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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian
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To: Lane3 who wrote (5878)5/20/2000 7:46:00 PM
From: Dayuhan  Read Replies (1) of 9127
 
I've always thought that the real function of the safety net was pragmatic. If you give people the opportunity to succeed or fail, some will always fail, even if the deck is evenly stacked, which it isn't. If we let the failures starve, they make a mess. The safety ne programs are based on the assumption that at a certain level it is cheaper to subsidize the basic needs of the failures than it is to clean up the mess they would make if they weren't subsidized. There is of course the issue of possible parasitism, and of reducing the incentive to succeed, which is addressed by making the benefits small and by making the process of getting them so thoroughly humiliating that no functional person would want to rely on them.

I would agree that the system needs review and change, as do all systems: the same could be said of military procurement. But I think the idea is basically not an unreasonable one.
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