letting poor people vote: "like handing out burglary tools to criminals"

Bastion

Whether or not this is true....that's the question (who wouldn't vote for the party that keeps you afloat?)

Getting the poor to vote against their own self-interest is what the Republican party does best, really.

Chagen

"While most small businesses manage to stay afloat, that's not quite the same as being rich."

It is better than being poor...

glennmagusharvey

And at reasonable best, it would take one generation to build the business core, and another generation or two to expand it to the point where it might be large and successful enough for the person at the top to be able to retire at old age to a comfortable life of golf and investment management.

captainbrass

This guy is the spitting image of Captain Mainwaring from the 70s Britcom "Dad's Army". For non-Brits, Mainwaring is a pompous and ineffectual small-town bank manager in charge of a rag-tag and incompetent Home Guard unit during World War II.

I think that probably says it all...

LouieW

glennmagusharvey,

Apparently a good number of these people actually believe that the poor
people remain poor because they can get handouts, and the only way they'll stop being poor is if you...uh...I really don't know how to come up with a good analogy for this...kick them out of poverty or something.

I think two alternatives to handouts that I have heard mentioned are government-sponsored work training programs and stuff like the earned-income tax credit.  I think both of them tend to be combined with the "rising tide lifts all boats idea" idea associated with the economy improving. That being said, I am definitely not an expert on economics so it is probably a good idea to take what I say here with a grain of salt.

Protega,
Getting the poor to vote against their own self-interest is what the Republican party does best, really.

I think that depends on what you mean by "self-interest." For example, I feel like some would say that supporting a specific candidate or party based on moral grounds is acting in one's self-interest.

As for the topic at hand, I find Vadum's argument to be somewhat strange given that as far as I know, people with low incomes tend to have low voter turnout. Basically, if there is a Communist/socialist scheme in place revolving around low income voters, I have to think it is not working very well.

glennmagusharvey

Well, some would just say that that's evidence that they haven't yet taken over and it's a good thing. :P

I don't like handouts either, and they ought to be a sort of last-resort thing.  If you do have handouts, you oughta have some sort of accountability, such as what IanExMachina described was where he lived--you have to prove that your'e actually continuously looking for work and stuff.

Work training is also a good alternative, but care must be taken to make sure that the training actually has a decent chance of leading to gainful employment.

As for the EITC, I don't know enough about that to say how good of an idea it is.