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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (99379)	3/24/2005 11:41:07 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

If the perverse incentive hypothesis was true, why wouldn't more people quit their higher paying jobs and take a part time job to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit? The last runner across the line in marathon gets a bigger applause like the winner. Why? Because for them, it was more effort than the winner who is graced with better athletics and genes. Sure, the winner trained a lot, but science has proven that the training is "easier" for them. Same is true with intelligence. Smart people are burning *less* glucose to do a particular task than someone not as smart (science has shown this too). We should reward the effort more if we want to get more people over the bar. Those with the gifts will make it over anyway.

To: epicure who wrote (99379)	3/24/2005 10:37:14 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I've seen real people's characters and sense of responsibility for themselves and, more importantly, their families erode and virtually disappear after they started receiving financial aid from a government agency. If you want an example, I'll outline one example involving a family that was close to ours. The change was amazing to watch and eye-opening. For me. My wife had seen much more of this is a lot more socially conservative than I am on such things. In this case, the government assistance was related to care for young children with disabilities from birth. Prior to qualifying for state assistance, the family seemed very happy (and we knew them very well) and coped with the children's care needs with a lot of free help from church members, neighbors, and friends. We were in the latter category and my family cheerfully provided a lot of help to the family. Eventually, the family qualified for a state-funded program which provided paid caretakers in the home. Shortly, the voluntary assistance to the family ceased. People don't do things for free which others are paid to do. And free help wasn't really needed anymore. Some of the people who'd been helping the family for free applied and were hired by the contracting company which provided the in-home care. But that didn't last long. "Man, she's a bitch now" was the usual explanation for why. It's only natural that people appreciate help which is given for free more than a service somebody is hired to perform. Eventually, we learned the mother was working out a deal with some of the hired caregivers so that she reported more hours than they actually worked and they kicked back most of the extra pay to the mother. Effectively, the mom was now getting paid to care for her own kids. And the mom now had more spare time than before. Enough to begin stalking and crank-calling an old high school flame - calling him up and hanging up when he answered, driving by his house and workplace, etc. Eventually she worked up her nerve to identify herself (they'd been out of touch for over a decade) and they arranged to meet. They hit it off. And pretty soon we began to hear complaints about the husband. That he was mean about this or that. Nothing big but it was a nice excuse to start seeing her old boyfriend, at first secretly during the afternoons. But eventually it came out in the open and the hubby's response was to go out to and get himself a girlfriend and for a time they'd take turns going out every other weekend, with one staying home to keep the kids. Along about this time, the mom decides she needs a breast enlargement. Which she got and now looks ridiculous - like a real-life walking barbie doll. Of course, the couple ended up divorcing and a few months ago the mom married her old boyfriend. The family breakup probably won't matter to the disabled kids but I worry about the older non-disabled child in the family. Worse than the family breakup was the change in the mom's attitude to her kids. Let's just say they sure weren't the primary concern anymore as they once had been. Now there was resentment for the burden they represent. At one point, before the mom reached her goal of getting her boyfriend to marry her, my wife felt she had to threaten the mom that if she harmed her kids, she'd make sure she didn't get away with it. Government money is very dangerous - it can be incredibly harmful to people. There are plenty of real life experiments on whether government assistance erodes character going on all over the place all the time.