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> In the Puritan model of charity, the rich have an obligation to do good for the poor—but the poor also have an obligation to the rich, to try to be a useful p

• toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Conversely, just because you're poor doesn't mean you contribute nothing to society.
• DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
  There's the problem of lock-out: how do you contribute usefully to society without some baseline to work from, and where your day-to-day activities are forced to be about the most basic level of survival?
  • fredgrott 13y ago
    It could be argued that the whole increase of drug use in USA is due to lockout and other effects
    • aaronem 13y ago
      Oh, it could, could it? Well, then, "lay on, Macduff! -- and damned be he who first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"
  • aaronem 13y ago
    Well, just off the top of my head, something like a new WPA seems like it'd be a decent start, considering the infrastructure maintenance problems I keep hearing about. Is that "workfare"? I've heard "workfare" is bad, although again I'm not really sure why.
    • DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
      I have no objections to WPA-style programs, and think that likely would be a good solution. Heck, it worked once before. The problem is that in addition to having let our infrastructure decay, we've let our social infrastructure decay.
      • aaronem 13y ago
        That's no more an obstacle today than it was in 1935; the original WPA was an emergency measure, just as our notional revival would be.
  • basseq 13y ago
    "...where your day-to-day activities are forced to be about the most basic level of survival?" Isn't the purpose of so-called "subsidization" to avoid this? (Not that it necessarily works in practice.)
    • DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
      There really aren't many homeless programs that subsidize living for a period where you can get back on your feet, in such a way as to not require that you stand in line for hours every day, so you can focus on finding a job, or similar. Many of them (eg, food stamps) cut benefits when you're unemployed homeless, and focus instead on at-risk employed people. Many kitchens require that you show up every day and spend large amounts of time on travel to-and-from, as well as waiting in line.
• benched 13y ago
  Nobody contributes nothing to society. Even if nothing else, the wretched of the earth offer those better off an opportunity to practice not being fuckfaces. In many philosophical traditions, that's a pretty big deal.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    Philosophical traditions, is it? How about "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread"? And, while I'm at it, "The poor will always be with you"?
    • gaius 13y ago
      And Marx wrote "from each according to his ability" before "to each according to his need". How did non-contributors fare in Marxists states? Well they were sent to forced labour camps where they worked or they starved.
      • aaronem 13y ago
        I tend to consider the Soviet experiment a subset of the general Progressive one, which sheds no complimentary light on the latter -- but, for those who cleave to it, "no true Scotsman" seems spackle enough to cover the cracks.
• nvader 13y ago
  I tend to agree with you. I don't _disagree_ with the author, because I don't know what the author's point is. She decries the "puritan" worldview, but outside of pointing out that it is an old one, she does not really bother to say what is wrong with it.
• betterunix 13y ago
  "I find this unhelpful, because it fails to explain why subsidizing people who contribute nothing to society, in such fashion as to provide an incentive to continue contributing nothing to society, is in any way a good idea." That is the price of having a social safety net. You are not just subsidizing people who contribute nothing. Some day you might be in need of some help despite all your productivity.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    That seems a rather selfish way of looking at the matter, to say nothing of how you carefully ignore the dependent clause beginning 'in such fashion...' But, since you bring personalities into it: No one can eat pride, of course, and if I'm in a tight enough spot, I don't kid myself other than that I'll do what's needful to stay alive, and wait to earn back my self-respect until I can afford it again. But on the day I beg for succor, I hope I have the good fortune so to do from someone who respects me highly enough to let me work for what I need, instead of offering mere unearned largess by means of which to enhance his own opinion of himself at the cost of my humiliation.
• pron 13y ago
  She doesn't explain because because this model really is so obviously erroneous, but only after you accumulate enough experiences in life, or, if you want a shortcut, after you read enough books written by those who have experienced a thing or two. Some things can't be explained in a few sentences, because they are not mathematically true, but happen to be true in this particular world of ours. Sometimes, it's hard to explain how the world really works; you have to experience it in the flesh, and it takes a while.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    You do me the compliment, sir, of mistaking me for a child, and I thank you for it. But perhaps you will consider that not everyone's experience leads to the same conclusions you draw from your own.
