Social Safety Nets

Depends on your situation. If you have family and friends maybe, but lots of people don't survive and you don't see them. Healthcare, housing, food, etc. is mostly tied to employment or lots of money. People don't have time or energy to figure out any alternatives if they exist, and face eviction and starvation if they don't, which is a whole new world of not being able to survive. We see lots of drug abuse, theft, suicide, and similar things precisely because there is no saf

Some people will be giving back. Point is not all can and want. For some a job might even be a luxury.Your role in society now becomes: not being a problem because you have no job/money. That is why they give you money.

Not where I live fortunately. We have social systems that care about people that cannot "earn their keep".

I don't disagree but it should proportional with strings attached.In a civilised society nobody should starve to death or die because they can't afford healthcare.But neither of these things should come without any strings. These people only exist because we fortunately live in a society where most of the rough edges are nerfed out.That doesn't mean we should be accepting or normalising this. It should be frowned upon and be something not to be proud of.Something like:

Free housing, food, and healthcare for every human being. Figure out how they can contribute back to society once they are no longer sleeping at a bus stop.

What's so bad about needing help? And what's so bad about society helping it's neediest maintain a basic level of existence?

Nobody questions your personal ability to voluntarily provide for them, though.The question is how much the rest of us are involuntarily having to provide for them, and more relevantly, whether or not society is even really being improved if the result is an increasing number of people so unable / unwilling to contribute to society that they can't even be bothered to show up for an interview.It is very easy to spend other people's money supporting people perceived as downtro

You have made assumptions a plenty about me but i'll stick to your anectodal point. Progressive taxation and safety nets helps people like you describe - would you rather your mother be in a group home or on the streets freezing to death? People being 'lazy' is a far superior alternative to simply abandoning people. The problem comes when people are only given material support but no mental health support etc. This support is given out in the US and UK (where I am from) but it is

I understand that there are legitimate reasons that someone may need assistance.My problem is with this nonsensical mentality that, without any actual statistics, people automatically assume that anyone struggling is a victim of circumstance. Or worse, that they have somehow been abused or stolen from by those with money. Which, by the way, I believe I'd a relatively new outlook in the history of the U.S.The danger is that it encourages people to live haphazardly and in the long run i

Well, you don't see too many homeless people or citizens failing to receive medical treatment or retraining if they fall on hard times. It's a compassionate society when it comes to care. I'm sure it's cutthroat in the business sense, but that's normal. The US is cutthroat in nearly every aspect where we should care for one another and prevent problems from existing--gun control, drug use, unemployment, basic housing, education (this is getting worse the more evangelical