Clarification

The hunting club story wasn't about Social Security, it was about the fairness of the whole political and economic system that we currently have. I guess I didn't make that clear. What I was trying to say is that the system benefits the rich more than the poor because the rich people contribute more to the system. The more you put in, the more you get out, sounds fair to me. I'm not saying that it's the poor people's fault. Obviously, if you ain't got nothing, you can't pay nothing. The guys in the hunting club solved this dilemma by providing two other ways that the members could fulfill their obligation if they couldn't easily come up with a hundred dollars.

Maybe that's what they need to do with our system, provide some way that the poor people can make a contribution. In my previous post, I said something about how the ancient hunter-gatherers found ways that people who were not so good at hunting and gathering could contribute to their system, thus justifying their membership in the tribe. This not only benefited those individuals, it benefitted the whole tribe by making use of diverse skills and abilities that the average hunter-gatherer might not have time to develop. This diversification of labor was the beginning of civilization. Without it, we would still be chucking rocks at wild animals for a living.

I haven't figured out yet exactly what kind of contribution our poor people could make. The first impulse is to put them to work on some kind of government project, but what caused the problem in the first place is that there aren't a lot of useful low skilled jobs to be had these days. If the poor could find some kind of well paying jobs that they were qualified to perform, they wouldn't be poor in the first place. Everybody says that the answer is education, but you have said that the poor can't get a decent education in the crummy schools that we provide for them. Truth be known, a lot of well educated people are unemployed or underemployed as it is. I have believed for a long time that what we need is some alternate way for people to make a living, since there doesn't seem to any future in working anymore, but I still don't know what that is.

Social Security: I've got nothing against Social Security, now that I've gotten my share out of it. All the years I was working and paying in, I never expected to get a dime of that money back. This was probably due to my association with paranoid conservative types who predicted that S.S. would be bankrupt by the time I was old enough to retire. Since then, I have learned not to believe everything that people tell me.

Public Health Care: I honestly do not remember the single payer plan ever being proposed while Obamacare was being debated, but you follow the news a lot more closely than I do, so I will take your word for it. I do remember looking up some of the systems in other countries, particularly the U.K and Canada, and concluding that Obamacare was none of the above. The Canadian system was my favorite, and I don't know why something like that wasn't proposed here. If that's what you call "single payer", I would vote for it.

Labor reforms: My experience with the 40 hour week was that it was largely a myth. Those guys at the paper mill were always trying to get me to work overtime, and not just management either. Most of my hourly colleagues seemed to think that there as something wrong with me because I refused voluntary overtime and repeatedly tried to get my union brothers and sisters to try to negotiate mandatory overtime out of our contract. Nowadays, I understand that a lot of employers want their people to work less than 40 hours a week, and a guy needs to have two or three of those part time jobs if he wants to get his 40 hours in. The other labor reforms you mentioned are good things, even if they were passed by liberals. Of course, none of it means anything if you don't have a job, but that's a whole nother story.

You seem to be saying that it's fair for people to get something for nothing. I would prefer to work for a living myself, and I think that many of the poor people would too. Like I said, though, there doesn't seem to be any future in that.

Got to go, a storm is rolling in and the lights are blinking. See you when you come back.