Kelvyquayo wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Where do you suppose the dividing line for "free stuff" should be?
That this is ultimately what it boils down to isn't it?
Always does.
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I understand I'm being ultra-utopian in my thinking..(derp!) but, Yes. The dividing line isn't that difficult. Water, Food, Shelter.. to begin with.
Ok. What how much water? What kind of food and shelter? What quality of those things? How should it be delivered? How much convenience should come with it? It's easy to say "let's just provide basic necessities", but we always seem to experience a creep of what these "rights" entail and need to be at least aware of that fact.
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Pretending like it's such a huge difficulty to make a distinction between privilege and rights is just an excuse to maintain the failed status quo.
Except that people do have a problem making that distinction. Else we would not be talking about having water run to the taps in your home as a "right".
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I'm not suggesting that we feed all of the poor and hungry with gourmet cuisines.
Aren't you though (the equivalent anyway)? A large portion of the worlds population would consider water run directly to their homes as a massive privilege/extravagance and are struggling just to have water that wont make them sick somewhere within a hour or so walk from their homes. As I mentioned earlier, this is entirely a first world problem.
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If we have the means to do it then every moment that we are not trying to do it is just a further step into futility.
I'm not even sure what this means. So because we *can* do something, we must? There are a nearly infinite number of things we *can* do. But if we attempt do all of them, we'll find that we run out of means quite quickly. We don't have infinite resources and have to prioritize our funds. As a couple people have already mentioned, what are you not going to spend public money on in order to do this subsidy? Let's assume we do decide to provide the first $20/month of basic service "free" to everyone. Great, right? Now expand that to a city of say a million people. Now we're talking about $20 million dollars a month we're pulling from the tax base to provide free tap water to everyone's homes, that isn't paying for say roads, or schools, or fire and police services, or parks, or any of a number of other things that our tax dollars pay for. Who decides which of those things we don't fund because we've decided that having basic water/sewage service run to your home is a "right"?
I'm a conservative (shocker). But I'm a Republican, not a Libertarian. I do believe that government should provide certain services to the community it serves. However, those services should be balanced against the basic concept that people should pay as much of the cost of the things that most directly benefit them (or which they use the most) as possible. As others have mentioned, it's why we fund road building mostly from taxes levied on activities which most use those roads. It's why public schools receive most of their funding from property taxes in the area they serve. The broader the service, the broader the taxes you can/should apply to it. So building a water infrastructure that all can use is fine. But it's quite reasonable to charge people for the use of the "last mile" of that infrastructure that runs into their own homes. Because that part of the system is less a right than a privilege IMO. And to be honest, the cost is pretty darn reasonable.
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Is there a distinction in Taxes between those that drive and do not drive on those roads? I am simply suggesting that certain utilities be payed for the same way.
That's exactly how utilities are paid for.
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Perhaps there is a good reason that we do not do it that way?
Except we do do it that way, and there are very good reasons why.
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I mean, I'm not talking about government repair-men coming to your house like in the movie Brazil. Private companies still get to work and get paid but they get paid via gov. contract and not by billing individual citizens.
The money still has to come from somewhere. As I mentioned earlier, nothing is really "free". It costs money to build and maintain water and sewer systems. Who do you suppose should pay for this, if not those using those systems?
