was a satire.
zeppo: Conservatives have a lack of empathy. It’s one of the things that make them able to live with themselves when they’re hating poor people and wanking over fantasies of New York being attacked again.
(Edit: Just before I hit ‘Submit’ I noticed I had typed ‘poop people’ instead of ‘poor’. Same thing, pretty much, if you’re a wingnut.)
“And there would be no health problems if it weren’t for health insurance!”
One of our esteemed Repug congresswomen said something like that. I think she said “If we pass Public Insurance then everyone will use it!”
Fish
And you know what else?
Cutting taxes causes revenue to increase!!!
And you know what else?
Cutting taxes causes revenue to increase!!!
I’ve tried to do the analagous thing in my own life, but I find working fewer hours just leads to less income. I wonder what I’m doing wrong.
You’re supposed to be rich first.
Mr. Poop doesn’t know much about stuff.
~
Seatbelts encourage unsafe driving and increase traffic fatalities. QED. Address my post.
Cutting taxes causes revenue to increase!!!
I actually like the new “deficit neutral” kick that the Democrats have taken. Showing how an improved social infrastructure actually increases our overall prosperity takes a big gun away from the Republicans.
Address my post.
That’s “address my post, libs!”
We accept that humans respond to incentives. Namely the incentive, if fucked over enough, for the poor to come to your house, kill you, kill your family, string you all up from lamp-posts with your own intestines and take all of your shit. It’s you dumb bastards that believe good intentions will stave off the proletarian revolution.
when is this going to happen, exactly? so far the poor have responded to being fucked sideways by waving flags and furiously sending out email forwards about obama’s birth certificate and how sarah palin’s lip gloss cures cancer in orphans, but only strong, determined orphans willing to craft their own destinies. meanwhile, the shadiest of all american political shades, the “liberals” (ten degrees left of center in good times, ten degrees right if it involves them personally, mr. ochs once observed) reacted by electing a radical moderate, a committed incrementalist.
stock response number one: rofl man you don’t understand how politics works. what do you want obama to do? be a realist man, grow up.
i reply:
1) at the time of his election, obama and his awesome team of suprageniuses refused to use their majority or their mandate to make significant changes. they did not do this, under the very reasonable and incrementalist notion that “if we use it, then we won’t have it.”
2) please re-read the quotation to which i’m replying. he is imagining some fantasy scenario in which rights are wronged, vengeance is taken, and the plutocrats plunge each night into their marble tubs with fear and loathing on their minds. my point is that this is never, ever going to happen. things will remain the same because everyone, from both wings of the american property party, from bachman to barney frank to obama to palin is, in some sense, invested in the whole goddamn farce.
stock response number two: man, you just don’t get it. obama is really hot and smart and cool and i just love him so much and and and wingnuts hate him roffles. a furious festival of simian onanism follows in which pictures and fetishes of him who shall never be criticized from the left are clutched with trembling, ecstatic, fingers.
i begin to reply that this reminds me suspiciously of the behavior of another tribe (very unpopular in this manor, gov, to give you kiddies a monty python reference that you enjoy so much) from a few years ago….but instead i merely sigh, shake my head, wander back into the jungle, and hope for a gavin post to come sooner than later.
Showing how an improved social infrastructure actually increases our overall prosperity takes a big gun away from the Republicans.
Libruls always trying to take away our guns!
AND WHAT WILL WE STICK OUR FALSE TEETH TO???
so far the poor have responded to being fucked sideways by waving flags and furiously sending out email forwards about obama’s birth certificate and how sarah palin’s lip gloss cures cancer in orphans
Specifically, poor white people who will eagerly eat a steaming pile of shit if it means that poor black people have to eat shit cold. Obama doesn’t have much to offer them.
Poor people as a whole are much more likely to be Democrats.
So, wait, I’m being called to the carpet for
1) Things I never said
2) Things I never posted here
3) Things I don’t necessarily think
Wow. Ideological purity is a bitch.
Not only did I get off the boat, I kept looking for mangoes after I saw the damn cat. He’s got a column on how Jesus liked rich people because after all, Abraham was rich, right? Well and also Zaccheus and Nicodemos and Joseph of Arimathea, but he conveniently leaves out* that those guys weren’t all “I got mine, Jack”. He even mentions the story of the miser and Lazarus, with the same level of understanding displayed by Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda.
Remind me again why I click on these links?
* Since he writes so much about the early Christian Church I would ASSUME he’d read Acts, but there’s really only so much of this guy I can read.
He’s got a column on how Jesus liked rich people because after all, Abraham was rich, right?
Ah. Onea those ‘prosperity Christians’. Who missed the whole thing about “sell thy coat and all thou has and give it to the poor” but I guess Jesus was getting misquoted by the MSM back then, like they do to all good conservatives.
Tom:
AHEM!
1) Things I never said
2) Things I never posted here
3) Things I don’t necessarily think
Yeah, but you coulda.
Now my friends, I’ll give you $50 an hour to be a day trader and a Christian. You couldn’t do it, my friends!
Also, simian onanism really pisses me off.
Now my friends, I’ll give you $50 an hour to be a day trader and a Christian. You couldn’t do it, my friends!
I see what you did here…
Oh, and sorry Oneman. I musta glossed over your post. Didn’t mean to steal thunder.
If it makes you feel any better, I agree with you.
“There are two kinds of people in the political world. One side accepts as fact that human beings respond to incentives (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain); and the other side believes that good intentions will conquer history, psychology, economics and any amount of bad judgment.”
There are two types of wingnut master debaters: nah, who am I kidding, they all loves them some false dichotomies.
Tommcatt, unless you post as Tom also (and such as), I wasn’t aiming my AHEM at you.
But hey, I know how it goes, liberal and all that, the collective guilt for others is just overwhelming sometimes.
Scott Beowulf said,
November 11, 2009 at 0:38
A whole pile ‘a crap that looks like so much other crap I see these days
Hey, Scott, I don’t know where you’re reading all this mindless adulation of Obama, but I sure as hell ain’t seen any anywheres.
Sure, your first para looked good, but then you got into the (a) ruthless ideological purity schtick, which is ignorant and stupid, and (b) started wailing about how some theoretical librulz loves them some Obama with a mindless passion and some simian onanism.
Really, you don’t know how politics works, particularly in America. Given the rightward bias of the media, and the foaming rantingness of the Republicans, and the structure of the electoral system, there’s no way anything like a progressive could have been elected. You’ve got a strict two-party system there, matey, and Obama was the best you could aim to get. We all wish it weren’t so, but until you reform your whole system (gerrymandering, campaign funding, ‘first past the post’ and electoral college nonsense, etc) you’re stuck with what you’ve got.
And for all the righties whining about the purported mindless adulation of Obama, I’ve not read one comment or article anywhere, anywhen, that comes even close. Progressives are cautiously optimistic, aware of the nuances of the situation, and just taking a breath after 8 years of Darth Cheney and having avoided the risk of Prez McCain (well, for a few months at least, then Prez Palin, soon to be Supreme Commander and Lord High Executioner Palin).
No-one, but no-one, thinks Obama is the bees knees and the wasps nipples. Pretty much everyone thinks he’s a whole helluva lot better than Psycho Palin.
‘Zat clear? Jeez, I can’t believe this nonsense is still around.
I thought this column sounded familiar; he lifted it from the Sermon on the Mount.
