The immigration law discussion Part 2 - The law of unintended consequences

[Ayiekie]

I'm not the one who stared throwing "Blank wing adjutctive" labels around.

No, Star Ranger, you merely insulted millions of people by saying they were too lazy to work. And then made silly generalisations about "liberals" and how they think all illegal immigrants should be given social services. And then called me a troll.
Right-wing boilerblate about welfare moms stealing your taxes because they're too lazy to work is as right-wingey-boilerplatey as it gets. It's also flatly untrue. That's the long and short of it.

[Ayiekie]

Ayiekie, just because you lived 'on the other side of the fence' does not mean you know what's going on here. Until you've actually lived in a US city that is having these problems, then everything you have to say is based on hearsay unless you can present some concrete data to back it up.

For my part, here's my concrete data. Sources are http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ and http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/

Here's one for defense spending (a frequent target of yours) vs. welfare spending.  Remarkable, isn't it?  On average, the welfare budget has always been about half of what our defense budget is.  And considering how big the defense budget is, that is no small chunk of change.
Now, contrast that with the following graph.
Uh-yup.  That welfare system of ours sure is turning out some mighty fine citizens, ain't it?

You asserted that legions of welfare moms too lazy to work who are stealing your taxes exist. The fact the U.S. pays a lot on welfare and also has a high violent crime rate are, to say the least, extremely tangential to that point. Other countries with far better social safety nets than the U.S. also, by and large, have far lower crime rates (see Sweden, Canada, France, etc, etc). Those with worse social safety nets (see Russia, Brazil, etc.) have higher crime rates. So, even given it has nothing to do with what you originally asserted, the point your graphs make is not at all the one you want them to make.
Incidentally, in the U.S., actual welfare benefits have been declining steadily since it's peak in the late 1970s (see: http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators08/apa.shtml , graph TANF2). This coincides very nicely with the high rise in crime on your own graph. It is currently plateaued at a lower point than welfare benefits in 1960. Violent crime, by your own graph, is over four times what it was in 1960, though still much lower than it was in the Reagan-Bush I years. 
The US spends less on welfare than virtually any other first world state other than Japan and South Korea (19.4% of GDP including education, versus 23.1% for Canada, 22.5% for Australia, 33.2% for Germany, 34.9% for France, 38.2% for Sweden, etc), so looking at it in absolute dollar terms isn't really helpful for grasping the state of U.S. welfare. Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, the Switzerland, Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom all have lower percentages of their population beneath the poverty line than the US. Australia (barely) and Italy have higher percentages of the population below the poverty line. Many studies have shown that there is no correlation between welfare spending and overall economic performance or social development. 

[Black Aeronaut]

Not so much as too lazy to work, but too depressed - it's a psychological issue. Think about it a sec. You're a woman girl and a guy's come into your life. You make the mistake of getting pregnant by him, and at some point he just up and leaves you because he does not want to support you or your child - he just wants to party. (Believe me, I'm familiar with the type because my sister's been through a few of them.) Suddenly, all your dreams of raising a happy family have been shot to hell. This hits a girl pretty hard because this is what they instinctively desire - it's a rare girl that does not want this at some point in their life or another. This is when depression sets in. If help in the form of good friends or family is not at hand, then substance abuse is the next step when the depression deepens.

Very rarely does a girl suddenly grow up and pull herself up by her bootstraps... not without help anyways, and even then in some cases all the help in the world would not be enough to make them independent.

Worsening the problem is the size of the generation gaps in these slums. They can be as small as twelve to fifteen years, making things worse like missing payments on a loan with compound interest.

And then you have certain other differences between the US and all the other countries listed. You gave percentages of GDP. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _(nominal) The USA is at second place on two of those lists, and first at the other. And I don't really count the EU since we're talking about individual countries and not some conglomerate (in fact, I just took a second look and these lists don't even assign the EU a numerical placement). And in each of those lists, the USA's GDP is almost triple that of the next country... Which happens to be the PRC. Funny, huh?

What does that mean? It means your argument is invalid. This is not about how much of your tax money goes to what budget. This is about fixing a broken economy. Like it or not, the US, as a culture, has a very unique mentality - one that generates problems that are unique from any other country in the world. We need to come up with unique solutions. We can take inspiration from what one country does, but like the melting pot the USA has become, we must do something that takes a bit from everyone else, and put our own spin on it.

That said... in America's 'glory days' the natural resources found here were not the only bountiful resource. What really empowered the nation was the workforce. It was this workforce that put more supply ships into the Atlantic than the German U-Boats could sink. It was this workforce that bridged two halves of a country whose size was rivaled only by Russia with iron and steel, making it possible to go from the east coast to the west in days instead of months.

