Does "you have to work to make a living" = "some people just deserve to die"?

This is a sentiment I found online that is, of course, popular (especially since it’s used to argue for free basic necessities like food, water, shelter, and more), but I thought it would be worthy of good debate.

Of possible interest here is the fact that, IIRC, some countries do offer a very basic level of income for all citizens. Does that generally cover the above or not when put into practice?

No, it means all people deserve to die. A lot of us manage not to starve or freeze to death, however. Almost all of us, in fact, at least in the developed world. And we’ve managed this for 200,000 years.

The conclusion to “if I don’t work, I’ll die” is not “I’ll die.”

clearly not.

Just because some people are against some forms of welfare programs, doesn’t mean they think some people deserve to die.

Everything is a balance of costs and values. The right would (correctly) say the left is spending more than we can on welfare. The left would (correctly) say the right is spending too much on the military.
But no matter what you do, even if there is welfare, some people will be fucked. Some people are fuckin’ nuts, and some of those people are nuts in a way that cant even be diagnosed. If you’re nuts, you can’t even muster the clarity to GO to the welfare office and get your check in the first place. And then there’s addiction - if all your money goes to drugs, even if its welfare money, you’ve got a problem. And it’s a hard one to fix.
Some people can’t work because of disability. A lot, if not most people would say that’s deserving of free government money. I’d agree but say that isn’t enough, you can’t live on just money ( my way of suggesting people go and help out people like that, with help and company). Some extreme or doctrinaire libertarians say that it isn’t the govenment’s place to take forcibly-extracted taxpayers money and give it to someone for the sake of helping them, an end which isn’t ultimately in the general service of the taxpayer. This is similar to saying that those people who need shouldn’t steal. I agree with the principle, but I’m a more practical libertarian, and realize tax money isn’t actually exactly COERCIVELY taken (you can leave a country), and that most people would vote for such welfare anyway, and such kinds of welfare are hardly high on the libertarian bugaboo list.

Other kinds of welfare more people might be against, especially on the right. There’s plenty of welfare given to people with two working hands and two working feet and a normally working brain. A lot of people, particularly on the right side of the political spectrum, flat out don’t government money given to such people, or only it be give for a small while, with a lifetime cap, or somehow otherwise limited.

Anyway, I got away from myself. Was that even the context youwere asking the question in? Like political beliefs? Or more generally directly about working? And then like questions like “but what about people who have so much money they don’t need to work?”

The guaranteed minimum income in France is something like € 500/month for a single person. I did a search for the housing benefits (*) for a single person living in Paris, unemployed for two years, with no income, and they amoount to about € 300. So that’s a total of € 800/month. You can live a very, very modest life on that, providing you have/can find a cheap place to rent, I guess. Let’s say € 350/month to rent a room somewhere in the remote subburbs (not certain it’s realistic), you have €15/day left for your expenses. Half of it for food, half of it for clothes and power.

Realistically, you’ll need to resort to charities, food and clothes pantries, etc… The slighest extra expense (say, you need to see a dentist or to buy a chair) will blow your budget
(*) And noted that some website on top of the search makes you pay for calculating it, € 1.5 added to your phone bill, while it can be calculated for free on official sites. Fucktards! :mad:)

Yes, that does appear to be a common attitude. Certainly I see many people advocate for polices that if implemented would (and historically have) kill large numbers of the poor.

Although they are typically unwilling to come out and admit that they just want the poor dead. The ones who are most likely to openly admit it seem to be the extreme libertarian/Randian/Social Darwinist types. The rest just dance around refusing to address what happens to people who can’t get the necessities of life.

Do you have a cite for this? I’ve never seen this as a common attitude, and in fact the converse seems to be true since, you know, we DO ensure that people who don’t or can’t work have at least a basic level of subsistence and don’t generally just die off, and since we are a democracy and all that would mean that a majority of people in the US don’t agree with your assertion. But I’m curious as to what you’ll come up with as a cite for this assertion of yours, or if you’ll just handwave (which is what I expect).

You must be new here.

Poor Parisian’s budget (???)

Income: 9600 Euros
Housing: 4200
Food: 2700
Clothing: 1350
Utilities: 1350
Insurance: 0
Savings: 0

This is bizarrely unrealistic. I understand the need to be fashionable in Paris, but really?

Speaking as a Libertarian, I of course think that everyone not making $100,000 a year should be actively euthanized, and their offspring sold off as apprentices. Waiting for them to die off would clutter the streets with dead bodies.

I don’t think it’s so much that “you have to work to make a living” = “some people just deserve to die” - as it is that if too many people eschew work and become free riders, society can’t function.

