Poverty and Sadism (Radu aka Ramsay)

It’s been a while since we haven’t talked about poverty in Romania and solutions. A recent “debate” caused by an over-the-top article on not giving money to the poor gives us a chance to look at it again and also address our reticence with BDSM practices.

On second thought, I won’t be writing about BDSM here, I’ll just tell you that it bores me, and I might add the link to where I’ll write about it later, when done. I will only say for now that BDSM relationships are often about not just pain, but rather counterintuitively deeper bonds, and the cognitive dissonance at the root of the debate below is about applying this small-community based logic at macro level, where it does not belong.

Besides, the title of the BDSM prince of blogo.ro-oaie is not vacant: it’s long been occupied by Popelu’.

I have been noticing a strange phenomenon for a while now, happening not just in Romania, but pretty much everywhere in the world. The poorer most people perceive themselves, the more they are open to “cost-cutting” and “austerity” programs. In Romania however, the perception of poverty seems to increase even while the general standard of living is definitely increasing, and this is because Romanians don’t compare themselves with what they were like yesterday, they compare themselves to an ideal, unattainable in their lifetime, Western European (mostly German) standard.

Not long ago, a law school and “Antene” graduate, currently “gurist” (talking head) at the national TV, Moise Guran, penned an article on a site that doesn’t even have a mobile version, arguing (poorly) that the children allocation should not be doubled to a meagre 84 RON / month (i.e., 18 Euros, US$20, CN$25, GBP 13, BTC 0.8599) because the parents would just drink it all anyway. That such an article is taken seriously at all and even debated is a only a sign that a large set of Romanians are remarkably dumb.

The debate took place on Facebook (buciu-alex), and it was started by Mihai Buciuman, who wrote an article (r-mg) on his “Urban Resistance” site, which we could not access for days because of

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What is it with all these people who insist on using Wordpress even though it obviously isn’t for them?

Luckily, the Facebook “debate” is still readable and it goes something like this (first, MB explains his misgivings; all translated with Google Translate).

In this country there are 2 million people living below the poverty line. The Great, nauseating star Moise Guran calls these 2 million people alcoholics. So you've heard, all poor people are alcoholics!

and condemns them: they drink their child allowance! Leaving aside that the poor are not all alcoholics, leaving aside that not all alcoholics drink children's allowance, and you must be truly evil to generalize that way,

even if you are 'wasting' all 900,000 of allowances that reach children in poverty (what an irony, they waste, they most need them!) STILL leaves millions of children whom you gave a hand of heavenly help, even with 40 RON in addition to the allowance.

In fact what Guran means in the article I'll let you looking for alone - won't give link to that - is that we should not help raising needy children because the poor have no right to children, and that with this allowance we help the poor to reproduce and vote wrong.

I'm embarrassed to exist on the same planet with Moise Guran, a politruk who every day makes political increasingly cheaper attacks on the back of the poor. Therefore I protest against the use of public television this week that assigns a space to this sad specimen.

Arguably, a bit too emotional, but generally an expected, normal reaction.

To this, one Ramsay Alexander replies (the Romanian name is Radu, which is also the real name of a schoolmate from my childhood).

Bah. Seriously. Do you leave the house? I know that ideals and shit but I doubt that you know poor people. As empirically so, the overwhelming majority are alcoholics. The poor are stupid and alcoholics. Let's not change the definition for some statistical errors. And yes. A non-alcoholic poor is a statistical error.

Go in any village and find a non-alcoholic poor and we'll talk after.

I read the article and it's very fair. And you interpret it wrongly. The man did not say not to give to needy children, but he says not to give the money in a form that can be used as the parents wish. Because many are denatured alcoholics. Which is absolutely right.

From here on things go downhill between the two.

Moreover, a few good men (and one woman, at the end) make a few good points.

