Motivation
It occurs to me that the number of people motivated to work hard is inversely proportional to the quality of life for the poorest portion of a population (I'm an alliteration dynamo).
Said another way, if the poor ever regularly got fanned with palm leaves and fed juicy grapes by robotic servants the entire population would have extremely low motivation. However, if being poor meant you'd be thrown into a lion's den for sport and the entertainment of others, the entire population would have a much higher intrinsic motivation to accomplish things to ensure they never became impoverished.
It's with this observation that I ask whether the stereotypical American "Social Safety Net" for impoverished individuals is a good or bad thing. I'm of the opinion that the government should guarantee a minimum quality of life of (a) 150 sq ft of temperature controlled housing, (b) three square meals per day, (c) access to free information/education, and (d) contemporary communication options including a voice cell phone and an e-mail address.
That being said, I think there are rights currently afforded to impoverished individuals that ought to be taken away. It seems to me like poor people get to raise children and I see this as a danger to society because it disenfranchises the children. Right now, it seems like the only way to lose your children is to actively abuse or neglect them. I think this might be due in part to the fact that (a) nobody wants to adopt older children who are "damaged goods" and (b) there's no better mechanism to handle them except foster homes which historically get underfunded (and have a stigma of being bad environments to grow up).
These are problems that need to be saved for another day, though. But my point is, we need to improve the way impoverished children are handled in our society so we can worsen (by taking away their children) the way impoverished adults are handled. This worsening will generate a thrust of motivation that will help the overall country improve its overall health due to the inversely proportional relationship that I mentioned earlier.
(Footnote: I'm not actively suggesting that we go take children away from people, only that we consider the option so that people who are in the position to bring new children into the world are aware of the risk that they could lose their currently unborn children in the future if they don't stay motivated to find ways to contribute to society.)
3 Comments:
Oh. Boy. Have you ever thought about the poor people who have worked their asses off in two or three shitty jobs because that's the only opportunity for income that they have? Or how about single mothers on public assistance who get training and attend school so that they can get better jobs and better pay and then they find out this "better pay" is actually worse for their families than remaining on public assistance? Just a side note -- racism, sexism, and classism are often played out in interactions between individuals, but make no mistake, they are enormous, socially constructed, systemic problems with immense momentum that is damn near impossible for single individuals to fight and change. I agree that some parents should be made responsible for the poor (i.e. bad) choices they've made which have negatively affected their children's development, HOWEVER, being "poor" should not be your only litmus. How dare you suggest infringing upon an individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, especially considering how badly tied some people's hands are? And I'm not even a conservative!! {sigh}
To respond to the above comment... the suggestion was made that children can be raised successfully by people working two or three jobs (none of which pay more than $14/hr) and individuals engaged in education programs who don't have the support of a spouse. I vehemently disagree with this on the basis that raising children is a time consuming activity that is over-whelmed by the requirement to work multiple jobs and/or earn a degree.
These three activities are mutually exclusive. Nobody can simultaneously (a) increase their earning power through education, (b) actively work a sustaining job, and (c) raise a child. Show me somebody who can successfully do these three things at once (without support from family) and I'll admit that you've identified a truly amazing individual. Instead, consider that the best thing for a child who is being raised by people who don't have the time to raise him or her is being disenfranchised. That's all I'm saying.
Plus, there's a whole industry of new care-givers who will emerge from the proposal to motivate people by taking away there children if they're impoverished. After all, I'd be a total moron to suggest casting these unfortunate kids into a system that's comparable to the current foster care system. The paradigm shift would be equivalent to the (much derided) option proposed by Plato in The Republic that children should be raised communally by experts within that profession. Which is to say, child-rearing would become a privilege and not a right with the end goal of providing a better life for all children.
I'm contemplating a response, which I shall later post on my own blog :*
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