CreateDebate is a social debate community built around ideas, discussion and democracy.
If this is your first time checking out a debate, here are some quick tips to help get you started:
Arguments with the highest score are displayed first.
Argument replies (both in favor and in opposition) are displayed below the original argument.
To follow along, you may find it helpful to show and hide the replies displayed below each argument.
To vote for an argument, use these icons:
You have the power to cast exactly one vote (either up or down) for each argument.
Once you vote, the icon will become grayed out and the argument's score will change.
Yes, you can change your vote.
Debate scores, side scores and tag scores are automatically calculated by an algorithm that primarily takes argument scores into account.
All scores are updated in real-time.
To learn more about the CreateDebate scoring system, check out the FAQ.
When you are ready to voice your opinion, use the Add Argument button to create an argument.
If you would like to address an existing argument, use the Support and Dispute link within that argument to create a new reply.
You can share this debate in three different ways:
#1
#2
#3
Paste this URL into an email or IM:
Click here to send this debate via your default email application.
Click here to login and CreateDebate will send an email for you.
How to reduce the unemployment numbers.
Currently, a portion of our taxes goes towards funding welfare. Those people do not work (they just collect free money) and that brings the unemployment numbers up. However, if our individual share of welfare funding went into our own individual trust and we gave welfare recipients a bank account number that identified it as belonging to a welfare recipient, then individuals could hire welfare recipients and pay them from the funds in their trust. Once those funds run out, you can't hire any more welfare recipients. Any money in the trust that is not spend by the end of the year, goes to the welfare recipients as free money. This would get welfare recipients to perform actual services/work (bringing unemployment down) and get paid for doing said jobs. They would become contributing members of society and not a drain on society. We could still have minimum wage and maybe have specific wage assignments for certain jobs. Those who are physically unable to perform any work, could still get welfare.
Which businesses get the benefit of unpaid workers? The reason why this hasn't been thought up before is because the idea that working for every single penny you spend even if you are having a tough time in life is heartless.
Heartless? Really? Do you want to pay some of my bills?
This is for individuals to hire people to pull weeds, clean house, etc. The workers get paid from the trust, directly into their bank account. I've seen a lot of homeless people who would benefit from the self pride that comes from doing an honest day's work (earning your keep).
I didn't get offended when you suggested I work. I do work. I do earn my keep. Maybe that's why I didn't get offended.
What I was trying to get at was that if you are willing to pay people to sit at home and do nothing, then you should be OK with paying me to sit at home and do nothing.
I didn't get offended when you suggested I work. I do work. I do earn my keep. Maybe that's why I didn't get offended.
You can claim that all you want, but I made a suggestion and you abandoned your position on the topic.
What I was trying to get at was that if you are willing to pay people to sit at home and do nothing, then you should be OK with paying me to sit at home and do nothing.
Actually, that isn't what you were doing though. You were trying to claim that it is not heartless to ask people to work by pointing out that I don't want to give you free money. All you would do is point out that I am heartless for not giving you free money.
What I was trying to get at was that if you are willing to say that all free money should be worked for then you should be ok with doing my job to have your bills paid. I was actually trying to get at that, you were trying to ignore everything you posted.
Yeah, I don't see how that proves anything. If anything it shows that there's a misunderstanding between what you think you said and what I understood.
Cartman is going to say something to joe_cavalry. If joe responds one way, it means this and if he responds another, it means that. Except that in order for the test to be valid, joe has to understand what it is that you said. In other words, I took a different interpretation of what you intended and so my response was null and void.
You countered with C(Jolie), and implied that C(Jolie) -> not B. The problem was that C was unrelated to A so you proved nothing.
I countered with A(Jolie) and you did not approve of the arrangement which implied A(Jolie) -> B, like I originally said.
Then you claimed that you were trying to show that if C(Other) -> not B, then C(Jolie) -> not B in an attempt to prove that your original argument A was valid.