• VD: Presumption of guilt. If you are poor you are an alcoholic. Let's do more bureaucracy that money is not spent as we want. "Hey!" I have a cousin from the country who commutes at 4am to arrive in Bucharest at school. I have a friend who is now Masters student in Holland and comes from the back-country with alcoholic parents.
• RV: According to the national strategy for the protection and promotion of children's rights (2014), one Romanian child in three is poor, although coming from a family where the parents work, poverty affecting also one in five children in households where the adults work less than 80% the active time. "Only" one in ten children lives in jobless households. In total, 52.2% of Romanian children are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the second highest level in the EU27, after Bulgaria.
• CM: Romania is ranked 3 to alcohol consumption per capita in Europe taking into account only taxed alcohol, one made in the back yard I believe we climb one position.
• FJ: vice tax helps to fund healthcare more than other taxes. Guran's "Alcoholics" do not get anything back of these services. Guran benefits from these charges through state health services.
• MB: Money is more useful and an aid much more flexible than pre purchased school supplies but if you start with the false premise that there is widespread drinking then maybe start a business to sell such supplies to the state.
• RV: Well then, let us sterilize the poor for peace, right? And euthanize half the children so that they are no longer struggling. Maybe NCCD should have a point of view on the aberrations of Guran. The child allowance is a universal right of the child, not the parent.
• RA: But meal vouchers why are they not given as money? Maybe so that the idiot does not waste it on alcohol and cigarettes? Exactly the same thing with the Allowance. It's a state aid for necessities. It's just as normal to have a system by which to care can not be spent elsewhere. Yes start from the presumption of guilt. It is absolutely normal. For protection. As the electrical panel that says danger. Normally you realize alone that it's dangerous and it's unnecessary. But start from the premise that among us are idiots and make a rule for everyone to protect minority of idiots. Same here.
• VD: Meal tickets are stupid and a fraud. The state assumes that man knows what it takes respectively. Even if a month has food from home and would like to buy some clothes or nails. State knows better. I get to think that Romanians love bureaucracy. Always a problem when we think how to put tickets, permits, authorizations, etc. NAFA eats you and you deserve your fate!
• AP: Does the baby need nails ?? NO. school supplies, clothes for children, food, books, film or theater tickets, YES! but better prevent those cases of cigarettes bought / alcohol? money is too flexible for an uncivilized and irresponsible people. There is no harm / drawback if the money is placed on the card. Only paranoia that money goes to banks. If you think, it is more bureaucracy to stand in line at the post office to get the money. dumb and wait 1-2 hours in line for 42 lei, than to give the pos card. There's nothing here about bureaucracy, it is efficient and modern.
• VD: He needs [nails] when it rains at home. But you decided they must go to the theater and buy school supplies because you are treating him like an animal. He can die of pneumonia, but at least he is cultured and did not spend his vouchers on drinking... Congratulations for the presumption of guilt.
• MB: I wonder how many of you who maintain that the poor should not have the right to make babies would have qualified to be created at the time that you were conceived / born. (..) If the discussion would simply be about giving cash or food stamps or How to prevent abuse of births for child allowance (very low statistical phenomenon anyway) then it would be different, but Guran is attacking the very idea of helping the needy because they are drunks and reproduce  and vote Ponta (he just knows all this).
• VD: So the person defending must demonstrate his innocence. Interesting. How do I know that I'm not giving you a salary / fee for human and organ trafficking. I must give you food stamps and postage stamps for records of expenditure. Presumption of guilt you start with is not justified, but if it were applied consistently it would mean bar code on the forehead, vouchers instead of money and more bureaucracy. Jail until you prove your innocence. Salary confiscated until you prove that you will spend it "right". Why do you like bureaucracy? Why do you want only preventive measures (bureaucratic) when control could solve 90% of the issues you raise? How many people will die without medication because no health card though bulletin was enough? Let's have more cards, more tickets. We never learn.

  You have Child Protection Services that can take children away if something goes wrong. You want to give them vouchers to make it harder for them to buy nails when they need it because it's raining in the house (the state says you should eat that money not to repair the roof). But tickets can be sold and that you can not stop it so you get nowhere in that you make life more difficult for people who would do something useful with the money. You allow alcoholics to continue to drink. You even pay for a system of vouchers and cards. Everyone loses .... WTF ....

