From G2A Free Loader
"I will agree that I failed to distinguish adequately between duty and obligation. Duty, as I am using it, is voluntarily accepted and driven from within. Obligation, as in law, is forced upon you from outside. Caring for poor should be a duty, voluntarily accepted, or else it is theft." JerryThoughts
"It is not theft, slavery or any such silly thing. You choose to live here. You choose to follow the country's laws. No one is forcing you to be here." G2A
"I did NOT choose to live here. I was born here, and have never been offered a reasonable choice of living somewhere else that was better. Sort of like, I believe, a lot of poor people or "unlucky kids." They haven't been offered a reasonable choice that they believed was accessible to them.
And I don't choose to live under the country's laws, either, because there aren't reasonable choices about that, either. There are penalties for disobeying the law, and no penalty, possibly even a reward, for following them.
Let's take your definition of welfare. Money is taken from me, by threat of force, and goes into the pockets of someone I do not know. What about that transaction is different from an ordinary street mugging?" Jerry
"Of course you choose voluntarily to live here, and choose to follow the laws of our society. Just like I do. There are many places that we could go, but America is wonderful, even with it's laws and taxes.
As for the difference between mugging and tax/spend...
Laws
"1. the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.
2. any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution."
A woman co-worker once told me she HAD to work. Well I knew she was married with only 2 kids, so I reminded her in my gentlest way that her working was choice.
She had many options, she weighted them, she scored them and then she chose...
By the way, she quit awhile later and they bought B&B that she operated..." G2A
"So, welfare is a LEGAL mugging? Is that really the distinction you want to make? Does something become wise or moral just by being written into law?
And we keep having the same debate. I do not believe I have a choice to live elsewhere, because all other choices have substantial negative downsides. I do not believe many welfare recipients (or parents of school kids) have any better choices available to them. You claim we have "choices," which is true, but if all choices are worse (IN OUR OPINION, which is all that counts) than what we already have, how is that indistinguishable from having no choices at all?" Jerry
"Wise and moral" are relative terms, law is how our society codifies them.
- Is it wise and moral for some in the community to go hungry while others hoard their money and eat well?
- Is it wise and moral to take the excess money from some people to prevent civil unrest.
Choice: an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.
Please note that all that is required are different possibilities. Accepting that almost everything we do in life is a choice is very freeing. The alternative is to spend one's life feel oppressed and controlled. No one forces me to come into work everyday at this particular company. I choose to because it is the best of the opportunities available to me at this time. And there are other options that I could choose if I am really unhappy with the current state." G2A
24 comments:
Obligation, as in law, is forced upon you from outside. Caring for poor should be a duty, voluntarily accepted, or else it is theft
Caring for the poor is the duty of morally straight individuals. Subsidizing sloth and depravity is morally untenable.
I don't know anyone that would refuse to feed and clothe someone in desperate need; there are such people out there, but I don't associate with them. Desperation can come from any direction, and without warning. Desperation is harsh, it's uncompromising and leaves one with few choices. Real desperation is also short lived; it is acute.
If you are desperate, either you will find a way through it on your own; be helped through by others or you will die.
We have replaced real desperation with subsidized destitution; especially among blacks. Destitution in practice in Western countries is chronic. No one starves; no one dies cold and wet. But since more is invested in supporting destitution than moving through it, and because we have largely removed all of the harsh, acute aspects, destitute has become a permanent socio-economic class in America.
Good Point to add...
- Is it wise and moral to enable people to stay trapped in a state of dependency, and to have them teach their children the same limiting beliefs?
Personally I think this is more cruel than letting them manage through the acute distress.
Enabling people to stay trapped in a state of dependency, and teaching their children the same limiting beliefs are the main platform of the Democrat party. Without helpless, unskilled, uneducated wards of the state, the Democrat party as we know it today would cease to exist. Dependency is an inherent part of all leftist theologies.
Worse, the Democrat party and their fellow travelers in the NEA and AFT not only inculcate kids the leftist ideology of dependency, they make it the only option by sending millions of minority kids out a functional illiterates. The destruction of the public school system is the greatest crime the American left has committed, in my opinion.
