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Originally Posted by 12clicks
Darwinism is what's driven mankind to the heights its achieved today.
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The physical Darwinism of thousands of years ago solved it's own problems by killing the losers. The trouble with social Darwinism today is that the losers do not die or disappear, instead they remain to wreck havoc on the rest of us. The best reason for the rich to pay for the care of the poor is completely selfish. If you don't, hungry homeless people start looting and killing. The absolutist strain of "libertarianism" never provides an answer for what to do with those too stupid, unwilling, or unlucky to participate successfully under our system. Putting them in prison for the inevitable crimes the disaffected will commit is more expensive than welfare, before even counting the cost of the damages. Pragmatists in power long ago figured out that it's best to bribe away the problem. It's really the only available solution, short of killing them, and history shows mass-executions frequently lead to your own execution.
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Originally Posted by 12clicks
"deserving" is a quaint idea you have but irrelevent
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And here we have the definition of today's shrinking Republican party. Those who hold this view simply fail as moral beings. Every person on the planet deserves adequate food, shelter, healthcare, education and opportunity. Beyond that, those who do the difficult, dangerous, or just plan gross work for the rest of us deserve even more. In an ideal world, a farmer or firefighter would be rewarded more than a pornographer. However I've made no suggestion that this is anything more than wishful sentiment on my part; human nature prevents it.
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Originally Posted by 12clicks
lastly, its silly to talk about "subsistence wages" when Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes, Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning, The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, not the poor in europe, the average. Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
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I obviously have higher expectations of the 21st Century than you do. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, most rent or owe a mortgage, and layoffs, accident, or illness means you'll be living in that clunker you drive. For the peace of a society, everyone should know that there is a safety net in place that will take care of the disabled or unlucky. It takes such a tiny fraction of our resources to provide that, that to not is both immoral and unwise.
It is also compensation for the fact that our system has stolen the option people used to have of just settling some unoccupied land somewhere and building their own community. If a poor person were to go chop down some trees and build a little cabin by the sea with the intention of fishing their days away, the state would step in, tear down his house, and force him away at gunpoint. You can't even legally live the life of a caveman anymore.
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Originally Posted by 12clicks
The point the people on your side completely miss is that if the "unwealthy" felt the pain of what their representatives in washington were promising them, government and life as a whole would be much better.
This has never been an argument over taking care of our poor, this is an argument about the government setting up class warfare so they can continue spending beyond its means by taking from the smallest segment of our population with the support of the largest part whom they've now set up to vote for more, while paying for nothing.
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You're talking as if the rich are a victimized minority, which is complete nonsense. The top 5% who control 95% of the wealth only contribute 50-60% of the tax burden, when in fairness they should contribute 95% in correlation with the resources they control.
There is a lie going around that there's not enough, and that's bullshit. The human race has been a big fat success beyond the comprehension of those who are used to only looking at their own family budget and can think only in those terms. It takes only a fraction of GDP to cover the basics, and it's both moral and practical to do so before blowing the rest on more crap noone needs.