The disconnect is that you keep talking about your own personal responsibility, but there are other kinds of responsibility, no? People, even conservatives, regularly feel a sense of responsibility for taking care of loved ones, family, friends, and neighbors. People feel a sense of responsibility for their communities, their country, etc. I don’t know if you consider these responsibilities to be personal or not – certainly they don’t fit in with what description – but they are responsibilities nonetheless, and they are very real.
My point isn’t that your own personal responsibility should extend to those areas. My point is that conservatives use other people’s personal responsibility as an excuse to eschew their own non-personal responsibility for their community, their neighbors, or their country.
My family has been fairly thoroughly researched. Although I cannot account for all branches prior to their arrival in the US, I have convincing evidence that none of my ancestors owned or sold slaves after immigrating, and fairly strong evidence that none were likely to have owned slaves in their respective native lands. (The research was not specifically oriented on the subject of slave ownership, but did include social information, and personal correspondence and records for those in the US, and records from Europe back to just after 1500.)
A few were actively involved Abolitionists, and some members of churches which opposed slave ownership. Most were not wealthy enough to own slaves. The few who were are well enough known to my family (although not to historians) that their feelings on the subject are also well documented.
I find it odious to claim that the acts of my ancestors convey some sort of righteousness to me. I think it absurd that someone who has slave ancestors thereby has been a specific victim of my ancestors. It is likely that few living American descendent of slaves have no ancestors who were white slave owners. Perpetrators or victims of the atrocity of slavery do not bequeath guilt, or moral obligation from its practice to their descendants. It is possible that property inherited from slave owners might be reasonably held to have clouded title. I own no real estate. Were there living former slaves, or slave owners, I suppose it might be possible to legally address the question of debt among them.
In the case of historically verifiable family estates based on slave ownership it seems reasonable that the descendants of slaves should have recourse to attachment of those properties; perhaps even as a class action versus that estate. But simply living in the country, and not being a slave seems to me to be insufficient cause to support the existence of debt.
If the crime of slave ownership conveys guilt by inheritance, what then of the crimes of theft, murder, fraud, extortion? Shall we enforce ex post facto confiscation of all inherited profit from formerly legal acts?
I feel no guilt for the acts of my ancestors. Not because my ancestors were uniformly innocent of wrongful deeds, but because I am not guilty of things I did not do. I have not profited from slavery. I hold no property because of the exploitation of slaves.
Some of my ancestors fled persecution. Some had their homes taken by invaders. No one owes me any money because of that, because I didn’t suffer those losses. The people living where my ancestors once lived are not perpetrators of their ancestors actions, because they didn’t do it. If I take someone else’s wealth, home, or freedom because of their ancestry, that is my crime.
If you’re going to give me the last word, then I’m going to take it.
Though I suspect that it won’t actually be the last word in this thread.
If you add up 3.7% unemployed, 2+% working part time who want to work full time, 2.9% who are working full time but still don’t earn enough to live on, and some hard-to-determine percentage who aren’t counted because they’ve given up actively looking for work, that gets you at minimum somewhere significantly over 8.6% of the working age population. And you say that’s not high enough.
But that’s not the main point. I’m willing to posit that as the economy’s currently constructed you may be right. However: You can argue that the economy won’t function unless there are significant numbers of people (the exact percentage isn’t the issue) who can’t find a job that pays them enough to live on. Or you can argue that people who don’t have a job that pays them enough to live in are in that position due to their own individual choice to not be properly responsible for themselves. But trying to claim both of those positions at once just plain doesn’t work.
Do you know the game ‘musical chairs’? It doesn’t matter how hard people are trying or how fast they are. If there are fewer chairs than participants, some people are going to wind up out. And you’re saying that the economy only functions if there are fewer chairs than participants; but that the individual people who wind up without a chair are individually to blame for not having one.
How did we get the interstate highway system, then? Or a judicial system? Or the military?
No, that is in no way the exact same problem. Driving a different car didn’t upend your entire life.
