1984?

[Philly Mike]

This from the A.I.G. thread, but it's been gettin away from that specific area so I thought I'd start a new one.

Well yes a lot of us can make our own decisions, but I don't know if you have noticed this, but people in general are too lazy to make decisions for themselves, this is where the problem lies. People are too lazy to make their own food so they just buy from mcdonalds the biggest and fattiest thing they can find, then when they get fat the sue mcdonalds. People decide for some reason to smoke cigarettes then soon enough they begin to smoke 1 pack a day then 2 then 3 and even more in some cases. then they get cancer and sue the tobacco companies.

You're telling me that because there are people who can't think for themselves, the government should have the right to legislate how we as individuals act, think and feel? That's going a little far. If you want to talk about supporting lazy people, why don't we look at welfare reform? It's a sore time to bring that up, I know.. but even when times were good it was abused beyond belief.

Well first off I never said the government had any right to direct people 100%. My point is that regulations have to be there because people don't know how to lead themselves, and the ones that acutally know where they want to go or what they want to do have the chance to because they still have the freedoms that we are granted in this country.
I had no intentions of talking about welfare, in fact it was not even on my mind when writing that, if you were lead to this by what i stated then you really misunderstood what i was talking about.

See, I have a second, part-time job as a produce clerk at a local supermarket (for seven years, I've been working one FT and one PT job). At times, I get called to help carry out groceries... and when I see someone pay with a Michigan BRIDGE Card and I have to load their groceries in a nice new Honda Pilot, a newer Lexus, or any number of other nice vehicles I've done it for, it pisses me off some. Don't cry about how people can't break an addiction to cigarettes, food, or whatever that *I* need to pay for it, because I'll end up paying for it in the long run. Just because "people in general" are lazy and don't want to make decisions does not mean that I should be OK with taking care of their problems via social, taxpayer funded programs.

the example with cigarettes or any of that other shit was completely unrelated to welfare. The reason i brought up the addictions is because these idiots blame others for what they can't control and they are complete ass holes. However they sue and they win, and the one who pays is the bigger fish(the company that provided said addiction). Frankly it's complete bull shit.
Now as far as welfare goes, yes there are plenty of assholes that abuse it, and that also is complete bull shit. I have also seen the welfare program actually work at it's best. A girl i used to know in high school got pregnant, her mother dropped her and she was basically alone. She ended up on the program and other government assistance. Now she also ended up getting her GED and then went on to community college, last I heard about her is she is now with a man and some good job.

Point being is the system does work for people but there also plenty of people who abuse it and I understand that. Yes there needs to be restrictions and more incentives to get these people off of it.

Taking away freedom of choice is not the answer. The government telling companies what they can and can't manufacture is not the answer. I'm not going to pretend I can solve the world's problems, but trying to legislate people's behavior does not sit well with me.

Now yes freedom of choice is something that should not be taken away. Thing is these companies need some kind of restrictions, letting them just make the rules is too reckless and that has been proven by the whole housing bubble pop. If there were regulations in place to stop the wild lending practices this whole problem could have been avoided. They made plenty of risky moves, they allowed a lot of people to lend with values they should have never had. This threw so much out of whack it screwed up industry not directly connected to them. The point I was making is that for the most part these companies are the people who won't stop smoking cigarettes. Thing is they have become the cancer and if we don't pay to fix it the cancer will wreak havoc on the body (the body being the world economy).

either way the taxpayers are screwed, this whole matter is just the safest way.