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thranx on 14 August 2010
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fastyxx said:
thranx said:
fastyxx said:
thranx said:

I'm worried that people are starting to expect government to take care of them, instead of taking care of themselves. There is a difference between borrowing to build a business or infrastructure, and  when we as a country are borrowing to help sustain levels of living that aren't sustainable we are just dragging out what should be a crash in the economy that we built ourselves. We made our bed, lets lye in it.


Depends on what you're talking about.   Unemployment money, for example, is not welfare.  It's insurance.  And you're paying for it the whole time you work.  

I have never used unemployment, I do not plan to, and I save for myself for when disaster can happen. I don't want the government saving my money for me. I am capable all on my own. It is welfare in the sense that the government is holding and forcing your hand to do it.

 

It's easy to say "Let it all fall" when you are not the one in need, or when you're young and don't have the responsibilities yet - - it becomes a little harder to say "Oh just let it crash" when you have to find a way to take care of three kids and find yourself unemployed and foreclosed upon through no real fault of your own. I  know this because it's my own bias.  I kind of say let it go as well - and it's because I'm fairly stable and I'm single and will be fine, but many of my friends would be screwed and I constantly am reminding myself to put myself in their shoes.

 

I am in need, me and my family are not rich or even well off. I have a single mom who raised me, my three brothers, and my sister. Thankfully she taught us to spend our money wisely and save, we all started work at sixteen, we all finished highschool, we are all employed now, and one has graduated college and has kids of his own. We all have choices to make, I would just rather make them my self than have the government do them for me.



Huh.  Well you know that dollar bill in your pocket?  That's the government holding your money for you and allowing you to do something with it.  Maybe you should barter chickens instead.

Exactly, allowing me to do what I want with it. I did not realize that when I pay into the Unemployment fund through taxes that I could still spend that money too. See the problem there? One allows me the choice to do what I want (spend paper money as I please while they hold the precious metals) while the other takes that option away. They hold my money and then return as they see fit, if you can't sp[ot the difference, sorry.

That crap about the government being a nanny state is such drivel.  If we actually allowed people to live without a net, we'd be in utter chaos.  Point to a country anywhere that has ever succeeded with a healthy and prosperous population without it.  It's so foolish.

It wouldn't be chaos, the idiots would die quick. The government should be there to protect us from others, not us from ourselves. Tobacco tax? wait till they introduce the sugar tax, and fat tax. How else will they pay for healthcare. The taxing of specific items like that is the government trying to run our lives by forcing us to do what we do not want to by taking more money.

But whatever.  It's your life.  You only hurt yourself by turning something like that down and thinking you are somehow living beyond the system.  I mean, the government helped you in SOOOO many ways get to the point where you can make that choice.  Health services and subsidies, public schools, roads, running water, power grids, investments in the college from which one graduated, the airwaves and telecommunications systems, the internet groundwork you are using now, etc. etc. etc.

Besides roads, although those things may have been started by the government(usually the armed forces, which is what I believe the government should support) The rest can be just as well or is being done just as well by the private sector. I am all for k-12, no need to force people into college who can't handle it.

 

The idea that anyone in this country lives above and beyond the government is just so fallacious and fraudulent.  And guess what?  In order for them to be there in the area that YOU need them to be there - after that car crash, or the time mom needed the ambulance or you needed the power back on after the storm, they need to make choices beyond you.  And just because YOUR needs may be different than someone else's doesn't make theirs less important.  


Its not that my needs are different or more important, its when you take what I work for and give it someone who doesn't that is problem. If you have read all i posted you would see that.I believe I even said it is worth it to invest in infrastructure in this thread.