For America to recover, we need to resurrect this workforce. Part of that can be done by giving the welfare riders the choice: work the job we assign you or go without welfare. (Of course, exceptions apply like the physically disabled. Even then, a man with no legs can work a desk job.) Another part is providing opportunity to immigrants with a provisional visa system and a more robust naturalization process. Labor laws need a thorough work-over and Unions need to be rehabilitated. We need to crack down on DoD contractors for price gouging. (Testing, schmesting - half of that is BS if the civilian market can get better gear for a lower price. I think the only thing on my ship that was genuinely guaranteed to never break given proper maintenance was performed were the main reduction gears for the turbines... and we lease those bastards.) We must reform the medical care system from top to bottom - insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the doctors themselves... everything. Medical fees here are far too out of hand and they are killing our welfare system more than the welfare riders themselves!

We do need to continue to build bridges by providing humanitarian aid where it is desired. We also need to maintain our military presence in the world as it was prior to 9/11. The heart of Al Qaeda has been crushed and we have more to worry about with the corruption in Pakistan's government than anything else. And you don't want us to make drastic cuts. That means pulling out of Japan, and then Australia will have to help pick up the slack there. Kim Jong Il has already recently proven that he'll be more than happy to let his dogs off the leash if he thinks no one's paying enough attention.
There are so many things wrong with my country - so many that they cannot all be addressed in just one thread.

[Epsilon]

Ah, American Exceptionalism. I was wondering when that little canard was going to be raised.
Also forcing people to work a particular job is kind of morally reprehensible. At that point, you basically have debt slavery (hey, you can pick cotton under horrible conditions or you can eat, totally up to you).
As for a cut in the military budget meaning a removal of your forces from Japan... that's not what he proposed. The budget for military personnel only accounts for one quarter of your budget. You could certainly step down stuff like your weapons development program and your Operations budget (by say, stopping two costly wars) without having to fire a single soldier or close a single military base (except for the one in Iraq, fuck that one).
---------------
Epsilon

[Star Ranger4]

Unfortuneatly, it also doesnt work. There are at least two welfare level programs in the State of California where, in order to recieve aid, you must prove that you are still looking for work in the form of showing that youve filled out at least y number of job applications, and provide x number of hours of labor to the state. Most frequently, in Los Angeles, you get to pick up litter off the road sides. I know, because until Social Security finally decided that I really was flipping nuts enough to qualify as permenantly disabled I was part of that self same system.

So I've SEEN the system from the inside.

And as for your proposal, Ep... Cutting the 'weapons development programs'. They did that after WW one, for the most part. Look at what we reapt from that sewing at the start of WW 2. Now compare what happened when we did NOT. Operations Dessert Shield, Dessert Storm, Iraqui Freedom. Not to mention that 90% of that weapons development programs' are NOT blue sky projects like the more Star wars aspects of Regan's proposed Space Defense Initiative. AND are carried out by the private sector.

YOu've just shot yourself int he foot and put more people on the welfare rolls and ensured that the next people who think 'those guys arnt so tough' and want to pick a fight just might win.

that is a total lose lose lose result in my book Epsilon. You'll never convince me of that just like Akei is convinced that I'm not worth listending to because I spout 'right wing boilerplate'
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Ayiekie]

There is about as much chance of an invasion of the US as an invasion of Neptune, even if the US didn't spend as much on the military as every other country combined. Neither in WWI nor WWII was the continental US ever threatened by invasion, and the disparity between military and economic power wasn't nearly as great then. Also, you won WWII just fine and it didn't take nearly as long as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" so.... uh... exactly what was so great about it again?

[Ayiekie]

This hits a girl pretty hard because this is what they instinctively desire - it's a rare girl that does not want this at some point in their life or another.  

Ummm... that is a statement that would offend many women, I hope you realise? By the by, the rate of women in the US who reach their 40s while remaining childless is almost 20% - that's not exactly "rare".

 What does that mean? It means your argument is invalid. This is not about how much of your tax money goes to what budget. This is about fixing a broken economy. Like it or not, the US, as a culture, has a very unique mentality - one that generates problems that are unique from any other country in the world. We need to come up with unique solutions. We can take inspiration from what one country does, but like the melting pot the USA has become, we must do something that takes a bit from everyone else, and put our own spin on it.

There is no significant difference between the US and the rest of the world. Your mentality is not unique - you seriously think you're the only melting pot culture on Earth? Your economy is not unique aside from its size (and Americans certainly have no trouble believing that what works there will work in any other economy no matter the size), and it is increasingly less unique on that front anyway.What you are doing is making excuses to explain why the same pattern that holds everywhere else in the first world will not hold in the US, backed by nothing other than "we're different". You're no more different than anyone else is. And something that works everywhere else has no reason not to work in America.

That said... in America's 'glory days' the natural resources found here were not the only bountiful resource. What really empowered the nation was the workforce. It was this workforce that put more supply ships into the Atlantic than the German U-Boats could sink. It was this workforce that bridged two halves of a country whose size was rivaled only by Russia with iron and steel, making it possible to go from the east coast to the west in days instead of months.

