Quote:
Originally Posted by Drolefille
It's not something you agree with or don't, it's fact. You're thinking of a stereotype of urban poor.
http://www.secondharvest.org/who_we_...ger_facts.html
This is about elderly people living on fixed incomes, people who cannot support themselves on the wages available, urban and rural.
So the mentally ill don't deserve food? These things are wonderful if you live in a large enough city to support them and have transportation etc. Your perspective is very very focused on one portion of the population. See the links above about people in America who resort to eating clay.
So you're for the social programs run by the government? And if those aren't adequately meeting the needs of the population you'd be for expanding them so they are?
... I cannot follow that sentence. People in the world hate us for different reasons, but you cannot exclude reasons because they don't fit your worldview.
Monetary as well as other promises we make, but you do realize that 25% of our national debt is in the hands of foreign countries right?
We also do owe the UN 1.246 billion dollars because Congress thinks its fun not to pay in order to try and make the UN do what we want. We currently pay 22% of the UN's budget because they have a "ability to pay" scale. This does not make use "basically funding the UN ourselves" |
It's not that I don't think people deserve food, but it's that I believe we presently have in place generally adequate levels of funding to provide food and private groups that actually hand out food. (although it would seem like a good idea to me to reevaluation how we pay farm subsidies to tip the scales toward food production if it we can see that the problem is in fact too little food available.) The breakdown, as I see it, occurs getting the food to the people, mainly because the people in need don't seek the aid, rather than because anyone is withholding it or because we just need more government employees out there ready to document the need.
I think when you really look at who might be going hungry, they are going to be a hard group to serve better, largely because of their own behavior. Since I'm not someone who thinks it's the government's job to force itself on people who don't seek it's help, it's a problematic issue for me. If additional efforts need to me made, I'd rather handle them with tax incentives and private aid to groups who can document delivery of food to people in need.
Paying almost a 1/4 of the UN's bills seems about right to you? Not even getting in to the costs of other support to UN programs? It doesn't to me. In additions to the 22% figure, where do you think most of the private support for UN programs is coming from? I think, even leaving out the military support Shinerbock mentioned, I think if you broke down UNICEF funding or other UN charities, you'd still be looking at way more US support than would seem proportional.
I'm also not bothered by owning debt to other countries as long as we are meeting the terms of the debt repayment. Are we defaulting? If we need to assume government debt, I'd prefer to get the lowest terms or go with a lender who provides some other benefit. If it's international, I think it's okay, but I'll freely admit I haven't studied the issue.
My point about why people hate us is that our perception about why they hate us is really too subjective to let it drive our domestic decision making. They hate us, and we should avoid it when we can, but deciding how we want to conduct our own government based on why we imagine they hate is isn't a particularly good plan.
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