Posted on 11/08/2005 4:20:51 PM PST by SJackson
WELFARE is what you get when you don't.
Guaranteed income is welfare. How motivated, productive and industrious is one going to be when his 'income' is guaranteed? Duh.
It makes me angry everytime I hear some idiot say something like this. This person has obviously never been to a Third World country, because it goes beyond ignorance to compare the poverty in America to the poverty in a Third World country.
First you have to dig the pony out of the horsesh**
I think you're getting your Lennon's mixed up with your Lenin's.
america is home to the richest poor people in the world.
our "poor" qualify as middle class in most DEVELOPED nations!
Thus it is that what we are attempting to do in this rapid survey of the historical progress of certain ideas, is to trace the genesis of an attitude of mind, a set of terms in which now practically everyone thinks of the State; and then to consider the conclusions towards which this psychical phenomenon unmistakably points.
Instead of recognizing the State as "the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men," the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent.
The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will. Instead of looking upon the State's progressive absorption of social power with the repugnance and resentment that he would naturally feel towards the activities of a professional-criminal organization, he tends rather to encourage and glorify it, in the belief that he is somehow identified with the State, and that therefore, in consenting to its indefinite aggrandizement, he consents to something in which he has a share - he is, pro tanto, aggrandizing himself. Professor Ortega y Gasset analyzes this state of mind extremely well. The mass-man, he says, confronting the phenomenon of the State,
"sees it, admires it, knows that there it is. . . . Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem, presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. . . . When the mass suffers any ill-fortune, or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent sure possibility of obtaining everything, without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk, merely by touching a button and setting the mighty machine in motion."
It is the genesis of this attitude, this state of mind, and the conclusions which inexorably follow from its predominance, that we are attempting to get at through our present survey. These conclusions may perhaps be briefly forecast here, in order that the reader who is for any reason indisposed to entertain them may take warning of them at this point, and close the book.
The unquestioning, determined, even truculent maintenance of the attitude which Professor Ortega y Gasset so admirably describes, is obviously the life and strength of the State; and obviously too, it is now so inveterate and so widespread - one may freely call it universal - that no direct effort could overcome its inveteracy or modify it, and least of all hope to enlighten it. This attitude can only be sapped and mined by uncountable generations of experience, in a course marked by recurrent calamity of a most appalling character.
When once the predominance of this attitude in any given civilization has become inveterate, as so plainly it has become in the civilization of America, all that can be done is to leave it to work its own way out to its appointed end. The philosophic historian may content himself with pointing out and clearly elucidating its consequences, as Professor Ortega y Gasset has done, aware that after this there is no more that one can do.
"The result of this tendency," he says, "will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify.[2] Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine. And as after all it is only a machine, whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it,[3] the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism. Such was the lamentable fate of ancient civilization."
Our Enemy, The State
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
CHAPTER 5
I find it impossible to believe that Milton Friedman ever endorsed such a concept, as this writer claims. No way.
I think I'm going to hurl at this socialism.
Giving people who made a career out of bad decisions a "guaranteed income" comes with only ONE guarantee - we will create a new class of poor decision makers who don't spend their "guaranteed income" intelligently.
After it's all been blown on crack, weed and booze, they'll still be just as poor, they'll just be too toasted to care.
You mean like Richard Moore, the author of this silly piece?
Personally, I like St. Paul's prescription: ". . . this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat." (2 Thes. 3:10).
I remember the newspaper-size money in 1952 Italy. People were carting wheelbarrow loads to buy a loaf of bread. Imagine a teen working for $30,000 a year at MacDonalds and a 50 year old CEO working for $30,000. There would be no incentive and
the economy would collapse. This is where liberalism always fails.
Tagline material
Someone needs to put this commie back in the crypt with his buddy V.I. Lenin.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that says "pursuit of Happiness". It doesn't guarantee anything other than the right to make your own way. Shame the Founders didn't write "among these are Life, Liberty, an Income, A new car, medical care, abortion on demand up to and including the last seconds before birth, marriage no matter what sexes may be involved, and anything else you can get the courts to agree we meant, but didn't write down". That would have almost made the leftists look sane. But, the Founders didn't, the leftists don't, and that pretty much sums it up.
It's semantics and a refusal to accept reality - "poverty" is a lifestyle for some. Unfortunately, some have come to think of the safety net as a way of life. No "war" is going to defeat the cultural attitude that perpetuates this thinking.
Only individuals can decide to change their situation in life. That's not to say that family, church, and other role models cannot be influential, but with all the race-baiting and class warfare the dims push, there is really little hope for many.
They are looking at a symptom. The problem is elsewhere.
I am certain that Russia and China are more tolerant of the above "anti-social" behavior. Espeially in the 'gulags'.
May I suggest Equine Scatology?
I have an alternate proposal.
Unless one is disabled, mentally ill, retarded,,,we should bring back the Poor Farms of the thirties. Or barring that, let non workers starve.
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