We both agree that C -> not B, but you tried to propose that to demonstrate A -> not B.
I pointed out that A(Jolie) -> B to show that A -> B.
You said, "Sure, can you show up to my work and do my job so I can collect my paycheck?"
Which was unrelated to what I had said (not the other way around). I never said that a welfare recipient should do your work so that you could collect your paycheck. I said that a welfare recipient do your work so that he could collect part of your paycheck. You wanted me to do your work and me NOT collect any of your paycheck.
Your whole premise is based on the idea that you work for me to get money from me (through taxes). You want to institute a program that has you work for me to get money.
I never said that a welfare recipient should do your work so that you could collect your paycheck.
You wanted free money from me. That is the task I want you to complete. You changed the rules when you asked me to personally pay your free ride.
I said that a welfare recipient do your work so that he could collect part of your paycheck.
No, you specifically asked if I personally would give you money like a welfare recipient.
You wanted me to do your work and me NOT collect any of your paycheck.
You asked me to give you free money. Where do you think I was going to get the money if not from my paycheck? I agreed to giving you my money as long as you did my job.
You asked me to give you free money. Where do you think I was going to get the money if not from my paycheck? I agreed to giving you my money as long as you did my job
That is not what I understood. When you said that it was heartless and I said Do you want to give me free money, what I meant was, would you rather give someone free money in the form of welfare. I guess I could have clearer.
So, you are going to try to tell me that when I said making people work for their welfare is heartless your response was "so, would you rather give someone free money in the form of welfare". Clearly you didn't mean that since the answer to that would be obvious.
That's why I was confused. I was expecting you to say no. Then when you asked me to do your job, I was like, wtf? Why would I do that and not get paid. Re-Re-read the whole exchange again but from the perspective that I was confused.
You are on a debate website. It is time to stop getting confused when people have a different opinion than you. Especially when you love to give crappy opinions to get responses.
Then when you asked me to do your job, I was like, wtf?
This is exactly my point. Even you think that asking someone to do work for free money should get a wtf reaction.
Why would I do that and not get paid.
FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME, YOU WOULD BE DOING IT FOR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Re-Re-read the whole exchange again but from the perspective that I was confused.
No, why should I re-read something an illiterate person wrote. The first time was bad enough.
That's not the way it works in the scenario I described. 1st, there's minimumwage, then there are job assignments with specified minimum. The welfare recepients can even form unions and/or they can negotiate a higher wage from there, depending on supply and demand. The more homeless people around willing to do the job, the harder it would be to negotiate a wage above the minimum. This would force homeless people to move to communities without homeless people. Kinda spread the homeless around more evenly. I call it, homeless redistribution. I got that name from the liberal play book.
The welfare recepients can even form unions and/or they can negotiate a higher wage from there, depending on supply and demand.
Now you want to unionize welfare recipients? Man, I can't think of any reason why this isn't bad.
The more homeless people around willing to do the job, the harder it would be to negotiate a wage above the minimum. This would force homeless people to move to communities without homeless people. Kinda spread the homeless around more evenly. I call it, homeless redistribution.
Wow, how is it not heartless to fuck with homeless people instead of helping them?
I got that name from the liberal play book.
The play book that is handed out to liberals only? ;)
Giving homeless people jobs make them feel good about themselves because they are becoming productive members of society. It also helps them get back on their feet. But if you care so much about helping them, why don't you just hand over your pay check to them? I know where some of them hang out. I can take you there and you can start doling it out.
I don't think you understand what I mean when I say free money.
I know exactly what you mean ... not free.
The same amount? The more they work, the more they make. There are still going to be some that are too lazy to work. That money can still be claimed.
You aren't creating jobs that generate money. You are creating jobs that give people their welfare money that they are already getting.
What is heartless is giving someone free money and take away their dignity, pride, self worth and motivation to be productive members of society.
I notice that your list doesn't include getting them back on their feet. :) Being homeless takes away your pride and self worth, not getting free money.
