[Kevin M]

Thing is, what happens to the poorest in a society happens to all of us. Who do you think commits the majority of crime, especially violent ones? Have you seen what real inner city life looks like? Would you like to live in proximity to the LA Projects? Or do you think maybe your world is going to be a better place if those people don't have horrible lives, and maybe have just enough incentive to behave themselves a little better because they have something to lose?

Another thing to keep in sight is that the portions of tax money and the percentage of people involved in this end of the debate is pretty small.

But let's get back to the "everybody should be 100% self sufficient" model. You realize that our economic system absolutely and without exception requires there to be a significant number of 'have nots' right? Like I discussed in the education thread, many, many, many essential jobs require little or no education/training and therefore don't pay worth a damn. People who work menial jobs cannot, and under our current system never will, be able to afford health care, or full comp/collision coverage on the car they need to get back and forth to their crap job, or be able to buy their own home and thereby have a chance in hell of retiring at a reasonable age, because Social Security barely gets seniors (who ususally have massive medical bills, or at the very least hundreds of dollars in prescription medications that keep them alive) above the poverty line. Not to go an yet another tangent, but I only view SS as a safety net to keep seniors from becoming utterly destitute, not to enable them to retire to Florida and play golf every morning and Penochle every night. But I digress. Point is, some people in the capitalist economic system get completely fucked by the circumstances of their life. Yeah, some people can overcome and be a real heartwarming success story, but that's about as common as winning the Super Lotto jackpot. Not only that, but what I am asking for is simply that all people can survive and not have to wonder if they're going to be homeless a month after losing their job, or if their kid busts his leg playing in the yard and they have to declare bankruptcy, because dad's job at Jiffy Lube pays $9 an hour and mom makes $6 an hour waiting tables at Denny's. How exactly do you raise a family and get full coverage medical (not just crappy high-deductible stuff, but real insurance) on that kind of money? Don't say "get a better job, because the world can't provide that. Some of us HAVE TO be in that situation for this society to function in the manner we're accustomed to.

I don't think it's out of line to guarantee a very basic survival-level of living without the ever-present fear of everything you have dissolving in a moment, and becoming just another statistic. Besides, if you think anybody on the planet really wants to live with less than that, all they have to do is not cash the check.