Mr Twain? Is that you?
some theoretical librulz loves them some Obama with a mindless passion and some simian onanism.
Those that do love Obama with simian onanism do so for reasons that have more to do with certain photos taken in Hawaii than any political ideology.
‘Zat clear? Jeez, I can’t believe this nonsense is still around.
Christ, don’t you realize all reality is black & white?
OBVIOUSLY if you’re anti-Palin, you therefore MUST be blitheringly pro-Obama. Just like if you don’t like chocolate ice cream you must therefore support the death of anyone who does. See? And the whole “butternut scotch ripple” thing is just a plot by Nader and the Greens to try to deceive you to the nefarious plans of the pro-chocky forces.
How do Republicans love the Bible so much without seeming to understand the whole “fellow man” and “least of us” bits?
They think it’s all the Old Testament and Revelations, without worrying overmuch about that stuff which is probably just apocrypha anyway.
Now that we’ve got the POOP, is there a wingnut named PENIS waiting in the wings?
And yes, that was a veiled avian intercourse reference.
Green Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, plz.
~
Just in time for Christmas, Popp decides to let loose his inner Scrooge.
Also, no matter where you go, there you are. Also.
Dammit, once again I’m late to the thread. And I really wanted to kick this purity troll around. I mean, c’mon. SIMIAN ONANISM! That is too precious!
I think you’re all being a bit unkind, comparing poor old Scrooge to this crapsack. Ebenezer was willing to let the poor go to the workhouse, wasn’t he? I suspect Popp would find the whole notion of workhouses much too liberal. After all, the deal was that, if you were willing to be parted from your loved ones, surrender every shred of dignity and humanity, and live a life of ceaseless toil, you wouldn’t have to starve to death. The idea of the unemployed not starving would horrify Popp.
Career counselors often say that a person holding a job stands a better chance of landing another one, compared to an unemployed applicant.
Yeah, maybe. If there are fucking jobs available.
Hi. Anybody want to have an honest discussion?
A few points: The “Shorter” treatment of my article is off the mark. A fair condensation of my article would be “Lengthening unemployment benefits increases unemployment.” This is an empirical question, and you can find the data yourself if you like.
To make this read “If there were no unemployment insurance there would be no unemployment” would be analogous to turning the sentence, “Adding gasoline to a fire makes the fire bigger” into “There would be no fires without gasoline.”
Yes, I am a Christian. Like me, many Christians see a division between the church and the state. Charity, in our view, is a personal, church, and/or parachurch function; not a government function. Government’s function is justice, not mercy (1st Peter 2, Romans 13). There is no example in the NT of Jesus or an apostle advocating giving _through government_. Some of us feel that, to mix up those church and state functions would be to create a theocracy – something I’m sure no one here wants, including me. These are my views, but I don’t question the salvation or sincerity of those who think otherwise.
To restate: we have the same goals – to help the poor, to reduce unemployment. We differ only as to the means (and perhaps some knowledge of economics and data).
“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” would be a great retort if not for the fact that the prisons and workhouses were the government solutions, and private charity was the remedy for both poverty and the government solutions, in that scene from A Christmas Carol.
I think someone wrote that unemployment insurance benefits are just the premiums the employee paid in, given back to him. Normally this would be true, but the Federal Government extensions are not that. Now they are taking money from elsewhere and calling it unemployment insurance. The premiums you were talking about ran out – thus the reason for the fourth “extension.”
Finally for now, someone mentioned my article, “Does Jesus Hate the Rich?” That was also miscast. The nugget of that article was that “If riches are not proof of God’s favor, they cannot be considered proof of His disfavor.”
Hi Dan, and I’m glad you decided to drop by.
If you’ll bother to read my blog today (click on my handle to find the site), you’ll find an interesting article that wholly refutes your simplistic position. The article is entitled A Thousand Points of Blight.
And Dan? Your column is quite fairly summed up the way the owners of this blog have summed it up.
There is no example in the NT of Jesus or an apostle advocating giving _through government_.
See, if first-century Palestinians weren’t doing it, it shouldn’t be done! QED!
And stop eating that shellfish.
private charity was the remedy for both poverty and the government solutions, in that scene from A Christmas Carol.
Have you ever seen the play?
The person who spoke that line was quite clearly opposed to private charity, and supported the “government solution”
And it should be noted that widespread poverty and death due to it didn’t diminish to any great extent until the social safety net was enacted.
So yeah, understanding of economics and history, you haz not it.
Charity, in our view, is a personal, church, and/or parachurch function; not a government function. Government’s function is justice, not mercy (1st Peter 2, Romans 13). There is no example in the NT of Jesus or an apostle advocating giving _through government_. Some of us feel that, to mix up those church and state functions would be to create a theocracy – something I’m sure no one here wants, including me.
Dear Dan Popp,
I am unclear on this. It seems to me that you are saying that charity, (despite being personal) is solely a church function. That your problem with government hand-outs is that it blurs the line between what the Church is supposed to do and what the State is supposed to do.
The implication is that charity only comes from religious bases.
Am I incorrect in that assessment?
Warmest regards,
Dragon-King Wangchuck
Government’s function is justice, not mercy (1st Peter 2, Romans 13).
Ok, well since the actions of a few rich bankers and traders caused the crash that has resulted in an additional 5% of workers being unemployed, I think it is “just” to take some of the money they recieved in bonuses and give it to the people now unemployed because of them.
While I’m quite serious about this, it also makes a broader point that there is no bright line between “justice” and “mercy” as justice is a philisophical and moral concept, one which we can easily enlarge past 1st century mores without turning a country into a theocracy.
justice is a philisophical and moral concept, one which we can easily enlarge past 1st century mores without turning a country into a theocracy
HINT: Dan has no idea, really really, that it’s possible to have morals and philosophy without religion.
Government’s function is justice, not mercy (1st Peter 2, Romans 13).
Neither of those passages limits government’s function to justice, their purpose is to tell the believer to submit to government’s God-given authority because dispensing justice is ONE function of government.
Dan’s point ignores the entire first 150 years of American history, where people, Americans, were dying in the streets of our cities and the roads of our rural villages for lack of food, clothing, and shelter.
In other words, Dan, we went from this uberChristian country that the right wing so cherishes…that allowed its citizenry to die off from neglect…to this “quasi-thoecracy” (to extend your rather silly metaphor) that somehow now has extended the life expectancy of its citizenry to unheralded lengths for this nation (but still lags far behind others).
It seems to me that this very government embodies the best of Jesus’ teachings, and should correclty be viewed as more Christian than the neo-mythic “America” of the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries that you wish to “Renew”.
Are you about to sell all your earthly possessions, Dan, and give all your money to the poor? Because if you ain’t, you ain’t living with Christ. Did Jesus not demand that of His disciples? Are you picking and choosing which part of the Christ you live with?
I don’t want to be dirt poor either, so I figure that giving taxes to the government and asking them to FIND the people who need it and give my money to them, is living a Godly life.
And if you ain’t down with that, I got two words for ya….
I don’t want to be dirt poor either, so I figure that giving taxes to the government and asking them to FIND the people who need it and give my money to them, is living a Godly life.
Since religion, politics, and economics have been so thoroughly blended here, I’ll jump in with this: The other reason to have government agencies take care of the people who need help is economies of scale. For the same amount of money, a city, or a county, or a state, or the feds will provide better service. Unless, of course, the faith-based charity is ignoring minimum wages, health standards, OSHA regs and such.
