I read everybody's posts. I'd also read the tale by "a self described liberal public defender", only elsewhere, days before it was posted here (twice
). I don't always respond, however, because I have days of outrage fatigue, meaning I feel it, but what is there to say anymore? Argh? Arrrgghhhh?
As for this --
I believe that those of us who are able to produce abundance have a moral duty to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for those who cannot care for themselves. I believe we have this duty even to those who can care for themselves but don’t.
Bah. And bullsh*t. I believe I have a self-imposed duty to supply those things
for my own people in the case of need. I, me, my duty; no one else's. As for those who can but don't/won't, even for my own, they can take a flying leap along with Mr. Public Defender who thinks he has some divine right to appropriate and distribute anybody else's "abundance" but his own.
I was musing to myself just yesterday about the "investment" concept in, for instance, education, in light of Obongo's latest announcement concerning "free" community college for "everybody who's willing to work for it". I didn't delve into the details of what he believes "willing to work for it" means, as in, what strings, but it brought to mind a man who posted on the local forum last year arguing for the same program --in effect creating grades 13 and 14 -- for our county as a means of promising and supplying a trained workforce in order to attract an auto mfg. plant here. He used the same rationalization: an investment in this now will generate future additional tax receipts from people working at good jobs. So, win-win, right?
Wrong. Wrongwrongwrong.
What do I receive personally for "investing" in the education of a bunch of strangers? Will I pay less for their future goods and services? Uh, no. Will I benefit from the additional taxes they generate? Uh, no, unless I'm a gimmedat or the type that's always crying about the need for more public parks, and I don't want the Feds, State or County government acquiring more tax money; that's how little counties in East Jabypp come by Obesity Directors.
People just don't value what they're given for nothing, and if they don't value themselves and their own futures enough to scrape together the money to attend Community College, then the hell with them. And there's something intrinsically disordered about considering folks first as tax-generating entities.
How much more are we expected to fork over for the care and feeding of the "general public"? It's always "just a few dollars" more, on top of what is already hooked out of our incomes, and I'm fed up to the teeth with all of it.
