I am lucky. I have never been poor enough to need welfare or been unable to pay for insurance. I have always had food to eat and enough money to make sure it was both healthy and fresh. Because I am a reasonably smart and hard-working individual, it is not unreasonable to expect that my life will continue to be so fortunate. So when I talk about a need for universal health care or some sort of system to get the unemployed on their feet, it is not out of a personal need, but out of a sense of personal responsibility to the society that I inhabit.
Personal responsibility should mean more than being self-sufficient. It should also mean being responsible for your community and making sure that it is safe for your friends, family and fellow citizens. Personal responsibility means that if you want to benefit from the safety and security that society provides then you must be willing to contribute. Sometimes this contribution will be symmetrical, and you will get back what you put in; sometimes you will get something greater back, and sometimes you won't. To receive government services and use the public infrastructure, you must pay taxes. To benefit from the protection of the laws, you must submit to them. To live under a robust and beneficial democracy, you must volunteer time to participate in the democratic process even if only to educate yourself and vote. Similarly, if you want to be guaranteed medical help when something catastrophic happens to you or be guaranteed food and shelter should your finances collapse because of unforeseen circumstances, then you must be prepared to help others should they come to such a fate.
It is somewhat disturbing that certain people spend so much time and energy talking about personal responsibility as an excuse to avoid helping others. If they spent even half as much time just trying to be responsible to the world they live in, it would be a better place. While investing in certain "liberal" programs such as health care and welfare requires giving up a small amount of money, these programs can improve the country as a whole. Living in a stronger, healthier society means that you, your family and your friends will be living in a safer, more secure country.
Other than the rainbows and the unicorns that liberals promise, there are real advantages to these programs. For instance, in lower income areas, crime is higher. This is because desperate situations encourage people to do desperate things. While welfare is not the only piece in this puzzle, it can be an important piece in saving people from extreme circumstances. It is difficult, nearly impossible, to secure a job without being well-dressed and clean-shaven, and it's hard to be those things if you have no money and no place to live. Furthermore, when people don't have an income, they can no longer contribute to the tax system. Therefore, helping people to return to the workforce as quickly as possible means having that many more people helping to pay for roads, police and other government services.
Ensuring universal health care offers similar advantages to the responsible individual. In the modern era, there are few who disagree that it is irresponsible to let another human being die for no reason, and thus people are guaranteed emergency care in life-threatening situations. In the end, it is the society as a whole that is left paying the bills. It is orders of magnitude less expensive to prevent these chronic illnesses and emergency room visits that cost us so much money. The responsible thing to do is to offer people basic preventative care, to keep them healthy and safe. To let one person go without health care is to force the rest of society to pay for it.
Our world is too interconnected, and we interact with too many people for us to just look the other way and claim we have fulfilled our personal responsibility completely. In the same way that letting your neighbor's house burn down risks catching your own house on fire, we cannot ignore other plights that might befall our neighbors. Helping the people in your community through a rough patch is not only morally correct, but it is also economically more efficient and more beneficial to you.
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Good gracious. This article needs more grafs. Looks like a class essay. Too Long. Did Not Read.
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Yes, heaven forbid you engage your mind in something longer and more thoughtful than a newspaper cartoon. Just a thought: you are in college now. . .
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"It is somewhat disturbing that certain people spend so much time and energy talking about personal responsibility as an excuse to avoid helping others. If they spent even half as much time just trying to be responsible to the world they live in, it would be a better place." -- FYI, the people who taxes hit the most and hardest is the middle class. They are the ones who don't receive the aid but are expected to contribute towards it; they are less likely to be able to afford it like the upper class too. But here is something you clearly do not know, the middle class always gives the highest percent of their income to charity. So before you write some sob story, wipe your eyes and do some research on these topics.
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Ford: That is why we have a progressive tax system. Tax the rich because they can afford to be taxed and because they make the greatest use of the the system. In regards to health care at least, the current proposals (that I know of) focus taxes at upper class citizens.
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To Anon2: The bottom line is that if the proposed health care bills pass and eventually run a deficit as they are projected to do then it does not matter who is initially taxed because taxes in general will increase. So while politicians say that only the wealthy will be taxed, i say to you that is a false dream. So because of the progressive tax system, the lower classes will receive more benefits while barely being taxed, the upper class may get taxed more but they still can afford it, and the middle class gets squeezed. I suggest you find out the true meaning of the 'forgotten man'. Besides, the middle class may be the most altruistic with their hearts and charity donations, but because of the tax breaks the upper class still gives the highest charitable contributions. If you start taxing the upper class then they loose their incentives to be charitable. The bottom line is that you should not fall for the silver lips of a politician; if the upper class get taxed, so will the middle class and the lower class will still remain at the bottom because 'liberal' programs create a dependency and not independence.
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Ford's got some great points. The bottom line is in this country you are guaranteed a chance to succeed, you aren't guaranteed success. There will be winners and losers and the successful in the middle and upper class shouldn't be penalized for winning and achieving the American dream. I don't agree with welfare or universal health care, the poor can pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and work hard like the rest of us. If they can't afford health care so be it, they still have the emergency room.