"Accepting that almost everything we do in life is a choice is very freeing. The alternative is to spend one's life feel [SIC] oppressed and controlled."
I believe you have discovered it. Some of us feel oppressed and controlled by paying taxes to support welfare dependency. Those on welfare feel oppressed and controlled by "the system." The longer they stay on it, however, they become more and more accepting of it and that is the true tragedy.
"Is it wise and moral to enable people to stay trapped in a state of dependency..." It is not /I/ doing the "trapping," but rather the government. You have just admitted that the welfare laws as they currently exist are neither wise nor moral. And not effective, either, since the purpose should be to lift people out of poverty, not maintain them in it.
"Caring for the poor is the duty of morally straight individuals."
Absolutely! So why does government interfere in that willingly accepted obligation, and replace it with an ineffective, rotting simulacrum of true charity?
Guys,
The reality is that our society was failing to care for and help far too many people. Therefore we the people chose to make this a function of government.
G2A God Works in Mysterious Ways
As for success or failure that is depending on the criteria used to measure.
"Wise and moral" are relative terms, law is how our society codifies them.
- Is it wise and moral for some in the community to go hungry while others hoard their money and eat well?
- Is it wise and moral to take the excess money from some people to prevent civil unrest.
- Is it wise and moral to enable people to stay trapped in a state of dependency, and to have them teach their children the same limiting beliefs?
Until the citizens of our country become less self centered and fiscal wealth centered... It is likely that society will continue to use government to help people avoid acute circumstances.
And since we choose to be citizens within this society and country, those laws, services, etc are our laws, services, etc... Even if we disagree with them.
Then our duty is to work for change and improvement.
"The reality is that our society was failing to care for and help far too many people."
That is not reality, that is an assertion based on a questionable reading of history. Moreover, there is a vast difference between "caring for" and "helping" which is the fundamental of the current welfare problem.
Just taking your assertion at face value does not suggest that government welfare is the solution. Indeed, the fact that government can extract resources from the society by force of law and redirect them to whatever well-intentioned but totally ineffectual purpose it sees fit, and then call it an "entitlement" has played out exactly as one might predict. Private charity, on the other hand, BECAUSE it has limited resources, seeks to maximize the amount of "help" that it provides with those resources. It creates a natural competition among those needing help and a certain amount of necessary "desperation" that greatly extends the impact of those resources.
You have already admitted that government welfare that takes money from some and gives to others simply to keep them dependent is neither wise nor moral, so your argument that citizens must be "less self-centered and fiscal wealth centered" is doomed to failure so long as government force is what drives this supposed beneficence. Can you imagine what would happen if all the money that government now takes to do "charity" were left in the hands of the individuals who earned it, perhaps through the simple expedient of a charitable tax /credit/ rather than a deduction?
"Then our duty is to work for change and improvement."
I am doing the best I can, but the first step is to convince our "wiser and more caring" representatives in government to quit doing stupid stuff. After that, a real solution should be simple.
Actually I said that it was more cruel "to enable people to stay trapped in a state of dependency, and to have them teach their children the same limiting beliefs" than to "have them suffer the acute discomfort and pushed to change / improve".
I don't think I ever said that "government welfare that takes money from some and gives to others simply to keep them dependent is neither wise nor moral"...
As you know I have many reasons why I believe people stay poor and dependent. Some are caused by Liberals and some are caused by Conservatives.
As for Private charity... There is nothing that government is doing that prevents Private Charity from fulfilling it's role.
Look at HCZ... Now why aren't their charities like that in every urban center?
John, you leave out a critical component in the humane and morally straight implementation of welfare.
Feeding and clothing the desperate is step 1, but step 2 must be helping people work through to self-sufficiency. We have power hungry leftists working not to help people work through to self-sufficiency, but to lock them into ignorance and dependence in order to maintain their political power and control. There is nothing humane in that.
It is as much the duty of humane and morally straight people to help the desperate escape the grip of grasping leftists as it is to feed and clothe them.
Such assigning of bad intent...
Personally I don't think anyone is trying "lock them into ignorance and dependence in order to maintain their political power and control."
Where do you Conservatives get such negative ideas about Liberals???
