but what if these citizens are actually being effectively abducted into group home or low income neighborhood situations while commonly drugged by a predatory medical establishment and forced to assert that they have an incurable ailment, in essence ostracized to various degrees by their communities? — Enrique

This seems like a pretty big assumption. Maybe you could flesh it out a bit by citing a country, then giving some examples. Otherwise, your comments are speculative.

A socialist utopia is an unnatural fantasy. Unnatural things are unhealthy because we are natural beings. They require enormous amounts of unnatural energy to maintain. If humans vanished the plants would take over every city within 200 years. If a man goes to space his body atrophies and he can't even walk anymore. Create a utopia and everyone would get sick.

People don't need welfare they need real friends. Who will help them out and kick their ass. People on welfare feel no guilt for taking free money from a faceless government.

This seems like a pretty big assumption. Maybe you could flesh it out a bit by citing a country, then giving some examples. — jgill

The way it works in some parts of the U.S. is you go to the doctor, usually with some desperation, if they think you're a sucker or they are irresponsible they put you on medication without knowing anything about you or caring, then demographics in the community that have been assigned the task of psychologically torturing citizens with certain "proven" medical conditions begin to stalk you and make your life miserable. If your social support system passes the test and manages to help you get out of that situation within about a month you recover, but if your family and friends can be harassed into negligence you basically crash and burn either quickly or slowly, ending up on a government check with a fake paper trail behind you and no prospect of meeting anyone who is not contemplating or actively trying to destroy you.

Yeah, not utopia, and not friendly.

but if your family and friends can be harassed into negligence — Enrique

Sounds like an eerie conspiracy.

Govt. is too uncaring and incompetent to employ such a malicious conspiracy for average joes. If you're dangerous and mentally out there you might get locked up and drugged in a local state institution. Such unfortunate folk probably don't have much of a hope or a prayer with or without govt. intrusion, lacking social support.

There is something to the absurd incentive structure of welfare. Folks might avoid getting a job in the event that they become less well off and they become dependent on the system that doesn't easily adapt to target such issues.

Fraud/bureaucracy is also a big problem for a functioning welfare system. There has been some noise about some NYC contractor siphoning money off shelter funds. Florida is famous for medicare/caid fraud cases on the business side.

Govt. is too uncaring and incompetent to employ such a malicious conspiracy for average joes. — Nils Loc

The catch is that many doctors are trained to use their diagnostic categories for screwing portions of the population into submission to a system that exploits them, and if drugging you or driving you insane assists the cause, so be it. It's not explicitly in the paperwork of course, but that's what it's about.

I can not speak to the American Medical system, I don't play in it.

However, the Canadian version goes something like this: If you can prove you are useless, as in unable to work, AND unwilling to attempt to better your situation by any means available to you, you will qualify for some sort of welfare payments (different provinces have different names for their programs but the premise is the same). However, if you are struggling and need a hand up in order to better provide for yourself (single parent with kids wanting to go to school to allow for better earnings to provide for the family) AND (this is the kicker) you tried to do it first WITHOUT getting government assistance, chances are YOU WILL NOT qualify for assistance. Because you wanted, and tried, to do it on your own before asking for help. So, as the system is currently, it essentially punishes those who attempt to help themselves while rewarding those who refuse to help themselves. In fact, the more someone refuses to try, the more people will show up with options for development. Additional funding will be provided for upgrading, college diploma programs, business courses and programs, start-up money, language courses, re-location options will be presented, etc. However, if you have demonstrated that you intend to improve your life, and actively try to do so, there are very few supports in place to assist, because, essentially, you are not proving the necessity of the complex system in place, thereby undermining it.

Horrible practice, but there it is. I have seen parents who have requested the family doctor label their son with some mental health disorder so that he qualifies for "support", meanwhile the son is, quite literally, crying in the waiting room, wanting to know why his parents won't let him get a job instead of sitting on welfare. This kid wants to work, is able to work, and isn't being allowed to. He is still too young to realize that he can tell his folks where to go, as well as the doctor, but once he gets the disorder diagnosis, he is rather screwed. Best option then is to move, not tell anyone where he went, and start over somewhere else. If any one asks for a medical history, tell them he doesn't have one. Just sad.

A socialist utopia is an unnatural fantasy. Unnatural things are unhealthy because we are natural beings. — Miller

:rofl:

:rofl: — Xtrix

Modern people are sick with neurosis. Caused by the very things they adore.

