Classic Stossel: Makers vs Takers — Transcript

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1. 0:00some people say either you're a maker or
2. 0:03a taker and today the makers and takers
3. 0:06are battling for America's Soul it's a
4. 0:09battle because we're deciding on our
5. 0:11culture sixty percent of Americans take
6. 0:13more out of the Public Finance system
7. 0:15than they pay in they get more in public
8. 0:17services than they pay in taxes how do
9. 0:20you give a rebate to people that didn't
10. 0:23put any bait in there are makers and
11. 0:25there are takers and I live the life of
12. 0:28a taker star Parker was a taker she
13. 0:30lived off welfare for seven years she
14. 0:33says the welfare bureaucracy encouraged
15. 0:35her to stay dependent on the Forum they
16. 0:38just made sure that you didn't work you
17. 0:40didn't save and you didn't get married
18. 0:41and if you didn't work or save or Marry
19. 0:44You Gotta check right
20. 0:46two checks first and the fifteenth
21. 0:49and let's go food stamps too and all
22. 0:52your medical expenses paid and all the
23. 0:54daycare for your kids so I can hang out
24. 0:55in Venice Beach all afternoon
25. 0:57so she did
26. 1:00the creators of welfare met with meant
27. 1:03to help people but handouts have
28. 1:05unintended consequences once I found out
29. 1:07about welfare why work when I can hang
30. 1:10out out here this was fabulous you know
31. 1:12even if welfare encouraged dependency
32. 1:15progressives say other programs don't we
33. 1:18have things like public housing we have
34. 1:20all sorts of things that are designed
35. 1:22not to give people just a handout but to
36. 1:24give people a Fighting Chance a fighting
37. 1:26chance so many people vandalized their
38. 1:28public housing projects that governments
39. 1:30ended up destroying them
40. 1:34again
41. 1:37and again
42. 1:39they build it it wrecks neighborhoods
43. 1:42and then they blow it up
44. 1:45public housing doesn't wreck
45. 1:47neighborhoods unattended public housing
46. 1:49wrecks neighborhoods we look at the best
47. 1:51moments of public housing like the
48. 1:52Taylor homes early in the night you know
49. 1:541960s in Chicago uh they worked out just
50. 1:56fine fine government programs do often
51. 2:00start nicely but within 15 years the
52. 2:02Taylor homes were a crime-ridden
53. 2:04graffiti-covered wreck on them the
54. 2:08government's solution
55. 2:10once again demolish the entire project
56. 2:14and yet the left wants more handouts I
57. 2:17think that the basic affordances of
58. 2:19democratic citizenship are housing
59. 2:21health care and education we have to
60. 2:24make sure that we're having a life
61. 2:25liberty and pursuit of happiness that's
62. 2:27like secret code for housing health care
63. 2:28and education it seems to me well but
64. 2:31that's a big step Beyond you can't have
65. 2:32life liberty and happiness if you if you
66. 2:34don't have access to a hospital you
67. 2:36can't have it if you don't have access
68. 2:37to a basic education if you leave people
69. 2:40alone to have life liberty and to pursue
70. 2:43their own happiness that's different
71. 2:44from taking money from one group of
72. 2:46people to give other people housing and
73. 2:49health care first of all we're not
74. 2:50giving people housing in healthcare and
75. 2:52people pay taxes even people who live in
76. 2:53public housing pay taxes what we're
77. 2:55doing again is creating an investment
78. 2:57we're not teaching dependency no I think
79. 3:00that you can you can you always run the
80. 3:01risk of intergenerational laziness but I
81. 3:04don't think that the welfare state
82. 3:05necessarily means that but it does says
83. 3:09star Parker it's so much easier to take
84. 3:11than to make I think that that's one of
85. 3:13the greatest strategy cities of becoming
86. 3:15a taker is you don't think about that
87. 3:16somebody else had to make this and you
88. 3:18don't think about what if I tried I was
89. 3:20just a title to it entitled to a nice
90. 3:23apartment on a tree-lined street with a
91. 3:25balcony and I had a fireplace I had a
