k wrote:
ibenez wrote:
What would we have done without food stamps you ask? We would have figured out how to survive. Food stamps actually made my family lazy in my opinion.
No the system is not functional.. we'll, sure it functions, but it's not effecient. The system provides a way for peopel to get lazy and dependant. Then it becomes a cycle.
It *IS* every man for himself - but you can get help fro mthe kindness of others, just not the damn government. Section8 housing my friend is full of woman who have babies just to get more money - I know some of them. They literally jsut have more kids because each kids yields more money. Food stamps does the same thing, you don't have to work to get food -why work?
The argument IS the job of the government - the government social programs such as food stamps and section8 need to be modified so that you can only recv them for a VERY Short time ( 1 month? ) and then never again. Call me cold, but socialism doesn't work. Don't take money from the rich and give it to the poor - don't take money from anyone.
I agree that the current system is inefficient. But I fail to see that as an argument against all social programs. I've long believed that the government subsidies for children should begin to drop, agressively, after the first. Things like additional foodstamps, and the tax credits available to low income families with children should decrease. It absolutely makes sense to limit the amount of additional burden a burdensome individual can generate.
I well know how the food stamp system is abused, and that's something that needs serious attention, as much as welfare and medicaid and on and on. Any functional social program really must act as a support structure which offers an incentive to reduce your reliance on it.
Cold or not, i believe you misunderstand the nature of the system in which we live. Your position presupposes that everyone's failure, and likewise everyone's success, is the result of their choices and personal actions, and ONLY their choices and actions. This is not borne out. There are many routes to wealth -- luck, inheritance, intense perseverence and personal skill is only one, and even it has limitations. The system that permits one to achieve wealth was built by people over time. The structure of society, which permits a person to become rich, came about as a result of the efforts of people you have never met. The cooperation *necessary* for the wealthy to become, and remain, so disproves the notion that success or failure in life can occur in a vacuum. It can't. A society in which there is no redistribution of wealth at all can't help but look a lot like the feudal system. The rich will retain their money, increase it, and pass it on. The poor will get poorer, live in dire conditions, and die young, no matter what their dreams are or how hard they work, with few exceptions. In the past, such systems gave us the dark ages, and quite a few bloody revolutions. Any system which doesn't prevent the unchecked acquisition of wealth cannot prevent exploitation and marginalization over time of those who have little.
Redistributing wealth is a mechanism for allowing people who have acquired a great deal of money to pay back the system which enabled them to acquire it. It's a mechanism to ensure that others get the opportunity to do the same, especially if they were born into less favorable conditions -- a situation neither person had any control over.
I do *NOT* argue that our current system achieves this goal efficiently. Only that it *ought* to.
As for the argument that socialism doesn't work, a number of european nations offer a counterpoint. Communism seems to have been a poor implementation, but plenty of countries have greater or lesser degrees of socialist or nationalist principles and continue to thrive.
Yes that's exactly waht I believe. People make choices, those choices are what defines their success or failure. The rest is just life - and guess what - life ain't fair.
