[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

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Originally posted by Cainehill:
I've been out of work for over four months (laid off, Marine and programmer always employed for 22 years straight), I should be supporting Graeme and the welfare state!

What welfare state? I wasn't aware that the equivalent of making health insurance mandatory and universal was the equivalent of a welfare state. I'm not supporting a comfortable lifestyle for those people who don't want to work, and suggesting that I am is nothing more than a strawman. I am suggesting that a person should be guaranteed enough resources so that they aren't malnourished, as long as they don't waste those resources on anything that is unnecssary. If they want to waste that money, then yes, let them starve, but at least try and help their children so that they don't end up like their parents.

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"Help their children so they don't end up like their parents"? In the case of the unemployed single mother with 8 kids (I believe that was the gist of your example), the only way to help the children is by taking them away from the parent. And spaying the parent. (We do it to dogs and cats, and dogs and cats are generally nicer 'people' than humans.)

You said we should support that mother of 8. That's a welfare state. You said that we should ensure that no one starves, no one is in poverty, no one is homeless, regardless of whether or not they're able to work but choose not to. That's a welfare state.

As I said - I think we ought to work harder at providing _opportunities_ for people to work; health care, education, the prison systems, etc, shouldn't be set up with profit as their sole motive (which is what privatization is all about). We should fix the system so that CEOs don't get obscene bonuses for screwing their employees, their communities, and the environment over.

But with Boy George preparing for a second term in office, and Little Jeb planning to occupy the White House after that, none of those things are going to happen. Not with the @#$#@ Bush Dynasty trying to rework the USA's politics and system.