HappySqurriel said:
Most people on both sides of the political spectrum want to improve the standards of living of everyone but they have contrasting views on how to accomplish this. On the progressive end of the political spectrum they believe in a social safety net and eliminating the possibility of failure, while on the conservative end of the scale they believe in eliminating barriers to success. Essentially, the response to the social contract is "You give a man a fish you feed him for a day, you teach a man to fish you feed him for life". Conservatives see the solution as finding a way to empower the "poor" to find work that pays well enough to support (and improve) their standard of living rather than subsidizing them staying unemployeed or in a low paying position. It is not savagery or uncaring, it is a different and completely valid perspective. |
The social contract is a form of collective understandings of rights and duties in a society, with expected outcomes for compliance and non-compliance. A society that lacks that either becomes one of EVERYTHING being legally binding contracts that get signed and have courts resolve, or one that is a savage state where noone trusts anyone. This contract's enforcement usually comes about with the formation of government/the state, and laws. Laws on the books limit the need for everything to be a contract signed on a personal level.
This contract can take a lot of forms, and have a wide range of taxes and tax rates. The reality of the social contract can be one that assume training people to fish/get skills, to work. But as part of the contract IS the assumption that if you play by the rules, you will get an expected outcome. This is being lost today, and the debate now is over what role government plays in the social contract. And there is also a BIG debate over what the social contract is and the values making it up.