I've labored within the social service industry and have observed various kinds of problems. What I have not seen first hand is anything like the kind of behavior you ascribe to doctors -- "screwing portions of the population into submission to a system that exploits them, and if drugging you or driving you insane". Frankly, that just sounds like capitalism at work.

Are you thinking of doctors over-prescribing addictive pain killers? Very bad. The doctors, the pharmacy suppliers, the manufacturers--all sorts of people--were in it for the money--not much else.

What I have not seen first hand is anything like the kind of behavior you ascribe to doctors -- "screwing portions of the population into submission to a system that exploits them, and if drugging you or driving you insane". Frankly, that just sounds like capitalism at work. — Bitter Crank

Well said. But capitalism is “natural,” so therefore it’s good. I mean, at least it’s not - gasp - socialism! :scream:

↪Enrique
I've labored within the social service industry and have observed various kinds of problems. What I have not seen first hand is anything like the kind of behavior you ascribe to doctors — Bitter Crank

I've been a US citizen for 84 years and have never seen the sort of narrative you describe, Enrique. But I'm not saying it doesn't exist. Are you a US citizen? What I have seen are the horrors of guardianship laws that allow companies to take over an individual's assets while supplying minimal support. This varies with states.

Yeah, I'm a US citizen, and the kind of situation I'm describing is rather new insofar as a totally irrational stigma is attached to individuals in treatment, who are then hounded by a mob, indirectly forced to remain in social programs unless their families and friends commit to helping rescue them. Professionals lacking in integrity can be to blame for not providing adequate support once the abuse starts, and society chains these citizens in the welfare system, forcing them to get drugged and ostracized. It's not uncommon for a real medical condition to be involved, but wrong or ineffective medications are frequently prescribed due to doctor negligence and it can be very difficult for even the marginally or temporarily disabled to rebound. Like @Book273 said, this sort of circumstance is very sad. Once the diagnosis is made, lives are compromised with abandon.

If we want to get rid of welfare, and not have some people simply die through lack of resources, then there needs to be zero unemployment. But capitalist economies never reach zero unemployment, and periodically have high unemployment when there is a depression.

If we could solve this problem (big if), then we may still have people who could work, but don't. First, how many people would this be? Maybe it wouldn't be worth worrying about. Second, if these people are committing fraud in order to claim more than their entitlement - fair enough. Things like that can be investigated. Finally, we have the worry of a significant number of people who could work but won't, but aren't living on so much individually. Well, given we have solved unemployment, we might not worry about this so much. But assuming we do, and assuming we can successfully identify these people and not confuse them with the people described below, well - I don't know what to think. We have a well-functioning economy that provides good work for everyone who wants it, and supports those who can't (see below), and we have this large rump of people who won't work. I think if you're still annoyed by these people at this stage in our thought experiment, you need to get your priorities straight, as you seem to be pretty resentful. But yeah, sure, if they are offending you so much, I guess they could have some pressure put on them to do a bit of work. Won't kill them, after all. That's assuming the pressure doesn't amount to something which could seriously ruin their lives. Because if they are only just above that happening, and then you take more from them, I would imagine they weren't using many resources anyway.

In addition to that, some people just can't work. They are ill, or lack the capacity. If you think these people should just be left for their families and friends to look after and the rest of society owes them nothing, fair enough, but I'm still going to support taking funds off you to support them - in the form of general taxation - whether you like it or not, because you're basically psychopathic, and you're lucky to be tolerated. Let me know when you get in power so you can slough off all the weak people who's existence - and the existence of your responsibility to them - offends you so much: I'm sure it will be a very wonderful place to live.

A socialist utopia is an unnatural fantasy. Unnatural things are unhealthy because we are natural beings. — Miller

You are just a bundle of joy, a harbringer of good news, aren't you.

Once the diagnosis is made, lives are compromised with abandon. — Enrique

Diagnosis is made because people get sick. The lives of the diagnosed are compromised with abandon because of the diagnosed' lack of basic skills to strive and survive in society.

Society responds with alleged cures and treatments. Some of them work, some of them don't, some diagnosed diseases can be helped, some can't. These are the sum results of the nature of the illnesses and the state of medical sciences to date, not the function of some evil government or hypocritical society that creates ghettos for the sick where crime, drug abuse and prostitution are the order of every day.

