Johnny 13 wrote: I would rather schools be funded on a local level, but I am not planning on sending my daughter to them.

This is a catastrophic position, though one that holds much sway with conservatives. Why? Because, by and large, they don't think poor people should get any of their money, but they don't mind spending it on their own children.

I think (to steal a line from Rob Lowe) our schools should be like palaces, and teachers paid like the critically important people they are. I think poor children have as much of a right to good education as wealthy ones. The answer is not to remove wealthy children from public schools and let the schools rot in decay, but to make the schools as a group strong enough to be excellent.

On an individual basis, every parent capable of making the choice will indeed remove his child from a bad school, and I can't blame him. That doesn't mean we should encourage the decay with national policy.

The idea of competition in public schooling is also ridiculous, unless one is wealthy. Even if one could choose a school based on its "performance," the market will price such schools out of the reach of anyone but the wealthy, and everyone else will be left with a rotted, gutted public school system that will contribute to the continuation of decay in poor areas.

There may not be a social contract, but there is a moral position: All of us should carry the burden of education of children and support for those who can no longer work. Rich people should pay more of it, because the poor cannot pay for themselves, and they count. The benefit we all receive from the work force (and hence our gratitude toward it and a moral obligation to support those who can no longer work) and smart children is a cumulative, national one.

The selfishness of the "Libertarian" conservative strain is apalling to me, and I can't see it as anything else. Yes, you earned the money. Now be decent with it and let old people eat. Even ones you've never met.

Johnny 13 wrote:I would like the government to have the consent of the people who make it possible.

Where you say consent is what I meant by social contract: I agree to give you x for service y. If I give you x and you don't give me y, you have broken our agreement, our contract and you generally suck and owe me x. You know, usual Thursday afternoon stuff.

Do you want
-- an individual participation agreement
or
-- is consensus enough?

If 60% of people want service y, what about the other 40%?

The government imposing itself upon the population has perverted its mission.

What is the mission of the government? Again, what about that 60%/40% split?

[We all have our limits, of course: one of mine would be the government jailing dissidents, even if 60% of the population approved of it.]

Social Security is not a good plan. It has become a greater burden on all tax payers as time has gone by. It will require more and more money to maintain. It is dependent upon constant population growth which is bad for so many reasons.

I kinda like it, but that can wait a spell. Here's a main question for you:

What would you have done instead? You're there at the outset of social security. What would you have done? A different program? Nothing?

What would you prefer?

Then, what would happen to a US citizen named Mabel who goes totally broke, best planning was made yet failed, at 72?

-->I'm not trying to set you up as a heartless guy ("Fuck Mabel!"). What do you see as our other options?

a younger me wrote:
-- Money is not earned in a vacuum.
-- Our economic lives exist in relation to one another.

Sure, but neither of those facts give greater weight to the idea that we need to surrender ourselves to social programs. My neighbor lives in relation to me too, he does not get to make my household decisions for me.

Surrender? I would say participate. I hope your neighborhood participates in your neighborhoodness together, but that neighborhoodness doesn't mean they get to dictate if you buy chunky or creamy peanut butter (clearly, creamy).

Participation should not be equated with complete submission. This is a slippery slope argument: once you take the first step (neighborhood community), you have to go to the extreme of the example (peanut butter). I don't think that's true or necessary. Let's get back to this, though, because it's a really complicated question, isn't it? and I need coffee.

edit: again, we all hit submit at the same time and I didn't see Johnny 13s paragraph on what he would prefer.

Steve wrote:

On an individual basis, every parent capable of making the choice will indeed remove his child from a bad school, and I can't blame him. That doesn't mean we should encourage the decay with national policy.

We are not spending money on a private school either. We are going to participate in the unschooling group that is operating in the area. Even if our local public schools were excellent, I would be doing this because I think it sounds like a better way to go. Were I going with a public school, I would want that control to be local (by which I mean state level, augmented by the local community). We have national policy in place right now, and it changes with each administration. No child left behind is far less egalitarian than the name suggests. I don't think this is a wealthy cop out. My wife quit working to focus attention on raising and schooling the baby, and I have not had my mind so keenly focused on my money input and output since I was in my middle 20s. Without me scrambling up some freelance, I would be spending more money every month than I have coming in.

