Interesting examples. Let's focus on the first one. Someone has a child but can't get a good enough job to clear the child care cost.
Now let's ignore the willing sources of help (charities, family, friends, churches, community, etc. etc.). Let's just focus on non-voluntary sources of support -- money that is taken, not given.
Why do you assume that people all over the place are just dying to watch your infant/toddler for free? When I was home with my son my husband and I had moved to an area where I knew
nobody and my friends, our parents and his siblings all worked full time anyway. Church?
HUH? There is no free daycare charities that I had ever heard of nor in any church (and I didn't belong to a church, anyway, you can't even send your kid to catholic school if you don't belong to that religion, whether you're able to pay the tuition or not).
1) How much of a working person's labor should go to the person who doesn't work? I'm curious... is it 2% of their labor efforts... 15%.... 50%? I'm curious to see where you see the line.
I've never thought about it, I don't think that way since I have no say in how it gets spent currently. I pay my taxes because it's the law. If they go up or down, I just adjust my budget accordingly, I don't really know, or want to think about, where things go.
2) What about subsequent bad decisions? What if they have two more kids? What if they decide to abuse alcohol or drugs? Does the public's obligation increase?
Again, all I was doing was providing potential scenarios where a person could be on welfare and not be a purposeful leach on the system, just a decent person who happened to be in a bind. People like you who don't believe there is ever a reason to go on welfare can't see that there could be cases where people need a hand to get over a bad stretch. For example, if my 57 year old husband were to get laid off from his job, the odds of him ever finding a job where he's makng what he makes now is practically zero. In fact, we happen to be very good friends with a couple that the husband is the foreman/supervisor for a company that does
exactly the type of work my husband does, and he offered my husband a job (remember, very, very good friends and they're about 50 miles from us so it's the same basic geographic area). He offered the top rate his company permits him to pay, it would have been a $15k cut in wages and loss of three weeks paid vacation. When I first got pregnant with my son I had to quit my job (it was just a BS job in a mall). I kept fainting, never fainted before or since but I nearly hit the floor on three separate occasions. My husband and I were living with his mother, he had a job, but no benefits. I had to go on medical assistance to be able to see an OB doc.
3) What about lifestyle choices? If the person is 150 lbs over ideal body weight, does that increase the public's obligation?
Little FYI, just because someone is morbidly obese doesn't mean they wouldn't like to be otherwise. I have another friend who is morbidly obese, she'd love to lose the weight, and is willing to cut the calories and exercise. Little problem, she has only one kneecap and blew out a tendon in the other leg (she was only released from six weeks of near total bed rest in an immobilizer last week) the only way she can exercise at all is in a pool in a highly limited fashion. She can only go and down steps one at a time and has to restrict that as much as possible. Additionally, she's on several antipsychotic medications which have completely destroyed her metabolism. In the beginning of this year she went on a liquid diet in anticipation of gastric bypass. After three months on less than 1000 calories a day she had lost the equivalent of less than 1/2 pound a week and the restricted calories were causing
severe problems with her meds. I know for a fact there are several drugs used for BPD or epilepsy that people start taking and weight just piles on and they can't lose it. Considering the GI tract is lined with neural tissue, it makes sense, but that doesn't make it any easier to live with.
Just because life is black and white and straightforward for you doesn't mean it is for everyone else.