We have a dynamic economy. In the past 150 years, we've gone from an agrarian society, to an industrial society, to a service society to a technological society to a knowledge society. Previous generations made the transition from one economy to another; why is this generation unable to do so? It's not easy, one may not succeed, but one should at least try.
To say people don't try I think is unfair. And to think that everyone can just make a "transition" is way too simplistic. People are complex. Many people don't want to leave the job their family has been doing for generations to go work in a cube or to work at mcdonalds. To expect people to give up their livelihoods and work a job that devalues work (for the good of corporate profits and the availability of cheap stuff) is unrealistic.
And I think family farms are great, but if they can't compete against agribusiness, then they should sell. Remember, creating subsidies for these farmers simply results in higher food and energy prices for everyone else.
Wait, are you talking about family farms or agribusiness? Remember, it's agribusiness that is receiving huge subsidies so that we can continue to run our economy and food system on corn. It's one of the most backwards and unsustainable industries we have in America, and we are paying right into it. I'd be all for providing subsidies for small farmers and taking them away from huge agribusiness. I can't think of a better way of providing jobs for rural folks who don't want to have to move to the city and work at Wendy's while at the same time helping an unsustainable and harmful sector of our economy move forwards.
Pulling yourself by your bootstraps doesn't mean striking it rich; it can mean just putting a roof over the head of your family and food on the table. However, there is dignity in all work and providing those things for yourself is so much better for your self-worth than getting a check from the government.
In saying these kinds of things, it seems you might have the benefit of being detached from the situation. If you worked in manufacturing and after seeing your job shipped overseas, what would you do? Go and work 3 minimum wage jobs to feed your family? Or work one and get government assistance? Nobody really wants to not have a job and get free shit from the government, especially not the folks who lost their jobs due to American business being allowed to circumvent labor and wage laws by shipping American jobs overseas. Those folks want their old jobs back, not to go and be a cubicle dwelling computer monkey.
You seem to want to pretend that taking care of others who choose not to take care of themselves is the compassionate thing to do. I disagree. I think the truly compassionate thing to do is to incentivize people to improve themselves by making our social safety net so bare bones (food, clothing, shelter) that's it's difficult for people to live on it for more than brief periods.
Yeah, that might incentivize people, but it will also kill a bunch of people too. But I guess, survival of the fittest right? For me, this all comes back to the fact that working in a service economy is almost traumatizing for some people. Some people just want to work with their hands, do something of quality, get the job done and be proud of their work. The whole incentivization thing really means, "How can we make people think that they have to work the way we want them to?" We don't want the American people to work manufacturing, agriculture or even many tech jobs anymore. We have cheap and/or slave labor overseas to do that. Or we've got machines to do it for us. There's no pride in quality anymore, there's no pride in making something unique when you can just buy one at IKEA for fractions of its true cost.
You want to talk about taking responsibility? How about not basing our entire economy on unsustainable consumer goods shipped in from overseas? That's irresponsible. How about keeping jobs in America and paying for the full cost of something as dictated by our laws, instead of using foreign labor and circumventing those laws? Are those laws meaningless? Apparently so. That's irresponsible. People don't want to work not because they are lazy or irresponsible, but because ultimately they are wasting half of their day chasing the dream of somebody else.
/off topic black Friday rant
But really, I see your point. If you read what I just wrote above, you'll see that I don't have too much trust in the system, even if people weren't using welfare and it were working at full efficiency. So, I don't care if people take handouts. It's just the fiddlers playing as the ship sinks.