Just to be clear, the debate is: Resolved, people who don’t work should be left to die.

Is that correct?

Since the question seems largely a response to Libertarian / Ayn Rand Objectivity philosophy, I’ll give the appropriate response. It’s not so much an issue of “deserve”. If you aren’t able to earn a living, the assumption is that other people must then provide you with the means to support yourself.

Think of it as if you are stranded on an island with someone else. You know how to hunt and the other person doesn’t. What is your obligation to spend your time and assume all the risk of injury hunting for both of you? How does that obligation change if the other person doesn’t accept your hunting lessons or refuses to contribute in other ways (like building a shelter while you’re out hunting)?

I think that’s a bit of a Straw Man.

I think the debate is:

Resolved, “you have to work to make a living” **necessarily implies **that “some people deserve to die”.

I would argue No. It confuses what is with what should be.

That There Ain’t No Free Lunch is a law of nature. “Some people deserve to die” is a moral judgment. It is perfectly possible to conclude that those who can’t work and those who deserve to die are entirely different groups.

[QUOTE=furt]

Speaking as a Libertarian, I of course think that everyone not making $100,000 a year should be actively euthanized, and their offspring sold off as apprentices.
[/QUOTE]
I am not a Libertarian, then. Don’t euthanize them - put them on reality shows and let them euthanize each other.

Regards,
Shodan

That’s exactly what the thread title says.

The rights that governments protect have evolved and changed over time due to a myriad of factors, including technology.

These include some lesser-discussed rights… like, say, the ‘right’ to be free from wild animal attacks. 200 years ago, in great swaths of the US, you were on your own as far as defending yourself and your property from wild animals. Local governments weren’t able to manage wildlife in large and sparsely populated regions. But now they can, and except perhaps in a few places like remote Alaska, if a wild animal attacks someone the local government will find and kill the animal, in addition to taking steps to prevent other wild animals from attacking.

It’s already possible, in some places in the US (and elsewhere), to survive without working. I expect that as technology continues to advance, it will become easier and cheaper to produce food and other necessities (as it has become easier and cheaper over the last few hundred years), and fewer will cite “prevent starvation and homelessness” as a main reason for working. There will probably be some larger number of layabouts than today, but I am pretty optimistic about humans, and I think most people actually want to do something with their lives.

There’s the problem of people who are unable to work due to age, infirmity, handicap, and the like. But just to push that aside, let’s assume that we’re all good people who feel that those people should receive at least some minimal level of support that would keep body and soul together, and a roof over their heads.

But even excluding them, there’s the problem of: suppose there aren’t enough jobs to go around? If the number of people looking for work exceeds the number of job openings by 3 million, does that mean 3 million people deserve to die?

Because that’s been the way things are for the past six years. And I think the answer is pretty obvious: no, you don’t deserve to die just because you lose that game of musical chairs.

But the attitude that’s all too prevalent in some quarters that it must be your own fault if you can’t get a job is pretty disturbing to me, because while it’s not ‘they deserve to die,’ it’s a step in that direction: they shouldn’t have unemployment benefits extended to them, we should cut their food stamps, we shouldn’t find productive ways to put them back to work, etc.

In short, it’s “we’ll make it a lot harder for them to live.”

That’s BS. There are jobs out there. But unemployment benefits, food stamps, rent subsidies and other forms of welfare all disincentivize work. The number of people on disability has increased dramatically over the past decade, at a rate that is preposterous compared to any reasonable need for disability welfare. And nobody can seriously argue that extending unemployment benefits again and again doesn’t simply delay people from seeking employment. In fact, many analysts attribute much of the recent job growth to unemployment benefits finally ending. Helping someone who has been unemployed for three months is noble. Helping them for six months is foolish. And helping them for 12 months (or longer) simply fosters and encourages a new, lazy lifestyle - one which they then find hard to change.

I realize that many here disparage libertarian viewpoints, but taking money from productive working people to give to those who cannot or won’t work has lots of unintended (or cynically, absolutely intended) consequences. There are other ways to meet needs rather than by force and law.

As for the poor dying in the streets, it seems to me every post here conveniently ignores charity. Lots of people willingly give of their time and money to see to it that other people don’t starve and freeze to death.

The poor don’t deserve to die; just to squeak by on a barely subsistance income level at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Some of them deserve this others probably don’t. I used to care about the poor, now I couldn’t give 2 shits.

Maybe we could have a welfare system whereby you get 12 months of welfare - a very long time - and then all subsequent welfare beyond that comes in the form of an interest-free loan from the government.
Because some unemployed may need welfare significantly longer than 12 months, yet we can’t have un-reimbursed welfare that goes on forever.