Disagree. I think the existing social welfare system in your country is hugely destructive, and you need to weaken and dismantle it as much as possible.
Social welfare weakens incentives for individuals to plan and live for the future. People should pay for their own lives with their own dollars, and if they are too foolish and imprudent to account for their old age, they should suffer the consequences of their own actions. They have no one to blame but themselves for not analysing the dangers.
Once people become aware that there are no second chances, behaviour will improve. It's a short-term pain for a major long-term benefit.
I think you'll have a hard time convincing the majority of Americans (or even just humans in general) that we should literally let people die on the street.
Yet that is what happens on the streets of America every single day. I think your statement should be "you'd have a hard time getting your average American majority to understand that people are dying on their streets today".. because, it is happening.
But that's exactly what we should do. Or, more accurately, we should leave it to private citizens to decide, of their own free will, to render assistance (and prevent anybody from using the state's threat of violence to force an entire society to render assistance.)
Until the full dangers of death and failure operate as incentives, moderated only by the free choice of individuals to cooperate and render assistance, our economies will never grow to their full extent, and our prosperity will always remain limited. In the long term, any society that clings to these dysfunctional social policies will be outcompeted by societies that discard them. In the much longer term, if the planet as a whole is held back by these policies, we may expect to be outcompeted by other, more progressive alien civilisations.
You advocate, in your own words, allowing people to die on the street unless private citizens decide to render assistance. I would far, far rather have state aid than that.
You imply that, left to their own devices, free to serve their own self-interest, private citizens would not decide to help "people dying on the streets."
So in essence you imply that the state must act as a coercive mechanism to override the personal interest of its productive citizens.
From where I stand it appears that you endorse tyranny. Can you explain otherwise?
I deny that a state that taxes its citizens and provides services to all in return is necessarily tyrannical. I also deny that I said what you think I said, because your black and white view of the world appears to preclude shades of gray. If it suits you to use scary words, however, then my answer is yes - it is still preferable to your alternative.
In a world where what happens to you in your old age is entirely determined by the choices you make when you're younger, and where the correct choices will absolutely guarantee that you have the proper resources available, this would be an excellent idea.
In my world, though, there are layoffs, long periods of unemployment, expensive catastrophic events, and generally a whole heapin' helpin' of reasons why people may need financial assistance for reasons that have nothing to do with their life choices. There are people who have done everything "right" and go into bankruptcy because a family member with insufficient health insurance gets sick. Do these things not happen in your world?
Sorry, what? Risk and uncertainty are universal. Everyone has to deal with their existence.
There have been plenty of insurance systems developed throughout time whereby people can hedge their risks. Previously however insurance was informal and consensual - you signed up to a Roman college. You and everyone else in the society engaged in it of your own free choice. If your group couldn't manage its finances it went broke (or more accurately appealed to an aristocrat.)
Nowadays we live in such enlightened times that the elements of choice and freedom have largely been removed.
The existing systems were created out of necessity, and were fundamental to the establishment of the middle class.
You talk about Roman College as if it were something available to the destitute, 70-year old serf? Come on.
Today we have millions of people working full-time jobs, making less than a living wage. That is a structural, societal problem, and no planning on an individual laborer's level is going to counter that.
How about you get back to us on your 50th birthday and tell us if the best way for minimum wage laborers to pay for basic healthcare is to beg rich people?
The only thing rich people hate more than taxes is bums. Something about moral deficiency, right?
1) Life-expectancy in Roman times was very low. 50 is a more appropriate age for your rhetoric.
2) "Serfs" are medieval. And besides, this is an argument about free citizens, so the very concept is irrelevant.
3) The colleges were all independent, spontaneously organised by poor citizens. Anyway, apart from subsidised grain and generalised patronage the Roman ruling classes didn't design social welfare systems akin to anything we would recognise (and again, the comparison is difficult, because the patricians were generally using their own fortunes to win favour with the masses)
4) The colleges insured primarily against the possibility of funeral costs in the event of sudden death - the most important shock financial event the average poor Roman expected to face. There was no effective medical technology in Roman times, but Romans cared a lot about having a good funeral and being remembered.
5) The colleges weren't "available" to anyone unless they paid their way. If you wanted that protection, you paid your membership dues. So yes, if the destitute old free citizen had been prudent and consistently paid their dues before striking bad luck, they would be okay (well, they'd get their nice funeral, but you know what I mean.)
6) Maybe your millions of people making "less than the living wage" (however you define that) should take a leaf out of the book that seems popular to users of this site - looking for ways to improve the value of the services they offer?
7) What is so wrong with the idea of people directly petitioning others for funds to purchase healthcare? Heck, they don't even need to just petition the extremely wealthy. Powerful modern technology allows people to petition the entire world for funds (if they can convince people their cause is worthy.)[1] One of the benefits of living in a more advanced age than 50BC.
8) I feel like you are imagining me wrong. To be clear: I am young, broke, and largely unaccomplished. I have no significant assets beyond my intelligence and my ambition. I have no vested interest to protect. In fact, I am someone who stands to gain the most short-term from these sorts of welfare policies. Hell, I even work for "minimum wage" currently - another thing I would like to see abolished!
I simply want society to reward and encourage people who provide genuine value, and stop forcing productive citizens to subsidise unproductive citizens, without any accountability or metrics for the benefit of their investment, because a) I want to make my way up in the world honestly, by offering true value for trade, and b) because I am concerned about the economic damage caused by pervasive, dysfunctional contemporary policy.
If society got rid of all this terrible policy, the abundance of opportunities from the ensuing economic growth would do more to improve the fortunes of the assiduous in a few years than social welfare has accomplished in decades.
If your pure Darwinian vision of the future were to manifest and hence there was no threat of prosecution, I'm pretty certain you'd be offed rapidly due to your savage annoyingness. The rule of law and the social norms that you decry are actually what is protecting you.
I'm just speculating, though; perhaps you would be crowned King of All There Is and paid the fealty you are so surely due, as you have responsibly planned whilst the impoverished clearly have not. All hail Nirnira, may the bones of the weak be used to grow his giant throne!
[apologies for feeding the troll, he's just so cute but ideologically dangerous]
Social welfare weakens incentives for individuals to plan and live for the future. People should pay for their own lives with their own dollars, and if they are too foolish and imprudent to account for their old age, they should suffer the consequences of their own actions. They have no one to blame but themselves for not analysing the dangers.
Once people become aware that there are no second chances, behaviour will improve. It's a short-term pain for a major long-term benefit.