Originally posted by: Leros
Its a tricky situation. Like you said, a fast growing population of lower class people is going to cause some problems. I don't see much else you can do while still treating them like people though.
The situation will balance itself out somehow. Absolute worst case: the country will collapse upon itself, there won't be enough food to go around, and the poor will die from starvation. Balanced.
Or we segregate into classes and develop our own "3rd world" within this nation.
And just like say...India, you'll have the select few rich overlords, and everyone else is working their butts off for a substandard quality of life.
People are fooling themselves if they deny that more undesirable traits are present in poor communities than in rich communities, helping contribute to the fact that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Nuture over nature, buddy. Unless you think Paris Hilton and ilk are examples of high quality specimens.
The difference in natural ability between the successful and unsuccessful is not so great that someone's genetics doom them to where they are. In fact, I'd say the benefits of a proper education and upbringing easily eclipse most any benefit bestowed by genetics.
In fact, I see native born Americans as a wonderful and woefully underutilized resource. Why is there such a big hangup over the nuclear family? Start up institutions, sorts of universities for young children. Make enrollment in these institutions voluntary, but appeal to families who cannot afford to keep children. These children can then be educated, at a fairly reasonable cost, as a single employee can be assigned to a large group of children, and many employees can share the burden of education in the arts and sciences. As well, develop a community among the children, so as they grow older they can offer guidance to their younger colleagues. Make them well rounded citizens, and offer multiple tracks so they can learn skills of interest and use.
And at the end, mandatory 2-4 years of (paid) government service wouldn't be uncalled for. Not necessarily military, if these children are as bright as the organization should be capable of producing, there are many tracks in government, even in sciences, law, art, etc, that they could join. Ergo, it's the new communism. Government money raises the children, so why shouldn't the government decided how the children are raised?
Were we to let evolution take it's natural course, there would be no welfare of any kind and those poor who couldn't feed their 7 ill-behaved bastards would die of starvation and evolutionary balance would be maintained. Instead it's just as several people in this thread have described. The productive* members of society will slowly become the minority until society collapses on itself. I just hope I'm not around to say "I told you so."
Society and the works of man are far greater than anything that could be hoped to be achieved by evolution. At least over any time frame we're concerned with.
If there are poor, unproductive members of society, the solution is not to let them die, it's to raise and nurture them into being useful.
BTW, I'm not being serious with my arguments here, if anyone was wondering.
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