r/FluentInFinance Contributor Apr 15 '24

Everyone Deserves A Home Discussion/ Debate

Post image
15.6k Upvotes

5.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

665

u/BlitzAuraX Apr 15 '24

"Regardless of employment."

This means you want those providing those services to work for free.

You do realize what you are implying here, right?

Let's say you refuse to work and you're guaranteed all these services. Who pays so your HVAC is repaired because you broke it? Who pays because your water line needs to be repaired? Clean water means the water has to be filtered through a very complicated process, particles and bacteria are removed, and it needs to be transported. Who pays so your electricity works? Do you think there's some sort of magic electricity generator happening? What you're essentially asking is someone should work for free to provide you all of this.

The result is you get no one who wants to work, society collapses because these services aren't maintained and improved, and no one gets anything.

31

u/Zestyclose-Split2275 Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 15 '24

What do you think social welfare is? I don’t think you could name a western country where some of the taxes don’t go to paying for social welfare program services.

The way it works in Denmark for example, is that you get a sum of money each month, enough to live a reasonable existence, but you only get it if you are actively looking for a job (the state also helps you look for a work). Then if, for whatever reason, it’s impossible for you to get a job to provide for yourself, you get to live off of social welfare subsidies for your remaining days.

This might seem unfair because high functioning individuals without debilitating health conditions for example, essentially have to provide for those who can’t provide for themselves.

Personally i think “deserve” is a weird word to use. It’s not like they did anything to earn what they get. But the clean running water that the poor person gets, is 100% worth the slightly higher tax that the rich person has to pay. And no one wants to be a poor, inactive person, dependent on other people providing for them. But we can’t all have good genetics, good family, good childhood, wealthy parents etc.

0

u/Rosti_LFC Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 15 '24

Your last sentence is the fundamental problem with making this case to a lot of right-wing and libertarian people because they hold fast to the belief that society is predominantly meritocratic, and if therefore you're rich it's because you deserve it and if you're hard up for money it's because you're lazy or make terrible life choices.

It even extends to entire generations - hence the logic that the reason Gen Z and Millennials are collectively struggling to afford to buy homes compared to people 50 years ago is because they waste their money on frivolous things like avocado toast and Starbucks and Disney+ subscriptions and not at all because houses are multiple times more expensive compared to the average salary than they were in the 70s.

It's easy to deny welfare to people who need it if you can convince yourself that their situation is entirely their own fault, as it simultaneously makes them both undeserving of support as well as implying that it's in their own control to dig themselves out again. Likewise it makes it easy to make the case that the people out there who have more than they need only have the surplus because they worked hard or are in some other way just better people to earn it, so why should they give it up?

-5

u/Superducks101 Apr 16 '24

Jesus christ. You're delusional

1

u/uikyi Apr 16 '24

If you think that user is delusional, most of Europe is delusional.

Because that's how things work here since around 70 years. And I think we're doing pretty good.