Quote:
Originally Posted by vreihen16
At the risk of getting this thread moved under P&R, this example is no different than the person who spent a million bucks on a McMansion before the housing bubble popped, took out a jumbo loan, leveraged it up the wazoo with second mortgages, and then cried to Uncle Sam when their whole house of cards came tumbling down.
As someone who purchased a moderate two-bedroom house and lives well within his means (and suffered a huge medical issue with $12K out-of-pocket two years ago), why should I pay for someone else's irresponsibility?
On the topic of the check, those who don't need it can freely donate the funds to their local not-for-profit hospital, health care worker scholarships, food banks, etc. I actually donated $100 yesterday to a well-vetted local college nursing student hardship fund.....
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The problem is that you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just like welfare, of course there are going to be people that abuse the system. The question is whether the good that the program generates outweighs the abuses.
If you want to run the government like a business, then "good enough" should be good enough. If we cut checks to a bunch of people and it saves 90% of people from destitution but 10% go out and buy a gaming PC with it, I'd call that a success. I'm personally unwilling to do nothing because of that 10%. Is it unfair to people like you? Yes. Is it a net positive? I'd argue yes.
We do incremental improvement all the time in business. We make tradeoffs with compromises because perfection is never really attainable. Why not hold social programs to a similar standard? The vast majority have a positive ROI.