You’re failing to understand the problem because you think money is essentially exchangeable for homes; or, to put it slightly differently, that a home and a house are the same thing. Apparently, as I suspected from your earlier post, you’re one of the people for whom this is true. Explaining why it isn’t true for others is a bit like trying to explain the impact of color in artwork to someone who only sees shades of grey.
Coming at this from a different direction, which is almost certainly not going to work either but maybe somebody else will be able to see it so I’ll give it a try: rationality is a tool that we use to get us what we want. It’s a really really useful tool; it can make it possible to accomplish things we couldn’t do without it; it can make it possible to accomplish things we didn’t even know we wanted when we started to use it; and it can make it possible to avoid unwanted results that could make it impossible to get what we want. But rationality is never the driver. Emotion is always the driver; and it is absolutely essential. Wanting to keep one’s home is emotionally based, yes. Wanting to have one’s children succeed, by whatever definition of succeeding one believes in, is also emotionally based. Wanting to be able to get something to eat today is emotionally based. Wanting to stay alive, or wanting anyone else to be able to do so, is emotionally based.
So ‘the underlying base of that argument is emotional, not rational’ is in no way a useful argument. It applies also to everything you yourself want to have happen, no matter how much of a rational or rationalized superstructure you build on top of it.
(It occurs to me that you’ve also massively moved a goal post. This part of the discussion started because you said (post 101) that property taxes aren’t regressive. I pointed out that often they are in practice. Saying that it’s possible to get out of the situations in which they are doesn’t mean that they aren’t.)
Being satisfied with one’s situation and being extremely dissatisfied with it but not expecting to be able to improve it are quantitatively the same thing?
Maybe. But they’re not qualitatively the same thing.
With that kind of strict definition of ‘personal responsibility’ or any other attribute to either conservatives or liberals, then neither of them can claim to have any attributes whatsoever and that my good sir is silly.
Altruism is a nice desirable quality. One that if left up to the individual is a great thing. If forced upon someone it stops being so nice. Maybe this is the difference between liberals and conservatives? Conservatives believe in live and let live, liberals want to make decisions for others? because they know better.
Right or wrong decisions be damned, we just got to do something!
I’m not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. Conservatives believe in helping other people, right? Isn’t that out of a sense of responsibility?
Of course. Why are you appealing to or suggesting hypocrisy by directing your argument against that doesn’t apply to the actual situation?
Ok.
No, it shouldn’t. I can say that I have responsibilities to my friend, country, school district, Etc. These are not personal responsibility. Doesn’t mean that they are not important, or that I can ignore them.
I think you’ve bungled the job.
It seems to what you are actually saying is that conservatives say “That’s not my mess, I’m not cleaning it up,” or “clean up your own mess.”
You do know that Republicans tend to give more to charity, don’t you? I don’t think what you are saying holds true.
What it seems to me that you are trying to do is say: “something bad happened here 50-100 years ago, so I want to force this group of people who had nothing to do with it to give some stuff to this other bunch of people that had nothing to do with it.” Somehow you are trying to tie this in to Personal responsibility so you can paint conservatives as hypocrites or whatever.
The fact is that I think redistribution are generally bad and unworkable and undesirable on so many levels as to be dismissible. It’s easy to be generous with somebody else’s stuff.
The way I, as a conservative handle these things in one very small way is that I also promote the common good in my community. I have God’s own lawnmower. The trout commission owns land across the street. I mow it for free so kids can play and people can walk their dogs and such, because I can, and it’s nice for my community.
It is not my “personal responsibility” to do so, any more than it is for me to pick up garbage I find on the road when I go for a run.
I too live in a community that is not far away from one that is not so nice. I do things that help improve that community too. I have done them personally, financially, by serving boards, etc.
Lots of conservatives, liberals…people just do these things, because it’s nice and feels good (and let me the first to admit that being a well thought of charitable community minded guy has its own benefits, but so what?)
I know I promised you the last word, but I cannot stand to see the math butchered the way you did.
You can’t add percentages that way.