• smtddr 13y ago
  Isn't compassion for others and the desire to end others' suffering enough of a reason without any other incentive? If in a hypothetical conversation, someone said to me "They contribute nothing; they should all just die & starve or just get out of the way." ... my response would be that it's us, the people with wealth(or at least not living paycheck2paycheck) who have the most power to change society and allow it to support them somehow. I don't really know how exactly, but the first experiment I'd vote for is basic-income and see how that pans out.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    I cannot end my brother's suffering. Only he can do that. The most I can do is offer help, if he'll have it. On that point: Regarding someone as worthless, that is, not only unable to contribute but unable to become able to contribute, strikes me as rather less compassionate than contemptuous. I concede I once thought as you do, but only until, through sheer good fortune, I learned what I could accomplish and, in so doing, earned my own respect -- and found in that the necessary prerequisite to earning the respect of others. Better, I think, to offer my brother the opportunity to do likewise, than simply to presume that he lacks even the hope of ever so doing.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• parrotdoxical 13y ago
  Someone REALLY likes the sound of their own empty rhetoric. While that's all fine and dandy, you should probably be aware that you don't necessarily get a choice as to "subsidize" people who contribute nothing to society because it is possible for people to actually negate things from society, all the way down from petty thugs all the way up to crooked, lawyered-up execs and/or politicians. The difference is that the latter gets to pay their way out of their transgressions to society (often times at a rate that still makes it profitable to rob society) while the former get the societal brunt and blame for society's ills. That's not to say that the former group are saints, but 1) they have systematic disadvantages that actually prevent any current legal implementations of a free market from providing for them and 2) once incarcerated, they actually end up costing society in a far more permanent way (up to $167k/yr in NYC). So, even if you disregarded how totally wrongheaded your argument on a sociopolitical level, it also shows a pretty flimsy lack of substance on a quantitative level. You WILL pay for poverty one way or another. You can't magically incentivize it out of existence with a free market, so don't whine about it by thinking about it as subsidization. Think of it more as insurance, at the very least.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    Empty rhetoric, indeed! You seem to have attended little, and understood less, of what I've written today. Perhaps you'll unhook the stimulus-response apparatus that sits in front of your language parser, and actually read my comments, or at least a few of the shorter ones? Should you decide to do so, I'll be glad to engage you in discussion.
    • parrotdoxical 13y ago
      Nah, I understand all of what you've written, I just find it sophomoric and pretty poorly thought out. I'll be glad to engage you in discussion once YOU mentally mature past the age of fourteen.
• sbov 13y ago
  Note that sometimes society doesn't let them contribute in ways you're probably thinking of. I have a friend who recently got a job at a company that works to deport immigrants who have committed some sort of crime. On the face of things they try to give them hope, but they mostly give false hope, don't provide the information they need, and make holding a job impossible. Once a month they will visit home "sometime next week" - and the person must be at home, which means an indeterminate amount of time off - maybe a week, maybe two. They ask them to come into their offices at 9am and don't see them until 6pm, if at all - maybe they ask them to come back tomorrow. He's in the process of finding a new job, as the job is misadvertised as helping immigrants. Especially as an immigrant himself, he hates working there.
  • aaronem 13y ago
    No doubt, too, this is far from the only such travesty. For those responsible, I prescribe public flogging -- lest this statement be mistaken for some sort of metaphor, as is regrettably common in these parts, let me say that by "public flogging" I mean that they be taken in tumbrils to the handiest public square, there to be tied to a post and administered ten lashes apiece at the least; for repeat offenders, the gallows should serve. Barbaric, you say? Do you then contend that the actions, which render such punishment meet, are any less barbaric? Which is worse, then? -- to lay open a man's back in answer to his crimes, and stretch his neck should he prove obdurate? Or to leave him grind his fellow men into the dust by trickery and deceit, and grow fat on the proceeds of their suffering? Or shall we handle him with kid gloves? -- as others here have rightly noted, a rich man rarely fears prison, and imprisonment itself carries great cost -- but let him once see his fellow criminal hauled down from the post with his back in bloody tatters, and you give him mightily to consider how best to save himself from a similar fate!