RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
July 19, 2014 at 6:15 pm
(This post was last modified: July 19, 2014 at 6:20 pm by Heywood.)
(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I'm always of so many minds about this sort of thing I don't know where to begin. No one has a right to a basic income just for existing. Welfare is a form of charity
There was a time in my life when I shared your opinion....that no one has a right to a basic income just for existing. However the world is changing and it is changing faster everyday. Automation is eliminating the need for people to work. A future is coming soon where most people simply will not work because most jobs will be done by intelligent machines.
Now that future can take on two faces. One face looks very ugly to me and it is the one I think we are headed for. It is a world in which the government tells you how to live. The government tells you how much to spend on food, how much to spend on housing, how much to spend on utilities, etc. The other is the world I would like to see. People making their own choices and spending the wealth the civilization creates as they see fit. The elimination of government programs(and the bureaucracy that goes with them), and the implementation of a universal basic income, would put us on the road toward people leading their lives instead of the government leading it for them.
(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: When we give out of charity whether we are individuals, an institution, or the government, we have the right to limit or direct that gift. It is after all a gift. Whether the particular limitations on the gift make sense is open for debate when the government is doing the giving. But before we decide whether the limitations make sense, we first have to decide what the objective of the gift is. If it's producing healthy babies, WIC is much better than cash. Ditto if it's making sure children are fed.
This is basically you saying you or the government know better how people should spend money then the people themselves. It is an elitist view. Government should empower people not run their lives for them. Government exists for the benefit of the people....people shouldn't exists for the benefit of government.
(July 19, 2014 at 5:09 pm)Jenny A Wrote: But, I don't think that anyone should question what a person does with a gift, provided they are following the dictates of the giver. The government gave her the food stamps with certain restrictions. She wasn't violating those. Anyone who has a complaint should address it to the government and not the recipient woman in the check out line. Certainly no one has a right to tell her what to do with her other possessions.
For this woman to be eligible for SNAP....she probably would have had to sell the car. She was collecting WIC which has less stringent eligibility requirements. So apparently no one has the right to tell her what to do with her possessions except the government.....and I think that is wrong.
