Elinda wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Of course they aren't. But government is not the same as what is referred to as "big government". When the government engages in providing benefits based on a lack of success,
What is the alternative?
If someone is unsuccessful in providing for themselves, is it more productive to let then wilt away on the street or provide assistance to help them succeed?
Help them succeed, of course. The problem is that government entitlement programs overwhelmingly do not do this and arguably do the exact opposite over time (increase the number of people who fail to succeed).
The biggest determinant of success is having a good paying job. Entitlement doesn't do this. It is paid for out of taxes taken from those who might have provided that job, and creates an employment opportunity cost which discourages many people from ever working more than entry level positions.
When the cost for not working at that $8/hour job is government assistance which is equivalent to working the $8/hour job, you don't have much incentive to work, do you? And if you never spend the time working at the $8/hour job, you're not likely to move on to the $12/hour job, or the $15/hour job, and eventually to the salaried position with the benefits and the perks.
Pretty much everyone starts at the bottom of the economic heap. If you stick with it, you'll eventually earn more money and advance economically to the point where you'd never consider welfare as an alternative. But for those who are comparing the entry level wage to the benefits of welfare, it's not such an easy choice. It's not as obvious that one path will lead to eventual success, while the other will lead to eternal dependence on government entitlement.
It is unfairly simplistic to just look at the potential harm done if we don't provide these benefits. IMO, we're doing vastly more harm by providing them in the first place.
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If we want a society that encourages free-thinking, new ideas, and innovation - one that pushes the limits to keep expanding our choices, don't you think it prudent to have a 'safety net' for those that try and fail?
No. Absolutely not. Because what inevitably happens is that societies which provide such safety nets discourage the very free thinking and new ideas and innovation that you start out wanting to help flourish. Because the cost of eliminating the risk is that you also eliminate the reward. Why bother creating new ideas and innovations if there's no benefit to doing so? If we reward people the same whether their actions result in said innovative ideas or not, it's pretty obvious that we're doing to reduce the rate at which people produce those new ideas in the first place.
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How many people are going to invest their life savings in a new business if they know that failure means moving the family into a cardboard box in the back alley and dining at the dumpster?
How many would do so if their needs are all cared for whether they succeed or not? What's their motivation? Right now, you invest and take risks because you want to build a better life for yourself and your family. If the "better life" is handed to you right from the start, you'd never bother trying that new business, right? There's no reason to...
Also, how many wont have a life savings to invest in the first place if the government taxes them at a rate which makes it nearly impossible to accumulate wealth? It's a double edged sword. You're eliminating the motivation to succeed and simultaneously eliminating the rewards for success. Of course innovation and effort will be reduced.
It's why 5 years after Katrina you still saw people living in poor neighborhoods with trash and debris in the road (from the flood), complaining about it, but never bothering to lift a finger to put any of the trash into the big bins right at the end of the street. They were unwilling to even pick up the trash right in front of their homes if it meant that they had to expend effort. That's what an entitlement mentality creates. People who expect the government to do everything for them and constantly ******** when it doesn't.
I know that many people have this utopian dream that if we just provide everyone with all they need to live, that they'll be inspired to create and work and produce out of some kind of humanitarian unity or some other ridiculousness. The reality is that the majority of people will do absolutely nothing if the consequences of doing nothing at all are removed.
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Again, you fail at looking away from your limited view and confining definitions of capitalism and socialism in the context of todays mega-society.
I think you're the one not looking past the ideology and at the reality.
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Your examples are absurd. What if your one of your two children was a bit of a risk-taker and broke his arm while doing a stunt on his bike, while the other child, a bookworm, has two good arms. It's time for their daily chore - washing the dishes. Uh oh, the broken arm kid can't get his cast wet. Oh, my what shall we do? Will you withhold his dinner, his allowance because, atm, he can't 'earn' them? Will you punish the risktaker and reward the bookworm?
And my examples are absurd?
I'm not saying to punish people who've been injured or something. However, just as the child with the broken arm can do other chores, so can the person who's slightly disabled. Guess what? When I was a kid, I broke each of my arms once (not at the same time, thankfully). You can bet that didn't get me out of doing chores.
And let's be clear. Having a child out of wedlock isn't a disability. It's not the same as having been in a rice-picker accident or something. And at the point where we see whole neighborhoods full of nothing but single women with 2, 3, or 4 children each, with their sole financial support coming from government assistance, we should really be thinking that something is wrong here.
We've created generational poverty in this country as a result of entitlement programs. We never had it before, but we do now. That's the utopian dream come true, and it's really a nightmare. Silly me that I'd like us to wake up as a society and realize that these silly ideas that social liberalists toss around just plain don't work when applied to the real world. They never have. But they've got really good PR and are able to convince the poor that their misfortunes aren't caused by them, but by the evil rich people. Yes. Because the objective of the rich is to make everyone else poor. Anyone want to explain to me why that would be?