redictable response<\/a>.<\/p>\nMy thought:<\/p>\n
One basic rule of economics is: if you subsidize something, you get more of it.<\/p>\n
Liberals approve of targeted tax breaks for things they like: electric cars and solar panels. Liberals approve of government subsidies for things they like: sports stadia and college classes. Liberals support these public expenditures because they know that without public subsidies, people wouldn\u2019t pay for the Volt or the Vikings. As a result, the companies that produce products nobody wants to buy voluntarily (General Motors or Solyndra) become dependent on government money and can\u2019t survive without it.<\/p>\n
Clearly, some expenditures of government money influence private behavior and create dependency.<\/p>\n
Welfare gives out government money, but only to those who follow its rules. Does welfare influence people to change their private behavior to qualify? Some do, certainly. Do continued welfare payments influence people to continue to behave in ways that qualify \u2013 passing up jobs or sending the other parent out of the home? Again, some do, without doubt.<\/p>\n
Do long-term continued welfare payments influence people to become dependent on welfare? There are plenty of social scientists who\u2019d agree.<\/p>\n
If welfare payments follow the same economic principles of behavior influence as any other subsidy, and if Democrats know this but insist on funding welfare anyway; then it\u2019s fair to say Democrats support programs which foster dependency on government, that keep people trapped in narrow behavioral ruts, discourage freedom, initiative, self-sufficiency and independence.<\/p>\n
Now, to point out this truth, are politicians required to speak in short, literal prose sentences? Are metaphor and simile prohibited in public discourse? Was Martin Luther King, Jr. really sleeping when he had his dream? Did Bobby Kennedy really ask why things never were \u2013 is there a tape of it?<\/p>\n
If a politician were to say that Democrats treat welfare recipients as if they were pets to be fed and sheltered but never allowed to run free, is that really an act of vicious hate speech equating poor people with animals? Have we all forgotten the difference between literal speech and illustrative speech?<\/p>\n
If I speak the Truth in vivid imagery, what\u2019s the objection: that I used the imagery . . . or that I spoke the Truth?<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n
Como Park<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Only the right<\/em>\u00a0– that is, left – people are only supposed to tell the truth, and then only “the truth” that’s been approved by their various superiors.<\/p>\nDo I have to keep explaining this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: The statement\u00a0 (about 2:00 minutes in) The predictable response. My thought: One basic rule of economics is: if you subsidize something, you get more of it. Liberals approve of targeted tax breaks for things they like: electric cars and solar panels. Liberals approve of government subsidies for things they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26780"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26782,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26780\/revisions\/26782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}