Quote:
Originally Posted by maskedmelon
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It's not a matter of "Fuck you I got mine." It's simple recognition that people learn through participation. They learn to converse by conversing. They learn social moors by practicing social moors. They learn to calculate by calculating. They learn to ride a bike by riding a nike. They learn success by being successful.
Others can assist by sharing information, but at the end of the day the individual has a choice to participate and endeavor to learn or to not. Conversing for someone does not help them become better at conversation. Completing math problems for children does not help them become better at math. Giving people money does not help them learn to earn/manage money.
Hard work does pay off and there is a reason it is infinitely more respected than talent: it is a path by which [i]anyone[i] may compete/succeed.
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Yea that sounds reasonable when you wrongfully reduce civic duty down to some caricature of welfare where you're taking $20 bills out of Johnny Middle Class's wallet and giving it to LeQuandaroga and her 8 kids.
Collective responsibility isn't about giving people things, it's about enriching the entire nation by creating opportunity and investing in society itself. Believe it or not, there is often a culture tied to poverty, and people born into poverty are likely to stay that way. It's a cycle. They are less likely to ever develop the skills to flourish in modern society.
I was born wealthy. My parents had their shit together. They read to me every night, I ate nutritious food, grew up tall, strong, smart, and healthy. They took me on summer vacations all around the country, taught me about ethics, the value of hard work and educational attainment, sent me to exceptional schools, helped me network, paid for my college, my car, and taught me fiscal discipline.
Meanwhile, there were kids growing up in Los Angeles who had never even seen the ocean 30 miles away, whose parents didn't give a fuck, and taught them negative, self-destructive behaviors. What chance did those kids have to end up successful, functional, high-achieving adults? It's not impossible; people rise up out of poverty every day, but that is the exception, not the norm. And it's not because one day they made a choice "Yea I'm gonna be a lazy criminal fuck and do nothing with my life", it's because sociological determinism is real, the culture you are raised with has a profound impact on who you become, and opportunity is important. Culture, including the settings and values with which you are raised, effects you down to the way your prefrontal cortex is wired.
That's the underlying reasoning for why we endeavor toward lower tax rates for poorer people, food stamps, need-based college scholarships, and stuff like that. It doesn't just help them overcome their circumstances, it benefits society as a whole by disrupting the cycle of poverty. When you help the poor, you're not just doing it to help them, you're helping everybody. Because poor people are fucking awful and we don't want them making more poor people. Study after study after study has shown that when there is infrastructure in place to give people opportunity, social mobility increases, poverty decreases, and society improves.
Also I hope you aren't Christian because having contempt for the poor, the less fortunate, or the inferior are just about the least Christian cognitions you can have. How the religious right deals with the cognitive dissonance I have no clue.
/positivism