Sure, you had a large well-educated population (you still do!) and a resource and industrial base that was basically immune to attack (you still do!), but what does that have to do with anything? By the by, Canada is bigger than the U.S., and China is about the same size, so saying "only rivaled by Russia" is wrong on those grounds.  In other rivals, Brazil is about 90% of the size of the U.S., and Australia a bit below that. And Russia is almost twice as big as the U.S. now and was over twice as big as it when it was the USSR, so the US does not exactly "rival" it in size. 

For America to recover, we need to resurrect this workforce. Part of that can be done by giving the welfare riders the choice: work the job we assign you or go without welfare.

So you want the government to assign jobs to people, and those who refuse will lose payments? That's, uh... not very free-market capitalist. It's, in fact, way more communist than anything the Chinese are doing. Are you certain you've thought this through? Who exactly is going to decide who works where? Who's paying for the bureaucracy to oversee this? Where are the jobs going to come from, exactly, given that the U.S. simply does not have a limitless supply of them?

We do need to continue to build bridges by providing humanitarian aid where it is desired. We also need to maintain our military presence in the world as it was prior to 9/11. The heart of Al Qaeda has been crushed and we have more to worry about with the corruption in Pakistan's government than anything else. And you don't want us to make drastic cuts. That means pulling out of Japan, and then Australia will have to help pick up the slack there. Kim Jong Il has already recently proven that he'll be more than happy to let his dogs off the leash if he thinks no one's paying enough attention.
There are so many things wrong with my country - so many that they cannot all be addressed in just one thread.

Yes, I really, really do want you to make drastic cuts. Although you're changing the subject again. Heh, "unintended consequences" indeed!
Kim Jong-Il? Are you serious? Who exactly is he going to make a first strike against? The answer is "Nobody, and if he does, his regime is destroyed and overthrown, and this is 100% true whether the U.S. is there or not". Do you honestly think that if the US doesn't have bases in Japan (a country that ranks sixth in the world in military expenditures, "self-defence"-related or not), he's free to attack them (to get what, exactly? invade with what logistics, exactly?) and will get away with it? A tiny, poverty-stricken country with a backwards military armed mostly with decades-old equipment? Meanwhile, the US being there didn't exactly stop the DPRK from shelling that island, did it?
You are not vital to the region on either end of the equation. You do not constrain the DPRK's actions more then they would be restrained without a permanent massive US military presence in the region, and the thought of them attacking Japan would be ludicrous whether you were there or not. Even South Korea doesn't want you there, and they are literally the only country on earth who would rationally have anything to fear from the DPRK (of course, if they attacked South Korea, most of the damage would be done in the first day and there's nothing the US could do to stop it, so here we are again).

[Star Ranger4]

 Neither in WWI nor WWII was the continental US ever threatened by invasion,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...leutian_Islands_Campaign
Wrong.  Try again.

didn't take nearly as long as "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

because we didnt have to build up a new government from scratch like we did in IF.  Nor did we have Korea trying to jump in and keep the fight going for Japan because both shared the same religion.
So, wanna try for a hat trick of Wrong?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[robkelk]

 Neither in WWI nor WWII was the continental US ever threatened by invasion,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_Campaign
Wrong.  Try again.

No, he's right - the Aleutians are not normally considered to be part of the continental United States.

Also:

• The infiltration of spies is not normally considered to be an invasion, so Operation Pastorius and Operation Elster don't count either.
  
• "Torpedo Alley" was a blockade.
  
• Lookout, Ellwood, Fort Stevens, Estevan Point Lighthouse, and the fire balloons were bombardments, not invasions.
  

[size=smaller](Oh, and you're coming very close to getting the thread locked, Star Ranger. Unless that's you want, please address only the topic.)[/size]
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Epsilon]

because we didnt have to build up a new government from scratch like we did in IF. 

I... what... seriously? You've never heard of the Marshall Plan? You know that incredibly successful four year long project which rebuilt most of Europe and Asia and in some cases, such as Japan, specifically involved you constructing a new government from the ground up?

Nor did we have Korea trying to jump in and keep the fight going for Japan because both shared the same religion.

Look up "Berlin Airlift".
-------------
Epsilon

[Ayiekie]

 Neither in WWI nor WWII was the continental US ever threatened by invasion,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...leutian_Islands_Campaign
Wrong.  Try again.

didn't take nearly as long as "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

because we didnt have to build up a new government from scratch like we did in IF.  Nor did we have Korea trying to jump in and keep the fight going for Japan because both shared the same religion.
So, wanna try for a hat trick of Wrong?

Others have already pointed out both your counters are wrong. But I'm curious as to who exactly is your Korea-analogue here. Let me guess: Iran, the Shiite theocracy that in recent memory had an almost decade-long war with Sunni-dominated secular Iraq? And that you are not actually at war with or have even had military clashes with?