I guess it's all about welfare then. Social Security has become welfare for the elderly, financed on the backs of younger generations. Minimum wage has become welfare for the working poor, financed on the backs of the employers.
I am 52 years old...I pay into SS to the max limit each and every year and have been for 30 years. In 10 years I will collect some of that money back. What do you suggest is the altenative for people, who unlike maybe you, have no other means of support in their retirement age? Where's the connection to moral decline you started this with?
It's not just the abuse of the system. It's how the system itself becomes the end-all-be-all solution to any of society's problems. Society not caring enough for the working poor? No problem, just increase government assistance programs. Too many low-wage workers getting exploited by employers? No problem, just raise the minimum wage. Not enough children taking care of parents? No problem, just keep that Social Security Ponzi scheme going. Rich getting richer? No problem, just raise taxes on them. They're just a bunch of dishonest thugs anyway.
You have a very strange way of looking at things. It seems to be more resentment for what caring for the greater good means to you than the recognition of the need for it, and the quest for a solution, assuming the current one is not good. Look at SS for example...zero out SS spending and recovery. What do you have? If you guessed government spending deficits greater than the ones you have with SS in place, you'd be right. If you had guessed that to be the MO for nearly as long as SS has been in place, you'd be right again. Why not the outrage at goverment for reckless mismanagement of SS, on both sides of the aisle...fix that first, and then we can talk about the appropriateness of socially oriented pensions for elders, the level of it, funding in keeping with affordability, etc...
Mimimum wage legislation? Study the history of labor in america and the world and then talk about the need for government intervention.
Gradation in taxation? The very society in which you enrich yourself asks you to give back in proportion to your gain...and still leaves you FAR more than you need to live lavishly. What's the problem? Avarice? Greed? Lack of compassionate responsibility?
See a pattern here? No one wants to be responsible for seniors. No one wants to be responsible for the working poor. No one trusts the rich to be charitable. All of this responsibility is offloaded onto the government. Now we can be selfish and greedy without guilt, because we trust that government will fill that role.
Goverment is an abstract term...it is the will of me and you and everyone else that lives in a self determined society. Many, and I would submit a majority in this nation, want to do all of the things you mention above and pay the collectively determined share of the bill.
Al |
