Does everyone deserve an equal opportunity to succeed?
I'm not talking of equality in the realm of equal standing among individuals in a slave/master sort of way. I'm not speaking of "rights" (define rights as you would see fit). I'm speaking of the opportunity to be "rich" or "poor".
We can all agree that the socio/economic strata that one is born into lends to advantages or disadvantages. If you're born into a family with significant financial backing, there are many opportunities for success. Good school, a home life where material concerns are not a point of stress, you name it. If you're born into a family without financial backing, there are precious few opportunities for success (if any exist). Are we as a society going to strive to take away those advantages and give them to the disadvantaged? Or are we going to let the advantaged have what they have, and try to help the disadvantaged? Maybe we decide to leave it alone and let what happens happen?
It is often pointed out those of society who are not successful (as measured by material wealth) are not necessarily there for lack of trying. It is also pointed out that the system that we have allows for some individuals to abuse the system.
Nossy, I believe, brought up the thought of what if the individual makes a mistake, or gets sick and that puts them in a financial hole next to impossible to drag themselves out of. I look at my own family and see those who dropped out of High School for <insert their reason here>. Or I see other family who are strung out on <insert their drug of choice here>. Where do we draw the line of the place a person is in life is due to the choices that they make? Where do we "save" them from themselves?
Is it the government's place to take care of us...feed us...clothe us...and give us something to do so that we don't become destructive? Where does a society balance compassion with tough love?
~Jeordam
absolutely, we should be doing what we can to create a society where living sober is better than self-medication, and where a poor kid from the ghetto has more of a chance of getting an education than getting killed or put in jail forever. unfortunately, and in relation to your other post on theology above, we have some people professing their christian ideals and proclaiming that we are a christian nation while simultaneously saying that the poor are nothing but low-life leechers on society hell-bent on destroying what rich people hold dear.
as long as people in this country are struggling to get by then our society must do what it can to prevent this. and make no mistake that it is a federal issue, since the problem of being poor is not endemic to any one particular state or region. it's not correct to frame it in the terms of "take away from the advantaged and give benefits to the disadvantaged". the ones who are born wealthy or who get the one lucky break and become wealthy through their own labors have a duty to "pay it forward" and make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
most people don't understand why it is that the millionaires and billionaires think they deserve more of the money that they make off of our backs without paying it back in some way. as i mentioned in a different part of this thread, JK Rowling credits the government assistance in the UK with helping her get through her time when she was trying to make her own way. and she is the first to admit that she gladly pays the high tax rate she has earned through her success if it means that other people will succeed later as a result of the same programs that she benefited from. US society right now has too much of "us against them" and more specifically "me first, screw everyone else" attitude to allow the least fortunate their chance to prove that they can do better for themselves. we've become a nation of "let them eat cake" and it's dragging us down as a nation.
"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman
- 04/04/2013 12:33:15 AM
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*NM*