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Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 11:31 AM EDT |
That's one side of the big picture.
The other side is: can the government tell
free loaders not to freeload? Can it decide
to solve a free loader problem that it hurting
others by taxing the free loaders to encourage
them to stop free loading?
And the government does already use taxes to
encourage people to fix their houses so that
they aren't such energy hogs, etc.
This isn't anything new, really.
The big picture is bigger than you see: it's
can a government care what happens to its citizens
and try to protect those who on their own will
die or suffer? Or should it let it be dog eat
dog?
The big dogs want the latter, of course. The little
dogs wouldn't mind a helping hand.
So the big picture question is: does government
have a social role?
If you research it, as I have just done, you'll find
that when Social Security was first proposed, people
used the same arguments now being used against
ACA, that it's anti freedom, etc. But at the time,
more than 50% of older Americans were living in real
poverty in America, thanks to the Depression and the
freedom of the businesses and Wall Street to do
what they keep doing, the ups and downs, which impact
people pretty harshly.
Some say, let it happen. Others say, why not care,
when there is so much wealth available?
That's the real big picture, and it's a moral one.
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