Under private accounts, you either study hard to learn a trade, then work diligently at it, or you starve. I am not saying that I agree or disagree with this philosopy, but that is my understanding of what they are trying to do.
Well Michael, I think you have a rather unique understanding. It may also be Emperor Bush's intention, but I doubt it would play well with most voters. Though I have no doubt that you think that you would like it.
One thing I would like to point out to you and anyone else who is not only short on empathy but also on common sense is that there are many ways to become poor other than by being lazy. Having a child with leukemia might be one. Study hard, become a carpenter, then fall and break your back might be another. Even a motorcycle accident could do the trick.
Or one could be the stay at home wife and mother married to a man to whom any of these things happen- or just to a man who decides to take off on you. Do you know any single mothers? Many of them are very hard working, probably harder than you will ever be. What is that like? You get up well before dawn to get your kids ready for day-care or school, work all day, then run around like a madwoman to pick up the kids, get them some dinner, talk to them and give them a little much needed love, then see if you can get 5 hours of sleep for yourself before starting all over again. Tough life when it is working, and very vulnerable to shocks.
Then there is always the birth lottery. Do you know that most skilled trades require at least an average IQ? An average IQ is 100. Do you know that by definition, half are above that, and half below it? For every 130, there is a 70? So a good number of people are running the race with their feet tied together. How do you feel about letting them starve?
Last week I was walking in a hip downtown residential area where condos cost $600,000 and up to well over $1million. People with their bedding were all over the place. Piles of human waste were here and there. Under your do well or starve theory, I suppose one would add to this collection people in various stages of dying, including the recently dead.
I suspect that the following might be a bit out of your ken, but the English Christian poet John Donne dealt well with this topic in his 1623 poem, For Whom The Bell Tolls:
"If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
Mikey