It's sad...

It's sad that my first post is piggy backing on Kevin's post from "Casino on the Moon" He was talking about personal responsibility, and I responded. I promise the next one will be based on independence, liberty, freedom, and the good ol' U.S. (That won't be the topic...I promise for real this time...)

Anyway here's my response to: http://casinosonthemoon.blogspot.com/2011/01/listening-to-peoples-conversations.html#comments

"I agree. If you can guess who this is, you wouldn't be surprised why I agree. Humankind is formed through social learning, so our livelihood as human beings depends on other...well...human beings. It's odd that people would reject humanism for individualism. Humanism in itself contains both the qualities of individualism and socialism, because those are both aspects of human life.

I think, however, that most of the people who oppose socialist programs do so because they feel simply robbed. It presents a sort of Robinhood imagery. (Is Robinhood a proto-communist? :O)
Are they robbed, though? We could ask if the money they "possessed" truly belonged to them in the first place,but I really want to not go on a socialist tirade, so let's just assume that the money was, in principle, under their possession. Going off of that you could say they were robbed, but it's really sad to see it that way.

There are people who do leech off of the system, I admit that. The whole idea of welfare is to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. So it really is a sort of a parasitic relationship. I'm not saying that leeching is a bad thing entirely, but it certainly can lead to a weaker society if the person being provided for remains in poverty permanently. Could this be prevented? I think so. This is where personal responsibility comes into the picture.

 We always have options, and we should always analyze those options. Do I take welfare or not? That's the first crossroad. Most people, I would think, if offered would say yes; so moving on. What can I do and what should I do with this money? Those questions I am really unable to answer because they are very dependent on the situation. Though, I've seen people purchase 3 20 liter Mountain Dews with their "allowance", which I think is really irresponsible, I can't generalize it to the point where I can say everyone is spending it on unneeded things.

I think the main reason welfare fails to solve the problem is because it's really just a temporary solution for poverty. I can give them all the money they want; they can use it to help support themselves, but it's not pulling them out of their situation. So really welfare is in essence a supplementary treatment for poverty which is best used with educational programs and job services. (Universal Health Care system is probably more beneficial to a society than welfare is, since it is providing aid directly. That's a whole other story though.)
Really, I'm not an expert in this area so it's difficult to know exactly what goes on, but this seems to be a decent enough model of social programs. "