well, i just wanted to put in one last word on this subject and say that no, i definitely do not believe in situational ethics. lying is lying, cheating is cheating, etc. what i meant to convey was the idea that i don’t believe it’s appropriate or fair to make a blanket judgement about the morality of a certain segment of society based on where they receive their income. “If someone has already made the decision to live off of someone else, instead of providing for themselves, then by definition, they are not good/decent/moral.” from what i’ve seen it is not always so simple as “making the decision”. i guess that’s what i’m taking issue with.

all this being said, i’ve enjoyed discussing this with you. :-)

“i am not seeing where your philosophy about the nature of people lines up with your fury about welfare recipients, whom you seem to lean towards saying are for the majority greedy and lazy.”

This isn’t incongruous with my opinion that most people are good. Most people aren’t on welfare, and even some of the people on welfare, are only using it temporarily, and for the right reasons. If someone has already made the decision to live off of someone else, instead of providing for themselves, then by definition, they are not good/decent/moral.

Your husband and MIL, obviously didn’t want to stay on welfare. they obviously respected themselves enough, and were decent enough to improve their lives. I know it isn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for my grandmother to go to work at 14, it isn’t easy for my grandfather to work very long hours, it wasn’t easy for any of them. Life isn’t easy for most people, but you don’t just throw your hands up in the air and say “I quit” and then let someone else pay for your existence. I know a lot of people who had to work their way up, and I don’t see anything wrong with it.

I’m Jewish (not to mention an Objectivist), so this whole sinful nature/people are inherently evil, doesn’t apply. It’s a Christian construct, which I think has really done a lot of harm, but that is beside the point.

As for the mortgage statement, it’s simply a statement of fact. It has nothing to do with education. There are plenty of college educated morons who took out loans that they couldn’t afford. There are also lots of people who used this opportunity to buy houses that they wanted to “flip”. That is moronic, irresponsible, and it’s their own fault.

Education doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with good sense. I have met plenty of people with college degrees (some of them advanced) who had no sense. I’m not going to use the term common sense, because it doesn’t seem to be so common any more.

I didn’t think that you were saying anything aggressively, and even if you had, I’m totally fine with it :) I just didn’t like that you were assuming that I had never known any poor people, or people on welfare.

I understand why you made that assumption now. As for this statement;

“I would highly suggest you take a step out of your comfort zone and walk alongside some of these folks for a season, and see if some of your black and white stances on issues don’t get a little grey.”

I don’t believe in situational ethics. Either something is wrong or it isn’t. I’m all for moral absolutes. Sometimes it’s hard to be moral, oftentimes it is, but that doesn’t change the rules. That is why when someone that I worked with closely in school, revealed to me that she was lying on her paperwork in order to milk the system, I had to point out to her that it’s unethical. It wasn’t pleasant, I didn’t want to do it, and I figured that it would pretty much end our friendship, but that didn’t change the fact that it was the right thing to do.

Doing the right thing is hard. It doesn’t win you friends, will often cause you to lose an election, and generally make life more complicated for you, but it’s still what you should do. I know people who have suffered for doing the right thing, people who have spent years as political prisoners for it. They don’t have any regrets.

I agree with you that money is not the end all solution. I’ve never understood why society feels that just by donating money all our problems will go away. To me, that seems to be a very temporary fix on a very long term problem.

Education, counseling, job training, on-going mentoring, financial planning, teaching how to set long term goals – all of this needs to be included along with the monetary aid.

And, to go back to the “political” debate, this is why I feel we still need to have the government involved in these type of services (a better system, yes, but still involved). I know we’ve discussed the possibility of non-profits taking over these roles but it worries me to leave it to organizations that can discriminate. If they don’t feel people are trying hard enough or they are too lazy or…they can deny them the money. People may also choose not to donate to these agencies because they don’t want to support its particular cause. I simply do not think there are enough people willing to donate enough money and services to provide the amount of help that is needed in our country.

