Quote:
Originally Posted by Lune
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What is it you think we are doing for underperformers? Do you have any idea what welfare is actually like in the United States? It's not a glamorous existence.
One of the reasons it's in our best interest to try to help them is because of how profoundly poverty is heritable, and all the ways that growing up impoverished stunts an individual. Punishing somebody for being impoverished, or leaving them to die, may feel good and just, but it does little to solve the problem. And this is less about just giving them money, and more about providing opportunity. (Affordable tuition, affordable housing, decent wages)
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Of course it isn't glamorous. By funding it you perpetuate misery. It is literally subsidy of failure, which is endemic. Those who rise from poverty rise from it whether given aid or not. Those who do not, do not whether given aid or not. Offering aid is self-serving but praiseworthy for the bold embrace of compassion in the cold face of reason. Beseeching the government to offer aid at the expense of others who have succeeded isn't even commendable on those grounds because you are only alleviating the personal cost of your moral crusade by spreading it across others who have overcome and may or may not share your sensibilities.
Suggesting normal people might somehow revel in allowing others to die is really quite inane. To the contrary, humans are social creatures who generally share a profound desire to help their fellow man even when not in their own interest. The problem of course arises when your chosen recipient fails to reciprocate your efforts.