This isn't about survival of the fittest, if you have no skill, then you are going to have trouble finding a job that has good benefits. No one is stopping you from acquiring a skill (outside of cases when you're sick...obviously.) You can become a plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. and make a decent living.
and... we'll just give a big 'fuck you' to everyone else who gets sick at some point, and can't go back to work, or has skills that get passed by in the marketplace. hey - just go back to school for a few years, juggling some low wage jobs while you get more skills! so that you can win some approval from some employer where yay you can pay extra money to have some insurance so you can afford medicine to keep yourself alive. whew! That doesn't sound like "survival of the fittest" AT ALL. not sure that the OP was thinking about.
The word "benefits" just irks the hell out of me in the first place. Maybe the entire concept of "benefits" being synonymous "things that give you access to something that keeps you alive and healthy", and tying said stuff to "employment" (something very much at the whim of people and factors often outside your control - handicaps, geography, family obligations, etc) we could think about the issue a bit differently.
Also... society needs people to be doing low-end crappy work. Are they just deserving enough to find a job that has "good benefits"?
> and... we'll just give a big 'fuck you' to everyone else who gets sick at some point, and can't go back to work, or has skills that get passed by in the marketplace.
Capitalism doesn't care if you get sick. It only cares if you have time/skill to trade. That's the cold hard reality. In this country, capitalism trumps just about everything else. It has its advantages and disadvantages for sure. By the way, I'm not saying all of this is morally "right" - it's just the way it's always been, capitalism/business comes first in the USA.
I agree that society needs people to be doing low-end crappy work, but maybe if there were fewer low-skilled laborers in the job market, there would be more competition for their services (i.e. the employers would have to offer better benefits.)
I'm all for universal-healthcare and frankly my family would be a primary beneficiary.
As far as safety nets go, how far do we go? If I got sick, I wouldn't expect you (and everyone else collectively) to pay my mortgage, grocery bills, etc. for potentially years on end. Where do we draw the line? How do we prevent people from gaming the system? I know people in Europe who have been "sick" for years.
The drain on the systems in Europe from those who are “gaming the system” and who are long term sick pales into insignificance when you consider the overall savings due to the collective bargaining power of a nationalised healthcare system.
This isn't about survival of the fittest, if you have no skill, then you are going to have trouble finding a job that has good benefits. No one is stopping you from acquiring a skill (outside of cases when you're sick...obviously.) You can become a plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. and make a decent living.