Anyone capable of working should have to do so in order to receive any public assistance. We would not want them to take away jobs from people gainfully employed, so give them work no one else seems willing to do. I for one would like someone to pick up litter around our main thoroughfares.
They're undocumented immigrants, not "illegal aliens"; they're still human beings and deserve a modicum of respect, especially since they're the ones who do all the jobs we're too good for, like housekeeping and landscaping. How about instead of rounding them up like animals, we make it easy for them to naturalize?
They are illegal alliens. They entered the country illegally. You might want to read up on some history and find out what happens to countries without secure borders. That's our eventual fate, unless we address the problem.
When whitey showed up, the Indians might have had a chance to kick them out, but they were devided, and waring amongst themselves. Kinda like we're doing today. A house devided cannot stand.
When whitey showed up, the Indians might have had a chance to kick them out, but they were devided, and waring amongst themselves. Kinda like we're doing today. A house devided cannot stand.
That wouldn't have mattered if it weren't for the fact that 90% of the Native American population was wiped out by disease when we showed up.
Actually, the migrant workers make the greatest contribution to society. Yard work or house work is just luxuries of the upper echelon. Agriculture is a core infrastructure that affects everyone.
They will be entering the country legally and will therefore be provided basic rights. So, they wouldn't be doing migrant work.
Need another plan.
You need a group of people that do not have worker's rights and are willing to work under dangerous conditions for well below minimum wage for 14 hours a day. Once you get that group in the US, we won't need illegals at all.
I was actually about to suggest that as a solution. There will be sympathizers for those as well. So we will need to get rid of those too. Pretty much, it should end up like the other debate where there will be a civil war.
"Immigration status. Fifty-three percent of farmworkers are undocumented, 25% are citizens, 21% are legal permanent residents and 1% are authorized in some other manner to work." source
"In 2006, 77 percent of all agricultural workers in the United States were foreign-born." source
2014: "More than 70 percent of all hired U.S. farm workers are foreign-born, mostly from Mexico, and about half are undocumented."source
Need to keep legal immigration up as well. Also, it is not that hard to google this yourself.
Those people do not work (they just collect free money
You might want to check out the 2012 Census, because that statement of yours is factually wrong (when made referring to the group as a whole).
However, if our individual share of welfare funding went into our own individual trust and we gave welfare recipients a bank account number that identified it as belonging to a welfare recipient
So those who need it most would have the smallest share? It seems like this idea would create a lot of backlogged money from those who won't need it, while failing to provide sufficient funds for those who do.
then individuals could hire welfare recipients and pay them from the funds in their trust.
And what of those who receive welfare AND work? And why are they working for money that they already contributed, which would then be taxed again?
This would get welfare recipients to perform actual services/work (bringing unemployment down) and get paid for doing said jobs.
Again, and what of welfare recipients who DO perform actual services and work?
They would be become contributing members of society and not a drain on society.
Are those who work while receiving welfare "a drain on society"?
I was specifically targeting those who do not work but physically can work. Those who work and get welfare to supplement their income would not have their status changed.
The portion that are physically able to work and do not are a very small portion of the total welfare recipients. They are abusing disability programs that exist to serve people with severe disabilities.
It is very difficult to identify these individuals as the distinction between severe disability (unable to work), partial disability (limited ability to work), and minor disability (able to work) are subjective. There is still no objective standard for pain, only a subjective scale that relies entirely upon the individual interpretation.
There is no reason to implement another source of bureaucratic waste just for these individuals; at least not until better methods are discovered for distinguishing them.
The past in the USA one could drive around and find spot labor to work doing such task as cleaning horse stalls, raking leaves, push mowing, baling straw, etc. Today these same type of people aren't holding signs saying,
"Will work for food." Instead they are holding signs that read,
"Will work for prevailing wage, 2 weeks paid vacation, insurance and a 401k."