Actor’s post quite seriously highlights the many systemic reasons why private charity can never match the ability of government to solve social problems in a rigorous, persistent way.
Most alarming of course is that charities will fail the hardest when they are needed most: During times of economic trouble.
But even in prosperous times, charities are only able to blunt problems, never resolve them. To wit: 44,000 people die a year for lack of health insurance. Why hasn’t charity stepped up to pay for their treatment? Liberals have turned to government to solve this problem after the market, and private charity has already manifestly failed to do so. If charities were successfully solving some social problem, liberals would worry about other stuff, they wouldn’t insist government step in and take over for the sake of it.
If charities were successfully solving some social problem, liberals would worry about other stuff, they wouldn’t insist government step in and take over for the sake of it.
There are somethings that charity can handle quite well. Local emergencies that can be fixed quickly. Think of the Red Cross, for example.
Or clothing drives to help the homeless get past one last winter.
Stop gap stuff, in other words, but long term solutions require, no, demand a bigger picture view of things, and as N__B points out, no charity can have that kind of focus, because it cannot guarantee funding past this year’s pledges.
Only government can apply the appropriate amount of fiscal responsibility to bring to bear on the intractable problems of healthcare or housing or hunger or poverty.
Think of the Red Cross, for example.
This is true, and liberals have never suggested that government take over the Red Cross, and in fact support allowing the Red Cross to have access to disaster sites, integrating them into the overall response plan etc. Not that you were arguing otherwise Actor, but it is a prime example of what I was saying.
Further, there are many types of non-profits that are not traditionally called charities (but donations to them are considered “charitable”) which liberals see as essential to a functioning democracy – media watch dog groups, civil liberties organizations and so forth – that make up civil society. Liberalism doesn’t begin and end with government, that’s just the part we end up fighting with conservatives over most often.
In my idealized vision, charities have a place and function in identifying below-the-radar social problems and addressing the symptoms in the early stages while consensus builds towards a societal/governmental fix for the problem. Something akin to how academics will try pie-in-the-sky research, develop it to a point of being plausibly commercially viable, where the market will step in to commercialize the ideas, which ends up benefitting everyone.
“theocracy”…I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Bringing the resources of the government to bear on the poorest of Americans is not equal to establishing a state religion in any world I’m aware of.
Also, prior to the New Deal, prior to the Great Society programs, people were literally dying because they were poor. Your “private charity” approach has been tested (for better than two thousand years) and has failed, epically.
Is this your best intellectual justification for being mean spirited? FAIL.
There is no example in the NT of Jesus or an apostle advocating giving _through government_. Some of us feel that, to mix up those church and state functions would be to create a theocracy…
“theocracy”…I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Hee hee. Some of us feel that[,] to circumscribe government functions based on one’s interpretation of what Jesus and the apostles advocated in the New Testament might be closer to creating a theocracy than if a secular, democratic republican government itself were to choose how to govern based on the will of the people and the Constitution.
Hey, no fair!
Dan Poop only wants to seriously debate the issue when the facts don’t cause him so much butthurt.
Thanks, everyone, for making me feel welcome. I don’t see how I can keep up with the responses. How about a pause while I try to catch up? Here are a few answers for now.
To actor212, you don’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that higher taxes leave individuals less money to give to private charity. Some of the “liberals” you lionize on your blog have advocated lowering the threshold for taxing charitable giving.
The person writing about 1st-century Palestinians: I was responding to someone’s remark (to the effect that) Christians care for the poor, and therefore we need big government programs. It’s not about limiting anything; it’s about helping that poster understand how a Christian might be for helping the poor, and against a particular government intervention.
To the very intimidating dragonmaster person, I feel that charity can be personal, and/or personal/church, and/or personal/other. The individual can give directly, or through an organization. But confiscation is not charity, by definition. I hope that clears that up; thanks for the cordiality of your response.
To the one that feels “justice” would be taking money from those who caused the crisis, I agree, with two conditions. 1) We have to know who really caused the crisis (how do we get all that money back from Chris Dodd and Barney Frank?) and 2) justice cannot be ex post facto. If what was done was not illegal at the time, then it would be unjust to punish people who were not breaking the law. If they were breaking the law, then we apply whatever penalties are in the law.
To the person who said that neither Romans 13 nor 1st Peter 2 limits government’s function to justice, I agree with that. But two problems for you – 1) If the goal is a biblical model of society, charity and so forth, you need to find a biblical example or exhortation for government to do the extra things you envision. 2) The text of Romans 13 reads (NASB) “For because of this you also pay taxes” – that is, because of the justice function. So while government may or may not be limited to establishing justice, taxes are limited to funding that function. So your additional challenge will be to show how the government is going to engage in mercy without using tax money.
I don’t mean to ignore the rest of you – I’ll try to respond to as many as I can.
P.S. How do I do italics in this interface?
I said in my first post that the premise of my article is an empirical question: Do extensions of unemployment benefits raise unemployment? Why haven’t any of you checked on that?
Italics are with html tags: <i>text</i>
1) If the goal is a biblical model of society, charity and so forth, you need to find a biblical example or exhortation for government to do the extra things you envision.
And if the goal is a secular government not based on a biblical model? Why would one have to find biblical support for a secular government to do as it chooses? Or for a representative government to do as the majority chooses? You are told to submit to its authority either way, and to pay taxes either way.
Dan, if you assert something you need to support it.
Do extensions of unemployment benefits raise unemployment?
Dunno. Do they?
Italicise text by typing <i>text</i>
“Do extensions of unemployment benefits raise unemployment?”
You’re making the assertion. You need to back it up with data.
I doubt that it makes an appreciable difference for most people, who would much rather work than not work. There are undoubtedly some people who would take advantage of the system to avoid working for a few extra weeks. You know what? I don’t mind. The benefit to the vast majority of people who cannot find work in this economy outweighs the incremental cost of the cheaters by a large margin.
The key there: I don’t mind. It’s OK with me that some undeserving people get away with something if the program is a net benefit to people who really need it.
I’d expect you, as a purported Christian, to understand that.
Although your parenthesised comment is undoubtedly true, I do not think it means what you think it means. As to the rest, if you had the goal of ‘helping’ the poor, you wouldn’t be seeking to further impoverish them. Sincerity FAIL.*
Or being generous: you don’t really understand how your economic system works so you think that you can have a capitalist system and long-term full employment, in which case basic history, economics FAIL.
——
*Although whenever I hear some Tory come out with this line it always raises a smile: ‘you can’t help the poor by giving them MONEY! What on earth are you thinking?!’
People who live in reality don’t believe that a person can rise from the dead.
No offense to zrm.
I expect that the data probably does show that unemployment rises after past instances where unemployment benefits were extended. Of course, the explanation for this phenomena has nothing at all to do with the fact that unemployment benefits tend to get extended during recessions, when lots of people are losing their jobs because the economy sucks.
So even if the data is as Dan expects, it doesn’t prove his claims. Congress doesn’t extend unmployment benefits during good times for us to have any comparative data.
However someone else did note upthread that there was no surge in employment after the Clinton era welfare reform. The milk was soured, but it turns out there just weren’t a statistically significant number of loafers and layabouts lying around unwilling to find work until Newt kicked them off the dole.
