How well you know me...
Actually, it wasn't my intention to offer a subject that would allow people to hang themselves but Openmind certainly seems to have done just that with the little bit of rope I dangled out there...
Sorry Open, really I won't hold anything you've said to this point against you in any way.
Seriously though, I was at dinner with a friend of mine who thinks we should radically reform the way gov. assistance operates and his suggestions served as the impetus for this thread. First, a little about who he is... He's the son of
legal immigrants, his family received a lot of gov assistance when they first moved to the US and it took years for them to work their way to independence from the state. He's also a beer swilling-pot smoking-Progressive, so our conversations are usually quite interesting.
Now as to his suggestions for how to reform gov assistance... When someone gets out of jail on parole, they get assigned a parole officer who they must check in with on a regular basis and who also shows up at their doorstep (sometimes unannounced) on a regular basis. Additionally the parolee gets an ankle bracelet, they have to find employment, they have to undergo regular drug and alcohol testing, and basically their entire life is regulated by an Orwellian "big brother" style of government surveillance. He thinks this system works so well that America should do the same thing with people who live on government assistance. However, rather than a parole officer, people would be assigned a case worker, everything else, ankle bracelet and all, would remain the same.
At that point I had to pick my jaw off the floor and duct tape it to my face... He could see that I was shocked at what I was hearing, so he offered his rationale and assured me that I would like the plan once I heard all of it...
As he sees it, most people would would be appalled to live under such tight government intrusion into their private lives. Therefore, he believes, most people would do whatever it took, work as hard as they had to, live as frugally as possible and save as much as was necessary, to become totally self-sufficient. Once they were no longer dependent on government handouts, they would truly earn their freedom.
He also claimed (and this is the part he thought I would love about his plan) that forcing people to live under these circumstances would actually have the benefit of instilling in people the necessity of personal responsibility, since they would be willing to do whatever it took to keep their freedom and not return to a life of being dependent on government.
Well that left me with an obvious question... What of the people who don't become independent but, instead, gleefully accept trading their own freedom for a minimal standard of living?
His reply was that having such people under close government supervision would benefit all of society; it would keep them from becoming drug addicts, alcoholics, gang bangers, and generally keep them from participating in criminal activity or anything else that might send them to jail or further burden society.
For the record: No, I do not and would not support such a plan but I did find it entertaining. I put the compromise on taxation bit in there just to make it more interesting.