Again, you are an autonomous ubermensch of a superior mold. You could have fended for yourself at 7 years old. These lesser beings deserve the starvation and illiteracy that come with poverty. Just say that already, you hate the poor and feel zero responsibility for them. You want to live in a feudal state with landlords and servants and all that jazz. Come on man just tell the truth, you can barely hide your disdain.
Ah, here it is, the expected descent into childish namecalling and strawmen. The last refuge.
This entire debate really boils down to two basic differing opinions. You seem to think that all human beings deserve and are entitled to food, shelter, clothing, and medical care. Lots of people feel that way; I disagree, but I don't think they're stupid untermensch.
I don't want to speak for Copro, but personally I believe that the only thing anyone is entitled to is a fair opportunity to work for food, shelter, clothing, and medical care.
And if you don't work, golly gee, too bad, you're going to find yourself hungry, homeless, naked, and/or not getting that bilateral TKA. If you have children it is your responsibility to care for them. I don't hate the poor, but you are partially correct - I do feel zero responsibility for them. I don't exploit them or keep them down. I don't shoot them for sport or work their children 16 hours/day in a factory. I already pay their share of taxes and the government I fund supports them in their (longer, and longer, and longer, and sometimes perpetual) times of need.
This is not to say there should be NO social support, unemployment benefits, social security, or welfare system. Anyone who's ever worked, even for a minute, has paid taxes to support such benefits should they ever have to endure a period of injury or unemployment. These benefits are not handouts.
I do feel a moral obligation to serve other people and my country - these were driving motivations behind going into medicine and why I'm in the military. It wasn't
all chicks, money, power, and chicks. But that basic human duty has limits.
If you ever travel outside the 1st world, and see what
real poverty is in countries where actual starvation, shantytown living, daily violence, and a thoroughly corrupt government actively oppresses and discriminates against various social & ethnic groups ... you may also find it very, very difficult to muster much sympathy for "poor" people in the United States. I've seen 10-year-old kids with shovels doing road work 10 feet from marked minefields in Afghanistan, and toddlers dragging around buckets of garbage in South American marketplaces. Life isn't fair. The poor kid growing up with loser parents is no more tragic than the 34-year-old rich woman with breast cancer, the 16-year-old who flips his car and winds up a quadriplegic, or the good peace-loving Muslim who was sweeping the floor at the Shiite mosque when the Sunnis blew it up.
Once you simply accept that a certain, small percentage of any human population will just waste their lives no matter what anybody does, you'll be less stressed about it. You can't save people from themselves, meister, and neither can the government.
Enablers are well meaning, good people who don't mean to harm the dysfunctional people they're enabling. You're not a bad person to care about poor people. You're just not helping them the way you think you are.
