ANSWERS: 9
  • It DOES exist
  • should poverty exist?
  • It already does exist.
  • As long as there are humans and some are better off than others, then, yes, it should exist. I am APPALLED at the miserly who would deny the poor because it might inconvenience the rich. We are all humans.
  • What are ya gonna do? There are people out there who are lazy and don't want to work, but they are the minority. What do you do with people that can't work due to literacy, addictions, mental health issues etc. How about those who can't afford to bury the dead, or get transportation for medical treatment? Yes, welfare needs to exist. Take it away, you better get a gun and prepare to move backwards in your way of thinking, sadly.
  • Of course, we as human beings should feel compelled to take care of those less fortunate. It should not be abused though.
  • Absolutely. Although it should be regulated more so we are actually helping the needy get back on their feet instead of supporting lazy asses that don't want to work.
  • Only for the ones who truly need it.
  • Yes. In fact, it was conservatives - Disraeli in Britain and Bismarck in Germany - who founded the welfare state as an expression of the community's ethic of common provision and to reconcile the masses to the uncertainties of a free market economy. (In fact, historically, it was the socialists who opposed the welfare state. The American Socialist Norman Thomas famously told his friend not to give charity to a beggar because it would "delay the revolution." Government ownership of the means of production is NOT the same thing as welfare.) The problem is that welfare can be a disincentive to work and can actually be a force for family break-up. (There is a lot of sociological evidence that the high rate of single motherhood in poor communities stems, in part, from the fact that welfare, if not modulated, makes a male head of household unnecessary. In effect, men aren't needed and so you get single mothers and unattached males who abandon their offspring.) It can also be used for social engineering. To transform society according to some a priori plan - with the law of unintended consequences pertaining. So the welfare state needs to be calibrated and regulated. It needs to be ameliorative without attempting to be transformative. It is not either/or. Rather, "take but degree away, untune that string and Hark! what discord follows." To eliminate welfare would be as debilitating and destructive as it would be to make it all pervasive.

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