I’d be all for that, except it means poor communities end up being poorer.
Haven’t they found that same problem when it comes to school funding? If the taxes for the school come from local property taxes, it means schools in rich neighbourhoods get lots of funding. But schools in poor neighbourhoods get less funding.
If instead, all the property taxes are pooled then equally distributed through the state, all schools have equal footing. The schools in the rich neighbourhoods have the same resources as those in the poor ones. You can expand this to the national level too.
Canada has a strange concept called “transfer payments.” The federal government collects taxes, and then redistributes them to the provinces based on being have or have-not. That way, a poor province can still provide the same level of social services as a rich province. Since health care is administered at the provincial level, it means that hospital care is consistent across the country. Instead of having elite level in one province, and falling down shacks in another.
A lot of people have assholes for family and friends. Really that’s the problem with society in general. Given a choice, many people will be lazy, stupid or just plain jerks. And even if you aren’t one of those jerks, you can still become poor or otherwise adversely affected if one of them is placed a position where you require them to act competently or ethically.
I think about the small farming communities, and more likely than not there would be at least 1 total asshole in the mix. The guy that’s slowest to lend a hand for others, but then loudest when calling for help. And again it puts us back in a position where good people are punished for being good, in that no one is willing to let him suffer, and he knows that.
One of the main points in the Cranick scenario is listening to people criticize the fire department, insisting that they had a moral obligation to help. Yet, at the same time, Cranick has no moral obligation what so ever. He knows this, and uses it to his advantage.
When we go back and look at society’s role as Sam Stone described, and introduce the asshole character into the equation, the whole system breaks down. You get grown children taking advantage of their parents, knowing they can’t be kicked out of the house. You get elderly parents imposing undue hardship on their child’s family, knowing that society expects them to be cared for.
So to me, the logical consequence of this is to start imposing rules enforced by the government. Force everyone to chip in, and allow everyone access. We’re not willing to let people die, or houses to burn. So we need to have everyone chip in for ER facilities and fire services. I can’t see a way around it. Making payment voluntary hurts the good people too much, and rewards the assholes.
One further note to this, what ends up happening is that certain states become the freeloaders. I notice this where ever there is a tax discrepancy near a boarder. In cases where property tax is lower, people will buy a house and establish residency in the low tax area, then drive across the river to work and enjoy the benefits in the high tax area.
In cases of sales tax, they’ll live in the high tax state, enjoying the benefits of those taxes. And on weekends drive across the boarder to spend all their money in the low tax state.
There are certainly plenty of problems with relying on community for all welfare. No one disputes that. The point is that there are also significant problems with relying on government for welfare. Therefore, we need to find some kind of balance. In my opinion, the right balance is to rely on community, local, state, and then federal government for welfare, in that order. Federal government welfare should be minimal, providing the barest of safety nets to catch the people who fall through the other cracks, because it has significant drawbacks.
Why would we or the community or society in general ever think that there are people out there that can’t be “left out”?
If that asshole friend of yours was really a friend, he wouldn’t be an asshole! He would either toe that line that everyone else toed or he’d be banished. If he was banished from enough places, he’d die a slow death somewhere in isolation.
If you had been paying attention, the central theme here is that society won’t let someone die a slow death in isolation. For every time the asshole freeloader is put out into the cold, there will be someone with compassion that will provide assistance.
And when it seems like society runs out of compassion, our resident asshole will suddenly repent. And for each time he/she repents, there will be someone with compassion to offer forgiveness. Thus starting the entire process over.
Well to be fair, I have been paying attention, however I cannot get behind the idea that an individual with no care but himself with find infinite good grace from someone else.
If he does, it will be less likely that it would continue to happen.
I understand and even agree with your premise and to follow it to it’s natural conclusion with no regard to human nature is illogical.
Eventually humanity will kick out those who refuse or fail to follow along.
Kearson - I think humans are compassionate by nature. It’s a double edged sword in that without the capacity for compassion society as we know it really wouldn’t exist, but its obvious that freeloaders will take advantage of it again and again.
I’d even go so far as to say that this problem of freeloaders taking advantage of those who do their part is not a recent problem but has probably existed since human beings (or pre-human beings) first started living and working together.
In all my experience, I have yet to see it happen. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen or that it won’t. But even if we take your premise, and establish that grace is finite, my point would remain: freeloaders will continue to drain the system.
Take the classic drug addict that can’t hold a job. First his roommate covers for him a couple of months. Then he crashes on a friend’s couch for a couple of months. He moves in with his parents for a couple of months.
Eventually, he’ll run out of places and end up on the street. Now others, perhaps nuns, decide it’s unfair, so they set up a shelter. Eventually, he pushes the limits and gets tossed back out.
Eventually, on a cold winter night, he’s found by paramedics, unconscious and near death. They’re obligated to take him to an ER, where the ER is obligated to provide live saving treatment. From there he’ll be taken into a treatment facility. From there, we go back to friends and family, asked to take him in and keep him sober.
What’s interesting to note is that in each stage his grace-limit is re-established. As an example, the compassion extended by the ER is independent of all the previous grace. At no point in the chain does someone say, “well, he got kicked out of his parent’s place, so we won’t help him.”
But still, we’ll establish at some point he’ll be left to die. Society has had to provide a significant cost before that runs out. Essentially, there is a lot of grace available, and it costs a lot of money.
My previous post is a bit long winded. In summary, yes there are limits. The problem is that the limit is extremely high, and hence extremely expensive.
I agree with other posters that health care is like education. It is one of those things that we believe everyone should have (at some level) regardless of ability to pay.
The problem I have with some of the ideas regarding a capitated subsidy for education OR health care is that it gives money to people who don’t need it. For example, the proposal i have heard is to give people $X that they can use towards whatever health care plan they want (or int he case of education use towards whatever private education they want). The problem here is that you have a bunch of people who send their kids to places like Sidwell Friends getting a $X subsidy to send their kids to one of the most priveleged schools in America. You also get a bunch of rich retirees with cadillac gold plates insurance getting a $X subsidy for their hiealth insurance which covers Yoga and massage (and perhaps even plastic surgery).
This doesn’t mean you can’t get more than the basics. I know plenty of kids that go to public school and then their parents pay extra to send them to remedial or enahancement tutoring, piano lessons, karate, whatever the fuck you want, but on your own dime.
in a world of limited resources where we have a public education or health care system to ensure that everyone gets a minimum standard of health care or education, its silly to spend money to subsidize tuition at Exeter or Sidwell and it is equally silly to subsidize gold plated health care plans. let them get gold plated supplemental insurance if they want but the free stuff from the government is going to look like what everone else gets.
The problem is that government is run by people, and thus subject to being run by lazy, stupid jerks.
That’s not why we pay taxes though. We pay taxes because there are services that nearly everyone uses or is indirectly benefited by. And many of those services don’t really lend themselves to a “pay as you go” model.
If you’re talking about the current health care law, it doesn’t really work like that. Subsidies are on a sliding scale according to income, so by the time somebody is making enough money to get a deluxe gold plated plan, they probably aren’t getting anything (or very little) in terms of subsidies.