If 50% of people are male, and 50% of people are female and 20% are minorities and 20% are left handed, and 39% admit to picking their noses and eating when nobody is looking that does not add up to 179%
The actual number of working poor who usually work full time who are living below the poverty level and who have had low wages as a contributing cause to this represent 1.55 percent of the general workforce according to numbers from the census bureau and BLS in 2017.
Realize that that number does not say that low wages are the only reason. The vast majority of that group are also going to be suffering from other issues, labor market issues, and personal issues.
This thing you are worried about is really not a thing at all.
You are if you are talking about government programs. Paying taxes is not optional.
No, it’s not.
Personal responsibility is an easy case to make. Most people understand that, if I do something, I am responsible for the consequences. I do something wrong or stupid, I bear the harm and must make it right. I do something right or smart, I get the benefits. That’s the general rule, and most people understand that.
But “you didn’t do anything wrong, but you are responsible for fixing it” is not something that can be assumed. You have to actually make the case.
OK, there are poor people over there in another town. I didn’t make them poor, but I am supposed to make them not-poor. Asking what the poor people are going to do is not avoiding personal responsibility.
Maybe there is something I can do to help. But that doesn’t end all discussion, because personal responsibility is something I value as a conservative, and therefore I want to know if everyone else is valuing it as well.
Charity is only one part of this. Also, where charitable contributions go matters, which is also sort of my point.
No, no no no no. I’m not talking about forcing anyone to do anything, and I’m not talking about hypocrisy, and I’m not talking about being generous with somebody else’s stuff.
Let me put it this way. When Mitt Romney said, “I’ll never convince [the 47%] to take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” was he
a) making a nuanced argument about whether aid to communities in need should be compulsory or voluntary, or
b) making a value judgement about which Americans deserve help at all?
Do you think statements like that about people being unable to take personal responsibility and care for their lives are likely to increase, or decrease, voluntary charitable aid from those who agree with that message?
I’m not talking about government programs. Thanks for the civics lesson, though.
There’s all kinds of charity that people don’t bother making cases for, right? Someone at your church has hit hard times and needs a new washer and dryer so they send around a collection basket, happens all the time. Do you feel a personal responsibility to replace their broken washer and dryer? Of course not. Do you feel a general responsibility to help those in your church community when they fall on hard times? Most people would say yes. And people do that without putting the recipient through the ringer about whether or not they’ve exhibited an appropriate degree of personal responsibility, or whether charity in this case will breed dependence. It’s a much simpler equation.
C. When people are dissatisfied, unhappy and circumstances are not what they want them to be, they are likely to blame anything and anyone but themselves, and this is bad.
And I agree with that. Life is what you make of it.
I don’t feel like that because I want people to admit they are inferior pieces of shit, or fuckups or they made their own bad and have to lie on it.
I feel like that because people learn from fucking up, and if you don’t realize that you fucked up you can’t learn and you’ve wasted the experience and you are probably going to fuck up again.
Also, because taking personal responsibility is empowering. Perhaps you are in a situation where 98% of it isn’t your fault or there was nothing you could do about it. That leaves you 2% to work with. Taking personal responsibility let’s you identify the things that you can work on to change your circumstances. If you don’t, your stuck.
It’s my frickin’ thread, if it was irrelevant I wouldn’t have taken care to phrase it that way.
I pretty much laid it out in the OP. I don’t think Mitt Romney feels any responsibility (note I said responsibility, not personal responsibility) for helping those people because they refuse, in his mind, to take personal responsibility for themselves. It’s a value judgement of their character that he’s using to avoid feeling responsible for them as Americans. And that’s the way, I’m arguing, that conservatives tend to use the phrase “personal responsibility.” Not as a value they personally hold, even though I don’t disagree that they do, but as something that other Americans lack.
Then why do you keep bringing up Mitt Romney, and what he said about taxes?
No.
Who said anything about putting people thru the wringer? Asking people what they can do to solve their own problems is not putting people thru the wringer.
It is assuming that other people are responsible for their own lives more than I am. Sometimes, sure, they are helpless victims. But I am not going to assume that.
“Your great-grandfather oppressed my great-grandfather, and that’s why I’m poor. Gimme money.”
