Shared sacrifice?

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by mpholland

Meaning after my motgage payment, truck payment, and child support are paid I have just about enough left for cable and food. I don't see why I should go to work for 50 hours/week to pay for more handouts from the government to others, whether they be homeless people or multi-billion dollar corporations.

Your mortgage and truck payments were assumed voluntarily and are owed to entities in the private sector. If they're onerous, then you have only to look to yourself as the guilty party and this is no excuse for turning your back on everyone else.

Your child support obligation is for your kid(s). Again, no governmental connection.

Food is a necessity of life. Cable isn't unless you consider that you can't survive without Fox News.

We live in a society. We are not a hodge podge collection of individuals with no obligation to one another. We have a societal obligation to help those who are less fortunate (the homeless, to use your example). Of course, there's a pragmatic side to that as well. By helping the homeless we mitigate the problems they cause: petty crime and blight.

Through government we also, at least potentially, have the opportunity of ameliorating the conditions that result in problems like homelessness. The private sector will never do that. It's simply not in their interest to do so and we'd be fools to rely on altruism from that quarter. (Greenspan's "optimum level of worker insecurity" comes to mind.)

I agree totally about handouts to billionaires. Why, then, do you favor the party which is obsessed with doing just that?

John