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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (5072)	2/29/2008 5:29:34 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

What are you trying to say? Condensed version: what living-wage job would you give someone with no skills and no work ethic? My added question: how would you make that happen?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (5072)	2/29/2008 5:35:38 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

OT You thought that I was saying that if FDR's proposals and ideas had been enacted in to law, that there would be some right to have a job as a brain surgeon. I pointed out how I didn't think (and had not posted) anything suggesting such an idea. Having a "right to a job" means that you get a job whether or not you are qualified. It doesn't mean that you get the best job, or the job you are extraordinarily unqualified for, but you get at least a basic job. So if your unqualified for (or don't care to work hard for) a even a very basic job (for example "burger flippers") you still get at least a very basic job. This by itself would not destroy the incentives for higher end workers (although the high tax rates and other parts of FDR's policies did damage and distort these incentives), but it would damage the incentives for the relatively unskilled, and people who don't have all that good of work habits. If they get a decent job even without skills or hard work (after all they have "a right" to a job that pays enough "to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation", and to decent housing a medical care as well), then there isn't much need for them to work hard and acquire skills and good job habits. The job isn't something they have to earn its "their right". Pushing such a policy requires either ignorance, foolishness, or a lust for power and popularity above concerns about the real world consequences of your plans (or some combination of these traits). Of course the last is something that politicians have in spades, and other qualities are common enough, but none of them is exactly admirable.