“people are inherently greedy”
“Wow, that is really cynical, and inaccurate. I think that people are inherently good and ethical, and will most often do the right thing. I think where we differ is how we see the nature of man. I see people as fundamentally good and ethical. Given the chance, I think that most people would do the right thing.”‘

i am not seeing where your philosophy about the nature of people lines up with your fury about welfare recipients, whom you seem to lean towards saying are for the majority greedy and lazy. i tend to agree with abby in saying that left to our own devices, our sinful nature prevails. i too know many people who abuse the system which is in place. i also, like you, know those who have used it and worked their behinds off to become independent of it. my husband grew up in housing projects and his mother worked numerous jobs around the clock to provide a better life for her children and has been a homeowner herself for many years now. my husband, despite his meager public education, worked about 10 times harder than i had to in order to become the first in his family to graduate from college. he took the small earnings from the non-profit he worked for after college and has invested it wisely in real estate and become financially successful. he coaches high school football and works tirelessly to educate those kids about how to make wise life choices, including how to work hard and manage money well. so i have also seen first hand that those born into poverty clearly do have a way out. however, the reason why i asked you if you had spent much time in relationship with someone on welfare was because it seems your views are so cut and dry. “People who have self respect wouldn’t continue to be parasites.”in my opinion, there are so many different factors that play into ones life circumstances, you can hardly make such general statements. what if your education is so sub-par that it is not an option for you to just “go out and get a job” that will pay for your expenses? what if you are working so many jobs to stay afloat that you can not spare the time to further your education? what if you had to drop out of high school to help your parents pay the bills because they didn’t know how to manage their own money? or because their jobs simply didn’t pay enough?? it is too complex to boil down to “go get a job”.

“Because we are not morons, that fact didn’t change our house buying budget. If someone is dumb enough to get a mortgage which they can’t pay for, it is their own fault if they lose the house.”

again, i find your train of thought to be a bit offensive. many of these so-called dumb morons have simply not had the chance to be educated in these particular areas of finance.

i surely would not ask you to feel sorry for someone who lies or cheats, i don’t feel sorry for them myself… what i would ask is that if you are going to assume people are inherently good, don’t x out a particular group of people in that assumption. just like the rest of us, there are those on welfare who make good and bad choices with their lives. it is clearly not a perfect system, however, i feel it is necessary. what is even more necessary is for people to stop seeing things as so cut and dry and writing off entire groups of people. for instance, immigrants are not the only ones in the u.s. willing to work hard in order to invest in their own families and bring themselves out of poverty. however, even that, in my opinion, is not nearly as simple as you make it sound.

again, please forgive me if i’ve said any of this in an aggressive manner. the written word is a beautiful thing but it is all too easy to read behind the lines and find a sentiment that wasn’t intended. so if i have done that with you, i apologize.

I have also worked with lots of people on assistance, and have seen, 1st hand, how much abuse goes on. When someone gets their hair and nails done on a regular basis, buys designer clothes, and eats out at restaurants, all while taking taxpayer money, I have a BIG problem with them. I also have a problem with supervisors lying on paperwork, so that their employees can get assistance. These things happen, all the time.

I am also sick of this born into poverty=can’t get out of poverty notion. None of my grandparents had any money, they are all from Poland. Jews in Poland did NOT do well. They didn’t have access to all the things the privileges that their gentile counterparts had, and they could be summarily beaten or killed. When they moves to Israel (Palestine at the time), they also had nothing. They had to work really hard to built themselves up, and be able to invest in their children.

You still have a lot of people, from all over the world, who come to Israel to work, and then send money home. There are a lot of Africans, Philippinos, and others, who are willing to work hard in order to invest in their own families. You see the same thing in various immigrant groups here in the US.

I don’t feel sorry for someone who has decided, that much like his/her parent/s and grandparent/s they are going to be on welfare. I don’t feel sorry for someone who sees each additional child as an added paycheck or boost to their housing allowance. I don’t feel sorry for someone who lies on their paperwork, or purposely avoids getting married, in order to qualify for assistance. Especially not, when I used to work 3 jobs (60 hours a week).

And you are right, there are too many cases of welfare fraud – and that’s a huge area of the system that needs to be fixed.

They are already in pocketed areas (ghettos – although some section 8 housing is far better than others) and I don’t think that too many people are rally together to combine their resources. Not to mention the fact that often times there already is a large family support system in place (grandparents/aunts/uncles/2 parent households) are already helping to care for younger kids, etc.

This may help clear things up (at least clear up my perspective). I consider “welfare” a large umbrella of government assistance. I see things like unemployment, section 8 housing, gov’t health care, day care assistance, food stamps, WIC, etc. to all fall under “welfare” and in many of those cases people are working or going to school.
Moving these people into one area and treating them as second class is simply going to take away their self-worth. It’d rather see middle/upper class people move into the neighborhoods that are the “bad” parts of town and try and mentor/be examples/assist the people who are currently there.