Social Services? Pro's and Con's?

Question

What do you think are the pro's and con's of continuing to provide our society with social services?

What do you think are the DISADVANTAGES of each of these items occuring?

- Increase minimum wage to $10.

- More money will be put towards disadvantaged.

- We believe education is key to success; more financial support will be provided for students studying in universities/college.

- Law offenders will serve for the society (i.e. WORK!!) under control of the police force to pay their debt to the society.

Yeah, it is a project, and I have been researching and asking people for hours and no one has come up with an A+ answer... easy 10 points guys!!! Thanks =D

Answer 1

Minimum wage: in this day and age cheap labor is abundant and Americans are going to have to get used to this fact.  Simply put if your neighbor is willing to do the same job you do, and the qualifications for this job are low, you will not get hired if he will accept lesser pay.  It's just Darwinism.  Survival of the fittest.

Money towards disadvantaged: this can help, and the hope is it does, but occasionally these people become complacent and just keep accepting handouts.  The point is to support these people temporarily, but when they start getting stuck on it for life we have to question whether it is helping them, or just sustaining them, and if it's the best use of the money.

Education: all for it, increase education in every way shape or form.  This is a bit of a socialist policy, or communist because everyone pays for it, but if you consider you'll never get anywhere or have any opportunity without it, we must provide it.  This is, IMO the only socialist / communist type of program we should be funding, as it is the basis of whether or not you will become successful.

Sure, make the lawbreakers work.  We might as well get some use out of them.

Answer 2

The problem with any sort of "program" is the mentality it creates in the person being "helped". Self respect is something that is earned, not given, and only self respect can create the desire to improve. Anyone given money, goods, services receives those things at the cost of their self respect. Loss of self respect results in generations on welfare, abusers and bullies, vandalism, self-destructive behavior, drugs abuse and suicide.

Study how we can give people a hand up instead of a hand out. Figure out how to create self respect in people and you'll solve 90 percent of the problems you're looking at.

Answer 3

Minimum wage is just that, the minimum that can be paid to anyone for any kind of work.  Anyone with skills would rightfully think that he was worth more.  We already have to pay plumbers 95.00 per hour and doctors think that they need to make 160.00 per patient=960.00 per hour.  How much more of this can we afford?

There are already so many programs in place for the disadvantaged that it is sometimes better for them not to work.

There are many scholarships that go unclaimed every year. Perhaps we need to streamline the availability of them so that people know about them. It also occurs to me that it would be a good idea to teach apprentice programs in high schools again.  Some people don't want to go to college.  This would be a good place to have nursing,mortuary science,contracting,drafting,and any other skilled trades taught to any high school grad.  Even if they wanted to go to college, they would have the skills to get a good job to help them through.

Offenders, I think need to work, and if they have no skills, perhaps they could be trained on the job.  They could be taught to work with electricity, plumbing,cars,woodwork, or any of the other skilled labor jobs that are in high demand.  Then maybe they would have something else to do besides get into trouble when they get out.

Answer 4

- Increase minimum wage to $10. - This drives up prices for those products that are produced by minimum wage earners and will simply over time drive up all prices and wages until a new equilibrium is reached. if you doubled minimum wage in time all other wages and prices would double causing the net gain to be zero.

- More money will be put towards disadvantaged. - Unless the money is coupled with training it does not solve the problem; the disadvantage remains.

- We believe education is key to success; more financial support will be provided for students studying in universities/college. - I don't have any negatives at least at the moment if the program is fair.

- Law offenders will serve for the society (i.e. WORK!!) under control of the police force to pay their debt to the society. - - Most of the work that would be performed under this program would be unskilled labor. While it does allow the local government the ability to cut costs associated with such things as keeping the highways clean, it does not do anything to help the offender to reenter society and provide for themselves.