Was the president being disingenuous when, during the State of the Union speech [Jan 24, 2012] he said that "...America is not about handouts"?

Who are all of these people who produce nothing? There aren’t that many of them.

Do you mean people on social security? Who paid intro the system their whole working lives.

Do you mean people on unemployment? Who were taxed to create the funds they are being paid out of.

The America he is trying to propel is all about handouts. His opponents and their constituents are not all about handouts. He is trying to sugar up to the middle.

@marinelife where have you been?

@saint Were you josie in a past life? Or Lucille?

@FutureMemory
I’m a guy

Who pays zero taxes? There are people who pay no income tax, but that’s just one small piece of the overall tax picture. That society is a cooperative endeavor in no way entails that it is all about handouts.

@SavoirFaire
When people bitch about the other guy’s tax rate, they are talking about income tax.

@saint So what? That doesn’t justify referring to tax payers as people who pay zero taxes.

@marinelife, employers pay the unemployment insurance for the most part. If I’m not mistaken there are three states where employees pay a miniscule portion of the unemployment insurance.

@SavoirFaire It does in a discussion of Federal tax. Most other taxes are state taxes. So, in this discussion we can certainly assume tax references are to income.

@MollyMcGuire I’m not talking about assumptions, I’m talking about descriptions. I pay taxes, even if I do not pay federal income taxes. As such, it is inaccurate to say I am a person who pays zero taxes. It’s just a stupid rhetorical trick, and people should be ashamed to use it. It is certainly an unworthy component of any serious discussion of the topic.

And for what it’s worth: I work, consume very little, and receive no government benefits.

@saint I just looked at my W-2 and I cleared just under $7,000 last year and I still paid taxes. I don’t receive a penny in free government financial assistance, I do not qualify for food stamps (even with a family of 5), any kind of medical insurance, energy assistance, etc. The only money I received from the government was in the form of student loans, all of which I will pay back – with interest. So in my little part of the country, the United States is definitely not about handouts.

Out of curiosity, how are these people who “produce nothing” able to afford to “consume as if they did”? I’ll tell you what, the people I know who have been on assistance can hardly afford to keep a roof over their heads, much less consume more than the bare essentials.

@bkcunningham Where do you think the employers take the money from? They take it from what would have been employee compensation.

While it’s likely that there are recipients of the dole who abuse the system and/or don’t really need it, I don’t think providing a safety net for people who are unemployed through no fault of their own (or through the fault of the greed of the rich) should be branded “handouts.”

Rather, I think one of the functions of government should be to provide a safety net for people, especially people at the lower economic strata who don’t have “golden parachutes.”

@marinelife, where does the employer get their portion of the employee’s payroll taxes they are responsible for paying?

I won’t even bother to point out the completely incorrect statement that this demographic “pays zero taxes,” as @SavoirFaire has already beat me to it. But far more ridiculous is the fact that you think that people who make essentially no money “consume as if they did” make a steady income. Please, tell me how people who can barely get the bare minimum on the little to no government aid that they may receive can manage to consume anything more than just that? I would love to hear how you think that this is at all possible.

But to answer your question, I really don’t understand how the statement that “America is not about handouts” somehow implies that he is trying to pull the wool over America’s eyes. To think that the only motivation that could possibly be behind this statement is disingenuously gaining support is completely non sequitur, as he really has no one to “fool” in saying this.

Furthermore, I’m assuming that you’re referring to those on welfare and other similar government assistance programs, in which case I ask you the following: In what way are these programs in combination with the reforms that Obama has been pushing for all along, which are designed to get people back on their feet and into the workplace, handouts?
I am not of the opinion that Welfare, Medicaid, etc. are handouts in the first place; they are designed as temporary aid to keep those people (just barely) afloat, until they are able to once again become “productive” citizens.
To debunk your ridiculously rudimentary statement that they pay “zero [federal] taxes” and “live on somebody else’s efforts,” many of these citizens have in fact paid federal taxes previously, and all of the citizens who successfully return to work will pay federal taxes, effectively paying back their assistance. The problem with this system which leads people such as yourself to come to these extremely biased and fundamentally incorrect conclusions is that the current government programs commonly do not provide the necessary help to get enough of these at-need citizens back into the workplace. This is why Obama has proposed the reforms/programs designed for that sole purpose, which will both create new jobs and help to fill the industries that need workers in the process.

In short, government assistance programs never were handouts, and they will be even less so with the reforms/programs that Obama has proposed. Furthermore, it is certainly not disingenuous to make a statement which is absolutely true, especially when talking about a brighter future.

Conservative rhetoric isn’t a question anyways, and we won’t even get into the factual errors and hyberbole in this rant; this is less about answers and more about just trolling.

The funny part is that the people who complain the most about “handouts” are the ones that are either making it necessary for more people to receive some form of assistance, or who support the system that does.

You want to end “handouts”? Then let a rising tide lift all boats, let the average worker have enough of the record profits for their income to exceed inflation even if it means that executive income is only 50 times what the average worker gets (as it was back when we used to be a prosperous nation) instead of 500–100, and turn some of those investor dollars into enough jobs that everybody who is willing and able to work can actually do so in a manner that allows them to live self-sufficiently.

The truth is that it is the Conservatives who want America to be all about handouts. Otherwise they would not be trying so hard to make them a necessity.

Jerv makes a good point. Wal-Mart teaches their employes how to get government assistance. Yet they make billions in profits. How about paying your employees a bit more so they don’t need food stamps and WIC?