Further on: The government cannot be moral. Anything it does that resembles morality if it were done by a person, is undone by the force it uses to gather the resources of those who would not cooperate otherwise. My lack of submission is not an extension of personal selfishness, but rather an ideological disagreement with the method. I do not see that I have any moral obligations for anything that I have not willingly entered into. I love PBS and NPR, but I will not donate to them because they have grabbed my 65¢ or whatever on the front end. If they had not taken what I did not give, I would be very generous since they are the major sources of media that I tune in to.

It's extremely difficult to build social equity in a society where corporate welfare, where a system that subsidizes and bails out the already privileged is so prevalent.

People don't like to think of the benefits of social equity in this country. I think conservative people especially don't like to think of it because they don't want to be participants in a society they'd rather be in denial of.

To elaborate: I have developed a theory of late. This theory posits that the popularity of conservatism, of the so-called neocon position in this country, is a result of many Americans wishing to disassociate themselves with an American society that they would rather not be connected to - socially, economically, politically, etc...

The typical conservative has no interest in social equity, in contributing to the well being of a society where they may feel their contribution goes to supporting people they feel are socially and/or morally objectionable.

This predisposition used to be based largely on race, and was easy to enforce, and can be exhibited by American public housing policy during the 50's through the 80's.

The problem for the neocon mind is that this is no longer limited to race, nor should it be, since racism is morally reprehensible - even if it manifests itself in the most sublime ways possible in their mind.

The problem is the intellectuals, the urban libertines, the homosexuals, the Mexicans/foreigners in the cities, the Godless/atheists/deists, the media industries that can no longer present the world to them in a polarized, black-white manner that makes their understanding of life and the world easy for them.

These Americans would rather not contribute to the social well being of the country at all, then have their contribution provide for the equity of those that they'd rather not have as part of their society.

This country is ripe for fascism, big time...

Americans have also lost the values of good citizenship that used to be taught in deference to the dangers of tyranny, despotism, and fascism - which are words you hardly hear spoken anymore. They used to be common to the American civic vernacular. The recent proof is in how easy it is for an administration to sell their policies based solely on FEAR. The fear of what will happen if pragmatism prevails. The ease with which fear sells preys upon the same fears that creates the dissociation that so many Americans desire, especially in rural and suburban communities.

The voting records and social politics of urban areas are different, of course, since those living in that type of setting have either been drawn to, or acclimated to that setting, and are cognizant of the civic responsibilities demanded of them by it.

Surrender? I would say participate. I hope your neighborhood participates in your neighborhoodness together, but that neighborhoodness doesn't mean they get to dictate if you buy chunky or creamy peanut butter (clearly, creamy).

What I like about my street is that everyone seems to mind their own business. I agree about the creamy.


If 60% of people want service y, what about the other 40%?

I find that to be a distressing situation, for many reasons, but especially things like the example you provided. I think there has to be a way to have a government that does not take more from people than they are willing to give. A minimal government that handles a few things well, and leaves the rest of us to organize these social programs ourselves. I do not know why only the religious types seems to be able to form charitable hospitals, but something needs to change in the way we relate to each other.

It's extremely difficult to build social equity in a society where corporate welfare, where a system that subsidizes and bails out the already privileged is so prevalent.

Lest I be miscast, I think corporate welfare is one of the worst things going.

Johnny 13 wrote: I think there has to be a way to have a government that does not take more from people than they are willing to give.

People do not give money to their government voluntarily. They are "willing" to give nothing, which is why taxation of some sort is inevitable. If it is inevitable, then the decisions about what to spend the money on are all that we should worry about.

I believe we should spend the money on keeping the poor, the old, the infirm and the uneducated buffered in some way from the natural peril their state of being implies.

A minimal government that handles a few things well, and leaves the rest of us to organize these social programs ourselves. I do not know why only the religious types seems to be able to form charitable hospitals, but something needs to change in the way we relate to each other.

It is important to distinguish between "the government," what the government spends on itself, and other people like us, who can be the object of government charity. To imperil the latter in the name of fighting the former is a mistake. I believe that is what the Right is doing.

To suggest that everyone has the means and the ability to manage financial support for his own retirement is to ignore the large and growing number of working poor people who are literally living moment to moment on subsistence incomes. They will never save, and a good argument could be made that jeopardizing their families' current well-being for the sake of future security (as in "saving") would be irresponsible on an individual basis.

