In the wake of a demographic collapse, you're arguing against helping feed children - future tax contributors, caretakers, social workers, healthcare personnel...? Who will pay taxes for you when you won't be of working age anymore? Who will be your caretakers?
Contributing to the next generation's upbringing is the least we can do, even if some won't have kids of their own they would still (directly) indirectly benefit from this.
How about this: we give all people all meals, clothes, housing, heating (all essentials) and spending money so that they can explore their interests, travel, etc?
If we're doing this, let's look at the other extreme as well: We give all people, including children, nothing as they are expected to take responsibility for themselves. No education, no services, no law enforcement, no roads, nothing at all.
These are both obviously silly examples. The 'Where do we draw the line?!' answer can in this case be answered with 'On the side that feeds hungry children'.
> If we're doing this, let's look at the other extreme as well: We give all people, including children, nothing as they are expected to take responsibility for themselves. No education, no services, no law enforcement, no roads, nothing at all.
In that case, people will always self-organise such structures anyway. Even amongst the most failed of the failed states, eventually you will end up with at least someone claiming to be the chief law enforcer (of whatever kind), someone to look after the kids (i.e. education) while the rest works to provide for food, and some sort of fire brigade.
It will just be many orders of magnitude more inefficient than what a large government that governs more than a few dozen to hundred people can establish.
That's how most of Europe actually works: we assist those who for whatever reason are unable to support themselves.
Granted, our systems aren't perfect either. People fall through the cracks sometimes or have to deal with inane bureaucracy. But you generally won't see large encampments of homeless citizens openly defecating on the sidewalks or school children being shamed for their parents not having lunch money.
Somebody should individualistically autonomously amass enough tanks so that they can point them at individuals who think like you so they can make their autonomic individualistic decision that they'd rather feed children than be shot at by a tank.
We know that's how humanity does collective action nearly 100% of the time, but it doesn't apply some linguistic shortcuts fro the sake of moving the discussion along.
Morality is written by the guys who had the most tanks last time.
i say this genuinely, with as much love as i can muster for a stranger on the internet: this line of thought is annoying to most people who understand that living collectively requires sacrifice and accepting imperfect solutions in the pursuit of good. individualism is a weird personality myth that 99.9999999% of people will never realize. kids are hungry and we can feed them. one thing cannot be concretely addressed and the other thing can.
> should I have my wealth forcibly extracted to do so anyway?
if you have amassed anywhere near what most people would consider "wealth", then yes, you should.
> is it ok to force people to pay for stuff that they don't want to?
Yes. Happens all the time. Money doesn't exist unless people are forced to use it to pay for something they don't want to. (read Graber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years.")
I don't want to pay for nuclear weapons. Why am I forced to pay for it through my taxes? Because if I don't, the state will use its power to punish me.
Pacifists can't direct their tax monies to avoid military expenditures.
Adherents to one faith can't say their taxes can't be used on apostates.
You sound like this is a surprise. Like you don't understand why people have to pay taxes for schools even if they don't have children, don't understand why people who don't drive still have to pay taxes for roads, don't understand why people who don't swim still have to pay taxes for public pools, .. the list is very long.
Your comments sound very much like 1980s Thatcherism - "There is no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."
The last 40+ years of neoliberal thought hasn't turned out so well, as those who have money no longer feel pressure or obligation to distribute it, resulting in a return to Gilded Age power concentrations.
That's what you want, it seems.
> such as increased salary and pension contributions
Such as tax cuts for the rich. Make Gates "only" a billionaire and we can use the remaining $100 billion to pay off school lunch debt (works out the math) ... forever.
$2.8 million debt for Utah with a population of 3 million people. US population 340 million. Call it $300 million in school lunch debt. Probably within an order of magnitude. That's less than the interest on $100 billion.
Yes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have an actual positive impact on education if, instead of funding projects that trained educators knew would fail - and eventually did fail - they has simply put their $10+ billion into funding school meals.
Instead, rich people get to fund "non-profits" that they control - reducing their taxes while not relinquishing the power and influence tied to their money. Gates' wealth gives him a very undemocratic and malignant influence over US education policy.
And you want to blather on about supporting student lunch debt?!
>How about this: we give all people all meals, clothes, housing, heating (all essentials) and spending money so that they can explore their interests, travel, etc?
But it's the logical continuation of the argument. It's not like we're going from "something something unlimited free speech -> something something more bullying something something more suicides" - which is a slippery slope fallacy if you don't show the logic or proof that one leads to the other. The argument for free school lunches is exactly the same as the argument for free school breakfasts, free dinners, and free clothes.
