It was Bismarck who invented the state-managed old age pension, along with unemployment insurance, to help stifle revolutionary elements and centralise control of the newly unified Reich, Berlin's power over this cash flow was very much a tool of the militaristic right wing in that place and time, and in many others since
In our village down south you don't get left to die hungry and unsheltered even if you don't have sons to support you ... and the government is not involved, either, outside of a pretty basic health care funded by Pemex money
One of the effects of government taking large slices of people's money as taxes and then passing it out in state-controlled fashion, is it generates a feeling that 'I gave at the office', and indeed you have, through the nose, paid enough to support a bureaucracy as well ... this undercuts a natural human response to help one's neighbours
For every leftie chanting 'share the wealth' there is a rightwingnut ranting against 'the culture of entitlement' ... and they can both be right, depending on individual cases ... i think the basic factor goes much deeper than 'left' and 'right' as the terms are commonly used, the bigger thing is that mankind developed in smaller communities, and is better suited to them, not ready at all for relationships that span even small cities, much less large ones, or whole nations ... the entire business of nationalism as we know it is quite new, one of the early stimulators of it was again Bismarck, it's had its pros and cons, but hasn't eliminated our tribal nature
... all above being a wordy way of saying, charity begins at home, and is less complex there, more efficient |
