brique wrote:
> Paul Bramscher <brams007_nospam@umn.edu> wrote in message
> news:dhda4g$8g0$1@lenny.tc.umn.edu...
> 
>>Alex Russell wrote:
>>
>>>Paul Bramscher wrote:
>>>
>>>>The movement toward privatization is simply a movement back to
>>>>feudalism: lords of the manor with private armies, public education
>>>>being no longer a right, but rather a private luxury.
>>>>
>>>>There is no evidence of the generosity, altruism, fairness, and wealth
>>>>of the private elite coming pouring through whenever something is
>>>>partially or fully privatized.  The track record suggests quite the
>>>>contrary, and this is immediately evident to any student of history.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yes that is true. People can be bad, but that is no excuse to implement
>>>government sponsored theft.
>>>
>>>In a perfect world, with perfect people, Anarchy would be the only
>>>government required. As you have pointed out many people actually like
>>>to amass and abuse power so it has been found a practical neccessity to
>>>form governments. But these governments also tend to expand and abuse
>>>their powers, no matter how well meaning. Good citizens have a duty to
>>>monitor their government and check its natural tendancy to expand its
>>>powers and reach into things that do not concern it.
>>>
>>>I don't mind paying taxes for schools, medical services, police,
>>>firemen, roads, water, courts, and even a small military.
>>>
>>>I can put up with paying taxes that give poor people shelter, and food
>>>enough to stay alive. But if able bodied poor people want more than a
>>>bare existance I firmly believe they should work for it.
>>>
>>>Other people have different ideas about what their taxes should pay for.
>>>Before changing what taxes are used for there should be a strong
> 
> concensus.
> 
>>>When taxes are too high, the rich take their capital and the wealth and
>>>jobs its investment leads to elsewhere. That doesn't help the local
>>>economy.
>>>
>>>Alex Russell
>>
>>I pretty much agree with all of the above, but I'd offer this as a
>>possible piece of the solution: that the underlying problem isn't that
>>able-bodied poor people ought to work, but that able-bodied poor people
>>ought to work at jobs in which they have genuine ownership or partial
>>ownership: some acreage, a co-op, company stock, whatever.  If they
>>never earn a sufficient amount to achieve dignity at this level, they
>>may as well be on welfare -- perpetually working primarily for someone
>>else's benefit rather than their own (capitalism for the poor).
> 
> 
> I would suggest that the comment about able-bodied people wanting more than
> a bare existence should work for it is somewhat undermined by the fact that
> many able-bodied people do work and all they get is a bare existence.
> If the dole is set at a low level, then wages will drop to just above it. If
> a minimum wage is set, then to all intents and purposes it becomes the
> maximum wage for the unskilled.
> In the UK there is a social benefit for the low-waged called 'Housing
> Benefit'. This is to subside the cost of housing, particularily in the big
> cities like London which have historically high rents. Partly this was
> introduced when restrictions on private landlords, such a secure tenanacies
> and controlled rents were lifted.
> The net result has been that rents for each category of housing now start at
> the level of housing benefit paid for it. If the rate of benefit paid
> increases, so do the rents. It has become a subsidy for landlords, not for
> tenants.

We have that sort of graft all over the US.  The problem you're 
referring to was addressed by Kropotkin in his "Conquest of Bread" when 
discussing major Europeans centuries of about a century ago.

The root of the problem is the nature of the landlord/tenant relationship.

The poor don't need a subsidy to rent, they need a subsidy to genuinely 
own.  Enough with perpetual rent (slavery under another name) or a 
30-year mortgage (indentured servitude under another name).