Re: The record industry, RIAA and US law

[gray <gray@karricountry.com.au>]

> > Chris - you are right to ask this poster to check the facts.  I wonder
> > if he was ever on welfare and if so - for how long?  Also I wonder how
> > easy it actually is to qualify for this welfare.
>
> I assume you're talking about me as the OP in this case, but it would
> help if you would include the "Username posted on Date" so that it is
> easier to follow.  I already replied to Chris' message.

Sorry Joe.  I didn't track your name back on that post as I was in a
hurry.  As it turns out your original post was wayyy back...  Now I've
found it I like the way you were sure to tag these points with
<opinions>.  I'm also pleased that this wasn't part of a big 'welfare
bludgers' rant as I feared.

So these points are not necessarily for you - whomever the cap fits...

People like to think welfare recipients get it easy.  The question
is : compared to who?  Usually compared to minimum wage earners...
Often people judge the laziness of welfare recipients on the thinnest
of evidence.  Laziness can be a product of lifestyle as much as it can
create lifestyle...  You would have to know someone pretty well to
draw such a judgement - I'm not sure if I could even safely make such
a judgement about a sister or borther.  Is there really a connection
between how you earn a living and whether or not you're lazy?  So
Gordon Gecko might say.

Minimum wage workers are getting a very raw deal in most parts of the
world at present as far as I can see.  It is interesting that Joe
cites the US as a possible exception.  Most Australians (and I expect
the rest of the world) have heard stories of the income received by
WALMART attendants and other US minimum wagers.  Myself and my friends
have also experienced first hand, as teenage workers, the union
busting tactics of US multinationals such as McDonalds.  There is also
the phenomenon of economic deprivation forcing people into the US army
which I have heard about.  Without broadening the Offtopic too much
this is one of many reasons why the US is distrusted globally as a
social and political system to emulate: if the US can't even treat its
own citizens well...  Anyway I know this was a favourite topic of
propaganda in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War - but that does
mean here and now that it is false.

Bob Dylan said 'and the poor white remains on the caboose of the
train' when he was showing how the deprived white classes of America
were groomed to hate the black rights movement.  They saw a class
trying to rise past them and 'like a dog on a chain' they had been
trained to guard that particular exit.  I think 'loose' comments about
welfare recipients often work in a very similar way.  Except perhaps
the poor white is now the middle class white.

>
> Interesting observation.  I agree that there are workers in the labor
> market needed, and certain jobs are not desirable for educated people,
> so one could argue that it is better to purposely not educate a certain
> number of people so that the only benefit they will have for society is
> their unskilled labor.  IMO, it's not a very attractive policy.

'not attractive' is to put it a bit over-mildly I think.  Many of
those certain jobs are not attractive regardless of education.

> The problem is not a simple one to solve, because everyone should have
> the right to board and housing, but someone has to pay for it.

Empty slogan.  Not to say there is no content here but that is a VERY
big topic.  The art of economics is precisely that and anyone who
thinks it is a science has been brainwashed by one of the many camps
of economists who claim to have found the 'true path'.  As my friend
Bob Dylan ironised (now I really am sounding like an old hippy) 'If
dogs run free then why can't we across the sweeping plains'.  He was
referring, at least a bit, to the biblical parable about the lilies of
the fields not needing to pay for their clothes.  The truth on this
topic is hugely more complex than 'someone has to pay for it'.  With
due respect.

>
> I remember learning in my youth that "Nothing is free, somebody,
> somewhere pays for what you get for nothing."  Even the air we breathe
> costs money because there are people who monitor it, and that costs
> money.  However, we don't individually have to pay for it (yet).

you should question what you learned in your youth.  Perhaps
everything is paid for already.  I was taught in my youth that 'people
only ever steal from greed - not from need'.  It took me a long time
to see how ridiculous this statement is: the sort of bullshit fed to
young-uns on a daily basis.  Perhaps if I was a catholic I would have
been given 'the lilies of the field' instead.

Graham E