When I first started thinking about writing about Social
Security I had some ideas. And one of them was to suggest some ways to
consolidate the social welfare aspect of what the Preamble stated.
The first problem in trying to rectify the issues is there
is so much hyperbole stated about takers from the government. And quite frankly
there are takers. They come in all shapes forms colors and sizes. And these
takers are mythical in numbers.
When Mitt Romney made his little 47% of the people take from
the government in a fund raiser to try and scare rich donors into giving him
money, he did the country a great disservice at many levels. This number is
tossed around like a Frisbee on internet posting sights as some hard fact that
is irrefutable. Throw in racist undertones and no one can get a real handle on
what is the real problem in an honest discussion.
Now look at some of the real problems such as our government
trying to truly help the people that should be helped with an over grown
bureaucracy covering multitude of different departments that creates more
problems generation after generation. If you really want to help someone, you
have to help them become self-sufficient. Not everyone can become
self-sufficient and you have to help those people also. You just have to
identify the truly needy, ie disabled people versus the people who the
political system and parties use to create a cause to rally around come
election time to sway their bases either through fear mongering or we are the
only people who care. All along neither side really wants to address solving
the problem. It would get in the way of calling the other side wrong or evil or
bad or whatever name works at the moment.
You cannot offer an opinion to work toward solving issues in
this country about social welfare anymore. You can research all sorts of ideas
to overcome what we face, however, trying to offer this as policy brings out
the extremes in both sides of the arguments. Great for Congressman who want to
stay elected, not so great for the truly needy.
So the best start is to ignore the noise and plow forward.
Hopefully rational people prevail.
The size of the bureaucracy of our country for any issue,
problem, policy is overwhelming. One
consideration to start to successfully be able to address an issue we need to
determine exactly what resources we can use. And simultaneously we need to make
determinations of who we should help.
And then work towards finding where the two ends meet. And there is no
middle in this scenario. You will have to determine what we can do as a
society.
And then some of you may ask why should we do anything?
Primarily if we choose to believe in Capitalism, the rat
race, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we have to conversely make sure
everyone has the same opportunities. The ideal is: all men are created equal,
the practical reality is: all men have equal opportunity. If we accept our
forefathers wanted to give the people of our country the best chance to succeed
you have to understand not everyone will be able to succeed or what has become
more important in the modern world: win (at all costs). So lets accept that
notion. It does not automatically mean the people who didn’t win are lesser
people or do not have a chance to win the next time around. We have to leave
that door open. Closing it hurts us.
Currently there are people who control Congress who do not
see this as an advantage for our country to open up opportunity, be inclusive,
and give everyone the respect they only expect for themselves. This is
fundamentally a flawed way at looking at governing a people. And since I write
opinions not research papers I do not use tons of footnotes, however, for this
last statement I could just put a #1 above for the footnote and then at the
bottom of the page just write the word “history”. Anytime a ruling class
becomes so entrenched and ignores the will of the people they eventually are replaced.
And in doing so many times even much of the good of the country is destroyed in
the process. Upheaval is not productive.
We do not have a duty to help everyone, help is not a right,
however, as humans who must share the world, resources, and each other, we have
a responsibility to take care of our own. This is how we, as humans, should be
growing and evolving. Sometimes I wonder how much we have evolved over the last
two thousand years.
Creating a social welfare system is not socialism if done
right, but focuses like I mentioned earlier on defining exactly who should be
helped and within a budget. A budget that reflects resources we can bring to
bear.
So I will finish up part three in the near future with what I
consider some practical applications of some of what we already do; new or
regenerated ideas and hopefully show that the goal is to lend a hand to someone
who has fallen down to pick them up and get them started again and other than
seriously disabled people this is all we need to do.
And yes other policies would need to change also so the
above will work. One step at a time, one step at a time. These posts are for
improving and helping Social Security
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