Would you please not take HN threads into ideological flamewar, regardless of how wrong other people are or how strongly you feel? It's off-topic and destructive here, and against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
A society absolutely does have a moral obligation to:
- provide its citizens with opportunities and freedom to move around (education, social lifts, basic safety net) and
- make sure those who could not use these opportunities for some well-justified reason (disabled people, elderly) do not die of hunger or cold
Giving everyone a lifestyle they want is not one of these obligations.
Is society providing education? Social lifts? a basic safety net? do we protect people from hunger and cold? In the United States, we don't even have a functioning political system that provides real options and opportunities. The political system has been captured by capitalists and serves their interests while disregarding the needs of the populace.
You’re quite right about a moral obligation, I agree with that. But the obligation is not to provide a middle class lifestyle. The obligation is for basic needs and opportunity.
Society does provide homes, thankfully, in the US. But we don’t provide them to individuals making $40k/year.
In the US, society does not provide homes. Nor does it provide health care. Nor does it provide access to higher education. Nor does it provide a safety net.
The US certainly does provide homes (HUD [0]) and health care (Medicaid/medicare) and higher education (state university system).
I think there’s a fair argument about the quality of the safety net, but the US does at least spend a lot of money on the basic needs you just called out. They are typically for the poor, disabled, and/or elderly.
> That is _not_ a solution, and this is an incredibly naive and classist take on why people people work in unskilled positions.
Care to elaborate? Many of us held minimum wage positions for some period of time before gathering the skills / tools / time to move on to something better.
> A society absolutely does have a moral obligation to its citizenry, otherwise what is the point of it?
A citizenry has moral obligations to its society. Demanding handouts for minimal contribution does not create a strong society.
> A man must bend his knee to the oligarchs and the state and get crumbs in return? This is what I meant by classist conspiracy theories and capitalist bootlicking. HN needs to wake the fuck up.
I can hurl insults and straw-man opposing views, too. I don't think it benefits anyone, though.
> Care to elaborate? Many of us held minimum wage positions for some period of time before gathering the skills / tools / time to move on to something better.
So did I, but I don't regard someone a failure who deserves misery if they did not 'gather necessary skills'. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to move past minimum wage work in life, not all of them their fault. Even if it is and they threw away every opportunity they ever had does that mean they deserve a lifetime of hardship?
> A citizenry has moral obligations to its society. Demanding handouts for minimal contribution does not create a strong society.
Our society provides trillions to oligarchs like Bezos. If we're OK with that then we should be OK with giving more to those who need it most even if they dont work "hard enough".
> So did I, but I don't regard someone a failure who deserves misery if they did not 'gather necessary skills'.
Back to the straw-manning, I suppose. I never made those claims.
> There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to move past minimum wage work in life, not all of them their fault. Even if it is and they threw away every opportunity they ever had does that mean they deserve a lifetime of hardship?
Nobody deserves a lifetime of hardship, but that doesn't morally obligate others to provide a middle class lifestyle for them.
> Our society provides trillions to oligarchs like Bezos. If we're OK with that then we should be OK with giving more to those who need it most even if they dont work "hard enough".
Nobody questions your ability to give as much as you'd like. It becomes questionable when you start trying to enforce this "morality" on others, but I think you know that, and that's why you frame it the way you did.
> Back to the straw-manning, I suppose. I never made those claims.
Not overtly no. You just heavily implied that anyone working for minimum wage or even simply earning less than you are has somehow lived a life of bad decisions and moral inferiority.
