09-19-2018, 03:45 PM
(09-19-2018, 03:28 PM)David Horn Wrote:(09-18-2018, 08:22 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'd say there's a difference between earning one's money with the use of ones particular skills and talents and one receiving an equal portion of money distributed to them by government officials regardless of ones skills and talents. How many factors contribute to the difference's between people, peoples wages and peoples over all wealth/net worth?
Where on this earth is there an economy that provides anything like that? Maybe a monastery works that way … maybe.
This is your blind spot. You extrapolate social welfare support to some idealized equal distribution of wealth and assets. It isn't. What it most closely resembles is insurance, where some level of support is provided in the event of some negative event like illness or a positive event that needs support like childbirth. This merely removes uncertainty, which promotes entrepreneurialism, among other unexpected benefits.
The ideal is that people use the social welfare system so that they can get their lives together, whether they ever were good or were not. In return for that effort I get disability payment and SNAP. What I want to do has nothing to do with disability.
Quote:What's expected of you? Pay your taxes, which will admittedly be higher than they are today. Do you get anything? Yes: healthcare, including things our insurance market doesn't want to provide, good roads, schools and other communal assets. Things you buy today are available for you to access at no additional cost. In some countries, lawyers are a social service, just like social workers.
Should I be able to do what I think I can, I will be a taxpayer much like Classic Xer. I will have no cause for complaint because the system will have made me a competent performer in a capitalist society.
Quote:No one's an island, and it's high time we quit pretending. Sharing the cost of things we all need is called SMART. Having everyone pay solo is truly DUMB.
So. the Luftwaffe destroyed your living space. Is it a good idea that someone takes you in for the duration? Sure. There but for random chance go you.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.