Monday, December 22, 2008

What if you do nothing but make bad decisions?



Here's a scenario for all the people who read this blog:

Suppose you were born with a disability and that the disability was that you could never make good economic decisions. Does society owe you anything? Who owes you something? Your family? Friends? The clergy?

I'm reminded of those cheesy 80s TV shows where some loser character says something like "I can't ever do anything right" before finding some hidden talent that makes women want to have his children. In our scenario, this loser never discovers his hidden talent and remains a loser -- right up until he lands in the arms of government assistance programs for the rest of his life.

My core belief is that the poor are poor because they're either losers or have an impaired sense of judgment. When I say poor, I mean "bottom percentiles" of society. A smart man in a third world country may be "poor" overall, but in the top percentiles of his local society -- such a man, in my book, would not be considered poor. It is not fair, imo, to compare the richest man in an impoverished Bangladeshi village with a welfare-recipient in New York City.

What do we owe the perpetually poor and the mentally impaired? Compassion? Or perhaps a job that doesn't require good economic decisions? Or should we make his decisions for him?

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