The 6 Essential Needs of Mankind

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I somewhat like the idea, but then you also get cases like I mentioned with my family - where the demands of private support are inherently unreasonable, but the attitude is that since you are receiving charity you ought to be grateful for the help. That’s going to especially be an issue with more rural areas where there aren’t a lot of options. For example, one concern is that some private religious charities may use it to impose their faith on others in inappropriate ways, or to prevent others from practicing their faith. Or, say, another personal experience where on paper I “had access” to mental health treatment, even though the treatment being provided was wildly inappropriate, it was often treated as though I should be grateful to have access to care at all. (Think “completely ignoring my own reports of being assaulted but calling me paranoid for wanting to avoid he guy” levels of inappropriate here.)
 
Well like anything with humans involved it will never be perfect. It’s a difficult situation on every side when you’re dealing with finite resources and having to decide how to best allocate them where most needed. Family can be the worst at times.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Well like anything with humans involved it will never be perfect. It’s a difficult situation on every side when you’re dealing with finite resources and having to decide how to best allocate them where most needed. Family can be the worst at times.
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I think I said it on another thread, but I think that’s where attitude is the foundation of more problems than the actual system. More good will come if we all take an attitude of charity in the moral sense, no matter how that works out. It’s simple logic really - if I’m automatically suspicious of the poor and think most of them are poor through moral failings, I’m going to be less inclined to support helping them through any means, than if I consider them to be people who have problems they need help with. (And lack of incentive or lack of understanding of opportunities can be genuine problems. I’ve seen many people suggest part of the problem of generational poverty is that children grow up believing poverty is the best thing they can expect unless they get some long shot sports career or go into crime.)
 
What bothers me about gov rrnment’s helping the poor is that those who are not poor think they have “given at the office” so to speak, and have fulfilled their obligation.

The problem is that a lot of poor people really need is personal help. Some may need friends, others may need mentors, etc, but a check in the mail is simply not enough.
 
Annie said:
What bothers me about gov rrnment’s helping the poor is that those who are not poor think they have “given at the office” so to speak, and have fulfilled their obligation.
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I’m not sure that’s an issue of government so much as social attitudes. We’ve become very disconnected from each other in general, and you can get the same result from people who gave at some form of private charity. It’s actually been mentioned as a factor in poverty - people like me who may not earn a lot, but have a background where we know a lot of middle class people, do better than people from poor families and neighborhoods where the people you know may not have the resources to help.

Not just financial resources either - for example, one major thing that’s been pointed out is that how to find and keep a job isn’t a skill that comes out of thin air, and professional jobs don’t have the same requirements as retail or manual labor jobs. I distinctly remember, for example, having to be taught how to find a job at the sort of place that’s not just taking any warm body.
 
JamesATyler said:
From this light, there are 6 essential needs that are owed to our fellow man under threat of the most severe penalty. These are food, drink, shelter, clothing, health care, and justice.
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Haven’t read all the responses yet, but I would think that air (oxygen) should be in that list somewhere.

D
 
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