Also, it’s insane to think that a non-corporeal alien intelligence is listening in on your wishes, for the purpose of possibly acting on them in the physical world. That’s reality? People who assign the wrong name to their illusion are sent to the looney bin.
People who assign the wrong name to their illusion are sent to the looney bin.
Good point. I had a close friend who was schizophrenic. If she’d only attributed the phantom voices she heard in her head to God, she probably would have spent a lot less time in the human zoos we call mental hospitals and instead become a major power player in Republican politics.
she probably would have spent a lot less time in the human zoos we call mental hospitals and instead become a major power player in Republican politics
You say to-may-to and you say to-mah-to.
Why haven’t any of you checked on that?
Why didn’t you check on it before you wasted photons making a fool of yourself?
TF has already explained why you’re wasting everyone’s time.
Anybody want to have an honest discussion?
Since you have had nothing to say since this comment, I think we can assume this was a rhetorical question … but what the hell – yeah, let’s “discuss” your post.
I live in Canada, which has much more generous benefits for the unemployed than the US does – so if your model is anything other than the same old bootstrap-yanking BS, naturally your unemployment rate is bound to be perennially waaaaay lower than ours is, right?
OOPS.
No – FDR’s make-work projects (which also created non-trivial benefits for the US besides saving Wall Street from becoming a free-fire-zone) would be LIKE a Public Option for jobs … sheesh … what you have is a small decrease in the level of human misery in your country … at least until the next GOP administration kills it with non-logic like this:
Which of course is why so many are eager to quit their jobs to get some of that sweet sweet unemployment payola. Next time, kindly READ what you write & THINK about what it says before you hit the “Submit Post” button. Surrealist Reagan lied about welfare mothers with Cadillacs for a reason – the elite trained him to. By the time he told that whopper, he’d been living high off the hog for a long long time, & no longer cared who his lies hurt as long as the paychecks didn’t bounce.
There are two types of ignorance – the innocent kind & the intentional kind. One merits patience & tutelage, & the other merits a severe smackdown.
Equating state-run assistance with theocracy or quoting Benjamin Franklin (who lived in a sparsely-populated colony with a large & generous church-based informal system of private charity, & yet still faced the specter of seeing the poor starve & die) to prop up your thesis doesn’t smell very innocent to me.
Since no amount of empirical evidence is likely to change your opinion on the topic of aid versus psuedo-Darwinism as regards the treatment of Teh Poorz, you have rendered any chance of being taken seriously here null & void.
Also, p00p.
#
Rusty Shackleford said,
November 11, 2009 at 19:54 (kill)
People who live in reality don’t believe that a person can rise from the dead.
#
Rusty Shackleford said,
November 11, 2009 at 19:59 (kill)
No offense to zrm.
thank you sir, but you are assuming I am living in reality….
Dear Dan Popp,
I apologize if my name is disconcerting to you, I chose it in honour of the Hottest Head of State who is actually a Head of State (and because it sounds unbelievably cool).
Your statement regarding “confiscation” versus “charity” has only confused things further.
Your original comment stated that goverment acting to provide things normally seen as “charity” was blurring the lines between Church and State and would eventually lead to theocracy. The argument seemed to be that the State should not usurp the functions of the Church, lest we all end up at the whim of a delusional self-appointed God-Ruler.
I originally had issue with this argument since charity is not a function solely of Churches (as you have already conceded), nor is it a trait exclusive to the religious. Thus the premise that Government providing things such as hand-outs to those who have recently lost their jobs is flawed, and the theocracy argument completely falls apart.
But now you have stated that taxes are some sort of confiscation by Government. That there is some moral failing or ethical short-coming in the very idea of taxes. I certainly hope that that is not your position, lest the taint of theivery be spread to all things funded by taxes, such as the Armed Forces. And on Veterans Day, in point of fact.
Anyways, I submit the question again (hopefully more clearly this time) – do you honestly believe that providing unemployment benefits is a stepping stone towards theocracy?
Sincerely,
Dragon-King Wangchuck
Which of course is why so many are eager to quit their jobs to get some of that sweet sweet unemployment payola
One minor quibble jim, you can’t collect UI if you quit, you have to get fired or laid off.
So it’s not the voluntary full time party train Reagan and Dan purport it to be. Although in most places of employment, just NOM a few noggins and you get the heave-ho pretty quick. One does have to be careful, because the line between “firing the zombie for eating brains” and “take a chainsaw to ’em” can be kind of fluid.
Also, Nomming Melons in most legal firms results in being promoted.
you can’t collect UI if you quit, you have to get fired or laid off.
You also have to be able to prove you are searching for work or improving your chances of getting work by documenting time spent searching, interviewing, training, networking, etc. for a minimum number of hours per week, and even then the money is a fraction of what you got paid in your last job.
To actor212, you don’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that higher taxes leave individuals less money to give to private charity.
Which would negate my point…how, Dan?
If I’m paying taxes to a government with the resources to perform the charitable tasks that a church or private charity cannot, then doesn’t the act of paying higher taxes itself become an act of charity on my part?
Which was my point.
Also, how do you feel about the trade deficit and the fact that you and I are both financing other countries ability to provide for THEIR citizenry?
You’re paying the French to provide free public education to their Muslim minority, in other words. But that’s not a tax, no no! That’s the “free market”…
Do extensions of unemployment benefits raise unemployment? Why haven’t any of you checked on that?
Mostly because it’s a strawman, Dan.
After all, unemployment insurance is itself a bare bones subsistence amount and please, PLEASE, don’t try to pass off that people would prefer to receive that than find work. I’ll have to hurt you.
If anything, unemployment benefits create economic activity…think of it as an individual stimulus program that prevents homelessness and welfare…that mitigates societal unemployment as a whole.
But hey, you don’t have to believe me…I only have a degree in finance from one of the finest B-schools in the world.
You can read Wikipedia. Maybe you’ll learn something:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#Costs_of_unemployment
You also have to be able to prove you are searching for work
And yes, there are abuses of the system. Sort of. A friend of mine called me up last week (I’m a business owner) and said “Heads up, I told the unemployment office that I interviewed for a job with you”. Which, of course, she hadn’t. This is commonplace. This must have happened to me at least a dozen times, friends and acquaintances asking me to lie for them. I always agree to it.
And I absolutely don’t care. I know my friend would much prefer to be employed, and in any case, I wouldn’t be in her shoes for anything. I’ve been on unemployment for exactly two weeks out of my entire working life, and I’d never voluntarily go back to it. And mind you, I’m a lazy cock.
I know my friend would much prefer to be employed
BINGO!
Dan, the normal unemployment rate according to economists is about 4%.
Now, those are people whose companies have closed or who have had to move to take care of a sick parent or any number of involuntary reasons.
Add to that, yes, a few people work just long enough to collect unemployment benefits and then manage to get fired.
Now…be a Christian for a second: would you condemn the MILLIONS of people who were forced out of work, who WANT to work but can’t, for the sake of a few thousand who, you know, are gaming the system?
Cuz, Jesus wouldn’t.
Now…be a Christian for a second: would you condemn the MILLIONS of people who were forced out of work, who WANT to work but can’t, for the sake of a few thousand who, you know, are gaming the system?
I’mma gonna let you finish, Dan, but first I will answer for you:
Yes, especially if there is any possibility that brown people will be able to benefit from the program.
Cuz you KNOW he’s thinking that.
