It’s fucking called prevension.
These kinds of expenses has two reasons behind them :
- It’s the kind thing to do, to provide food for hungry children and orphans and the needy
- It’s CHEAPER to give these fucking people the basic necesary things, because if you don’t, then they will steal it, and now you have to pay for bread, AND a broken window, AND the fucking jail for them.
I’ve been saying for years now, you can pay for police and jails or you can pay for social assistance and schools, but one way or another, you will pay.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people deeply resent supporting society, and would rather have a solution that makes poor people suffer more.
Yes, but it’s worth it to make them say it out loud, rather than letting them hide behind excuses like fiscal responsibility or the economy.
If cutting these programs had a meaningful impact on either our tax bills or the national debt, I would be more willing to have the conversation about what should be funded by the government and what should be done by private local charity. I support the idea that government funding should be the absolute last resort, the only thing left after all other options have been totally exhausted. I also believe that the government which governs least, governs best. But that means that when something stops being funded, the taxpayers should immediately feel it and have more cash on hand.
But somehow, the government funds less and less, but takes in more money and takes on more debt, and their salaries and pension funds get bigger.
so like, a lot of this stuff gets done (in the US at least) by charitable CORPORATIONS (gasp! a dirty word!) and funded through government grants.
I’m not opposed to that. But I don’t think that the government should be the first place to look. I think that individuals in the local area (and presumably care about their neighbors) should be the first source of money. Not the government threatening force.
Half the buildings in my small town are owned by 2 families. One owns the largest private employer in the county, the other owns the largest dealership in the area and is also our state senator. There is no provate charity for this stuff because there is no money going to said charities. The wealthiest hoard everything and make sure there are as few scraps for the rest of us as possible.
Rugged individualim is completely incompatible with modern life.
yup. that money wouldn’t get to the charities without the strong arm of the government. i have helped run the largest fundraiser in the area for 30 years. we bring mid 6 figures every year for the homeless shelters and cover two months operating expenses. the rest comes from grants.
to all you ancap/libertarian/bullshit types thinking oh the government shouldn’t do this, the money you invest getting someone out of poverty, you get back societally tenfold just from them being wealthier down the road. that is why this is the government and society’s job, not individuals’. they will have a shitton more money to spend in a year and a shitton more money than that the next year and so on, with compounding effects on the economy. the only better investment is educating children (given current political realities), possibly universal healthcare or ubi. but now we’re splitting hairs and getting into utopias if we’re talking statesia.
what does this even mean?
It means it’s often cheaper for society to intervene and help young people before they experience trauma and grow up to be troubled people who end up costing society a lot more money.
It’s called building a future worth a fuck
Who is going to pay for it if a country doesn’t have a foster care/orphanage programme? The children and orphans, with their lives.
Plus the rest of society when they turn to crime to survive
Not only that, it effectively takes potential people out of the workforce. It also gives people no reason not to be deviants leading to higher expenditure on enforcement and incarceration. Not to mention potential higher crime rates.
I’m confused too. It lists programs aimed at helping people become productive members of society, so my best guess is it’s suggesting not paying for these programs would lead to social issues that have a larger cost.
It means private enterprise can’t or won’t pay for certain things that we want, so they need to be taxpayer funded if we want them to exist at all.
If society pays for things that eliminate individuals’ needs before they begin to suffer from them, society doesn’t have to pay to incarcerate or rehabilitate them when they turn to destructive behavior to cope with or reduce that suffering.
I can only speak to personal experience in the USA, but the post covid years have drastically accelerated things in my part of the world. Every “public” service seems to be gimped these days. I could try to write a brief summary of the highlights and it would still be a wall of text. DMV, is fucked. Social security office, is fucked. Post office, is fucked. Court house, is fucked. School system, it’s fucked. It’s all fucked. What are we even paying taxes for and why do they seem to be going up?
The worst part is, this whole charade has bled over into the private sector as well. Try to go to the doctor, it’s fucked. Go to the hospital, it’s fucked. Try to buy groceries, it’s fucked. Go get your car fixed, it’s fucked. It’s all fucked. Why is the cost of everything going up so much when almost everything is getting more and more fucked?
Anyway, I know this sounds pessimistic, and there probably are exceptions of things that are getting better or at least are maintaining. It’s just hard to see this all going anywhere but down, that’s the problem. Almost everybody I know is worried about layoffs at work, but at the same time, we’re all stressed because we’ve got too much on our plates trying to do the job of 2 or 3+ people for pay that certainly does not reflect the effort. Makes you wonder how this doesn’t all fall apart immediately.
And fuck. I’ve skipped over all the details, yet still ended up with a wall of text.
Late Stage Capitalism.
It isn’t pessimistic to realize that our current society is fundamentally flawed and we are living through the consequences of those flaws.
I will pay for these social programs, IF the government give us tax transparency. I don’t trust my government nearly enough for them to not do some sort of corruption. Gotta know where the money went.
The concepts work a lot better if people are active participants in the governance of their communities instead of the government being some separate entity that dictates rules from on high.
Government cannot be for the people unless it is made of the people, and that is the largest flaw of our current system. Our government is not made of the people, it is made of the ruling class which only seeks to exploit people for power.
