points by cattenwallen 1 day ago | 0 comments
I think there should be free rides for a lot of circumstances tbh. Like, I want children to be clothed, housed, fed, educated, and exposed to minimal trauma or workplace/economy pressure. I want anyone too disabled to work to also be clothed, housed, fed, educated to the degree possible depending on their disability... I want single moms to not worry about that stuff either... I want 70+ y/o folks to not feel pressured to be in the workforce so they can leave leadership opportunities to younger folks... None of this has to do with some characterization of people that are against those things I just think we disagree
[–] SpicyLemonZest 1 day ago
Against what things? The US government spends over 2 trillion dollars each year providing resources to elderly and disabled people through the Social Security and Medicare programs. I don't think "free ride" is exactly the right way to phrase this - we live in a society, we're obligated to take care of those who can't take care of themselves - but basically nobody in the modern US argues that old people should starve if their nest egg isn't big enough. The debates are about precisely how generous the funding should be and what tradeoffs we should make to obtain additional funding that may be required.
Uh, that's like 20% of households with children, or 25% of children (plus another 5% are raised by some other guardian, so likely also a welfare situation). That's again where we're getting into unrealistic territory (not to mention the terrible incentive). Across all of your groups, you're basically saying half the population should be taken care of by the other half.
A more pressing issue is why are a quarter of children raised by single parents? Even if they were completely taken care of economically, that's still a disaster.