Yes, cheap shot, but hey, what do you expect from a zomby?
you can’t collect UI if you quit, you have to get fired or laid off
But … but I just told my boss to … OH SHI-
ZRM,
Let’s give Dan some Propps. He came in here to defend his point and while it’s true, unemployment affects blacks disproportionately, I’m willing to think he’s not racist.
“I’m willing to think he’s not racist.”
Mean-spirited, stingy, superior and ill-informed, yes.
Not necessarily bigoted.
I know, actor, it’s just such a prevalent attitude over at RenewAmerica, that it’s where the betting odds are.
I retract that comment until more information is available.
If Dan comes back and says “some of my best friends are…” will that count?
So… all Americans have the capacity to be lazy cheaters, and unemployment should not be extended because it will only serve their capacity to be lazy cheaters. But, all those same people with the capacity to be lazy cheaters are going to give so much money to charity that government social services can be rendered unnecessary? Or are there two groups – the very rich who also happen to not be lazy or cheaters, but instead are of the purest hearts and will save us all with their charitable giving? And, then the lazy, cheating, succubus-like poor and/or liberals, none of whom are interested in working, ever?
Maybe that’s all exaggerated, but it’s to make a point. None of this computes. That’s the problem with first creating a set of beliefs and then arranging the facts to suit the belief system.
If Dan comes back and says “some of my best friends are…” will that count?
*sigh*
Yes, you can eat his brains then…
Here are some places you can find statistics on unemployment benefits vs. unemployment rate. One of them, as you’ll notice, is “slate” – not exactly a bastion of right-wing extremism. Remember that all my article was proposing is that the more money that is payed out in unemployment “benefits,” the longer people tend to remain unemployed. This, as I have said, is an empirical question, not a matter of opinion.
http://magicstatistics.com/2006/10/11/offer-generous-unemployment-benefits-get-higher-unemployment/
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/commentaries/6441.aspx
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=425572
http://www.slate.com/id/2206420/
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/unemployment-insurance-and-unemployment/
I’ve been trying to post some links to stats on unemployment benefits vs. rate. The posts aren’t appearing. Any tips/workarounds? Thanks.
If you just paste the links into the post, Dan, they’ll show up.
Yes, you can eat his brains then…
Well, to be realistic, then I won’t WANT to.
It’s a real dilemma. The wingnuts and trolls, who DESERVE to have their branes et, either don’t have branes worth bothering with or have stinky, moldy, dessicated lumps. NOT appetizing.
meanwhile, my liberal compatriots have fresh, well-exercised brainz, but I find myself reluctant to NOM them….
I am sure that most people *say* they are far more generous than they *really* are. There’s a reason for that ol’ “I gave at the office!” chestnut.
Haven’t government social safety nets come about because it was determined that:
PRIVATE CHARITIES COULDN’T HELP EVERYONE???!!!
I’ve been trying to post some links to stats on unemployment benefits vs. rate. The posts aren’t appearing. Any tips/workarounds? Thanks.
I, for one, don’t really care about that. All you are trying to do is “prove” that those “undeserving freeloaders” are freeloading on *your* dime, and you know what, some are. That is not a reason to get rid of it.
OneMan wrote:
theocracy”…I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Bringing the resources of the government to bear on the poorest of Americans is not equal to establishing a state religion in any world I’m aware of.
… Your “private charity” approach has been tested (for better than two thousand years) and has failed, epically.
Theocracy, if I remember the definition correctly, is rulership by priests.
The book of James describes helping the widow and the orphan as “pure and undefiled religion.” Now James is either right or wrong about that. Charity is either religious, or it’s not. If he’s right, then you can either promote government “welfare” programs and accept that you’re setting up a state religion; or you can try to keep the two separate. If he’s wrong, then there’s no reason for anybody to talk about a Christian imperative to help the poor.
If failure of the “private approach” means we should scrap it, then that’s the end of government intervention, too. We have as many poor people now as we did when we started the “War on Poverty” 40 years ago, with trillions of dollars “invested.” If you want to talk about epic failure…
OK, I pasted them one at a time this time. Remember that the crux of my article was the increasing unemployment benefits causes unemployment rates to rise. This is an empirical question. Notice that the first source is “slate” – not exactly a bastion of right-wing extremism.
http://www.slate.com/id/2206420/
http://magicstatistics.com/2006/10/11/offer-generous-unemployment-benefits-get-higher-unemployment/
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3570.pdf
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/commentaries/6441.aspx
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=425572
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/unemployment-insurance-and-unemployment
Charity is either religious, or it’s not.
Dan? Really?
Are you suggesting that atheists are not charitable?
Charity is either religious, or it’s not.
Dan? Really?
Are you suggesting that atheists are not charitable?
And Dan? You’ll note poverty rates in the country dropped dramatically until, you know, welfare…the government charity?…was gutted and then “reformed”:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Poverty_59_to_05.png/800px-Poverty_59_to_05.png
Dear Dan Popp,
Are you retracting your assertion that charity can be personal, i.e. separate from any Church influence?
I still do not understand what you are trying to say. I have re-read your argument several times now, and what I’ve gotten out of it is:
“Providing help to the needy is not something the Government should be doing. That’s a religious function, therefore unemployment benefits are in fact an assault on the separation of Church and State.”
Please inform me if my interpretation of your argument is valid.
Awaiting anxiously,
Dragon-King Wangchuck
We have as many poor people now as we did when we started the “War on Poverty” 40 years ago
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html
“In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level to date: 11.1% . They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. Since 1973 poverty has remained well below the historical U.S. averages in the range of 20-25%.” [wikipedia]
So, Dan, back to our discussion of “reality”, where you live and we don’t.
Did a man rise from the dead 2,000 years ago?
Does an incorporeal alien intelligence listen in on your silent wishes?
Just trying to get a fix on “reality.” Tnx
Did a man rise from the dead 2,000 years ago?
Does an incorporeal alien intelligence listen in on your silent wishes?</i?
Careful where you go with this, Rusty. Don't forget I'm a Christian as well. I can take the ribbing, but keep it fair.
Dan is a Professional Christian. Should we really expect him to say anything that might jeopardize his job? Remember, if he’s fired, he’s morally compelled to refuse unemployment benefits.
actor212, I have tried pasting the links several ways, and nothing sticks.
As to your latest comment, please try to maintain the distinction between the arguments I’m making to theists, and the ones I might make to non-theists. Certain posters have questioned my faith or argued their position from a framework of Christianity. I am answering them in kind. If the NT is rubbish, then their arguments and my arguments are all nonsensical anyway.
To answer your question, as you probably know, religious people give more than non-religious people as a percentage of their income. Christians invented hospitals and have planted them everywhere. I haven’t seen any atheist hospitals, though there may be some. When hurricane Katrina hit I Googled to see what the atheists were doing to help – they were sending people to the Salvation Army and the Red Cross – a Christian denomination and a Christian-originated organization.
I’m not suggesting that atheists are not charitable. But when they want to give, they have to use infrastructure that Christians put in place a century and a half ago.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Religion should be charitable, but charity is not necessarily therefore religious or only the purview of religion.
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/unemployment-insurance-and-unemployment
Do you read these links? From one of yours: “But new research from Raj Chetty, a young Berkeley economist, suggests that moral hazard may not be why more generous benefits seem to lead to more unemployment. Chetty realized that unemployment benefits do not merely pay people to stay out of work; they also protect them from having to rush into an unsuitable job. It is nothing to celebrate if unemployed engineers cannot afford to spend three months finding a job for which they are qualified but are forced to work as real estate agents to put food on the table. A longer gap between jobs is sometimes preferable.”
