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I'm surprised you didn't title your thread "A Modest Proposal".
A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in
Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for
making them beneficial to the publick.
Actually, Bob Cratchit was better off than a lot of Americans. They lived in a house with a garden, they could afford to eat goose for Christmas, and their doctor made house calls.
good points! My family and I have decided to forego exchanging gifts this year, in favor of spending that money on supporting our local food bank. . . and NO, I AM NOT a Christian!
OP- You may want to live in such a society but, I and a majority of the population, do not. We have convinced our representatives to apply a tax on all of us to help support the poor and the businesses that supply them with food, cloths and shelter. This is one place where having the congress, state legislatures and city governments responsive to the needs of business have actually done some good.
There are plenty of third world dumps where the ruling elite keep an abundant supply of poor for servants and/or slave labor. We seem to have a problem with illegal immigrants from these places that are just looking for enough work to avoid the starvation in their home countries. We have actually taken measures, NAFTA corn dumping for instance, to aid and abet the starvation that leads to the immigration. Many American big and small businesses benefit from the low wages these people accept. Your proposal would drive these wages below the survival level.
Instead of your work or die proposal I propose the opposite. We should implement a bold highly progressive income tax to support not only the poor but the working classes that chose not to work for somebody else. These people would receive free food, clothing and shelter so long as they did not take a job. They would be the ultimate consumer for the excess industrial production of America and China.
These folks would be encouraged, actually paid extra, to remain in school as long as they wanted and earn as many degrees as they desired. The colleges would be paid to educate them. This would reduce the competition for jobs in the economy and raise the general wage of teachers.
Admittedly the people at the uppermost 10% of the income would object to having much of the money they stole through market manipulation, monopoly and warmongering removed from their clutches but why not there are only a few of them anyway. It wouldn’t make a lot of difference because once you have enough spendable money to drink, smoke or get sexed to death why do you need any more?
In any case I suggest you spend a year as a poor person in some interesting places where your method of “helping” the poor are actually practiced instead of suggesting it from a comfy well fed middle class existence. Good luck.
I did not mention, nor do I support genocide, murder, or socioeconomic cleansing.
I am shocked that you think that people would not step up to provide the poor with necessities out of their savings from decreased taxes.
Many of the solutions you listed are indeed one or a combination of genocide, murder, and socioeconomic cleansing.
Lets not be coy here. A smug "let them die" does not sound like someone who believes the general public will step up to support the poor. It sounds to me that you'd rather the poor drop dead so no one will feel moved to help them. If this was truly about Americans stepping up, you would have titled your thread in a manner that relayed that idea. You list all your solutions and then almost wrapped it in cute paper with a bow by saying:
Prior to that time, the poor were primarily maintained by charities--soup kitchens, shelters, and charity hospitals. Children were expected to pull their own weight, and working children did not clog up the few public schools that existed. Parents who could afford it could send their children to elite schools that had high expectations and delivered a quality education.
You didn't fool me with the pretty paper and bows.
But you didn't just stop there, lol. You are also advocating vigilantism. Who is to say the vigilante justice system ideas are right for society? Just because they have money to support their families does not give them the right to decide who lives and dies. Somehow, I believe if Cousin Bob just couldn't cut the mustard down at the steel mill, Deep Pocket Cousin Joe isn't going to allow him to be killed. Big eyeroll, here. This is about survivial of the fittest, right? Seems like Cousin Bob should deserve to die just like Billy down the street. Deep Pocket Cousin Joe doesn't give a damn about Billy so he can just die. Just like that?
That's what your vigilante justice system boils down to. It's a form of socioeconomic cleansing (as well as ethnic, racial, and a bunch of other forms of divide and class with an us versus them mentality). That's a major first step in genocide.
He is not dangerous but his ideas are the core of a psychotic murderously competitive system controlled by sociopaths. Some what like medieval Italy cleansed by the Inquisition and ruled by a Borgia. We tried that and it did not work except as a population reduction method.
The Conservative solution was the Earned Income Tax Credit, you know using tax dollars to redistribute wealth, introduced by Richard Nixon and enacted under Gerald Ford.
What you are proposing doesn't even meet medieval standards since the Poor Laws established by the Tudors in 1495 were far more progressive.
I'm surprised you didn't title your thread "A Modest Proposal".
A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in
Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for
making them beneficial to the publick.
I kept his Modest Proposal in my mind as I formulated my suggestions.
Why do you all seem to let the churches off the hook here? My original point is that Jesus told His followers to care for the poor. The churches have passed the responsibility to the government--i. e. Caesar. The tithe on personal income would go up if there were a significant tax reduction. Corporate donations would likewise be able to be increased if mandatory support of welfare programs were ended.
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