| There are those who cannot assist themselves, the elderly, the mentally and physically sick people, single mothers and unemployed.
Those who live below the poverty line will all ways be there and they can either be given assistance or left to rot.
Left to themselves they create social problems, like slums and crime.
Families under financial distress break apart, there is abuse and children grow up learning that a gun and belonging to a gang is there only choice.
So then the tax dollar gets spent on building more prisons and more police and emergrncy services to deal with it.
It would be better to spend the tax dollar on welfare. But not just as a hand out that is futile and accomplishes nothing.
It should be welfare with a purpose such as giving better education and creation of jobs that give people a chance to improve their situation.
Suitable housing so they don't have to live on the street and affordable legal defence to help empower them against injustice .
We can ignore them and throw them in jail when they become a nuisance or we assist them to get out of the poverty trap. Either way the tax dollar gets spent.
In the long run to assist them will reduce the number of those below the poverty line and increase the number who pay taxes. And that is what will create a better and safer society for all of us. |