Welfare - are you for or against it and why?

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

Are you denying the fact that government spending, especially in big governments, is less efficient than personal spending? What a laugh, someone purchasing their own insurance for instance is a method that involves far less bureaucracy, so Is someone giving to a local shelter.

We don't have unlimited resources to throw at our problems so we should be making the most effective use of what we have - government simply isn't the right choice for a myriad of things that they are involved in.

Are you denying that companies and businesses are just as inefficent, corrupt, and irresponsible?
Please. As if the profit motive made companies better and more altruistic and responsible...

You've clearly missed the point, a valid comparison would be the difference between someone purchasing his own private jet and someone paying a government to purchase a jet for him.

Besides, what is wrong with someone buying a jet if they have the money for it?

So it's fine when some rich blowhole blows millions on the maintainance, purchase, and storage of a corperate (not personal) machine that's utterly unnecessary other than getting past airport security but when the government blows a relatively similar investment - such as that line of military jets that was also brought to light as being a waste of funds - the government is inefficient and people and businesses are the ones who spend money appropriately?

That was caused by a state guarantee, limiting the liability of the loan providers and providing an opportunity for reckless investment, if fannie and freddie weren't being guaranteed security on the loans by the government they wouldn't have bought sub prime loans in the first place because the risks are simply too great, government makes giving loans for housing attractive through subsidies and guarantees and suddenly these loans aren't untenable. This is what gave loan brokers the opportunity to make as many loan agreements as possible with people who couldn't afford them because they could simply resell the liabilities to fannie and freddy while taking a healthy cut of the transaction.

... and I wonder how many pockets were greased by lobbists for those companies in order to enact those laws so allow the US citizens to foot the bill if their housing scheme failed...

They didn't buy toxic assets so much as the assets became toxic when people realised the housing bubble was going to burst.

Also, these banks would have paid for their recklessness if the government hadn't bailed them out. The recession would have been sharper but afterwards the economy would be in a much more balanced state and the governments using these bailouts wouldn't now be in more debt than ever before.

The government bailed them out (hindsight nonwithstanding) because jobs were at stake during a recession in which job losses were mounting - just as with the auto industry and I'm not just talking about the CEOs, but rather everyone else involved in those major banks that could have lost their jobs if they went bankrupt.

He's a criminal who ran a ponzy scheme, that's an entirely different situation, the greed is the only common factor, Bernie didn't get to piggy back off government stupidity.

You're damn right he is, so what makes you think that the customer and worker protections brought about by the government's hand in the economy makes us worse off to help protect us from the more malicious folks like him whose goals of power and money over human health, life, and dignity allow him to become the criminal that he is?
What makes you think that the balance of power in a society is better served when a purely capitalist society is just as bad as its opposite? You're in a daydream if you think people become more efficient and produce higher quality products if their job is in the private sector over the public sector.