Quote:
Originally Posted by AnchorAlum
OK, SOME Grandmas said those things. 
I agree that we should help those who are truly down on their luck in the event of a disaster or unforeseen circumstances, etc.
How many times do we help someone who refuses to take necessary steps to help themselves? At what point is it okay to expect that if able, they re-enter mainstream society and begin to contribute again so that others who come behind them and also undergo the the same sort of misfortune are able to have the same level of assistance?
Is it unreasonable to have an expectation of such? The bedrock core of those who are always the "contributors" or the "producers" is shrinking. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that at some point they can be expected to say enough?
I am a big softie, but dang, I'm just about out of being able to keep on keeping on. |
In this case we're discussing Social Security, which short of being disabled you receive after retirement and you receive based on what you pay into the system. So, we're talking about people who HAVE produced, have helped themselves all their lives. If you remove SS (or privitize it or whatever) most people will probably do ok, although they'll probably work longer. As much as we all work paycheck to paycheck these days I don't doubt that the cost of living would increase faster if we all had our SS money available to us rather than making it easier to save. But that's an aside. So most people do OK, but some people, whether because they've invested poorly, or just had bad luck, will end up needing some sort of safety net anyway. Perhaps they invest in a house and it is destroyed by flooding which wasn't covered by their insurance. Or they were invested in very reasonable mutual funds and following a market 'correction' they end up with very little in the way of principal left. So they have to withdraw to live and that just spirals downwards. But perhaps these are people who were never good at managing their money in the first place, they're irresponsible and had the SS never been taken out of their paychecks they would have spent every last dime. And now they can't work anymore, and no one will hire them to be anything more than a Walmart greeter which pays minimum plus a bit for 25 hours a week. So they need EBT/LINK or they need Section 8 because they can't afford to eat or live. But generally people who are pro-SSprivitisation are against those benefits as well.
I think it is society's job to provide the very basic needs, a place to sleep and something to eat for those who cannot do it for themselves. I don't really believe that there are more than a few outliers who simply choose not to take care of themselves, but that far more are a function of poor health and mental health care, and institutionalized poverty. As much as I mock the "bootstraps" type comment, the biggest problem with it is that it presumes that everyone was born with boots.
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