While this is funny, it also demonstrates the sociological phenomenon of opposition to "free riders." It's a biological phenomenon that extends way down the range of evolutionary development, and, of course, it is typified by parasites. Taken to the extreme, it is comical.
The Raw Story
Georgia Republican Party chair: Straight people will enter gay marriages to get ‘a free ride’
Arturo Garcia
Fox News contributor: ‘It gets a little comfortable to be in poverty’
Stephen C. Webster
Appearing Saturday on Fox News’s “Cavuto on Business,” contributor Charles Payne insisted that he knows firsthand how “it gets to be a little comfortable to be in poverty” in the United States.
“There’s this idea that between the food stamps and the welfare and the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit and the local programs, you know, it gets a little comfortable to be in poverty,” he said. “Listen, I’ve lived it first hand. I’ve seen when people don’t go to work because they get everything paid for them. The incentive is not there.”
Payne, one of the network’s more vocal critics of assisting the poor and under employed, expanded on his theory about the laziness of poor people during a broadcast last Thursday, explaining that he’s disappointed so many Americans — over 47 million, according to the latest official numbers— are on food stamps. “What we actually have ended up doing is created a wall, a giant barrier, where people don’t move out of poverty into the middle class because in that initial transition they actually lose money and lose benefits,” he said.
Payne is essentially repeating a common meme among many conservatives who believe that helping poor people keeps them poor and only fosters dependence and the growth of state benefit payments. What many Fox News reports on this subject fail to note is that 90 percent of all welfare benefits go to either members of working households, the elderly or the disabled,according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
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ReplyDeleteNPR covered Social Security disability payments in an in-depth story last week. Anybody interested in US economics who hasn't listened to it, should. This is an important and poorly understood, rarely discussed part of the safety net. In my experience working in the poverty stricken parts of the country, mostly across the midwest and south, I found Social Security Disability has become the primary welfare system. Communities excluded from the various 'good middle class job' subsidies end up with a disproportionate number of citizens using the program. Until you understand the people, the places, the anecdotal stories and the general pattern repeated over and over, you can not accurately analyze or understand our labor markets, incomes, participation rates, and educational systems. No matter what your political bent: whether you like to get indignant or have empathy, it is important to understand the reality for millions and millions of people in a large geographic area of the country.
ReplyDeletePayne was my friend for many years when I worked at Fox, but he's turned into a Fox News, conservative, right wing shill. He's got nothing of value to say; only capable of spewing the Fox propaganda. That's been the reason for his "success" over there, if you ask me. That is, if you can even call it success, because no one watches Fox Business anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnd what valuable contribution does Charles Payne make to society that gives him the right to attack others like that? What does he add to our economy? A bunch of misinformation, lies and distortions that end up poisoning our national debate, our leadership our policy? He's no better than a drug pusher.
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