What I, personally, find inacceptable is this: In my society, Canada, the government decides how to redistribute wealth via the tax system. Each and every government I've lived under since 1972 here, favours the banks, the big businesses, over the sick population. The present cost of sick population, in terms of government hand-outs of cash, is basically and roughly $1200/month/per sick person. Multiply this by 12 and by the number of disabled on financial support, (which I don't know) and you get a number. This number is way, way, way less than the government subsidies to corporations and to industry to keep them in business, and they are kept in business to have people, workers, enjoy continued employment.

I don't have the statistics. It would be interesting to see if someone could support or disprove this theorem:

Canadian governments spend more money on keeping some of the workers of its workforce employed than on the cash disbursements to disabled people.

Why is this bad? It's not bad, per se, but it's unfair. To stigmatize those who are sick and unable, to contribute, and lock them out of mainstream society under the consideration that they are not contributing; while many others are encouraged to work at non-contributing processes, putting in the hours, and getting paid multiple times the amount of monies that the disabled get.

One group (disabled) are kept starving and in squalor; the other group (non-contributing workers) are kept in relative riches. Neither groups contribute.

What the fuck gives?

However, the Canadian version goes something like this: If you can prove you are useless, as in unable to work, AND unwilling to attempt to better your situation by any means available to you, you will qualify for some sort of welfare payments (different provinces have different names for their programs but the premise is the same). — Book273

You are actually full of shit. The italicized part of your text is untrue.

However, if you are struggling and need a hand up in order to better provide for yourself (single parent with kids wanting to go to school to allow for better earnings to provide for the family) AND (this is the kicker) you tried to do it first WITHOUT getting government assistance, chances are YOU WILL NOT qualify for assistance. — Book273

More shit coming out of you.

What you are describing is that healthy people have to pay for their own education, and unhealthy, sick individuals get subsidies, or grants. This is true, but the way you put it shows that the only difference is that one group is willing to pay their own way, the other group is not willing.

The difference is not that. The difference is that one group is ABLE, the other group is UNABLE to pay their own way. It is not the WILLINGNESS, but the ABILITY or DISABILITY that makes a difference. You are biassing the difference by your own personal bitterness.

Have you ever heard the expression "Disabled"? it means not able.

That's A. B. is that there are only a very few people who are disabled AND are trained in expensive schooling to enable them to work. Very, very few. Again, I don't have the statistics.

You don't have the statistics. Or the reality. It sounds very much like you have the Social Worker handbook though, as well as a nice "how things should work" brochure. I agree, it should work that way. It doesn't. I work with the covered capable and unwilling everyday; half my patient population at any given moment is capable and unwilling and on full government support.
But the brochure reads better than the reality plays out, that is accurate.

I think you want to portray yourself as a doctor, since you used the word "my patients". However, physicians don't write "every day" as "everyday". Maybe you are a parole officer? If yes, then I can believe and support your bitterness. You deal with a fragment of a stratum of society, a self-selected group that is not indicative of the whole.

But this thread is not about your persona; I apologize for this digression.

And I do admit that welfare culture is a socially strongly inherited thing. A family on welfare will produce children who will also live on welfare. Most of these people are unhealthy, but there are healthy ones, too, who just can't imagine their lives to live any other way.

In summary: I think you are right, I just believe that your descriptions of the proportions of who can, who is unable, who is willing and who is unwilling are skewed. Your qualitative descriptions are right on, with the provisions of the exceptions as I opined above. However, your quantifying their ratios is off. I also believe that your work involves very frustrating situations, which police officers, probation officers and some social workers experience. This may have jaded you or else made you unsympathetic. I can't blame you for this, this is typical of the workers in that line of work.

Not a parole officer. Currently practicing in Acute Psychiatry. Interesting to read that you reclassified my profession based on the lack of a space, rather than assume it may have been a spelling error. Now if we redefine disabled to include entitled and unmotivated, then yes, the vast majority of financial aid recipients would be disabled. Maybe diagnose them as Motivationally Challenged; exacerbated by Congenital Entitlement.

