Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

Re:Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of soc... by EdSharkey on Saturday July 01, 2017 @02:22PM (#14678236)

I wasn't talking about those people, was that not clear? I wrote because you were being either sarcastic or snarky or chronically compassionate.

There are scam artists that stitch the rich tapestry of welfare programs together to make a living. You might choose to look the other way, out of compassion, whereas I choose to look straight at it and call it theft, out of compassion. I am being compassionate (tough love). You are being compassionate (empathy). Both of our voices are important in this discussion.

I actually don't believe you have to sacrifice your belief system to acknowledge there are fraudsters in the system who are a drain on society. Everything I have read about SSD says the fraudulent claims are anywhere between 1% and 25% of the total. I'm willing to accept that as few as 1% of claims are fraudulent, but even 1% would be 106000 out of 10.6 million (2011 numbers), and that's still a ton of fraud just in that one benefit.

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Re:Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of soc... by mikeash on Saturday July 01, 2017 @02:43PM (#14678339)

I was talking about those people. Was that not clear?

I was being sarcastic because I was replying to a person who said that avoiding poverty was simple, all you have to do is get a job.

I don't see what any of your comment has to do with this.

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[dead]

Re:Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of soc... by mikeash on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:42PM (#14680053)

This is an interesting tactic: try to forcibly shift the conversation in a completely different direction, and then criticize the other person when they don't follow. I can't say it's working, but it's not a bad attempt.

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