Dear Mr. Popp:
I have a question: if you were not required to pay taxes, would you give the same percentage of your income to charity that you currently are required to pay in taxes?
Christians invented hospitals and have planted them everywhere.
Really?
from here
The Sinhalese (Sri Lankans) may have been responsible for introducing the concept of dedicated hospitals to the rest of the world. According to the Mahavamsa, the ancient chronicle of Sinhalese royalty, written in the sixth century A.D., King Pandukabhaya (fourth century B.C.) had lying-in-homes and hospitals (Sivikasotthi-Sala) built in various parts of the country. This is the earliest documentary evidence we have of institutions specifically dedicated to the care of the sick anywhere in the world.[2][3] Mihintale Hospital is the oldest in the world.[4] Ruins of ancient hospitals in Sri Lanka are still in existence in Mihintale, Anuradhapura, and Medirigiriya.[5]
“Theocracy, if I remember the definition correctly, is rulership by priests.”
…and that’s different than state religion how?
The book of James describes helping the widow and the orphan as “pure and undefiled religion.”
That’s swell, Dan. So when an atheist like myself gives to charity, what is it? Seems like the last time I checked, “religion” has to do with gods and spirits and immortal souls and stuff like that. Did the definition change? Why was I not informed?
See, here’s the thing: if your premise is wrong (“providing for the poor is religious“) then probably your conclusion is also going to be wrong. Now I admit I don’t live in “reality” — or not the reality where you live, but I’m pretty sure I’m right on this one.
Finally, I don’t recall Jesus means-testing those he helped. He just did it and wanted us to do the same. I’m willing to admit it’s been a while since I’ve studied religion so maybe I’m missing a subtlety here and there…did he check peoples’ backpacks before he passed out the loaves and fishes?
“Fair enough. My questions: how much does the increase in unemployment benefits increase unemployment in this economy? A lot? Is it responsible for half the increase in unemployment? My guess is that it increases it in the same way me buying 1 stock increases the stock price – a negligible and indistinguishable from zero amount.”
Dan, so far I’m seeing two Canadian and Swedish study that suggests your point may be supported. What’s that got to do with American unemployment?
Note that in those countries, national health insurance is a God given right, so people in those countries have perhaps less incentive to go scrimping for a crappy job that they are overqualified for.
I can’t look at the WordPress blog post from work, so I can’t comment on that one.
And the Slate link…
Which supports my earlier point about not taking a job beneath your qualifications.
“Whether the provision and generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) increase unemployment has been the subject of much research.1 Theory generally predicts that unemployment will rise in response to an increase in UI generosity. However, the empirical evidence is not as unequivocal as the theory suggests.”
Here’s a charity for all of you atheists
That’s from the Swedish study.
Dan Popp said,
November 11, 2009 at 17:52 (kill)
Hi. Anybody want to have an honest discussion?
Ah…the predictable disingenuous opening by a dishonest shitbag.
It reminds me of someone. Oh yes.
To answer your question, as you probably know, religious people give more than non-religious people as a percentage of their income.
Yes, but most of that goes to churches in the form of weekly tithes and collection plate donations. Those do NOT get funneled to charities like environmental or arts organizations.
Christians invented hospitals and have planted them everywhere. I haven’t seen any atheist hospitals, though there may be some.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Muslims have hospitals and Jews have hospitals and I’m fairly sure that Buddhists believe in curing the sick, too.
I can’t speak to all religions, altho I think the Reading Rooms might suffice for Christian Scientists.
When hurricane Katrina hit I Googled to see what the atheists were doing to help – they were sending people to the Salvation Army and the Red Cross – a Christian denomination and a Christian-originated organization.
AHEM
“Neutral” in this case referring to secular. As demonstrated by the by-laws:
http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/Governance/bylaws_restated.pdf
And the fact that they are Congressionally chartered, which by definition means they are secular:
http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/Governance/charter.pdf
I said upthread that there are some cases in which private charity is absolutely the best vehicle for assisting the afflicted and even mentioned the Red Cross specifically (I neglected to include the Salvation Army).
But for chronic intractable problems, the problems that Jesus would anticipate government intervention if He could wrap His mind around them, I’d say government intervention is best.
Dan, why do you dodge the question about your bizarre supernatural beliefs (if, indeed, you hold them)? I thought we were talking about reality vs. non-reality here.
Can we trust you to understand the nature of reality?
I can’t look at the WordPress blog post from work, so I can’t comment on that one.
That’s a shame a212. Talk about LOL FOOTBULLET.
Or, when he Dan Popp’s point is actually addressed:
Or his closing three points:
1. Read the Chetty article (the one about having a longer period of time to find work you are suitable for)
2. At a time when the world is reeling from a massive global financial crisis, perhaps high unemployment #’s makes a bit of sense.
3. Higher unemployment spending is a feature, not a bug, of the recovery.
Yes, but most of that goes to churches in the form of weekly tithes and collection plate donations. Those do NOT get funneled to charities like environmental or arts organizations.
Interesting. I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re probably right. Included in the level of charitable donation by the “religious” is money to fund their own churches (salary, benefits and housing of the spiritual leader, salary of other employees, electricity bills, etc.) Figures. I wonder what the numbers look like if you look only at the funds that actually go to help the “less fortunate” with food, shelter, clothing, etc.
DKW,
SERIOUSLY????
The guy basically said “Let them eat cake”????
LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!
My God…what hast thou wrought?
That Girl, go check out my blog (click on my nym) and look at the article I posted today called A Thousand Points of Blight. Second one on the page after my shameless blogwhoring.
Religious organizations get more than half of all individual contributions (but oddly, not a dime of corporate donations).
Dan should know better than to try and pass off a Canadian right wing stink tank like the Fraser Institute (which has very limited credibility…i.e. wingnuts) in SadlyNo.
Even conservative economists in Canada agree stimulus spending is necessary, and Harpo cons have realized “jobless recovery” will be the status quo for some time and they need to do more to bolster unemployment insurance benefits – including extending benefits to the self-employed – to keep people from defaulting on mortgages and to keep them spending, especially in small towns where the unemployment rate is upwards of 100%.
Dear Mr. Popp:
I lost my job in JANUARY of 2009. I am a highly qualified college educated individual with over 15 years experience who has actively looked for work since Jan 5th, my day of reckoning. I’ve had countless interviews, consistently lowered my asking number, attended networking functions, and persevered. Nothing. I’ve drained my sixth months emergency money, I’ve lost my house, my daughter could be kicked out of private school soon because I can no longer pay them.
I suppose this is all my fault because I’d honestly would much rather have my 70K a year job back (even with the stupid four hour a day commute) then the job of trying to convince people to PLEASE pay me 8$ an hour because I REALLY NEED IT. Still—I can’t even get a job waiting tables or slinging fries. It seems i’m “Overqualified” for these kinds of jobs. Yes, That is exactly what I have been told.
You’re article is condescending to someone in my position. It seems that you equate every person collecting unemployment to someone who is spending their time partying, drinking, watching reality Teevee (I don’t even HAVE cable) and not looking for a job—or taking a CRAP job offered to them. I would take a CRAP job in a HOT SECOND. I live on the kindness of others–The kindness that someone will hire me. What about THAT kind of charity?
