Discuss amongst yourselves.  Let's see if we can keep it from getting locked this time.

I can see that point these days with welfare,medicare,disability and everyone's favorite-unemployment.
But how would that work back then? Without any assistance programs what else could you do to make it worse to be poor, I'm sure people may have helped privately if they felt compelled though. Is that what he is advocating, no help at all? Or some form of punishment like debtors prison or stockades maybe?

Those who do not fear for their survival will never take the necessary steps to survive.

Unemployment is not welfare it is insurance you have to have had a job to get it.

+1



I get irritated when people try to say Unemployment is the same as welfare. IT IS NOT THE SAME THING. Unemployment is insurance, it is not government handouts.



I'm really lucky right now, when jobs are very hard to find over here in Michigan, I was on unemployment for almost 2 years. I just got a job now and am HAPPILY and eagerly working 64 hours a week. I feel for all the people who really want to work, just like I really wanted to work, but can't find any work.

I didn't mean unemployment= welfare
I meant that removing it with other forms of assistance which may or may not be welfare would be one way now to make the poor uncomfortable in poverty.
Where back then there was no programs to remove to make the poor uncomfortable in poverty so what else would they do?

It was called the poor farm.  Social stigma used to be a great motivator.

BS. When you have 99 weeks of unemployement, IT IS WELFARE. No different than any other handout.

As someone who volunteered in soup kitchens on a weekly basis for around five years, I agree.

No better motivator than an empty belly and the Grim Reaper tapping on your shoulder.

NB for the record the soup kitchen was on Penn's campus, at St. Agatha's on 38th and Chestnut.  Seems like we have more than one Penn alum on this board (M&T 94, Law 97).  

I went to UPENN and named my first son after him.  I hold him in high regard.

Now you have 14 year old girls getting knocked up and wearing it like a badge of honor.

I'm a bastard kid born in the 60's at a "home for wayward girls". I'm not saying they should be punished. They're already getting an 18 year sentence. I'm just saying a little name-calling and behind-their-backs laughter is in order.

Sounds like wisdom to me.



 

Weather or not unemployment is welfare or weather poor people should be helped at all or not certainly is debateable.
But I don't see how any government entity or private entity should have the right to imprison, indenture servitude from or place any form of stigma on anyone based on their financial worth. It's kind of shocking that Franklin would propose something of that nature if that was actually what he meant.

As much as I agree with the quote, having been in numerous high rise projects I can not see how anyone has comfort there... between the roaches/rats and HUMAN feces and urine in the hallway and stairwell it's just disgusting. Yet there are generations of families in these buildings so they can't be too bothered by the conditions.

Take the buildings away from them and you would see discomfort.





 

Try making a living in a state with over 10 percent unemployment. It's insurance, not a handout. You don't know shit.

For all those telling the unemployed how great it is I can only hope and
pray you get the opportunity to "enjoy" the experience first hand.


- Loosing your health insurance so you can now pay full price for your prescriptions.

- Not taking all your prescriptions since you can't afford all of them (so now you feel like crap)

- Watching your savings you built up go away

- Having to spend MORE in gas because you have to drive all over looking for a job
(I drove to some interviews that were hours away)

- Laying awake at night thinking you may loose your home, cars, etc.

- Loosing your self worth


Then when you finally find a job after months of looking
it does not even pay close what you were making.


I don't know anyone who is happy to be out of
work all the ones I know hate it with a passion.

I just learned a few weeks ago my neighbor has not had a
paycheck in a couple of months; he sure is not happy about it.

I can only believe if you have friends who are happy about being
unemployed then you must be a lowlife for having such friends.

[/quote] As much as I agree with the quote, having been in numerous high rise projects I can not see how anyone has comfort there... between the roaches/rats and HUMAN feces and urine in the hallway and stairwell it's just disgusting. Yet there are generations of families in these buildings so they can't be too bothered by the conditions.[/quote]
Take the buildings away from them and you would see discomfort.
 [/quote]

Hey like I said I'm all for the quote but if someones already living in their own piss and shit with the rats and roaches, shouldn't that be motivation enough? It's a completely different mentality than what most are used to.

The experience of a man who wants to work and be successful is different than that of the deadbeat.  I've met people who don't worry about gas money because they don't have a car anyway, people that don't want to have a job, people that live in simply vile homes, people that consider it routine to have their power turned off and have "tricks" to restore it for a while. These people are happy to live what you and I would consider undesirable lives while mooching indefinitely off every form of public assistance there is.  I think this site overestimates the number of people that live extravagant lives milking the system but underestimates those that just skate by continually, for those people it is great.  It may be subsistence living, but they're happy to not work.

Franklin was of course spot on.  He isn't saying you can't help people out, just that if you help people out too much and make it too easy, there will be no incentive for some of them to do better.   This is why government charity is a bad idea too.  Private organizations can cut people off when needed and determine need better than any blanket legislation that must be "fair" at all costs.

Insurance or handout, either way, it's socialism.

Why?

I can't opt-out.  My unemployment taxes are going to pay your (or whoevers) unemployment benefits.

I'd support it and fully be behind calling it insurance if I could opt out of buying it (and thus forfeit my claim on collection).  Until them, it's a little bit of both.

Just another example of an over-reaching government doing things it has no business doing.


 
 

Hmmmmm.

Before I declare BF a douchebag, what is the context of that quote?? He was well known for his sarcasm.
In fact he was against a large upper class accumulating all the wealth at the expense of the lower classes. He even said savage indians were "gentlemen" compared to that lot in his letter about his travels to Ireland and Scotland.



LINKY TO HIS LETTERS

Can someone provide me the letter that he wrote that in or any link? It might even be a false quote.