I don’t understand how your analogy applies. Can you explain more explicitly?
I don’t understand how your analogy applies. Can you explain more explicitly?
Okay, here’s a closer analogy…
Russian citizen complains about communism, even though his only food ration he gets is from the communist system. Should he be grateful for communism and not vilify it? After all, wouldn’t he be dead if the commissars withheld his ration?
You’re not a Russian citizen. If you work more, you earn more and can pay for your own private medical care.
You’re not a Russian citizen. If you work more, you earn more and can pay for your own private medical care.
Just because you can do something does not mean you ought to. You have to decide what you spend your money on. There are advantages to opting for private health care in the U.K., or for private schooling in the U.S. However, one may well judge that the advantage of doing so are not worth the cost. (Note, these high costs are primarily a creation of government.) If you judge that you should use your money for something else, and use the NHS/public schools, the decision is completely moral. In fact, if you judge that to be the better use of your money, and yet act against your interests, then you are either mistaken or immoral.
Thomas, why didn’t you solve your problem without welfare?
Does it make sense to vilify something when it helped you in your life?
The answer is simple: I was unable to work for six months and I was living off my savings; and I had been paying federal and local taxes for the whole nearly thirty years I’ve been in Dallas. My options were to move back in with my parents, or to take welfare for long enough that I could get back on my feet. I chose the later option because of my high sense of independence. Now, if it wasn’t for welfare, I would have moved back in with my parents, but part of my struggle was to become independent once again. My dad would not have let me stay home too long without getting at least a part-time job, so I decided to recover fully and get back out into the world. I mean, for a time there, I was completely helpless and could not take care of myself, but I was able to get on welfare and a Texas health plan until I recovered – just a few months, actually. And the only people who can take welfare morally are those who speak out against it. I am not for welfare, and if it hadn’t existed, I would have had no choice but to move back in with my parents for at least a few months. I decided to stay in Texas and recover on my own without their help, though I am thankful they were here for a few months to see me on the road to recovery. I don’t think I did anything immoral because: 1) I paid my taxes all those years; and 2) I am against welfare on principle; and 3) I didn’t say the state owed it to me. It was available, so I took advantage of it as a partial repayment for all the federal, state, and local taxes I was forced to pay for nearly thirty years at my current address. I also used a state clinic and still do under similar premises; I am currently “self pay” since I don’t have medical insurance, by I do get reduced rates (which I will lose if I move out of Texas). So, I am against all state interference in welfare and medical facilities, but because I am fifty years old and have been paying all of my adult life into the system, if I can use it to my advantage, I have the right to do that, given my premises. And I fully recovered within six months or so; and I am proud of that achievement.
By the way, if I hadn’t been taxed all those years and if we lived in a freer country politically (more capitalism), I would have had enough savings to have been able to weather the storm completely; because I only ran out for a few months.
I’m not trying to pick bones here..
but welfare can’t do anything to anyone can it?
I think this statement is key to the authors premise,
the welfare state therefore requires people to be stronger and morally superior to people in societies lacking a welfare state.
I’m not one to eschew personal responsibility, but I have to agree with him. In any statist scheme, a few generations removed and knowledge is lost in a generally selfish way. Take specie backed currency for example. I’m 34 and would have to go back 4 generations in my family tree before stumbling across anyone that even remembers gold backed dollars. Even further for someone who remembers not having a monetary cartel.
Prior to 1913, more than a few elections for president were won and lost primarily over the issue of banking. Currently, of the voting populace, how many out of 1000 have even a vague idea of the causes of our current banking crisis? I’d be surprised to find 1 or 2. So one view is, that these are lazy philosophically unsound people who should know more about the world they live in and what is happening to the thing they spend most of their lives chasing after. The other view is that FDIC insurance causes people to believe their money is safe no matter what, and their time could be better spent doing something other than reading economic journals to try and wrap their minds around this ridiculously complex issue.
Now multiply that by every other BS thing they ram down our throats, and it’s easier for me to understand how people just go with the flow. It takes an unusual amount of courage and energy to take the path of most resistance.
Once enough generations go by and the social stigma is removed from welfare, people are confronted with a choice of working at their(usually) unsatisfying job or having an easy semi-retired life while some other fool takes care of you. Especially when the amount is equitable. If the average person is given the choice to work doing what someone else wants them to do or be paid nearly the same amount to float around and do whatever they feel like, we shouldn’t be surprised by what they choose.
I understand the long term ramifications psychologically and am in no way advocating this approach to life. Im just noting that to require the world to be filled with reasonable long term planners capable of extreme delayed gratification is an exercise in futility. The environment shapes our choices and in that process shapes our behavior.
Thomas, why didn’t you solve your problem without welfare?
Does it make sense to vilify something when it helped you in your life?
If it weren’t for welfare, people on welfare would be self-sufficient without welfare. Do you see how?
As for your second question: Yes. Thomas only reclaimed what was rightfully his to begin with. He did not have a say in the creation of this system. It did not help him. The potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars (even millions, I don’t know what he makes) he’d have without taxes would’ve helped him.
You’re not a Russian citizen. If you work more, you earn more and can pay for your own private medical care.
Why should you refuse a sum of money that was stolen from you/will steal from you?