Remember, those of us who are actively looking for work can only become employed if someone is kind enough to chose them for the position they are qualified to do. I no longer believe that humanity is kind. I believe that selfishness has ultimately taken over. Your article has proven this.
Just to clarify, that double blockquote was intended. Rortybomb cites this FreeExchange column at The Economist and agrees with it. Take-home point for people who are not Dan Popp:
Anyways, it’s all tangential because it’s not about unemployment and umeployment benefits in the general case, but rather specifically in regards to the response to the global downturn. Or at least that’s my lacking-in-economic-understanding reading of it.
Included in the level of charitable donation by the “religious” is money to fund their own churches (salary, benefits and housing of the spiritual leader, salary of other employees, electricity bills, etc.) Figures. I wonder what the numbers look like if you look only at the funds that actually go to help the “less fortunate” with food, shelter, clothing, etc.
Usually considerably less than 10%. While I do not doubt the charitable intentions of the faithful, relatively little of their charitable contributions go to help the less fortunate. Churches are, in a way, nothing more than tax-exempt country clubs for like-minded people. Which is fine, until they begin using membership in their club as evidence of their superior moral stature.
The US dept. of labour which crunches the employment figures every month, last month factored in the discouraged job-seekers, i.e. those who give up looking for work and drop out of the labour force because they’ve lost faith in the economy’s ability to employ them. The dept. calculates a truer US unemployment rate is 17.5%.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/business/economy/07econ.html?_r=1&fta=y
DKW,
From The Economist column, but earlier:
Now, I can’t say I’ve studied enough with respect to extended unemployment benefits to speak intelligently on this specific point…UI benefits get extended so rarely that anyone who claims they can is either an idiot or has an agenda to prove…but note what the blogger who quotes this column that Popp bases his theory on missed!
Also to clarify –
In response to a challenge to provide backing for the claim that “unemployment benefits mean more unemployment”, Dan Popp cites a post which takes someone else making the same argument (Casey Mulligan in this case) and tears him a new one.
Seriously. He’s citing a thorough smackdown of his argument as some form of support. It’s, it’s… if there wasn’t a RenewAmerica column with his name on it prompting this whole thread, I’d have called fake troll.
Well, Fuck, I can always strip.
I am a GUUUURLLLLLLL——-a fairly young, decent looking GUUUURRLLLL, too. Hmmm…..I guess I can do that. Then I can bilk Men like Dan Poop with sexy promises while slapping their hands away from my boobs. “Gimme a Fiver and you can MAYBE touch my Boobies!”
There is always THAT!
Arrrrgghh. I just noticed that tig beat me to the Rortybomb. Damn you tigrismus and your actual paying attention-ness.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is complete and utter bullshit in Canada. During the period of the economic boom – between 2005 through early 2008, prior to the recession, and for some months past the beginning of the economic recession – unemployment levels, unemployment rates, and employment insurance claims reached the lowest level recorded. Why? Because work was plentiful, wages were better, and most people had full time jobs.
Living on employment insurance isn’t easy. It’s a pittance compared to a full time salary and certainly won’t pay all the mortgage, food expenses and other bills. People who, by necessity, rely on employment insurance also tend to be more reliant on credit cards and lines of credit to see them through the rough patch.
I’m lucky UI pays my rent.
BUT—that is about all. Screw electric! Screw FOOD! and the Pittance I get is 100$ short of my monthly rent.
Well, Fuck, I can always strip.
Jesus loves the morally corrupt.
While almost completely disagreeing with Dan Popp I will commend him for taking one for the wingnut team. Debating the sadlynaughts upfront is a rare occurence. The predictable death from a thousand comedic cuts has hopefully enlightened Mr. Popp.
TheHolyFatman, Dan Popp said that choosing unemployment and living the sweet life on unemployment insurance would be so awesome that tons of people would do it. Are you saying that isn’t so?
Frankly, I’m still confused about the nature of reality. If a man who believes in invisible superheroes lives in reality and I don’t, then I’m at a bit of a loss.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is complete and utter bullshit in Canada.
You don’t have to. LEAFS SUCK.
Oh, in case anyone else didn’t want to read that Economist article, there’s a bit about how extending unemployment benefits has the added bonus of keeping people from selling their worldly goods and depressing demand with desperation fire-sales – i.e. increased unemployment benefits during downturns = lower unemployment numbers.
But then again, look at the source – the über-liberal Economist.
Included in the level of charitable donation by the “religious” is money to fund their own churches (salary, benefits and housing of the spiritual leader, salary of other employees, electricity bills, etc.)
Don’t forget missionaries. The Church’s favorite charity is The Church.
Damn you tigrismus and your actual paying attention-ness.
Neener! Seriously, though, I can only guess he didn’t read his own links; only one of them that I saw was supportive, and it assumed higher UI benefits= higher unemployment as a given rather than actually proving it.
it assumed higher UI benefits= higher unemployment as a given rather than actually proving it.
I can understand the logic behind this: if I give you a dollar, it’s one less dollar that you have to earn.
The fallacy of that thinking is that the real world includes other factors that can’t be measured in a simple mathematical model, like self-esteem, peer pressure, social ostracism.
You know, the soft fuzzy stuff that economic royalists and conservatives ignore or laugh off.
…until some Muslim blows up a building or crashes a plane and then it’s all “Well, what did WE do to you????”
Rusty Shackleford said,
“Churches are, in a way, nothing more than tax-exempt country clubs for like-minded people.”
I’m stealin’ that.
actor212 said,
“Jesus loves the morally corrupt.”
I believe the PC term is “morally indiscriminate.”
Obviously I can’t respond to all these posts, so a few highlights, then I have to leave.
To those who pointed out to me the “longer gap is preferable” line in the Slate article, that is almost exactly what I said in my original article – which it seems very few of you read. I wrote:
“Those few of us here in Reality see that when people have more time to look for work, they usually take that time — and hence tend to be unemployed for a greater period. The longer you can extend your hunt for a job (or a house, or a car…) the better your chances of finding a good one. If you’re the one unemployed, you’re simply maximizing your opportunities by taking all the time you can.”
To the nice lady who said that Jesus did not “means-test” those He helped, since she admits she is an atheist I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she has not read the New Testament where the rule in churches was, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b, NASB)
Finally, to Rusty who wants to challenge my grounding in Reality based on my belief in the Resurrection, I would say that I think you’re talking about plausibility, not reality. Neither one of us was there, and if we had been, someone might seek to impugn the evidence of our senses. You don’t find the Resurrection plausible, and you reject it. I find it less plausible that ten or eleven apostles allowed themselves to be tortured to death rather than say, “Ha ha, just kidding – we made all that stuff up.”
(Still to Rusty) Science requires that every effect have a sufficient cause. And yet some people believe that the cause of Everything is Nothing. That’s not scientific. Whether it’s plausible is your call, my friend.
Thanks for the spirited discussion, folks. All the best to you.
“To the nice lady who said that Jesus did not “means-test” those He helped”
Ha ha, reading comprehension FAIL.
Also, the whole premise of Mr. Poop’s article is that people taking more time to find a job is a bad thing. So it turns out we agree that offering longer UI benefits may allow some people to take longer to find a job. Our difference is around the question of whether or not this is a bug or a feature. You have to ask yourself, is it better to get people back to work at any old job they can find (and as we see by the anecdote of TheHolyFatMan, those might not be available) or is it better to help as many people as possible for as long as possible, to get them on their feet?