• VD: We are all criminals. We must wear collars with GPS and neck C4 to decrease crime. And vouchers!
• RA: You are outraged that they make laws like we are all guilty. but THAT'S HOW SOCIETY WORKS. Why are guns prohibited? most people would use them only to defend. why make a law for that 1% who were maniacs and would shoot random people? ooowait, you're starting to get it.
• MB: If the parents 20,000 thousand of children drank allowance for children is very ugly and should be admonished. That is kind 0.006% of pupils and not a reason to stop the allowance unless you're Guran and lie and exaggerate and make your political platform of poor-bashing to feel better those who are not poor because you tickle their superiority and they vote you.
• VD: See, your answer can be civilized. That's something I can answer myself. It is a huge difference between guns and money. Guns are made to kill and is likely to be used to injure. We can not erase any and all differences between the things we prohibit, regulate or allow. Your level of fear of the use of money is unjustified and starts from the false premise that all / most / a significant percentage of parents are distorted. If your premise is true, the allowance would be a pointless discussion and those children should be taken away. Or that's not the case ... So if that assumption disappears, disappears also the need for vouchers ...
• MO: Not to mention the problem that in enormously many cases alcoholism is a disease, or a method of treating depression, not a moral deficiency, no matter how much those who always associate poverty with bad morality want to see it that way.

The arguments put forward by Victor Draghicescu, Monica Olaru and Michael Buciuman are excellent and sadly, Ramsay Alexander (previously quoted in Hajduks..) comes across as a monumental moron, incapable of grasping basic logic and insulting those who try to help him. The benefits of the allowance outweigh the potential downside by such a humongous margin that the very discussion seems a waste of time.

If you are not persuaded by the above, it is unlikely that I can do any more in that direction. After all, it is quite obvious that the sadism (see the first paragraph) manifested by those who take pleasure in making the poor’s life more difficult, is completely illogical and motivated by what may have happened to them in their childhood. Let me just reiterate an argument I’ve been making in existentialism/suicide, as well as Quo Vadis, mah coin? (I and II): in a deflationary recession of the kind most of the world is traversing, it is essential to pump money into the poor, not only for their own good, but to avoid the deathly downward spiral of plunging demand that accompanies such a recession (Blegoo rebuttal). Yes, Romania is not yet in such a recession, but its growth of 2-3% p.a. is anaemic considering how far behind its targets it still is and the central bank is moving into QE territory. Giving money to people with children is not only moral, it is REQUIRED by the state of the economy and it’s the best welfare money the state could spend, even if 50% would be wasted (and it won’t be) by constipated individuals’ standards. That would be true even if Romania wasn’t in a demographic crisis, but it is even more so knowing that it is.

LE: Two TED speeches I came across since publishing: Gary Haugen (ted-haug) and Chrystia Freeland.

There are of course other solutions to the demographic crisis (especially since when the tide has turned toward depopulation, you have to give a lot of money to parents to get them to have children, and a national childcare program goes farther than giving them money straight), but Romania could never rely on immigration (too many closed-minded imbeciles): it cannot retain inside its borders even born-Romanians who speak the language!

Not only that the government should be increasing the aforementioned allowance, as it is doing, but a program should be started to revamp the education system with an eye to Finland and start giving money directly to kids who do well in school, based on performance.

Part of the problem is some sort of “proximity bubble” left behind Romanians seem to be living in. In this bubble, the many retirees everybody stumbles upon in the bus are not there because the population is aging, nobody’s having babies anymore henceforth their proportion of the living retirees has visibly increased, they are there because they are insufferable and forget to get off. The poor and the unemployed are not so due to systemic issues and a worldwide recession, but rather because they don’t want to work. People who resort to alcohol en masse end up unemployed, and nobody drinks because they ended up unemployed through no fault of their own. Finally, whoever makes a good living does so because of personal merit; luck and parents have nothing to do with it. Romania has low living standards because of pensioners who suck any surplus out of the system; they should be euthanized, and all those who think this way will never get old or be in their shoes.

Let me conclude with yet another Ramsay’s saying, which goes from my heart to all “intelligent”, “rich” Romanians who think giving money to the poor is a mistake.

LE: It seems that even one of RA's colleagues at Catavencii (Mihai Radu Ramsay) sees through Guran's deceit.

Sources / More info: buciu-alex, r-mg, ted-haug

Zamo, saracie, poverty, moise guran, buciuman, radu alexandru, alocatie, child benefit, bdsm, sadomasochism, sadism (Tags)