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Which is, I suppose, a way of saying that only governments can have power to affect your life. But even if that were true, it would not rule out the possibility of a small group of individuals routinely subverting the political process to affect your life through government.
There is certainly an argument to be made. Take health care, for instance: is it a commodity that the rich deserve more and better of than the poor? Or should it be like infrastructure which is available to all equally?
Like housing, education, and food, if you can afford better, you should be able to purchase better.
Since we are merely outlining the problem, I won't ask you for an argument supporting that position quite yet.
Right, and we are not necessarily talking about binary "all or nothing" options, either.
Who's to say what is unnecessary? But there are other approaches as well. For example, our local ESL program has a class which teaches how to make nutritious meals out of US grocery store commodities which may be unfamiliar to new immigrants--the notion being that how to eat nutritiously on little money is not something the poor already know and just blow off.
I don't think anybody is seriously proposing giving away houses, but what do you think about low-cost housing or rental assistance? Given the number of homeless people who are employed and even have families, relegating them all to homeless shelters seems a little harsh.
But there is an element of self-interest to be considered. The state of US workforce training is abysmal and a serous limitation on labor productivity, which affects us all.
Yes, the poor can always go the the emergency room. But the emergency room is not set up to provide the kind of routine care which often prevents illnesses from becoming serous medical emergencies and there are services which they don't provide, like vision and dental care. It's just not cost-effective but we all wind up paying for it anyway
The person (or entity) that is giving you free stuff decides what is unnecessary.
Personally I think programs in place like section 8 are necessary for those who need it.
Whether an argument can be made that free college is a good idea or not, I don’t think it should be considered a moral or legal right.
Again; should not be considered a moral or legal right.
What's a section 8 program?
I'm not sure how "moral" comes into it exactly. Large numbers of dead and dying poor people piling up would be a nuisance. Lots of unhireable poor people wandering around with nothing to do are a nuisance, too, especially when there are unfilled jobs requiring training..
Section 8 is a government system that pays a percentage of your rent.
Moral right or legal right? What other kinds of rights are there?
True. Like I said; medical emergencies should be taken care of
Free college ain’t gonna fix that IMO; of anything it might make it worse because people would be getting useless degrees that doesn’t lead to employment because they are free, and the colleges will increase the cost of getting these useless degrees because the Government will guarantee payment. They say when the Government (freddie mac & fannie mae) got involved in college tuition is when the cost of college really got out of control. The conservative view is usually that private enterprise and private charities usually do better than Government involvement, when the government gets involved, things more often than not get worse.
Poor people who get an illness which might have been prevented by regular check-ups or easily cured by them have to wait until the situation becomes life-threatening and they go to the emergency room--all at greater cost to the rest of us than the check-ups would have been. And poor people with chronic conditions can go to the devil. Why? What's the point?
OK, I see--you're arguing against a stereotype of what "going to college" means.
Notice I said right to basic health care, basic food and basic housing. I do think all of these should be provided by our society for those that cannot afford it. Do you?
And, by and large, they ARE being taken care of now.
No they are not. There are many people that are homeless and don't want to be. Many people that do not get routine checkups because they cannot afford to etc. We are not doing a good job of this. If someone of sound mind chooses to be homeless then so be it. Many do have mental issues or do not want to be homeless.
Illegal activity is a different subject.
So your position is that if federal aid and federally secured student loans were removed from the equation, the cost of post-secondary education would decline. Why would that happen? More importantly, how would you address the problem we face with an inadequately trained workforce?
I'm not sure that the genie can be put back into the bottle that easily. However, it is undeniable that the federal government caused the problem in the first place.
