Mar 11, 2018

As I said before, I'm not advocating for taking away people's money who have already earned it. I agree with you that once you have your money, you should be able to do whatever you want with it (though like you said, I wish people were more altruistic). I'm just saying that I think CEOs should be paid less money and low-wage workers should be paid more money to close the gap between the upper/lower classes and the middle class.

It's great that you worked hard to achieve success, and I think hard work does pay off in a lot of cases. But I wouldn't want you to have to work 60-80 hour weeks to earn a living wage any more than the single mom or any other person. But it's not always possible for everyone. As you said, everyone's situation is different.

I agree no one should get straight handouts (other than people who are legitimately too disabled to work or people with kids in some cases), but I don't consider a living wage a handout. Everyone who is physically able to work works, and everyone who works gets paid at least a living wage.

 

Mar 11, 2018

1. There are very, very few people who are dumb enough to think adopting two kids for extra money would make their life easier, and even less of those people would pass through the adoption agency to actually get two kids.
2. Even if it did happen...why is it mooching if two kids without parents get a home and extra money to be fed? Do you seriously think that's "mooching"?
3. Maybe it's not directly the government's fault that a person was born into a situation that made it hard for them to further their education/skill set, but government laws/programs/etc. and lack thereof have contributed to the socioeconomic factors that keep people downtrodden. And why shouldn't the government or companies help them out? You'd rather have someone with two kids have to work 60-80 hour work weeks every week to barely scrape by than to just pay them a little bit more?

Look man, I know there's thousands of factors to consider and nothing involving economics/the government is so simple that it can be laid out in a forum post. I know that I alone don't have a bulletproof solution. I know there would be tons of kinks in revamping how people get paid and/or assisted by the government. But I don't understand your resistance toward helping our own people, toward simply having a bit of empathy, toward even talking about trying something different. And at what cost would it be to you or me? I don't know how much you make, but I doubt you're in the tax bracket that would lose a significant amount of money from something like this (and people in those tax brackets already have more money than they know what to do with).