The problem isn't because there is a lack of work, just the unwillingness to do any work.
Economic terminology is different from the common conception. Unemployment only includes those who are a part of the workforce, which rules out anyone not actively seeking employment. By implementing your plan you would likely drive unemployment up by creating more people seeking employment without proportionately increasing the number of jobs.
No; that is not remotely close to the point I was making. You suggested that your plan would reduce unemployment numbers, and I merely observed that why this would not be the case due to the way those numbers are calculated. It is hardly my fault that you constrained your reasoning to a broken method of economic assessment.
So the unemployment numbers were reduced simply by changing the definition from people not working to people looking for work? The numbers are artificially underinflated? And my suggestion would reveal the sham the current numbers are? But my method is the one that's broken, not the government's?
Interesting.
Regardless, my suggestion serves the purposes of my debate, so.... If the government's method serves their purpose, more power to them. They can keep their retarded method. I'm keeping mine.
Your original statements do not remotely lend themselves to an advocacy against the current method of assessment, likely because you were unaware of how it counteracted your plan until I pointed it out. The problem with shifting your advocacy now to endorse expanding the definition of employment is that doing so would inherently increase the unemployment figure which directly contradicts your objective of reduction.
And regardless of how one ultimately defines unemployment, your plan is still flawed because it creates more competition for jobs without necessarily securing a corresponding increase in jobs.
I beg to differ. From a working person's perspective, their tax base has not changed. All that has happened is that the government now says, "We have set part of you taxes in a trust for you to use to hire former welfare recepients." You now have an incentive to create a job for those new workers. You dodon't have to worry about their wages because it comes out of the trust. So, the number of workers increased, but so did the number of jobs.
The actual consequence would be that employers layoff current employees whom they are paying themselves and fill their positions with the new welfare trust workers whose wages will be paid by the government. The former employees would then join the now larger unemployed workforce in a vicious cycle that further destabilizes the workforce by institutionalizing cycles of unemployment... all while not creating any new jobs.
You wrote: "[...] then individuals could hire welfare recipients and pay them from the funds in their trust." This means that businesses would be paying welfare employees with welfare trust funds rather than with their own business funds, which would create a financial incentive to layoff traditional non-welfare employees in favor of welfare employees that they do not have to pay (at least not in full). This creates more welfare employees, etc.... per my earlier argument.
I really do not understand the disconnect. I do not consider a business, like McDonalds, as an individual. If they are not individuals, they don't have access to those funds. If they don't have access to those funds, they can't pay anyone using those funds. I hope this clarifies things a bit.
Are you saying the welfare recipients should be paid the normal wage by the business AND the amount from their welfare fund?
If not, then what is he saying is that the business would not have to spend money on the wages of the individuals in question, which would give incentives to hire this essentially free labor (to them, at least).
Are you really only referring to private individuals hiring these theoretical welfare recipients and not businesses? Because if so, I fail to understand how you believe the scope of this program of yours would cover all welfare recipients.
Well, when you think about it, there are more individuals (i.e., homeowners) than corporations/companies. There a a number of welfare recipients that already work, so they would just get a check. Then there are other welfare recipients that can't physically work, so they too would just get a check. That leaves the welfare recipients that are just sitting around waiting for their check. So..., yeah, all the welfare recipients are covered. The tax contributions made by business would remain as is, unchanged.
That is definitely not what I thought you meant, but I think it is also unfeasible. The amount of time one would have to spend finding individuals and commuting to their homes to do the relatively limited amount of work per individual/household would severely restrict their ability to look for actual, long-term, stable, living wage jobs. For those who are already employed but not earning a living wage, the result would likely be that the have to choose between their underpaying job and the welfare originally designed to fill the gap between their income and the cost of living (so either poverty or unemployment would go up).
Further, the homeowner either does these things themselves already and would likely just save themselves the paperwork and hassle of the system and continue to do so... or they already employ someone in the formal or informal economy whom they would either retain due to their reliability and consistency or fire to replace with a welfare employee which makes your plan ineffective at best and counter-effective at worst.