Millions of citizens receive assistance from welfare programs, which in an ideal world would help them stay afloat during hard times or when suffering from a disability such that quality of life is adequately upheld and law-abiding behavior reinforced despite a challenging social environment, lack of actualization, and probably a measure of disgruntlement. — Enrique

The only thing that is going to help people stay afloat, is if they swim their asses off, preferably in the direction of a shoreline. Now, does that mean you can't give them a hand? Of course not. But, giving them a hand does imply an evaluation of the means by which you have to help them with. Do you have a boat? A helicopter? Just a life-saver? And what if you don't have the means, eh? What if when, not having the means, you decide to come to my house, pull out a gun, point it at my head, and say "give me your money, it's to help the guy drowning." Sounding a bit more familiar now, isn't it? Now, let's say, it works. You've stolen my money at gun point and you've saved a man's life, you're a hero, and I'm the swine who didn't want to help because it wasn't my problem. Everyone congratulates you on your despicable act of human depravity and then demands that the government decree that all people who are to be found in need of help getting to the shore, lest they drown, be granted emergency aid. Thus, instantiating a live hand-gun in front of my home, with a camera on it monitoring my income supplied by my labor, and access to my bank account to take as much as they decree they need for such a venture. And now I am demoralized by the fact that my labor is no longer my own to decide to do with what I wish, and all kinds of people flock to the beach with no worries in the world of drowning. But, the guy who pointed his gun is but one man only, he can't save all these people if they begin drowning, or get lost at sea; which sure as I'm typing to you, is the first thing they're gonna figure out how to do. So, the guy with the gun and his buddies all get together to save people from drowing, all of whom regards himself as a champion of the "greater good," and heroes of "the people." And every day these men show up at their neighbor's doors with a gun saying "Give me your money, it's to help the people drowning." And more and more people who weren't drowning, but providing services and products to other people who weren't drowning, grow as demoralized in their labor as I have. And everyday, the guys with the guns go to their stations to save lives, only after enough time some patterns begin to emerge that seem quite funny. At one time they approach a drowning person to save, and he/she claws at him and tries to drag him under, desperate for a breath. At one time, two or three unaccompanied children are seen swimming beyond the markers that the guys with guns specifically placed as a point of caution. colord in bright, abrasive reds and yellows. At one time the guys are called upon to save "the people," and are sent on a desperate attempt to reach someone floating face down in the water, only to discover it was an elaborate trick played on them by mischievous trouble makers. At one time they find three corpses because the trick embittered them to their job and they didn't take the plea seriously, and something akin to a faint thought of pleasure trickles into their minds at the fact that they failed to uphold the duty they swore to by the gun they used to rob those who weren't drowning in perpetuity to uphold. And slowly the bitterness sets in, and the mystique fades from the images of glory they devised for themselves, and it just becomes a job like any other, except now it is forever in place and someone must fill it, lest the people who have stopped teaching their children how to swim, as why would they, they've nothing to be concerned about, drown without their aid-in-perpetuity; and if the people did have something to worry about, then they'd just enlist more guns to rob more people, for more securities at the beach, until the beach and every other public watering hole became a place devoid of any character, any fun, any noise, and any splendor, forever and ever.

And at that very point in time, a guy with a gun will have been witnessed arriving at his neighbor's house, inspired by this story, pointing his gun at the head of his neighbor saying "Give me your money, it's to help the guy who's hungry."

Take care, now!

-g

Now if we redefine disabled to include entitled and unmotivated, then yes, the vast majority of financial aid recipients would be disabled. — Book273

lack of motivation is a sign of depression. You'd throw out all the depressed people off of welfare, because they are unmotivated?

I assume not, you say you see people who are unmotivated without any signs of mental illness. So why do you treat them?

Entitlement, as far as I know (I am not a medical professional) is a major part of narcissistic personality disorder, and I assume that some of your patients have the feeling of entitlement but no other signs of disease. So why do you treat those people?

Because if the unmotivated are depressed, and the narcissists are haughty, then perhaps they are unable to perform in the workforce, partly due to lack of motivation, partly due to social incompatibility.

Can you explain why you treat the non-diseased, or else why you think the disabled should work when they can't?

Interesting to read that you reclassified my profession based on the lack of a space, rather than assume it may have been a spelling error. — Book273

Part of my reclassifying your profession was due to your attitude toward your own patients.

If you were a doctor, and you deemed your patients to be not mentally ill, but "playing" the system, then it is your legal and moral duty to get them off of social support, as long as the financial support is for medical / psychiatric reasons. If you can't, then they are sick.

So which is it? You are allowing illegal activity at the risk of getting your license revoked, for people you personally detest, or else you think that sick people who are unable to work should be cut off from governmental financial support?

