# Personal responsibility, or avoiding responsibility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 24, 2019, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550 "2019-07-24T16:29:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/101 "2019-07-26T12:14:33Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Yes, that is what Romney said, but Romney was either misinformed or lying. He was trying to make a disparaging remark about those he considered himself to be better than, but the facts bear out that he was also talking about his own peers. > > As far as roads and schools, those are paid for, not by income tax, but by property tax and excise tax, both of which are regressive, and both of which are not only paid by the poor, but paid at a higher percentage of income than that of the wealthy, very bad examples for you to choose to try to make Romney’s comment about those he looks down on to be any more accurate, or any less hateful. You misunderstand. I wasn’t pointing out that Romney was wrong, because he wasn’t. I was pointing out that you were wrong, because you are. That is, your claim that Romney’s wealthy peers do not pay taxes for the government services they receive is amusingly bizarre, but not otherwise worthwhile. Also, your notion that property taxes are regressive. Can you explain how a person with a million-dollar home pays less in property taxes than a person living in an apartment? Rhetorical question, obviously, because you can’t. > [@](#): > > So, you are in favor of massive deficits, sending our people into unnecessary wars, seperating children from their parents and locking them in cages, and hate half of your fellow citizens? I am not strawmanning you. You are strawmanning yourself, and not doing a very good job. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/102 "2019-07-26T12:17:27Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > You would be wrong. Trump has endorsed measures that would have cut legal immigration by 40 to 50 percent or more (such as Tom Cotton’s RAISE Act). I’ll check it out. Thanks. > [@](#): > > So what do you expect to happen to the people filling those jobs? I expect that a lot of them will be fucked over if you raise wages. As I said in the post above, there are many sound reasons a person work and benefit from a low paying wage, and a living wage is not the same to all folks everywhere. > [@](#): > > What if there aren’t incentives, though, to which people can respond? A lack of incentives would mean that everybody is so satisfied with what they are doing, they are unwilling to change jobs or move (in the context of our discussion). That is in fact, the evidence, the data is suggesting is occuring. > [@](#): > > Some economists see a future in which the number of actual jobs in the U.S. declines, even as the population continues to increase. If 150 million people are chasing 125 million jobs, for example, the incentives and wage structures are going to be grossly distorted. Yes. That might happen, or not. Right now we have the opposite problem. Not enough people to fill existing jobs. That future, if it happens will not happen overnight. If and when it does begin to happen, we will have to adapt. > [@](#): > > Even today, we see an increasing bifurcation between highly-skilled and highly-paid workers, on the one hand, and the great mass of workers on the other. This latter group has generally seen their wages stagnating or only very slowly increasing, even as the smaller group surges ahead. Moreover, there’s not a lot of mobility between the groups. People who spent the early part of their career in a coal mine tend not to have many opportunities to become digital architects or marketing experts, even if they want to learn something new. The phenomenon you are describing has always existed. Dish washing is not a skilled or highly valued career. It is though a job almost anyone can get. You mention the lack of mobility between job strata, but you don’t state why it exists. Maybe people like being coal miners, working their Dad’s job in their hometown making a halfway decent wage. They don’t want to leave everything they know, the place they have been their whole lives, friends and family, and uproot and try to do something new somewhere else. That’s tough scary, risky and unpleasant. But maybe we need less coal, and the economy has moved on from coal because it is dirty and inefficient and destructive to mine. How do you get that coal miner to give up what he has known all his life, the only thing, and abandon everything to go somewhere else and try something new? There are three ways: 1. He is a natural adventurer and will give it a go. 2. You offer him something so incredibly awesome at such a high wage, that sounds so good, he can’t say no. 3. Things get so unpleasant and difficult that he no longer stays. 1and 2 are nice those rare times they occur. The market takes care of #3. If you interfere with that maybe you are helping him, but maybe you are just prolonging his misery in his current circumstances while depriving him of the better future waiting for him. Sadly, people are stubborn, and oftentimes things have to get truly terrible before people will abandon what they know. Do I like it or want it this way? No, but that is the unfortunate reality we must recognize. > [@](#): > > Labor isn’t a single item. A roofer and a nurse are not interchangeable, for example, even though they are both “labor,” and even with training may not be capable of doing the other’s job. Treating all workers as fungible is overly simplistic to the point of invalidity. And there are different grades of crude oil too. It’s a stratified or graded commodity when you look at large enough figures to be statistically significant which is why the statistics that I cited and the gov reflect them as such. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Kearsen1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen1)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/104 "2019-07-26T12:25:03Z")
To those 2 folks whom have corrected my error, many thanks. It is not SSN that they do not pay, it’s the Fed Tax. (I had to go actually look at a check on an employee) ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/105 "2019-07-26T13:05:18Z")