Did Someone just say fuck them?

Johnny 13 wrote:I am not calling for gutting the safety net, I still believe in creating a floor for the percentage of people who have suffered tragedy, or are just incompetent, but that sort of thing should be funded out of the general budget...

You would like a safety net for the unfortunate, but not a huge "the government will do this so I'm not even going to try to save by myself" thing, right? Like welfare for those who have unexpectedly lost their jobs or, as you say, are just incompetent, because we don't want to leave them in the rain just because they somehow can't get it going in our culture.

By general budget, I'm guessing you mean year-to-year budgeting, like the budget Congress approves every year.

As it is, everyone pays a large part of their earnings in, and they expect to get it back in some way. If people saved for themselves, and paid a smaller amount out of general taxes...the whole thing would run smoother and fairer.

I don't think this would be a better system.

One of the cool things about social security is its adjustable nature: for instance, we forecast a lot of retirees when the Baby Boomers retired, so we've been building up a surplus in the social security account. Also, it's set aside, not to be haggled over and replaced with a pork project for some Senator.

Again, people have to save for themselves, right? Social security makes a way for us to all save for our old ages.

I think there has to be a way to have a government that does not take more from people than they are willing to give.

There are a lot of self-centered or short-sighted pricks, though, that don't want to give anything. I'm related to many of them and they are heartless, totally heartless - you'd freak out. "Mabel's poor? She could sell a kidney. She should have planned better, fuck her." It's sick.

A minimal government that handles a few things well, and leaves the rest of us to organize these social programs ourselves.

I disagree that doing these things ourselves is better than the government doing them. I've done a lot of non-profit work. The government provides structure, standards, channels for funding...especially, the necessary logistics of it all. Why not the government? At least then, it works by law and can't be dissolved so easily when our nation goes through a particularly heartless phase.

I do not know why only the religious types seems to be able to form charitable hospitals, but something needs to change in the way we relate to each other.

Religious types-->god-mandated morality and organizational structure. (Personally, I'm all for non-godly morality and organization.) But you don't want to kick it in your neighborhoodie? Maybe you live in my apartment building with the girl with the earth-shaking sub-woofer and the 13 ferrets. She gives me a beer every time I see her/ask her to turn the bass down. I still won't touch the ferrets, she can't make me buy that evil chunky crap and that's all all right.

Nobody likes feeling coerced. Myself, I don't feel coerced by social security, etc., as much as I feel glad there are well-established programs to help us all when we stumble or fall, or to prevent us from falling at all. Admittedly, I've always been a "we're all in this together" sort of person. But we are, right?

I'm off to class. See everyone at the Bottom Lounge,

bumble

Edit: I'm not going to keep saying that we are all typing at once. Nope, not anymore.

I am willing to be taxed within reason, but a desire to level the playingfield to an unnatural degree just gives the government enough money to finance invasion and topple foreign government. In a previous post I said that I am for maintaining a bottom level beyond which we will not let people fall. Every cent I will ever pay in taxes will not pay for a single cruise missile fired back in the 70s. My entire contribution is gone, and here I am paying over 30% of my income for the rest of my working life. These social programs are not the worst thing about government, but to a degree they irk me more because the desire for them allow the government to gather more and more resources to do the things that I think we all agree are not in our best interest.

Not everyone can save for their future, but a whole lot more could be than are doing it now. Does it make sense to base the single largest expense of government around avoidable personal failure to be responsible? Ants or grasshoppers.

founding fathers.
*elected congress* determines law, not Judicial.

Johnny 13 wrote:A minimal government that handles a few things well, and leaves the rest of us to organize these social programs ourselves.

removing federal mandate, leaving the determination of how these things should happen up to "people", you will inevitably end up in a situation where a disagreement escallates and it becomes the duty of the Judicial System to determine who's right.

Johnny 13 wrote:I think there has to be a way to have a government that does not take more from people than they are willing to give.

there is. change the way human beings (and many other if not most living creatures, for that matter) seem to be wired.

mad props to you for having dropped mad props on the religious hospitals. it's nice to see somebody give recognition to one of the better products of religious institutions, at least the ones that appear to be managed by people who really walk the walk and are serving others' interests.