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[Thomas Lunde]

Some thoughts on Aberattions

I was trying to explain the other day, to my 9 year old daughter about
wages, value, work and welfare.  Quite a challenge.  I found coming out of
my mouth some interesting thoughts.

Has it every occured that when you are on welfare, their seems to be a
principle in which if you are single, you recieve one amount of money -
while if you have dependants, you recieve more money.

But, once you move into the waged economy, your income is based on the job,
not on the number of dependants you have.  Which creates and interesting
anomaly.  Take a job - truck driver - value of job $15 per hour.  Now, if a
single man does this job, he is allowed to keep the whole $15 for himself
and spend it however he chooses.  We accept that idea without a question -
right.  Now, what if his co-worker has 3 children and a wife and one of his
children requires additional costs, let's say drugs.  The system is set up
so that he recieves the same $15, but is expected to spread that around to
cover 5 dependants.  Why would we chose to make the job the deciding factor
rather than a persons needs in regards to dependants.  Especially when in
other areas of income, we have accepted the thought that those with more
dependants require more money, such as welfare?

Well, it is the difference between two ways of thought - isn't it.  One is
the thought of socialism and the other is the thought of capitialism.  Take
for a point of interest housing.  We often see two middle aged people living
in suburban splendor - 20,000 sq ft of tastefully decorated, heated and
convienced comfort while we look at people raising kids who find themselves
in limited space, restricted furniture, living one on top of the other.  How
do we rationalize that?  Well, we do it through the capitalistic model,
which says as you gain experience, get older and have more responsibility in
the work world, you get paid more - in other words, by the job.  Perhaps in
a socialistic society, the family of children would be alloted the big house
on the basis of their needs and as the children grew, the living quarters
might be reduced as the needs grow less.

Now, if you were put in the position of a new world and you became the
economic god.  How would you decide.  The job is the determiner of wealth
and use of resources - or the needs of people become the determinant of
wealth and use resources?  Might not a very rational and humane system be
devised based on needs rather than qualifications?  What would be the
downside - well perhaps, some would say that all those lazy people who don't
want to work, would just have a lot of children.  Ha, anyone who thinks that
has never had to deal with children 24 hours a day.  A job is infinitely
easier than being around 2 or 3 young children for ten years or so.  On the
other hand, one could argue that perhaps many of the problems of society
would be eliminated if there was no poverty in families and children had
adequate family resources, parents who might be able to spend more time in
the family and that over time, many of the costs of the capitalistic society
would just not be incurred.

Of course, ruiminations like this come down to the hard fact, that those who
benefit from the current situation, also hold the bureaucratic power,
academic power, financial power and when in government the political power.
Now the argument might be made that if this was truly wanted, then there
would be a political movement towards this.  But most who hold jobs, who
have been brought up in the capitalistic way of thinking, cannot and will
not engage in a discussions of this manner, nor provide the money or the
structure which would allow an honest polling of the populace through a
vote.  Rather, the media, the academics, the rich, derail such thoughts and
aspirations by sheer neglect - they won't talk about it, promote it, argue
it or in any manner do anything but avoid it and riducule it.  And so the
world goes on, following a particular philosophy - without debate or
experiment into other ideas.

After I had went through this with my 9 year old, she sat quietly for awhile
and finally said, "I understand what you mean Dad and it sounds really good.
How come people don't pay you to talk about this?

To which I could only reply - they don't want to hear.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde
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