Slash: I took a quick look regarding Trump cutting legal immigration and there many cites that say he will, and some that say he won’t. Bias seems to be the main predictor of which is which. I did find this, recently, in the NYT, that seems to indicate that his latest official stance is not to cut it. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opinion/trump-immigration.amp.html](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opinion/trump-immigration.amp.html) Personally, I think it needs to go up a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/106 "2019-07-26T13:31:49Z")
Posted in wrong thread ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/107 "2019-07-26T14:16:29Z")
In the military I was taught that there is no responsibility without commensurate authority. That should apply to the Conservative concept of personal responsibility. So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value, then: Without authority over her own reproduction, a woman cannot be financially responsible. The Conservative position should logically be pro-birth control and pro-abortion. The corporate form isolates the individual from responsibility for his personal actions. He can exercise authority without accepting responsibility. The Conservative position should be against the corporate form. I believe this is not the case. Personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/108 "2019-07-26T14:45:54Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Things like education, job training, relocation assistance, childcare, and healthcare are things that make people more productive and allow people to become more independent and less reliant on assistance, but these are all things that are fought against by conservatives. > \ > Get rid of cliffs in assistance that disincentivize promotion and growth. Maybe it’s because I live abroad, but with the possible exception of relocation assistance which I haven’t heard about as a government program, I consider every one of the things you’ve listed to be a conservative value. My starting point is that I want a government that’s effective and that operates under a reasonable tax burden. That requires that the vast majority of people meet most of their own needs. It also involves trade-offs. At their worst, liberals have a very broad list of the needs government should meet, far more than your basic list, and think that all those needs can be met if the rich are taxed sufficiently. And their definition of rich is someone making more money than they are. By the way, in a thread about personal responsibility, if we want to talk about a proposed US federal program that liberals favour and traditional conservatives should disagree with, can we talk about the Student Loan Debt Relief Act? If you want evidence liberals don’t believe in personal responsibility, there you go: > **[Elizabeth Warren's plan to forgive student debt would help 45 million students](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/elizabeth-warrens-student-debt-bill-would-help-45-million-students.html)** > > Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill Tuesday that would forgive the student debt of tens of millions of Americans. Under the bill, all 45 million Americans with student debt would see at least a portion of their balance greatly reduced.... ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/109 "2019-07-26T15:13:28Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > **Not all jobs can or should pay a living wage** , because some aren’t meant to and aren’t needed to. I worked in a deli after school while in High School, part time. It was a great job a high schooler could get, supplementing the two owners during peak times. If it had to pay a living wage it would likely not have been offered, to the detriment of all. Others work for experience, or to supplement an income or social security, or… because they like it. And, yes, some are working as hard as they can without making enough to live. That is bad. I agree. Can you fix it without causing more damage than you are fixing? That’s tough, likely not. > > If you raise the minimum wage, some of those jobs will just go away, depriving people of work. Some of those jobs will be altered, maybe combined with more skilled jobs or requirements raising the barrier for entry. Then too, what is a living wage. It is surely a different number in a small town in Montana, than it is in San Francisco. It is also a different number for someone on SS, or a single person versus one with a family to support, or a student working part time. > > Or all workers the same? Or, are some better than others? Why can’t a valuable worker command a higher price? You raise the minimum wage, you are pulling from the pool of cash which could potentially reward quality work, punishing high quality workers and rewarding the marginal. > > \*\*Raising the minimum wage is making a very arrogant and dangerous statement: that you know better about what a business can afford to spend, and what their labor is worth than the business. \*\* You are also telling the worker that you know better what is good for them than they do. > > It’s a dangerous thing with unintended consequences. I disagree with the portions of your statement that I’ve bolded. An adult working full time at minimum wage should be able to earn enough to be above the poverty level. I’m sure my categorisations of the absolute (meaning non-relative and not percentage based) poverty level and living wages will be lower than many on this board. However, if we expect people to be self-reliant and responsible for meeting their own needs, then they need the ability to do so, which means the ability to earn a living wage. Also, a minimum wage is a market inefficiency, but a necessary one. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that there is a very broad pool of unskilled workers. Some unskilled workers are able to make more than others through a combination of work ethic and experience, but their pay is relative to their starting point, which is the minimum wage, and many aren’t in situations where they are able to achieve raises. The market “fairly” values unskilled workers at a price that is below the minimum wage. If you expect unskilled workers to not be impoverished, and thus self-reliant, then that market inefficiency is needed. I will note that there are exceptions that justify paying below the living wage. Teen-agers, apprenticeships, work-assistance and retraining programs all, in my mind, are acceptable exceptions, although they should still have a minimum wage, just a lower one. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/110 "2019-07-26T15:20:08Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > No, that is not what I meant, and it would be either stupid or disingenuous to think that I did. That’s not even a strawman, that’s just completely fabricated from whole cloth. I’m not quite sure because it’s difficult and tedious to read the fisking style you seem to like, but this sounds like both a personal insult, and an accusation of lying. Dial back the hostility, or go play in the Pit where it’s appropriate. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/111 "2019-07-26T15:25:33Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > I disagree with the portions of your statement that I’ve bolded. An adult working full time at minimum wage should be able to earn enough to be above the poverty level. I’m sure my categorisations of the absolute (meaning non-relative and not percentage based) poverty level and living wages will be lower than many on this board. However, if we expect people to be self-reliant and responsible for meeting their own needs, then they need the ability to do so, which means the ability to earn a living wage. > > Also, a minimum wage is a market inefficiency, but a necessary one. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that there is a very broad pool of unskilled workers. Some unskilled workers are able to make more than others through a combination of work ethic and experience, but their pay is relative to their starting point, which is the minimum wage, and many aren’t in situations where they are able to achieve raises. The market “fairly” values unskilled workers at a price that is below the minimum wage. If you expect unskilled workers to not be impoverished, and thus self-reliant, then that market inefficiency is needed. > > I will note that there are exceptions that justify paying below the living wage. Teen-agers, apprenticeships, work-assistance and retraining programs all, in my mind, are acceptable exceptions, although they should still have a minimum wage, just a lower one. The problem with this is that if the market fairly values unskilled workers at a price below the minimum wage then either the employers altruistically pay them more than they are worth or do not hire them at all. The latter is much more likely. Thus those with the lowest skills are unemployable and have to be taken care of by everyone else instead of supporting themselves at a low paying job. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/112 "2019-07-26T15:30:41Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > In the military I was taught that there is no responsibility without commensurate authority. That should apply to the Conservative concept of personal responsibility. > > So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value, then: > > Without authority over her own reproduction, a woman cannot be financially responsible. The Conservative position should logically be pro-birth control and pro-abortion. > > The corporate form isolates the individual from responsibility for his personal actions. He can exercise authority without accepting responsibility. The Conservative position should be against the corporate form. > > I believe this is not the case. Personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. Killing a baby you created and are responsible for is the opposite of personal responsibility. The corporate form is a an abrogation of personal responsibility but the economic benefits are so immense that it is best to make an exception in that case. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/113 "2019-07-26T15:42:40Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > In the military I was taught that there is no responsibility without commensurate authority. That should apply to the Conservative concept of personal responsibility. > > So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value, then: > > Without authority over her own reproduction, a woman cannot be financially responsible. The Conservative position should logically be pro-birth control and pro-abortion. > > The corporate form isolates the individual from responsibility for his personal actions. He can exercise authority without accepting responsibility. The Conservative position should be against the corporate form. > > I believe this is not the case. Personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. Regardless of anyone’s position on abortion, much less birth control, you’re taking a moral argument and turning it into an economic one which is flawed logic. I’m opposed to child labour. There are children whose parents are happy for them to work, and who would do as their parents ordered them too. I’m sure there are people who aren’t bothered about child labour, and would accept them as lower priced workers. If supply and demand both exist, absent moral issues, why not let that market exist and let everyone gain the secondary and tertiary economic benefits? And frankly, speaking personally, if you’re supporting women having abortions so they can keep working, I find that rather reprehensible. I would much rather pay for a woman to have maternity care, maternity leave and child care than for her to have an abortion. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/114 "2019-07-26T16:07:46Z")
WS, Thanks for the response. Responsibility is a single attribute for a human being. It is not possible to separate moral from financial. Having children involves serious financial decisions. The authority to control all related resources is necessary in order to exercise personal responsibility. Health, age, situation, finance and moral standards are equal parameters used in exercising personal responsibility. It’s fine to disagree, but in that case, personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/115 "2019-07-26T16:21:01Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The problem with this is that if the market fairly values unskilled workers at a price below the minimum wage then either the employers altruistically pay them more than they are worth or do not hire them at all. The latter is much more likely. Thus those with the lowest skills are unemployable and have to be taken care of by everyone else instead of supporting themselves at a low paying job. 1. Strictly speaking, obeying the law isn’t altruistic. I don’t litter because I dislike litter. That’s a personal preference. Some people may not care about litter, but avoid littering because they’re afraid of being caught and fined. That’s consequence avoidance. If you pick up other people’s litter because you think it improves the community, that’s altruism. Similarly if an employer provides a benefit even though they aren’t required to and there’s no market-risk and not doing so, that’s altruism. But obeying a minimum-wage law isn’t. 2. I’m not going to hijack a thread about personal responsibility into a debate about the minimum wage. My one comment is to note that the risk of a minimum wage increase is that it will turn a profitable activity into an unprofitable activity, and there isn’t sufficient demand for the activity at the increased price required for the activity to be profitable for it to continue. However, across the entire consumer market, demand is fairly inelastic. People will generally switch to a lower priced alternative, but if all alternatives increase in price, people will usually pay the increased price rather than end their consumption. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/116 "2019-07-26T17:29:12Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > WS, > > Thanks for the response. > > Responsibility is a single attribute for a human being. It is not possible to separate moral from financial. > > Having children involves serious financial decisions. The authority to control all related resources is necessary in order to exercise personal responsibility. Health, age, situation, finance and moral standards are equal parameters used in exercising personal responsibility. > > It’s fine to disagree, but in that case, personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. If I understand your argument, you’re asserting that conservatives disagree with abortion and essentially seek to order women to give birth to unwanted babies rather than have abortions. Fair enough. I disagree that that position is universal among conservatives, but it’s obviously true of a large segment especially in the US. I think you’re also pointing out that having a baby forces financial costs and time costs, which are also financial opportunity costs. I think where you’re then going is that by forcing pregnant women to accept these costs, regardless of whether they can personally handle them or not, these conservatives are disabling poor women’s ability to be self-reliant. I agree with you. The most personally responsible thing for a woman to do is not to get pregnant if she doesn’t want a baby. However, that obviously happens. When that happens, if society is going to disallow abortion, then society should pick up the woman’s costs of having the baby. I consider picking up those costs to be corporate (meaning collective) responsibility rather than personal responsibility. However, to be in favour of imposing those costs while refusing to pay for them is personal irresponsibility. I realise some conservatives seek to have it both ways. I disagree with them, and think they’re failing their own argument if they argue for personal responsibility. Covering a couple of other issues, I can’t think of any conservative I know personally who objects to birth control. I’m aware that there are religious conservatives who object to birth control, but I believe that’s a minority and most of them are in favour of abstinence. I haven’t seen any surveys on this specific issue, but I expect that most of those religious conservatives will concede that if you’re going to “sin” by having sex when you don’t want a baby, it’s not much additional sin to go ahead and use birth control, especially if you’d prefer having an abortion to having a baby. I’m sure that there are some outliers somewhere, but frankly I think it’s a bizarre anti-pragmatic attitude. Also, you didn’t mention adoption. All the conservatives I know who disagree with abortion support adoption. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/117 "2019-07-26T17:45:01Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > In the military I was taught that there is no responsibility without commensurate authority. That should apply to the Conservative concept of personal responsibility. > > So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value, then: > > Without authority over her own reproduction, a woman cannot be financially responsible. The Conservative position should logically be pro-birth control and pro-abortion. > > The corporate form isolates the individual from responsibility for his personal actions. He can exercise authority without accepting responsibility. The Conservative position should be against the corporate form. > > I believe this is not the case. Personal responsibility is not a Conservative value. This is a good post, and it gave me pause for a while and made me think deeply enough to set off smoke alarms. I think you are wrong because the military is a bit of a special case of how responsibility exists, because you exist in the military to carry out orders through the chain of command. An absolutist view of military responsibility is that if your Sargent tells you to throw a grenade into that hut of orphans, and you carry out that order, you are blameless. It is on him. Things have evolved, and that defense failed at Nuremberg, but to a degree, the original concept holds. Within a set of parameters that do not include war crimes and atrocities and that fit within the military code of conduct, you have no moral agency or responsibility. So, what you are talking about is responsibility as it applies to the military or other rigidly structured organization. In other words, you are talking about organizational responsibility, not personal responsibility. You give an example of a woman without control of her reproduction, but there are aspects of control of her reproduction that do not include abortion. You also talk about corporate responsibility which exists under the legal fiction that a corporation is a person and that no responsibility is possible to such an entity. I agree that responsibility is too often obfuscated in practice. But, in theory the board of directors, chairman and CEO are responsible for corporate conduct. I think this would potentially work fine if we applied it and gave it teeth. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/118 "2019-07-26T17:58:17Z")
