In Reply to: Re: Interesting links posted by Farmer on August 27, 2006 at 07:51:00:
I think about this topic on a continuing basis, because I serve the interests of people with severe, persistent mental illnesses. You'll find many of my constituents living on the street or in homeless shelters. Those on state welfare--i.e., those receiving public "charity"--live in low-income subsidized housing projects in high crime areas, where they vegetate on psychotropic medications in front of the television all day while smoking cigarettes.
From a Christian humanist standpoint, social darwinism is the collective sin of highly competitive, individualistic, free-market cultures. For me, social darwinism explains a lot of the attitudes, beliefs, and policies that I do battle with day in, day out.
Right now in the U.S., we're evaluating major welfare reform policies that took place 10 years ago. The measure of our success is that fewer people are on the dole, and they are now working at low-income jobs. The same amount of poverty exists, perhaps even more so today than ten years ago depending on how you measure poverty. Nevertheless, people who work have a chance to better their lives (or so the theory goes). Actually, I believe employment is extremely important for developing human potential and a sense of personal dignity & empowerment, but we're finding that people with serious mental illnesses are one of the most difficult groups to move off of welfare into the workforce. It's not that they don't want to work or can't acquire the necessary job skills. The problem is they're stigmatized as "crack-brained" or "dangerous" and require workplace accommodations for people with disabilities. Such workers, unfortunately, do not maximize the employer's profits. They do, however, maximize social benefits by paying taxes and participating in the broader range of economic activity.