4 ms·
Religious groups typically look after their own. Take care of the poor, needy, and disabled. For quite a long time, most US states were essentially religious ar
by s5300 5y ago
Religious groups typically look after their own. Take care of the poor, needy, and disabled. For quite a long time, most US states were essentially religious areas/boundaries, which is why much of New England is seen as quite puritanical to this day.
Go read about the history of Mormons and Utah. The reason the surrounding borders are so weird is because the U.S. gov essentially tried to thwart a larger land grab by the LDS
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret
Their tenants were largely about taking care of each other.
So, in short - there were a lot of welfare states, mostly segregated by religion. As time went on, they mostly morphed into an encompassing welfare state.
Do you disagree? HN is definitely a tough crowd when it comes to ideas of helping the less fortunate it seems. Hopefully your future physical therapists won't charge too much when your ruined backs and wrists are hurting, despite the fact capitalism says "why shouldn't they reap your pains for all they're worth"
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI don't know, you still haven't provided me with your definition of "welfare state" that has applied to the USA. Certain groups choosing to take care of their members is not a welfare state so I'm not too sure what you're getting at there.
- google234123 5y agoYou've definitely not convinced me that the US was founded as a welfare state.
- samhwr 5y ago> Their tenants were largely about taking care of each other. For what it’s worth, you almost certainly mean ‘tenets’. I don’t know why, but this malapropism has become increasingly common. Tenants are people who rent a property.
- Tommah 5y ago> I don’t know why Both words come from the Latin tenere, to hold. A tenant is someone who holds a lease. A tenet is a belief that is held.
- samhwr 5y agoYeah, after wasting eight years of my life doing Latin at school I understand the basic etymology, but I’m confused because the English meanings aren’t very close. Your careful phrasing manages to get the word ‘hold’ into both of them, but ‘someone who holds a lease’ isn’t a very natural-sounding definition of ‘tenant’, and the notion that most people who make this mistake are familiar with the paradigm of teneo feels rather tenuous (plus ‘tenant’ noticeably isn’t a Latin ending, it’s apparently Old French, though transitively descended from teneo). You don’t think it’s more likely, if anything, to be that they just sound similar?