is it hypocritical to believe in a strong welfare state but be against immigration?

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by WraithDukat, Jan 8, 2018.

  1. Avro Arrow

    Avro Arrow Vice Admiral Moderator

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    @ArcherNX01 , just a reminder that posting three times in a row like that is against board rules. You can edit your original post if you want to add something else a couple minutes later.
     
  2. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    Well that bit makes you exactly the sort of person I'm having a dig at.

    Fair enough....
     
  3. Kai "the spy"

    Kai "the spy" Admiral Admiral

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    Yes, and I've given you context as to why I didn't apply for any jobs. Because I send out applications for three years, and only got invited to job interviews four times as a result of that. I used to have to check on the companies I applied to weeks after to even get an answer out of them. Even though I always applied for an open position.

    Do you not see how experiences like that, to have to draw attention to oneself to even get a rejection, that this stuff can get people to just give up? To draw the conclusion that they're just not wanted in the job market and, thanks to the social stigma, the rest of society, and that it's better to just take the crumbs of welfare society (where people like you tell them they don't even deserve that) and live their lives as best they can under these circumstances.

    You previously said I wasn't the sort of person you were "having a dig at", even though that information that I was unemployed for years and didn't apply for jobs for some time was in my post. I just put it in different words and given some context. And after I simplified my story the way you simplify all these people's experiences, suddenly I am one of those people.

    Guess what: All those people on welfare have some context to their situation. They all have reasons why they are where they are and do what they do. There's a reason why many of them have given up on society, because they see that society has given up on them. What they need is empathy and help, and people like you telling them that they have it to well is counter-productive.

    You're not better than them. You're just better off.
     
  4. Qonundrum

    Qonundrum Vice Admiral Admiral

    Except for women who use the word to describe other women and look shocked at men who look in shock over their using it... The day I first heard my friend say it I was shocked, but it happens and she's living in 2018 along with everyone else... aren't there bigger things to get upset over?
     
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  5. ichab

    ichab Commodore Commodore

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    Obvious cases like that is frustrating but if you remove welfare the only people who suffer will be the children.

    As to immigration, I know of very few who are against the concept. The argument has been what to do with immigrants who break the law by crossing the borders illegally or overstay their work visas.
     
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  6. E-DUB

    E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Not at all. The fact that one believes that the poor in this country should have a tolerable standard of living does not constitute an obligation to provide same for any and all comers.
     
  7. Refuge

    Refuge Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I support immigration based on categories. Those whose grandparents or parents are citizens of a country should be able to apply and should be self-supporting. The young doing their big overseas jaunt should be allowed a temporary visa. Work visas for essential jobs. There also should be a realistic expectation of refugees. I live in Australia and most refugees come by boat. Australia is very strict and uses overseas detention centres for processing. It's not something I personally feel we should be proud of. I realise there are security concerns but policies regards these often very desperate souls require different sensitivities.

    Obviously the more productive the citizen or immigrant the more contribution can be made to a welfare state.
     
  8. Avro Arrow

    Avro Arrow Vice Admiral Moderator

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    Obviously we are all individuals, and therefore may be bothered by different things.

    Besides, you must be familiar with the concept that there are sometimes words that are OK for members of a group to use among themselves, but that it's not so acceptable for people outside the group to use?

    Probably. Would you like to start with the pervasive harassment, or the wage gap?
     
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  9. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Doesn't having some capability others don't tend to give decent human beings a motivation to help them?

    So you propose removing the means by which those children are fed?
     
  10. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    You're basically saying:

    "People better off than me should have a % of their income taken away (by force) to feed me and my family but I refuse to move my standard of living for those much worse off than me, even though many come over and make a better contribution than many of the indigenous people."

    Only if they want to help themselves, if their aims in life are to sit around getting drunk and having loads of kids who they will bring up to do the same then no.
     
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  11. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'm really struggling to find an adequate response to this degree of stereotyping. Unemployment is a complex societal issue which can't accurately be reduced to lazy people wanting to sit around drinking and having babies.

    Factors involving disabilities, long term housing difficulties and employment inequalities, the economy, geographical restrictions, the effects of unemployment on mental health and self esteem, learned dependence, social stigma (of much the sort you have just demonstrated) , social exclusion up to and including homelessness, access to services and financial barriers all play demonstratable roles in the demographics and sociology of unemployment.

    To reduce this to a single extraordinarily judgemental statement suggests an almost bewildering degree of prejudice and an almost Darwinian attitude to the roles and responsibilities of society.
     
  12. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    I live in Sunderland UK, one of the unemployment hotspots of the country. Trust me, the stereotype fits. Ofcourse they're not ALL like that but plenty are.
     
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  13. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I live in St Helens UK, socioeconomically worse off or at best comparable. I don't base my assessment of societies dynamics or trends on personal experience of meeting the local drug addicts. Nor do I base my politics on the basis on the desire to punish them.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2018
  14. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    I guess we will have to agree to disagree then.
     
  15. E-DUB

    E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    No. Not at all. What I will say is that I recognize that both the public's purse and its willingness to expend a not insignificant portion of that purse in the interest of helping those less fortunate are both finite. And that one sure way of undermining the public consensus that enables the existence programs designed to do that is for people to see, or even to believe in the absence of seeing, that those dollars are going towards people who weren't even here a year or two ago.

    I can also state that is pretty close to axiomatic that you're never going to fix poverty if you allow the bottom of the economic barrel to keep filling up.
     
  16. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    You'll never fix poverty as it measured relatively rather than absolutely, so as the general standard of living rises so will the poverty line, they would laugh at what we call poverty now 50 years ago.

    To me it is hypocritical:

    'people should share what they have aslong as I don't have too, also I am against other people having a privilege I don't but I fully intend to keep the one I have, simply by being born here, it's my divine right since I'm British'
     
  17. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You'll never "fix" poverty at all, I don't believe for a second you could, but when you take more than the briefest glances at the trends and dynamics involved you find being judgemental stops being quite so easy.

    You said yourself, Sunderland is an unemployment blackspot. Why is that? What is it about Sunderland that stands out from Chelsea? Are the people there inherently inferior? Do they breed subhuman people with lazy genes?

    The fact that you can point to specific geographical regions and isolate them as hotspots at all should give you pause for thought, those hotspots do not just develop in isolation, they are the result of complex and sweeping processes playing out throughout society and the economy. They will always exist, but as responsible agents of the state we have a duty to be aware of the causes and consequences, to reduce the human impact that results. We do not live in a Darwinian state, we do not and should not view the people living in low socioeconomic circumstances and assume they are all collectively to blame despite the overwhelming evidence they are not, especially when we can identify the causes and trends which result in swathes of the country suffering the sorts of inequalities in education, employment and social care provision we see.

    To suggest whole towns have a culture of deliberately setting out to game the system is just ludicrous. People learn from experience, they act accordingly to the world they know, to the circumstances which define their context. Reliance on benefits, petty crime, drug use, these are cyclical symptoms of underlying problems, not causes.
     
  18. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    Don't be an apologist for them, if I couldn't find a job in my home town guess what I would do? Move to where there is some work, I wouldn't shrug say 'oh well' then leech off the state my whole life.
     
  19. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Because that is an entirely realistic assessment. Your solution to mass unemployment is populations should up and move en masse to other areas. Bravo.
     
  20. WraithDukat

    WraithDukat Captain Captain

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    It's what plenty of people do, it's why London is so overpopulated.