The best I could muster is to suggest they see the public schools as a source of cash and power. The kids are secondary; the record is clear on that. But if they do happen to get educated, leftists might see it as a bonus.
You don't know any liberals, do you?
Joel
I think it is time to employ a favorite leftist tool, and suggest that liberals' "bad intent" is proven by the fact that there is a "disparate impact" on poor and minority people. Their kids are forced into failing schools, they are not offered the help they might need in obtaining job skills and are penalized-- i.e. their benefits reduced-- if they do choose to work. "Fat, dumb and happy and voting Democrat" did not become an unspoken slogan out of thin air.
"There is nothing that government is doing that prevents Private Charity from fulfilling it's role."
How about taking $1 Trillion out of the economy to "do" welfare, when that same amount spent through private charity would quadruple the amount of money spent, and multiply the "good" done by far more? People only have so much money to spend, and if they are forced to give it to the tax man, they cannot give it to charity.
And if government will hand you a check for doing nothing, why should you do something, like a private charity would ask you to do?
"As you know I have many reasons why I believe people stay poor and dependent. Some are caused by Liberals and some are caused by Conservatives."
If I agree with you about that, will you then admit that what you have just said is that ALL the reasons stem from government (liberal or conservative) actions? I fail to see how a government-run welfare system could be anything else. If it is failing (which it is) it is the fault of government, somewhere, somehow.
I did a new post to continue this topic.
But to answer Jerry's question... Government is nothing but the will of our society turned into policies, laws, programs, services, taxes, credits, deductions, etc. Therefore I think the citizens of our country are responsible for all of the challenges we face.
That is one problem with democratic self rule... We should look in the mirror and accept some of the responsibility...
And please remember that there was death, poverty, unfortunate people, ignorant people, unwanted pregnancies, orphans, starvation, depravity, etc LONG LONG before there were modern governments. For better or worse, now more of those unfortunates have kids and live long lives thanks to our more benevolent, tolerant and law abiding society.
"Government is nothing but the will of our society turned into policies, laws,..."
What you miss is that ours is a representative republic, not a democracy. Thank goodness. As a result, we send people to DC to work in our best interests and, for the most part, just let them do what they want to do. To attract our votes, they decide more and more to "solve our problems" and to do that they acquire power and in turn, deliver bad solutions to those problems when they should not have been meddling in the first place. If the Congress had said they were passing a bill that would "spend a trillion dollars on keeping 45 million people in poverty" do you think it would be supported widely? Yet that is what they do, year after year. If you want to blame the public for these outrages, at least blame them for not paying attention rather than what they didn't pay attention /to/.
Sorry but I think the majority of Americans believe differently... That is why the programs are still in place.
Now if you could prove to the majority of Americans that preventing acute poverty consequences (ie welfare), funding training programs (adult ed) and paying experienced / degreed Teachers more causes people to stay trapped in Poverty... Maybe then you could encourage people to change the laws. Since this logic is very counter intuitive for many... It may be a hard sell.
"Sorry but I think the majority of Americans believe differently.."
No doubt, but they have been ill-informed and misinformed for a generation or more. They believe politicians when they say they will "eliminate poverty" and then go back to the sofa and pick up the TV remote. As I said, if Congress or the legislature would state the purpose of legislation and set up measurable benchmarks for it, with the threat to abandon or change the program if it failed to meet objectives, many of these problems would simply go away. As it is, there seems to be more of an effort to conceal the failures, rather than fix them.
Perhaps, to your point, and because Congress seems to march to its own drummer, they should simply do what is right and sensible, and THEN sell /that/ to the people. Unless the new program is a complete mess, it will eventually succeed and bring people along with it.
I do agree that the Religious Right and the Liberal Left have been pushing for failed policies and misleading citizens for a long time. Hopefully they decide to put the kids ahead of their egos and beliefs some day...
Again, the difference is that the Liberal Left has succeeded and the current situation is a result of that success. We cannot say that RR policies have failed because they haven't been tried. Now, the way you want to mischaracterize them, and perhaps even in reality, the RR policies might need to be tempered a bit, but I doubt the "mess" will be fixed until some of the liberal "successes" are ash-canned.
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