Quote from: JeffK on September 08, 2011, 10:47:22 PM

Quote from: AyeYo on September 08, 2011, 10:26:09 PM

Quote from: SgtSpike on September 08, 2011, 10:11:18 PM

Quote from: AyeYo on September 08, 2011, 09:36:35 PM

Quote from: SgtSpike on September 08, 2011, 09:25:59 PM

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"? What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion? Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases! They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!

Roll Eyes

Fair point, but it still shouldn't be forced. If you have a much lower tax rate from not having entitlement programs, then you enable people to have more free money to donate to charities that would help some people. Ideally, if a person did have a debilitating disease, then family members and/or charities would decide whether it is worth spending money on keeping them alive. Sounds harsh, but keep reading...

This gets into another question though, which is, what is the value of a random person's life? $5? $500? $500,000? $5M? At what point do you say, enough is enough, and give up on throwing money at trying to save a person's life? And I'm talking about any general public fund's money, not an individual's money which they can spend at will on whatever they like. You can't say that a life is priceless, else we'd all be so poor spending money on keeping people alive that we'd live in shacks and eat grub for every meal.

See above, history has proven time and again that charties do not cut it, which is why social services were started in the first place.

It's not about spending money to keep people alive, it's about giving everyone as equal a shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we can. No one should suffer due solely to being dealt a bad hand. That's why this BS that everyone that uses social services is some lazy ghetto queen bum is so off-the-wall wrong. The purpose of social services is to prop up people that need propping up so that they can hopefully get back on their feet someday and become contributing members of society. They can't do that if we just let them die.

Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives. Father gets cancer and has to stop working. Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy. Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive. Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket. Mother goes to work. What about the kids? The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table. Their future is shot. They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's. Father dies. Mother is now old and burned out. Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids. Mother dies. Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment. The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society. It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

This is what I'm not getting, it's basic social contract. Rich person benefits greatly from standing social infrastructure - shouldn't he be required to give some of what was given to him back to ensure continued existence of the system?

Working class person gives and gives to society by providing labor, and gets cancer. Shouldn't the society that benefited from his labor take care of him, either as repayment or so he can actually re-enter the workforce again?

In America, the answer to these questions is no. The rich should be allowed to disproportionately leech off the system due to their position and advantage and life, and the working class man should be cast aside as a disposable tool the minute he becomes a liability.

Here's a truth-bomb for everyone posting here: You may not fully believe it yet, maybe you have not gotten a full dose of the real world yet, but if you spend your free time theorycrafting on forums, it is very very likely you weren't born off into good enough conditions to not be in the second class, and in a capitalistic society you WILL NOT benefit from all the fruits your labor, in fact, you will probably receive much less of a fraction of your labor back as you would under even a mild nordic-style socialism system and safety net. Also, once you become useless to society, either through age or disability, your employer, your banks, and even your insurance will throw you to the side like trash and let you die, no matter how much you've given them. People and markets are not rational, and unless given regulation and a tax code that requires people to pay into a structured society, people will do everything they can to fuck you as hard as they can, just to make their bottom line grow a little.

The rich may leech off the system, but so do the poor. I see examples of it nearly every day. Which is why there shouldn't be any system to leech off of. Not abolishment of government completely, but certainly downsizing it from the ridiculous bloat it has become. No welfare or loopholes for anyone, rich or poor, to use.

I am fine with my return off of labor. I wouldn't mind more money, but who would? I got myself a degree, I work hard, and I take home a decent paycheck. I put some into a retirement fund, and at some point when I have more of my debt paid off, will start putting more into more savings accounts. If I get cancer and none of my family can afford to pay for it (or wants to pay for it), then I die. My wife would have life insurance payments to help take care of the children and pay off the mortgage, because I was smart enough to pay for some, and life moves on. If a person puts their family's financial state into danger because he didn't pay for life insurance, or assure them other means for survival should he pass, then that is his fault.

Also, one of the big reasons why a cancer care bill might run into the hundreds of thousands is because many people never pay their hospital bills. Remove that leech of the system, and you'd have much smaller and more manageable bills for the people who actually do pay them.