
The Lesson Americans Never Learn - viburnum
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/gofundme-economy-was-never-going-work/615457/
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thursday0987
heres a lesson that Americans learned a long time ago:

a government powerful enough to give you everything is a government powerful
enough to take everything from you.

~~~
rbecker
_Any_ useful government must be powerful enough to take everything away from
you. How else could it, for example, punish murderers?

Like it or not, this is true for literally every government in the world. So
that's not a sensible counterargument to giving it the ability to help as
well.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
This sounds like a Ben Shapiro "but akshually" argument.

American government was founded with the clear intention and understanding
that power was derived from the consent of the governed.

What you said is meaningless - of course they have firepower that makes
resistance futile. But US government is fundamentally based in the protection
of individual rights.

~~~
rbecker
But that's a different argument. You haven't shown any fault in my reasoning
other than calling it meaningless. There may be arguments for why government
shouldn't be able to give you everything (for example, the ones in your post),
but "because then they can take everything away" isn't it, since every
government in the world can already do that, both in theory and in practice.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
The American tradition is fundamentally skeptical towards governmental power.

This is a disposition and ideal.

Clearly we can violate that ideal at any point.

But it's like saying that dieting is useless cause you can gorge on food
whenever you want to.

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CincinnatiMan
> It [the government] should provide child care and public education for
> families.

I worry that once childcare becomes taxpayer-paid, salaries will eventually
reach an equilibrium where use of this public benefit plus dual incomes is the
expectation. Then the decision to raise your children (and thus revert to
single income) will become an even more premium experience that only the very
wealthy can afford. Which is kind of depressing to me, that even more couples
than today would be priced out of raising their children by themselves if they
desired to do so.

IMO a better way to lift up the poor who can't afford childcare even on dual
incomes is for these dual incomes to become larger through wages increasing,
such that they can afford said childcare.

