So your choice is to expire rather than take the life saving
medication, because it's possibly addictive? That is what you are
saying. Is that what you mean?

No, my choice is to put up with nausia rather than become addicted to
some powerful narcotic. It's a matter of degree - is the cure worse
than the disease? In this case, I do think so. You seem to disagree.

I find the side effects of the dole to be large scale, long term, slow
to manifest, and extremely hard to get rid of. This is most true of
welfare, somewhat less true of social security, less true of insurance
(depending in part on whether it is mandatory or not), but even in the
case of (say) auto insurance, there are significant negative effects.

In the case of car insurance, the cure, or rather, treatment,
(insurance) is better than the disease (uninsured motorists killing
people). In the case of welfare, the cure is =far= worse than the
disease. In the case of Social Security, we are creeping across the
threshold. I don't know, maybe we passed it already. Maybe not.

Aren't you overlooking the fact that SSI recipients have paid into the
SSI fund, so it's not your dime?

Not really. The SSI benefits are only loosely tied to the money they
put in. They are more tightly tied to the total amount that has been
put in, which allows the big pot to pay a small set of recipients. Now
the pot is getting smaller, and the entitled people are getting larger
in number. Thus the accusation that it is a ponzi scheme is not
unwarranted.

Aside from those issues, what sort of person abandons his aged
parents, because he doesn't want to fund their existence? Eliminating
SSI would be roughly equal to that to me.

My relationship with my parents is considerably deeper than my
relationship with my neighbor's out-of-work cousin's boyfriend. I'm not
completely against the concept of SSI, but I don't see legislated
charity as being the same as caring for my own parents.

So the way you see it, government should not provide for the
inevitable portion of its population that is unemployable?

To do so will increase that number. This is a disservice to those on
the edge, as it encourages them to go the wrong way. I do see and agree
with your point about the truly unemployable, but even that is a tricky
problem; look how welfare has floundered.

Doling out money based on the recipient having made poor choices (not
saving for retirement, for example).
Is that being done?

It discourages people from saving for their own retirement, and thus
makeing a poor choice, from which SSI will rescue them.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
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