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Why US americans are against welfare ? In europe most nations are pro welfare and pay appropriate taxes. Why are US americans against helping each other ?
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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Why are US americans against helping each other?
There is no simple answer to your question. Generally speaking, the US ethic is largely built on a foundation of rogue settlers who were encouraged to take what they wanted by force and duplicity. Whether it was the attempted (and ongoing) ethnic cleansing of the tribes, or total destruction of the environment, or massacring fauna to extinction, or the brutal subjugation of African people, early americans operated at a level of entitlement, ignorance, and the absolute belief in a zero-sum competition.
This mindset has been useful to the people in power, and it has been frequently stoked to manipulate a large minority of the population into a fearful and angry existence, effectively preventing a cultural shift that embraces social enlightenment. Even the US education system is designed to perpetuate the propaganda while preventing critical thinking skills and empathy.
Interestingly, even the most virulent USers, on an individual basis, exhibit selective social welfare tendencies, while still maintaining their cultural bigotries. To be fair, most US americans are in favor of social welfare. The rich in the US, who are in control, will always fight reform, because it isn’t profitable to them.
I'd bet if we started calling them "societal subscription fees" people would be much cooler with taxes.
Welfare isn't assistance to the poor. Welfare in the US is those efforts specifically designed to denigrate and humiliate the poor.
Means testing increases costs and decreases effectiveness and should not be included in these programs. But it always is.
We need to start thinking of ourselves as "shareholders". We invest our individual political authority in out government, who uses that authority to provide essential services to business and individual customer, while charging for those services via taxation. Without the political authority of the citizenry, they would have no ability to provide those services.
We are each individually owed a return on our investment, separate and apart from any of the services we receive from the government. UBI should be thought of as a citizenship dividend.
Reagan's smear campaign on welfare is still paying dividends
That's just associations' war.
Complex words have more specific associations. Except specific associations are easier to change via propaganda than generic associations. And people love to pretend to be smart like I do, so use complex words when they can.
This rule shouldn't be limited to outsiders. It should be used when talking to your own as well. Using compound concepts of simpler ones in discussion helps preserve understanding (and filter the kind of people not better than tankies).
Reminds me of how many people were really against Obamacare, but loved the Affordable Care Act.
Anyone can be poor, but only they are on welfare.
Publishers note: They usually refers to African Americans, but can be used for any suspicious minorities.
its almost always used as negative connation against blacks, or unsavory demographics. while the people, white conservatives railing on these people are the biggest welfare queens.
don't forget wall street and corporations. if you fuck up, congratulations now you're homeless. if they fuck up, congratulations you're gonna bail them out.
Psychological damage is present.
Nobody is immune to propaganda
Yup, I consider myself better than most at critical thinking, playing devil's advocate, and identifying sources of propaganda. I'll still find myself getting overly agitated and upset when I read five articles and posts within thirty minutes that all tell me why to be upset and who to be upset with.
Don't use the buzzwords Republicans have spent decades poisoning.
yup, including entitlements, Woke,,,,etc.
Entitlements is a weird one. A person who wrongly believes they are entitled to money/power/respect is "entitled" in a derogatory sense. A person who has paid into the Social Security and Medicare programs for three or four decades is truly, genuinely, entitled to the payout of those programs.
And Republicans believing entitlement programs are bad, when so many of them are dependent on these programs to maintain a basic standard of living, is an astounding level of doublethink.
I get the critical comments here, but I think there's a basic association of the word "welfare" with the CURRENT system of assistance which leaves too many people out. Democrats have made the current apparati too hard to qualify for with their means-testing. If they were sincere in working for the masses, they would push more universal programs, but at least on the national level, they are bought out by the same corporations as the Republicans.
Democrats have made the current apparati too hard to qualify for with their means-testing.
I kind of doubt that democrats are the ones who MADE it too hard, but they definitely are the ones that preserve it's difficulty.
Godamnnnnn we are fucking monkey smooth brain fucks
As someone that works with the general public.
People are fucking dumb. Like not I'm not even kidding, there's a skill gap to even get to a site like this...and not everyone has the ability to do it...I'm not even kidding. People are just stupid.
Just want to point out that this negative association is based on racist dog whistles like the, "welfare queen," which were propagated by right-wingers to convince low-income whites to hate the programs designed to help them.
And I think theres a place to break that association, but .aybe candidates that are running to change our system dont need to be the ones to do it.
I would actually say that would he a great strategy in building working-class solidarity. Making poor whites realize that their declining standard of living isn't caused by minorities accessing social programs but the ruling-class gutting the those programs is key to building a progressive coalition.
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