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Edited on Wed Jul-07-10 09:07 PM by LuckyTheDog
I posted this as a retort to a guy who said all forms "wealth redistribution" are immoral and should be abolished so that smart people like him would not me made to suffer at the hands of the rabble (or words to that effect):
Some people here just don't realize what being part of a society is all about. And when they are called on that, they react with anger and name calling. It only reveals that, on some level, they know they are wrong.
Everything we earn in this or any other society is earned in the context of being part of that society. We benefit from infrastructure, the availability of currencies, contract law, education provided to us as children and young adults (usually by the government), and by the fact that law and order exists (no mean feat, though we take it for granted) in the place where we live.
There really are no "rugged individuals" in this country -- save for a few survivalists who scratch out a subsistence living in the wilderness in places like Alaska. The vast majority of us benefit every day from being part of this society. It always amuses me how some of the people who hate the government the most choose to express their rage on the Internet -- which was made possible by the government.
It's also true that, here in the United States, we have chosen to pursue the path of capitalism. It's a good thing we have. More than feudalism, communism or just about any other kind of “ism,” capitalism is good at creating wealth – lots of it. However, capitalism, like everything else created by people, is not perfect, The very dynamism that makes capitalism great also makes it unstable and subject to disruptions.
Some of those disruptions are really, really good. New technology, for example, has generated more economic growth than anything else. And here in America, we reward technological innovation, so we get a lot of it. Good for us.
Here is the downside: The history of capitalist societies is littered with panics, recessions, depressions, schemes to manipulate the market, monopolistic abuses, and other kinds of problems that are hard to anticipate – and hard to overcome. The result is that some people, through no fault of their own, get hurt when those things happen. They become unemployed and suffer other kinds of economic harm.
Now, the happy libertarian would say: “NO! Those people are not unlucky! They are stupid, slothful, immoral and deserving of their fate! Why should I – one of those whose choices in life were validated by the fact that I was NOT hurt – pay for the freight for all those idiots who were less wise than me?”
The answer is obvious. It's because they were not all idiots. (Sure, some of them were, but then, that holds true for some “successful” people, too. Dumb luck really does exist.) In most cases, the people hurt by the unstable nature of capitalism are hard-working, decent people who simply could not anticipate all the bazillion variables ahead of them when they were choosing a career path.
I know a woman who has a master's degree in engineering and kept going back to school for post-graduate certificates to keep her skills up to date. But guess what? She had the misfortune of failing to see that, decades after she started her first job, the American auto industry would go into a tailspin. Or, even if she did have an inkling that would happen, she had every reason to think her hard-earned skills and spotless work record would prepare her for anything.
That woman has now been unemployed for 18 months. She applies for jobs every day. She networks like crazy. She even volunteers her time to a start-up incubator in order to keep herself sharp. Yet, she cannot find a job and is likely to lose everything if this goes on much longer.
What her story tells me is that nobody is really “safe” in a society like this. But do I want to give up on the dynamic nature of the capitalist economy just to get the kind of predictability offered by a system like, say, feudalism? Heck no! And don't even get me started on communism. That was a HUGE disappointment.
The best solution, it turns out, is to use some of our tax dollars to make our dynamic, ever-changing economy more humane and sanity-based than it otherwise would be. In short, we need a safety net. Without it, capitalism becomes vulnerable every time there is a serious crisis. Just look at the Great Depression. Every kind of demagogue, crackpot, revolutionary and would-be Messiah appeared on the scene in those days. Had Roosevelt failed to step in and sand the rough edges off of capitalism, the whole system could have fallen apart. Roosevelt saved capitalism to fight another day and to evolve into something better. Yet, folks call him a communist. Amazing.
Can the social safety net go too far? Of course! Are all welfare-state programs well-designed or effective? No way! But the extent and nature of the specific programs are details that can be ironed out. The underlying truth is that it's hard to seriously argue for a return to the kind of 19th-century capitalism that set the stage for the Great Depression of the early 20th century.
Call me all the names you like. But I'm not going to apologize for wanting America to survive or for loving this country enough to support those things that will ensure its survival over the long run.
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