WS, I stated that personal responsibility requires that all women have authority over decisions for which they are responsible. I did not deal with the motives of Conservatives. The issue is not a matter of adoption or male attitudes toward birth control. Personal responsibility simply requires personal authority. Having sexual relations is not an absolute ‘sin’. It is a decision one makes. Birth control is not 100% effective. An unwanted pregnancy can be terminated. It is a matter of personal authority and responsibility. So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value then Conservatives support abortion. Of course we have yet to define Conservative and list Conservative values. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/119 "2019-07-26T18:08:04Z")
Scylla, Under the corporate form I can build 12 houses, sell them; then bankrupt the corporation. The next day I begin building 12 more houses down the block. The first 12 home owners have no access to me for complaints of quality, drainage etc because the entity that built their houses no longer exists. It is the way housing developments are organized. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/120 "2019-07-26T18:15:42Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > I disagree with the portions of your statement that I’ve bolded. An adult working full time at minimum wage should be able to earn enough to be above the poverty level. I’m sure my categorisations of the absolute (meaning non-relative and not percentage based) poverty level and living wages will be lower than many on this board. However, if we expect people to be self-reliant and responsible for meeting their own needs, then they need the ability to do so, which means the ability to earn a living wage. > > Also, a minimum wage is a market inefficiency, but a necessary one. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that there is a very broad pool of unskilled workers. Some unskilled workers are able to make more than others through a combination of work ethic and experience, but their pay is relative to their starting point, which is the minimum wage, and many aren’t in situations where they are able to achieve raises. The market “fairly” values unskilled workers at a price that is below the minimum wage. If you expect unskilled workers to not be impoverished, and thus self-reliant, then that market inefficiency is needed. > > I will note that there are exceptions that justify paying below the living wage. Teen-agers, apprenticeships, work-assistance and retraining programs all, in my mind, are acceptable exceptions, although they should still have a minimum wage, just a lower one. The problem here is that I agree with your sentiment. I really do. It **should** work this way. Who would disagree with the basic concept of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay? If someone goes out busts their ass for 8 hours doing a job, they should be earning enough to put food on the table, and a roof over their head. That is fair and just. I mean that. Saying “well tough shit, the world is not fair, life is not fair, deal with it!” Is callous, insensitive and most damning… it is easy. But it’s not. Sometimes an honest and full day’s work is just not worth much. Maybe it’s only worth $6/hr. If the minimum wage is $15, that work may not get done and nobody gets anything. Maybe $6 would have helped somebody who now gets nothing. You have taken away his choice, his chance. The fact is that some people, especially at the level of very basic unskilled labor come with issues and baggage that lower their $worth/hr. I know a landscaper who mows lawns near here, and he pays an hourly wage on a sliding scale based on how many days in a row somebody manages to show up and work a full day, because some of his employees are hungover and sleep in the truck all morning if they show up at all. Others work a couple of days and make enough money to make it through the rest of the week and don’t show up. He basically needs to stock his crew at 150% to count for no shows, and if they all show up he has to pay them all. He has other problems, too that lower the value of the workers who take his jobs. When he finds reliable people he usually gives them a crew and a truck and pays them very well. Even at this level he can’t find enough people who are capable of driving a truck, and responsibly running a crew of 3 other people and 4 lawnmowers to mow lawns on their own. Such a man, when he does find one gets an hourly wage AND a percentage of the earnings generated. He has been running this business the 25 years and he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others, and we are talking around $1,000 week such a person could earn. Then too, business carries risk, and can run on temporary hard times where the choice might be to close or pay less. A farmer can break his back planting a field, but there is no guarantee that locusts won’t eat his crop generating a huge loss in which case his labor had a negative value, or that his crop will recoup his investment. It’s unfair, but it’s true. It’s difficult but not impossible to pass these risk on to one’s labor. The trade off is that if I work that farmer, I get paid regardless of his outcome. If he can’t meet minimum wage and can’t plant his crop, his crop, and my labor and the goods that they could provide are removed from the economy. So… it has very real negative consequences. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/121 "2019-07-26T18:17:38Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > WS, > > I stated that personal responsibility requires that all women have authority over decisions for which they are responsible. I did not deal with the motives of Conservatives. > > The issue is not a matter of adoption or male attitudes toward birth control. Personal responsibility simply requires personal authority. Having sexual relations is not an absolute ‘sin’. It is a decision one makes. Birth control is not 100% effective. An unwanted pregnancy can be terminated. It is a matter of personal authority and responsibility. > > So, if personal responsibility is a Conservative value then Conservatives support abortion. > > Of course we have yet to define Conservative and list Conservative values. How does having personal responsibility allow a woman to kill her unborn baby? Personal responsibility means taking responsibility for your own decisions. If someone decides to take an action like having sex it is their responsibility to deal with the foreseeable outcome of that decision. Not to kill another person to evade the consequences of their action. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=7)