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The Lesson Americans Never Learn

10 points by viburnum 6y ago

CincinnatiMan 6y ago
> It [the government] should provide child care and public education for families. I worry that once childcare becomes taxpayer-paid, salaries will eventually reach an equilibrium where use of this public benefit plus dual incomes is the expectation. Then the decision to raise your children (and thus revert to single income) will become an even more premium experience that only the very wealthy can afford. Which is kind of depressing to me, that even more couples than today would be priced out of raising their children by themselves if they desired to do so. IMO a better way to lift up the poor who can't afford childcare even on dual incomes is for these dual incomes to become larger through wages increasing, such that they can afford said childcare.
thursday0987 6y ago
heres a lesson that Americans learned a long time ago: a government powerful enough to give you everything is a government powerful enough to take everything from you.
- rbecker 6y ago
  Any useful government must be powerful enough to take everything away from you. How else could it, for example, punish murderers? Like it or not, this is true for literally every government in the world. So that's not a sensible counterargument to giving it the ability to help as well.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    This sounds like a Ben Shapiro "but akshually" argument. American government was founded with the clear intention and understanding that power was derived from the consent of the governed. What you said is meaningless - of course they have firepower that makes resistance futile. But US government is fundamentally based in the protection of individual rights.
    - rbecker 6y ago
      But that's a different argument. You haven't shown any fault in my reasoning other than calling it meaningless. There may be arguments for why government shouldn't be able to give you everything (for example, the ones in your post), but "because then they can take everything away" isn't it, since every government in the world can already do that, both in theory and in practice.
      - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
        The American tradition is fundamentally skeptical towards governmental power. This is a disposition and ideal. Clearly we can violate that ideal at any point. But it's like saying that dieting is useless cause you can gorge on food whenever you want to.
- krapp 6y ago
  That's not a lesson that Americans ever "learned," that's an axiom that some Americans assume to be universal across the culture.

10 points by viburnum 6y ago

> It [the government] should provide child care and public education for families. I worry that once childcare becomes taxpayer-paid, salaries will eventually reach an equilibrium where use of this public benefit plus dual incomes is the expectation. Then the decision to raise your children (and thus revert to single income) will become an even more premium experience that only the very wealthy can afford. Which is kind of depressing to me, that even more couples than today would be priced out of raising their children by themselves if they desired to do so. IMO a better way to lift up the poor who can't afford childcare even on dual incomes is for these dual incomes to become larger through wages increasing, such that they can afford said childcare.

thursday0987 6y ago

heres a lesson that Americans learned a long time ago: a government powerful enough to give you everything is a government powerful enough to take everything from you.

rbecker 6y ago
Any useful government must be powerful enough to take everything away from you. How else could it, for example, punish murderers? Like it or not, this is true for literally every government in the world. So that's not a sensible counterargument to giving it the ability to help as well.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  This sounds like a Ben Shapiro "but akshually" argument. American government was founded with the clear intention and understanding that power was derived from the consent of the governed. What you said is meaningless - of course they have firepower that makes resistance futile. But US government is fundamentally based in the protection of individual rights.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    But that's a different argument. You haven't shown any fault in my reasoning other than calling it meaningless. There may be arguments for why government shouldn't be able to give you everything (for example, the ones in your post), but "because then they can take everything away" isn't it, since every government in the world can already do that, both in theory and in practice.
    - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
      The American tradition is fundamentally skeptical towards governmental power. This is a disposition and ideal. Clearly we can violate that ideal at any point. But it's like saying that dieting is useless cause you can gorge on food whenever you want to.
krapp 6y ago
That's not a lesson that Americans ever "learned," that's an axiom that some Americans assume to be universal across the culture.