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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (54780)	8/17/2000 2:51:52 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I shouldn't butt into this, really I shouldn't, but I am drawn to ask about [what I see as] the premise of this whole discussion. You say that a small minority of assistance recipients abuses the entitlement programs. Cobe says that a sizable fraction - perhaps most - abuse[s] the system. Is there any way an underinformed bystander like myself can find numbers that relate to this premise?

To: epicure who wrote (54780)	8/17/2000 6:23:11 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

The flaw in the ointment with my ideas is that it will never be tried here, or at least not in the near future. Where it has been tried- in highly socialized countries, it DOES seem to promote social harmony. Not in the long term. Virtually every society that has tried it is falling apart. The people who sacrificed to put the system in place, who know the bleakness which led to the desire to install a more protective society, die off, and the generations which have been raised knowing nothing of the conditions which inspired the system, take it as the norm and not as a privilege. So they increasingly demand more and more, until the system falls to pieces. Russia has gone. Germany and France are approaching crisis. Our own SocSec system is in crisis. Only the very small countries are still making the system work, and there only creakily -- Sweden and Denmark, principally, but even there the end is in sight.