Currently practicing in Acute Psychiatry. — Book273

This actually does not state you are a physician. You could be a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an orderly on a ward, or a social worker, even a paralegal. So... do you now, or have you ever had, a provincial license to practice medicine in the capacity of a physician? Please note, that the anonymity of the Internet covers you to say anything without the risk of getting proven false or misleading, and by the same token, I have the moral right to choose to believe or not believe what you claim your profession truly is.

I don't treat those that don't want treatment. They have the right to refuse treatment and I respect that. I can't treat people that do not require treatment. I am not responsible for admissions, that is someone else's balliwick. So yes, when someone refuses treatment, or doesn't need it, but are admited regardless, we do nothing for them. They take up space, generally bitch about how hard done by they are, and eventually decide to leave the hospital after a week or three. That is one reason hospitals lack space: pure bullshit admissions.

what if these citizens are actually being effectively abducted into group home or low income neighborhood situations while commonly drugged by a predatory medical establishment and forced to assert that they have an incurable ailment, in essence ostracized to various degrees by their communities? — Enrique

That would be bad. But the picture you paint is inverted, unlike the actual reality.

The predatory parts of the medical establishment are the various insurance companies, some worse than others, and the for-profit medical system. There are guilty parties here, but the medical staff are not the culprits.

I am old enough to remember when it really was possible to commit people against their will to the very large state run mental hospitals; those practices were made illegal starting in the early 1970s. However, the old state mental hospitals served a very real need that existed prior to the introduction of drugs that made it possible to greatly lessen the symptoms of psychosis, mania, and depression.

The treatment available in these hospitals was not great -- and couldn't be great, because the means were not at hand. Since the 1970s, most of these facilities have been closed.

Today, in every large city, there are homeless people who are mentally ill who would benefit from care on an involuntary basis. They can't receive care under those terms, so the end up immiserated.

You are not responding to what I said.
You treat people. We don't know if in the capacity of a physician or not.
You say too many people who are plain unmotivated but could work do not work.
If you are a physician, then your professional obligation is to get these people off of disability benefits.
you are in that position as a physician.

Then you tell us you have no say over admissions and some people just leave.

That does not answer the inquiry I suggested: either you are a licenced physician, then you must get these people off of disability benefits, the lot that you claim are not sick but simply unmotivated;
or else you are not a doctor, in which case you don't have a training to establish a diagnosis, so your opinion that these unmotivated people are not sick is not medical because only a doctor can make a medical diagnosis in Canada (and some nurse practitioners, and some psychologists.... but NPs and clinical psychologists also must report abuse of the disability benefits system).

So... which is it, Book273? An unscrupulous doctor, NP or CP, or else a layman who has an opinion without much substance?

The welfare state, as nearly everything in our complex world, has negative sides too.

Simply put it, if you don't need to work, some can choose then not to work. And then you basically slide off "the society", even if the welfare state does provide you housing and free health care. In that case you look for a job only so many times and then say f*k it. And what it creates is apathy.

Yet that negative side isn't so bad as that you would have people begging in the streets and pushed to be criminals. I'll choose that apathy if the other choice is people living in tents in the street.

Reason-driven reasonable reasoning. Correct conclusions.

Unfortunately the welfare state is failing too. In my town people live in doorways and tents on the street. They beg politely. Crime is still not up horribly.

The problem with the welfare state is that the money doled out is clearly not enough to pay for food and rent, and absolutely not for clothing and entertainment. If they raised the welfare amounts to livable levels, there would be a revolt, because minimum wage jobs full time (40 hours a week) still don't pay for food, rent and clothing for an individual.

So if we want to bring aboard everyone, there would be needed a massive pay raise for 20% of the population. That would not go down well politically, either.

And even if it did, there is the druggie problem. People on welfare who use every penny they get to feed their addiction.

What's it going to be, to build utopia? Establish outposts on Mars?? Get hearing aids for everyone? use Pledge to polish furniture?

Simply put it, if you don't need to work, some can choose then not to work. And then you basically slide off "the society", even if the welfare state does provide you housing and free health care. In that case you look for a job only so many times and then say f*k it. And what it creates is apathy. — ssu

If that were true, then why are so many rich people, including pensioners who no longer have to work, highly productive?

Apathy is the product of alienation rather than the product of financial security.