"My tax dollars should go to provide basic services a community needs. Fire protection, police, education, government, military". Education is the key. Not enough tax dollars go to education. Without health care and health (mental and physical), education is not going to help much. Normally I would agree with your statement if you added health care, but with this extreme thinking you have I want to ask, Why? I thought no one owes anybody anything? Won't we have to tax people to get these things? Why do you think you have a right to tax anybody for anything? Why shouldn't you provide for these things yourself independently of any government assistance? Do you need help from other people?
"I'm torn about social services. Because it is the children who suffer for their parents poor choices". Well guess what, these children grow up to be adults. So when they become adults they no longer are victims and should just "will power" out of any situation no matter what?
"Our current system rewards the poor choice makers". Yeah I agree, like George Bush!
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Furthermore:
It's not that people don't have to take ANY responsibility for their actions... of course they do. But responsibility has to be shared.
You have to take responsibility for how you affect people in society indirectly, not just directly. Social or societal responsibility is part of "personal responsibility". Right Wingers conveniently filter out this subset of responsibility.
The person I have been responding to here had a very tough life, but not so tough that he or she couldn't get unstuck.
Maybe this person is mad because they could of used some help back then and think it's not fair for others to get something "for free" which they didn't get and should of. Actually this person did get that important combination of conditions to get unstuck. Maybe this person wants others to toil and suffer like he or she did.
Since life is getting harder for everybody (including you) I have to assume punishing the sick and poor is even more important to you then even raising you're standard of living!
These right wing authoritarian followers like this person are ignorant of how unlikely it is to get out of a powerless situation because they drew the wrong conclusion when they got out. They are ignorant of all the incredible complicated multi-faceted difficulties people can have. Instead of thinking, "I don't want anybody else to go through what I went through", you thought "I want to make sure no one gets an easier way out of adversity like I didn't get".
One of the most important and basic ways to prevent this "stuck-ness" would be offering everyone affordable health care. The positive ripple effect would be dramatic (not to mention the cost savings in administration and marketing costs) and (not to mention the money saved for healthier happier more productive, less sick people). Then education could help enormously, but only after health is achieved.
Any number of adversities can keep a person down and the fact that there are a few people who overcome incredible adversities (usually they are simple and extreme but NOT multifaceted and complicated) doesn't mean that everyone else should. When someone on TV says "if I can do it, so can you", that's a lie. No, your conditions are different then the person on TV! The fact is if you look with a microscope those people had something extra with their mind or belief systems or physical health or enough simplicity (they only have one isolated extreme problem instead of a complex nest) or some set of sufficient conditions that allowed them to overcome their adversity.
We know logically and factually that if we use our wealth to re-invest in the people that our society flourishes and, on the other side of that, if we allow the abundance of prosperity to be sucked up to top few, that the society will move toward despotism. Wealth distribution goes to quality (and quantity) of life, and what is more important then that? Voting for people who are against a balanced wealth distribution is irresponsible. And voting for people who get in the way of making sure everyone at least has their basic needs met is deplorable!
You can say "it's a free country" to justify your draconian rules, but is it? Freedom is not an absolute. The poor are not "free" They supposedly live in a "free" country but are they really free? No, true freedom requires power which requires health and money. Freedom is relative. We live in a society and so we affect each other so their is no ABSOLUTE freedom.
If you cared about people you would also want there to be more government money spent on medical research and development for remedies and cures for physical and mental problems and spend much more money on improving the quality of life and for creating a higher standard of living for all people!
If we give people safety nets they often can rebound and be given a second chance. But the person I am writing this article around probably doesn't want to see others get a second chance because they must think people should be "all knowing" and be able to predict the future, otherwise how could they be certain to make the right choice? In my opinion someone who thinks everything is a simple choice and that people are 100% responsible for ALL their conditions, really are not rational and reasonable enough to vote.
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