Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!mcnc!decvax!genrad!wjh12!n44a!ima!inmet!nrh From: nrh@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: YOU EARNED IT??? - (nf) Message-ID: <1208@inmet.UUCP> Date: Fri, 6-Apr-84 07:00:41 EST Article-I.D.: inmet.1208 Posted: Fri Apr 6 07:00:41 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Apr-84 01:21:11 EST Lines: 72 #R:mit-eddie:-152700:inmet:7800078:000:3781 inmet!nrh Apr 6 01:14:00 1984 >***** inmet:net.politics / mit-eddie!lkk / 5:39 pm Apr 4, 1984 >All of you people who are so upset taht you have to pay taxes on what >you have earned to support others are being both shortsighted and >ignorant. The real reason for paying for college educations is not >because its "a nice thing to to". Rather, it is a socially necessary >requirement of our society to have a large force of well trained >workers. If people are unable or unwilling to go to school, our entire >country will suffer. If indeed it is "necessary", it means that it will be profitable for people to train new workers. You may have heard of apprenticeship programs. Many of these are now impractical because of minimum wage requirements. You think people will suffer? Tell a black teenager (48% unemployment in 1982, 50% unemployment in June of 1983, according to the World Almanac). If indeed it is "socially necessary", it seems to me that we can arrange for a lot of on-the-job training -- just repeal the minimum wage. >The same is true for all social programs. Oh? Does that include the "Comprehensive Employee Training Act (CETA)"?, The Chrysler bailout? Paying farmers NOT to grow wheat? Paying farmers extra to grow tobacco and then requiring warnings against cigarette smoking? >Welfare, for instance, stimulates the economy by allowing people to >consume more. If all those people on welfare were starving to death >instead, demand in the economy would be lower and we would be in an even >worse recession. The "trickle-up" theory! I don't argue that people on welfare do not participate in our economy. Such people, though, are more the pawns of our government than participants in a free society. By making their welfare payments contingent on arbitrary rules we put terrific stress on their families (remember Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)?), limit what sort of work would be profitable to them (who will work for less than they make on welfare?) and in general put them at the mercy of beaurocrats. If indeed, the alternative to backing "all social programs" was the "all those people on welfare" were to starve, there'd be a real dilemma. Happily, that is NOT the only alternative. Repeal the minimum wage! Those people would be productive in ECONOMIC ways, and demand in the economy would be HIGHER! (To say nothing of higher employment). >For those of you who say, "I worked for it, its mine." Tell me if you >could have earned what you did without the existence of a society which >provides the frame work for your employment. I doubt I could -- BUT! That our society HAPPENS to be the framework in which we made THAT particular salary doesn't mean that its government is therefore entitled to keep any particualar percentage of that salary -- after all, I could as easily complain that our society, by not being sufficiently free, RESTRICTED my salary, and owes me lots more money! Remember -- the alternative to the current mess is not necessarily continual rioting and war -- there are MANY alternatives. >No producetion in a modern >industrial society exists in a vacuum. We are all interedependent and >to claim that you alone are responsible for the value created by your >work is missing the lareger picture. Certainly if I write a program, I share the credit for the final product with the people who wrote the OS, who built the computer, who decided to pay me to write the program, and so on. Nonetheless, the particular value created by MY work (which is only a portion of the final product) is indeed my property. I'm a programmer: my employer pays me a salary to write programs -- my employer (to put it another way) has agreed to pay me a regular salary in exchange for the sporadic value created by my work.