Social Welfare and Liberals

The main reason I identify with liberals is social welfare.

Liberals try to push through legislation that enables the less fortunate in our society to have a chance.  I was able to have a chance because of government subsidies.  I was able to go to college because of government subsidies.  If they didn’t exist, or were severely weakened, then I wouldn’t have been able to live a childhood free of wondering where my next meal was going to come from or a childhood where I had to work and contribute my paycheck to helping my family.

We a liberals realize that while society isn’t necessarily about equality, it is about helping people maintain a certain minimum level of living.  The popular view right now is that the government should only provide people with the minimum they need to survive.  The term used to describe this policy is “subsistence.”  As a liberal I feel empathy toward families who are living at this level.  I feel especially saddened to hear about children who grow up in these households.  Why is it that a child should have to be held down and not provided with the same opportunity as any other child?  Why is it that a rich man’s right to sip mint juleps on a yacht in the Mediterranean is considered more sacred than an impoverished child’s right to eat?

Why is it that a person’s right to be happy is intertwined so tightly with their ability to excel in the marketplace?

Social Welfare and Me

I was the son of a single mother.  I grew up in section 8 housing eating because of food stamps and warm in the winter because of subsidized heating.  It’s not that my parents were lazy bums.  My father was around, usually somewhere nearby, but he didn’t really contribute anything.  My mother worked at a factory named aerovox where she performed assembly line work and–ended up with carpel tunnels.  Eventually she was able to put herself through CDL training school and she became a produce delivery truck driver and–ended up with 2 herniated disks.  Finally when she couldn’t do that anymore she managed to get another assembly line job buffing the seams off of 5000 to 8000 gold balls every day.  At least this time she didn’t get a debilitating injury, and this time the job actually paid pretty well (about 30K a year to start)  I can’t personally imagine how monotonous it must have been buffing balls for 8 hours a day/5 days a week + overtime.  But she did it, and she did it well.  Well enough that we were able to get off of food stamps,  well enought that we no longer needed section 8, and well enough that I was always able to have (as she always re-iterates) “levis on your ass and Nikes on your feet.”  Hard work plus occasional help from the government equals a decent living in America, and that’s the America in which I want to live.

Social Welfare and Sharing

We are taught as children to share.

A child has the instinct to keep whatever they have for themselves.  If you have something, if you are able to utilize something to give yourself happiness, why should/would you willingly give any of that something to someone else? But, as it turns out, the whole sharing thing has its merits.  For example, when someone has two of that something, and they only need one, they can give the extra to someone else.  Another person’s life can be made better with the surplus.

This is the key idea: “Another person’s life can be made better with the surplus.”

Why?

This blog, as you can see form its title, is intended to be used to express my political opinions.  Also from this title a clever person might be able to glean my political affiliation.  Don’t be too hard on youself if you wern’t able to figure these things out, I can be rather cryptic.