The House Budget Committee has released a “report” called The War on Poverty: Fifty Years Later. The report tries to argue that people are poor because of social welfare programs and proposes to “help” them by gutting the programs. Paul Ryan was behind this, of course.
It didn’t take long for scholars whose work was cited in the report to weigh in.
… several economists and social scientists contacted on Monday had reactions ranging from bemusement to anger at Ryan’s report, claiming that he either misunderstood or misrepresented their research.
In short, Ryan consistently edited out data that didn’t support his conclusions and sometimes just plain misstated what the scholars he cited had concluded.
Ryan wants us to believe he’s “helping” the poor by shredding the safety net so that they don’t become dependent or complacent. Paul Krugman reveals what a crock that is.
OK, do you notice the assumption here? It is that reduced incentives to work mean reduced social mobility. Is there any reason to believe this as a general proposition?
Now, as it happens the best available research suggests that the programs Ryan most wants to slash — Medicaid and food stamps — don’t even have large negative effects on work effort. . . .
. . .In fact, the evidence suggests that welfare-state programs enhance social mobility, thanks to little things like children of the poor having adequate nutrition and medical care. And conversely,of course, when such programs are absent or inadequate, the poor find themselves in a trap they often can’t escape, not because they lack the incentive, but because they lack the resources.
I mean, think about it: Do you really believe that making conditions harsh enough that poor women must work while pregnant or while they still have young children actually makes it more likely that those children will succeed in life?
Of course, the point is not to help the poor but to punish them. Obviously, if people are poor, it must be because they deserve it.
Wasn’t Ryan on a social program when he was growing up?
Bardi,
Yeah, he got SS during HS and College, after his father passed away.
But I’m pretty sure that in his own mind, he’s either convinced himself that HE was deserving of it, unlike “others,” or that he made it on his own, DESPITE getting that help.
Here’s my favorite moronic quote – EVAH!!!!! – by “actor” Craig T. Nelson on Glenn Beck’s show a few years back:
“I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, and they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my education.”
I guess his “education” didn’t include logic or ration, huh?
Scholars whose work “Privatizing” Ryan used in this latest example of his BS, complained that he either cherry-picked some data, or excluded parts of their data that didn’t fit what he wanted to present.
Nothing new here!
Our Conservatives do the same thing with The Bible and the US Constitution ALL of the time!!!!!
And I won’t take the time to give examples, since there are surely more of them than I’ll have time to collect before I exit this stage.
he got SS during HS and College
He earned it pretending to wash dishes at St. Vincent de Paul!
Actually, go back 70-80 years, and go across the Atlantic, and I think Ryan would have made a fine SS officer.
gulag …Maybe Nelson meant that nobody helped him out of the socialist trap of being dependent on welfare and food stamps?
Oberführer Von Ryan?
Ryan always votes to keep the m-i- complex dependent, though.
Krugman writes in an earlier column Flim-Flam, The Next Generation:
I got Paulie’s number when he made his debut as one of the Young Guns. There’s nothing like indulging in an adolescent fantasy, huh? I wish I could have been a young gun..but when I was engaging in my adolescent fantasies my options where limited.. I could either be a Shark or a Jet… I chose being a Jet because when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet till the end.
I know that the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t have a formal designation for the disorder that afflicts Paulie, but they should have something that describes a person who can’t function without their dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged constantly in their possession.
Off topic, but does anyone here know who put the pubic hair in Clarence’s coke?
Are we talking about a beverage or white powder on a mirror? Either way, it shouldn’t clog the straw.
Oh, I’m sure it was the beverage. Actually I don’t think there ever was a pubic hair in his coke. I think he got caught up in a moment of awkwardness when he was trying to put the make on Anita Hill. And he just blurted out a stupid comment vaguely related to an anatomical region that was weighing on his mind at the time
I’m sure he regretted his blunder, especially after he was publicly ridiculed for such an inept come-on at his confirmation hearing. As a matter of fact, he was so traumatized by the ridicule of his question, Who put the pubic hair in my coke?that’s he’s never asked another question in public again.
I kinda feel bad for him. I think Anita should have been a little more sympathetic in understanding the difficulty that males have with societal expectations that we should make the first move in initiating a sexual advance.
Oh yeah, Swami. I feel sorry for all of them, their handicaps are so debilitating.
“…but they should have something that describes a person who can’t function without their dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged constantly in their possession.”
How about an “Ayn Randjob?”
Or, a “Randful.”
And finally, “Randdumb.”
Either way, it shouldn’t clog the straw.
Laughter = coughing fit. Cold & flu season sucks.
I really don’t understand how Paul Ryan can stand himself. He just keeps presenting the exact same shallow, disingenuous “plan” (demolish the government = magic) over and over again. Such total commitment to something so vacuous. To me there’s something horrifying about that.
Stephen,
May I refer you to Hannah Arendt, who coined the phrase, “The banality of evil,” when talking about Adolf Eichmann, who was being tried in Israel at the time,
Eichmann, as I’m sure you know, was a non-Jewish “nebbish,” who was very good at his job of “efficiently” managing the job of killing Jews, Gypsies, gays, non-Nazi Germans, Slavs, etc.
“Privatizing” Ryan has a ‘less final solution’ for the non-rich here.
The result will be essentially the same – it’ll just take a lot longer to get there.
And everyone’s hands will be much, much less bloody.
I really don’t understand how Paul Ryan can stand himself.
It’s not difficult to understand..Paulie is getting off on himself. He’s delighting in his self assessed intellectual prowess that just happens to be devoid of any feedback. It’s simply a case of he thinks he is wonderful… therefore he is wonderful.
And the Bible says: “There is no condemnation in self adoration”
Swami,
Randmaid’s?
I know, it really isn’t that hard to understand. It’s just, you never know what’s going to get to you. There are all kinds of zombie lies we have to deal with from day, and most of them bounce right off, but I first started to become vaguely politically aware during Ronald Reagan’s first term, and the Republicans have been pushing the exact same supply-side nonsense the entire time. It was voodoo then, and it’s voodoo now, and yet they keep saying the exact same things. If I think about it too much I start to feel like I’m suffocating. Or maybe it’s more a feeling of nausea in the existentialist, but at any rate I wish they’d come up with some kind of variation in their plans other than the size of the tax cuts.
I’m wondering if that “pubic” hair perhaps fell from the judges’ own head, and was a victim of “missidentity”. Hey, it’s possible.
What an asshole.
“Big time!”