The answer is simple in my eyes. Cutting people off early because some of them might take advantage of the system is a shitty way to approach your fellow man.
Has Mr. Popp read and understood the Golden Rule? I think perhaps not.
that is almost exactly what I said in my original article
That is true Dan Popp, but why did you cut your quote off there?
Emphasis yours. You did note that benefits meant that people could take longer to find a suitable job – but then you said that that was a bad thing.
whups. shou;d of course be promoting chronic unemployment. Disn’t mean to misquote Dan Popp there, just messed up due to tags.
Awesome. You can te;l excarctly ween I sturted drunknigs today.
Awesome. You can te;l excarctly ween I sturted drunknigs today.
You think so? Because it all looks like your standard comments to me.
To the nice lady who said that Jesus did not “means-test” those He helped, since she admits she is an atheist I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she has not read the New Testament where the rule in churches was, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b, NASB)
Jeez, is St. Paul the Ayn Rand of Christianity?
Thanks for the spirited discussion, folks. All the best to you.
Shorter: “Uncle”.
“Christian” is an unfortunately fuzzy word. I expect Mr. Popp is of the “Get Into Heaven Free” variety, in which he is not obligated by his faith to do anything. I’ve never understood why this flavor of Christian advertises the fact (beyond violating the hubris aspect noted in Matthew – get in your closet to pray). Such “salvation” is strictly personal – why should I give a rat’s patootie about your status in the afterlife.
Mr. Popp also does a common stchick of this brand of “Christian”, quoting Peter and Romans and other apostolic letters, even though Jesus repeatedly has to slap the apostles upside the head for being thick, having to break down the parables and castigate them for little faith. Rarely do “Chrisitans” of this stripe quote the Good Rabbi himself, “as ye do to the least of them, so you do unto me”, “love your neighbor as yourself” and “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. And it is clear Mr. Popp doesn’t buy that.
I have no use for your brand of Christianity, Mr.Popp. Your true love is for good old moolah. Taxes are not theft – stealing government services is theft. If the people of a government have decided to help out poor folks, then that is perfectly legit, and frankly I don’t see how anyone that claims to give a hoot what Yeshoua ben Yosef said can have any problem with that. So no, your “religious” justifications are quite flawed and don’t begin to correspond with the synoptic Gospels, which is the best record of what that weird Palestinian preacher said a couple of millennia ago.
As for your “empirical” argument, well first off you don’t know what that word means. The data is empirical; conclusions about that or any kind of sociological data are not. And your quite-non-empirical conclusions can be refuted in a single sentence: “correlation is not causation”.
To the nice lady who said that Jesus did not “means-test” those He helped, since she admits she is an atheist I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she has not read the New Testament where the rule in churches was, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b, NASB)
Dan, when did Paul become Jesus?
That’s twice you’ve quoted something in defense of a comment made in support of Jesus’ teachings by using Paul’s missives?
Are you suggesting that Paul was somehow perfectly in sync with the Lord’s teachings, even tho he was a flawed human? He left no interpretations on the table?
Quo vadis, Dan?
I respect that you have a different outlook on the Bible than I do. I’m trained in evanglicalism, and have even read the Dispensationalist version of the Bible.
I much prefer Thomas Jefferson’s…you recall him, the architect of this nation? the guy who laid our groundwork down?…version, in which he quotes only Jesus’ verifiable teachings (thru MMLJ).
Too, Dan, Jesus lived in an agewhen governments existed only for the aggrandizement of the governors, not the governed. Had Jesus lived in a time when democracy existed, I have no doubt, NONE, that He would have demanded government assist the poor and sick.
After all, He wanted us to use all the tools in our possession. Why would He deny us the one greatest tool we could use?
(of course, this does beg the question how an omniscient God managed to miss this nation in His infinite wisdom but I’m willing to overlook that hiccup)
To the nice lady who said that Jesus did not “means-test” those He helped, since she admits she is an atheist I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she has not read the New Testament where the rule in churches was, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b, NASB)
If you’ve read Acts, you know the early church was largely communistic, and this rule was for those within the church(he specifically refers to BROTHERS, i.e. fellow Christians). You can bet your life it did not apply to the widows and orphans. At any rate, rules for the church charitably protecting its own but not allowing able-bodied men to publicly sully the church’s reputation among non-believers and drain its finances are not rules for the government, which may be charitable in whatever way it chooses. It was also not Jesus.
From someone who thnks jobs will materialise out of thin air if you just starve people enough, that’s quite amusing.
You don’t find the Resurrection plausible, and you reject it.
No, the Resurrection is impossible so I reject it.
And yet some people believe that the cause of Everything is Nothing.
No they don’t.
The masterful Fred Clark on the Dan Popps of the world.
No, the Resurrection is impossible so I reject it.
Nothing’s impossible. Chaos theory tells us that.
See? Just used science to prove the existence of God! 🙂
Well, the possibility of the existence of God, anyway. Of course, He and the Anti-Godicle blink out of existence almost instantly.
Nothing’s impossible. Chaos theory tells us that.
So the Resurrection is as possible as my coffee mug spontaneously falling through my kitchen table. Okey dokey
So the Resurrection is as possible as my coffee mug spontaneously falling through my kitchen table.
Well, you have to admit, that’s pretty improbable.
He and the Anti-Godicle blink out of existence almost instantly.
Mmmmmmmmmm, Godcicle….*guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuhuhuhuhuh*
So… you believe in the Resurrection but think it was a random event?
you believe in the Resurrection but think it was a random event?
Frankly, I think it happens pretty frequently, only Jesus had a good press agent.
I know for a fact that some guy in Dubuque was resurrected and indeed, how else do you explain Ozzie Osbourne’s career?
In Ozzie’s case I fully assumed it was the devil’s work…
No, to us ‘Utopians’ this just seems short-sighted.
Here’s another ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’ for ya, Dan: letting all those ‘slackers’ get their come-uppance means that even less money is flowing through the economy, as the pittance paid to the unemployed is almost entirely consumed. As businesses are no longer receiving this expected revenue, they are forced to-wait for it-fire more workers!
UI, while viewed as idealistic by simpletons and Scrooges, is actually fiercely pragmatic.
Shockingly, Mr. Popp employs binary thinking yet again. I’m no fan of defending ‘Nude Atheism,’ but insisting that those who don’t jive with your teleology are relegated to some sort of futile reductionist role, well, that’s some YHWH-caliber hubris.
Nude Atheism
The what now?
I will defend nude atheism to my last moan.
Nude Atheism = the petty sniping of New Atheists who can’t help but wear their disbelief on their sleeve.
Not religious myself, but really, Rusty’s silly tangent just provided Popp a convenient avenue down which to duck the valid arguments of other commentors.
Well, as we know, there are only 10 types of people in Dan’s world..
Not religious myself, but really, Rusty’s silly tangent just provided Popp a convenient avenue down which to duck the valid arguments of other commentors.
I don’t usually “wear my atheism on my sleeve” but when someone presents himself as a believer in the supernatural (it’s his strongest self-identification, above even husband and small business owner) AND a man with a superior knowledge of reality (which was the premise of his article, after all), then he needs to explain himself.
Fuck Dan POOP