I figured there was a disconnect. I'm glad I took the time to look for the problem and correct it.
I expect some would just bunch up near a Home Depot waiting to get picked up. The more industrious individuals would select affluent communities and hit a bunch of houses in one shot. Right now, they just stand on a street corner waiting for a handout. Others are just waiting for someone to get killed by the police so they can get free stuff when the riots start. Either way, they are not actively looking for actual, long-term, stable, living wage jobs.
For those who are already employed but not earning a living wage, their situation would not change. They just keep on getting their supplementary check in the mail as always.
The homeowner wins out because now they can use part of their tax money (that gets spent by the government as the government sees fit) on additional services they couldn't otherwise afford.
I am glad as well that we persisted in identifying the actual substance of our disagreement.
I am rather confident that you can not substantiate a single one of your presumptions about welfare recipients. You have no way of knowing what the majority of unemployed recipients are doing with their time, and jumping to the conclusions that they are looting instead of looking for living wage jobs is entirely assumptive. The reality is that there are not enough actual, long-term, stable, living wage jobs to employ everyone who needs those jobs. That someone is unemployed or underemployed does not immediately translate into their being to lazy to find a decent job when our economy fails to ensure that the minimum wage is actually a living wage and that there are enough jobs to go around.
I reiterate what you have not really addressed, which is that whatever time someone is spending standing in a parking lot or canvasing affluent neighborhoods (frequently designed to be inaccessible to lower income populations) is time they cannot spend seeking stable living wage employment.
You have also neglected my points regarding the lack of incentive for many homeowners to engage welfare workers, as well as the potential loos of employment for those already doing those jobs.
When they first implemented welfare, there were similar arguments being used to try and stop the implementation of welfare. In the end, they implemented it and people were like, "See? It doesn't work! Now we have generational welfare recipients." And there were people who were like, "See? It works great! Check out my check." So I'm very confident that if my solutions were implemented, we would end up with a group of people for it and a group of people against it. That is not going to change. Already there are many who say that the current welfare system is broken. They just lack what it takes to change it.
But, even if there aren't enough actual, long-term, stable, living wage jobs, why should we just hand them unearned money? Why can't they have multiple part time jobs? Why shouldn't they be required to do some amount of work for it?
Now, since these people already have their Obama phone, they can use it to seek stable living wage employment while they stand around Home Depot. They can even use the free WiFi. As far as not being able to access affluent neighborhoods, they certainly can and do access them. I live in a gated community and I see them all the time wedging their business card in the door or throwing their little zip lock bags with rocks in them and their business card as they drive by. These people can get past American Customs Officials and Border Patrol Agents. Do you really think a 10 foot fence and a gate can keep them out?
As far as incentive for homeowners, of course there are incentives. Go to any home owner and ask them this question, "If I pay someone to do whatever menial job you may have, would you let that person do the job?" I mean, do you think that there are people out there who get paid to clean out a garage or attic? Maybe you just want someone to pick up the dog poo in the backyard because, since you're too lazy to take your dog on a walk, you're probably too lazy to pick up the poo. Maybe you want a hand-car-wash. Why pay a robot to do the job? A bunch of welfare recipients can get together and do a bunch of cars in a given block. After getting past the gate, they can leave leaflets that say, "Hand-Car-Wash this Saturday from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM." Or cheaper yet, they can write it on a piece of card board and post it by the gate so everyone sees it as they drive by.
I guess the problem is that I'm an engineer. I don't sit around thinking, "Oh, that can't be done. That'll never work." I sit around thinking, "OK, we can try this and this. We can collect metrics for a couple of weeks and make the necessary adjustments as prescribed by the metrics. In the mean time, I'll think of other approaches just in case." See? I am a Puerto RiCAN not a Puerto RiCAN'T. BTW, are you British or American?