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A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
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I have a hard time taking advice on morality from an individual who purports that one owes some sort of innate debt to his fellow man by virtue of them existing, and using the coercive force of government to back up that belief. Let us imagine your neighbor is a doctor. Let us also imagine that you become sick. What would happen if you went to his house with a gun, and you demanded he treated you? Abdicating the use of force to the government makes it no less evil. That is why it is morally wrong but a review of the empirical evidence would also lead one to the conclusion that universal health care does not work.
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Also, we live in a Republic, not a Democracy (At least we are supposed to). It's ok, you probably attended a public school so it's understandable. That would explain your statist ideology. Don't try to pick my pocket and tell me it's for my own good.
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The author of the article is basing some conclusions on false premises. The first is that taxes only require "giving up a small amount of money". I don't consider 35+% of my income a small amount of money (by the time you pay ALL income taxes at all levels of government, but not including all of the other sales taxes, property taxes, utility taxes, etc). The 2nd is that it is difficult to secure a job without being clean shaven and well dressed. I know it's difficult some to understand, but there are plenty of jobs where showing up in dirty clothes and week-old stubble makes you the perfect candidate. Another error is that paying for preventative care is cheaper in the long run. This is decidedly more expensive for society to do. And the CBO agrees with that point, as the Director points out in this quote "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness." link here http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10492/08-07-Prevention.pdf
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Research has shown that the vast majority of health care costs come from a person's last few years of life, as doctors struggle with various treatments to keep the person alive. So cost savings through preventative care are not the budget cure-all you're hoping for. I hope that we all share your sense of responsibility in helping others - but forcing it through government run programs is not the best answer.
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It's a great opportunity to not care for the old people. Saves money on health care AND social security. We can get a 2-for-1 deal just by not keeping old people alive past their expiration date.
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So let me understand the logic here: It's a personal responsibility, so the government should handle it. That's the world's biggest non-sequiter, if you ask me. The government is a de facto IMPERSONAL entity. It makes decisions for huge swaths of people without really ever considering the implications of those decisions on particular individuals. It's also a bit presumptive to assert that 'the wealthy' owe more to the nation because 'they take more' from the nation. I'd contend that the opposite is true - 'the wealthy' don't generally receive government assistance in the form of medicaid, welfare, or food stamps; 'the wealthy' don't generally use public transportation; 'the wealthy' tend to send their children to private rather than public schools. All the while, 'the wealthy' pay about 90% of the overall tax burden of the nation - the fact that they CAN pay more in taxes doesn't equate to a moral imperative that the OUGHT to pay more in taxes. If I want a new car and make you pay for it for me, we call that stealing. If the country wants a new service and we make 'the wealthy' pay for it, we call that good governance. It's absolutely ludicrous.
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the problem with doling out money for welfare to help them get a shave and a suit to join the workforce is that there is no work. so addressing that issue might resolve everything. and I don't know much about health costs or anything because it doesn't matter to me, but how many/which of the chronic illnesses and emergency visits could be avoided through basic preventative care?
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Mr. Butler I don't know what disgusts me more, your ignorance or your stupidity. In the first part of your essay you talk of personal responsibility consisting of the use of government force to take from some people and give to other people. Personal responsibility means you, not some government entity, but YOU. Here's a pro tip: If you're going to write an article about personal responsibility then make sure you know what personal responsibility is. This actually will work for any topic you plan on writing about. What you are advocating is collectivism- the opposite of personal responsibility. Let me give you an example so simple that even you will be able to understand. COLLECTIVISM: Having the government provide "free" health care to people. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: Taking an EMT class and volunteering your time to provide medical services to those in need
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You see one of these means you care enough about about your community to do something yourself. The collectivist approach means you only want to play lip service about a feel good topic to make it look like you care. Mr. Butler you seem to be a very generous and caring person with the money of other people, but a miserly old scrounge when it comes to actually doing something yourself. That is the hallmark of the collectivist though, they want the government to do things so they can wash their hands of any sort of personal responsibility. You claim it is "morally responsible" to use the force of government to force others to do what you want them to do. Morality cannot be forced, and morality NEVER comes from those advocating force Mr. Butler.........................................................................................................I don't have the time or space to correct all your economic fallacies, but I'll touch on one. You say it is important to get people back to work as soon as possible so they can pay taxes supporting other government programs. This shows a total lack of understanding of how economics work. Work is not the same as PRODUCTION. If it were we could just pay people to dig holes and fill them back up. Keynesian theories do not work..
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I feel it is my personal responsibility to show you not only how you fail, but explain to you how to fail less in the future. Take the initiative if you're talking about personal responsibility. Take that EMT class, volunteer in an old folks home, or something along those lines. Or at the very least donate some of YOUR money to them. I would also advise you not to write about ecnomics or any other subject when you have no knowledge of them. It makes you look like a fool. -William Squalus
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Karl Marx back from the dead
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