92. 3:28spa in the back stories like hers drove
93. 3:31the push for welfare reform
94. 3:34today we are taking an historic chance
95. 3:36to make welfare what it was meant to be
96. 3:38a second chance not a way of life
97. 3:42some people predicted trauma we haven't
98. 3:44known since the cholera epidemics
99. 3:46families will fracture a million
100. 3:49children could be forced into poverty
101. 3:51there would be people starving in the
102. 3:54streets nobody starved the record
103. 3:55numbers of people that were on there
104. 3:57just left the welfare system and nobody
105. 3:59died star Parker found jobs I started a
106. 4:02little magazine and it began to grow
107. 4:04over time she never returned to welfare
108. 4:06most people went got jobs and some went
109. 4:09and went home and apologized to their
110. 4:11mom and moved in and started over got
111. 4:14back into school other folks started
112. 4:16thinking about their own life again
113. 4:17nearly 2 million children rose out of
114. 4:20poverty welfare caseloads fell by half
115. 4:24yet that success hasn't convinced
116. 4:26politicians that handouts hurt people
117. 4:28it's so essential to pass the
118. 4:30unemployment insurance extension
119. 4:32unemployment benefits used to last 26
120. 4:35weeks but Congress has extended them to
121. 4:37nearly two years that does encourage
122. 4:40dependency it did encourage me to pass
123. 4:43up open job openings that I could have
124. 4:46applied for how many uh probably half a
125. 4:48dozen Patrick Berry lost his job writing
126. 4:51software manuals he says his 99 weeks of
127. 4:54unemployment benefits let in the turn
128. 4:56jobs down because they paid less than
129. 4:59unemployment that would amount to a pay
130. 5:00cut and why would I want to do that
131. 5:03Fresno California has 17 percent
132. 5:05unemployment yet people who run
133. 5:08employment agencies here tell us people
134. 5:10turn down jobs all the time we call them
135. 5:13for a position and they say no thanks
136. 5:15I'm on unemployment a lot of people take
137. 5:16advantage to try to work the system if
138. 5:19the state's going to give me money why
139. 5:20not take it unemployment agencies say
140. 5:22many people just pretend to look for
141. 5:24work better talk Personnel this is Nancy
142. 5:26may I help you they pretend because
143. 5:28that's required to get your check
144. 5:30they're you know completely not dressed
145. 5:33for an interview in shorts a T-shirt and
146. 5:34flip-flops saying oh yeah I want to get
147. 5:36a job really bad please hire me and
148. 5:38they'll come through the interview
149. 5:39process and we know that they're not
150. 5:41going to go to work I would say maybe 25
151. 5:43to 35 percent of the people that we're
152. 5:45talking to are just not trying that's
153. 5:48not what we hear from our president I
154. 5:50haven't met any American who would
155. 5:52rather have an unemployment check than a
156. 5:55meaningful job that lets you provide for
157. 5:56your family but incentives matter in
158. 6:00Denmark the socialist government once
159. 6:01offered laid off workers five years of
160. 6:04unemployment benefits When did many
161. 6:06Danes finally find work surprise after
162. 6:09exactly five years so Denmark cut
163. 6:12benefits to four years then Danes found
164. 6:15jobs in four years this year Denmark cut
165. 6:18the benefits in half
166. 6:20survey found that one-third of the
167. 6:22unemployed find work immediately when
168. 6:25their unemployment benefits run out when
169. 6:28there were only a few weeks left I
170. 6:29actually did start looking at jobs that
171. 6:32I had been passing up the chance to
172. 6:33apply for we should have a safety now to
173. 6:35help people who cannot help themselves
174. 6:37but I don't think we ought to have a
175. 6:38safety net that loves people in the
176. 6:40lives of complacency independency in the
177. 6:42federal government
178. 6:43again it is kind to want to help people
179. 6:46who've fallen in hard times but
180. 6:49government handouts encourage people to
181. 6:51rely on handouts instead of on
182. 6:53themselves