I agree it is best to taper, but none the less this must be the arc to save humanity.

I agree on reform. Incentivizing poverty makes no sense to me and it keeps people waiting for a constant handout. I would prefer to have a system that puts limits and also is more in place to keep people from falling into poverty and not forcing them to be in poverty to get help. Lets say that you are struggling for a month or two and getting some support would prevent you from falling into poverty...then that's more financially sound.

Let's say you already don't make a lot of money and you live check to check, now your car breaks down and it's $2000 to fix it...well that's your rent money. Now you have to decide, do you fix your car so you don't lose your job or not pay your rent and risk eviction. I don't have all the solutions but something to keep the lower middle class from falling into poverty would be great in this country (along with limitations).

Without the welfare system my concern is that they'll become thieves and be less likely to uplift themselves rather than more. We have enough of a national debt problem that I'm thinking it would be best to get rid of some things. If more people go into the prison system that's just going to shove their option for getting careers down the toilet while costing the state money. Welfare gives them the option to advance.

Regarding a future as far as 70 years from now...if anything there's a good chance we'll need to become a lot more socialized, as in, everybody gets a living wage like Andrew Yang wanted. For all we know technologies could lead to far more jobs becoming obsolete and we may end up with far better capacity to produce resources, but far fewer people who can contribute to society in ways they can make money off...so we may require the government to spread that around more or risk our society just collapsing.

The good news about that is that though it would be a lot harder for the sorts of people who love to build their own lives up from nothing and have five tractors to just toy around with as a hobby...we'll have more time to research our opinions and contribute to society in terms of discussion and I suspect we'd become a lot better educated, and society would benefit from that in some ways.

But at some point...I don't know why we wouldn't turn into an automated society with a living wage. I think the idea of less welfare-style programs is, at best, a short term solution...not something to anticipate fully coming into place 70 years from now.

Of course, the national debt keeps increasing. It'll be a good idea to figure out some things to remove. I just don't know what. I'd rather not have NASA put humans on Mars or the Moon though. I say, let the private companies be responsible for that.

@BlackoutNJ

It would helpful if we taught life skills in our schools and at home.

I'm an atheist but having trouble seeing how that can be done without religion.

@wolfhnd The elimination of home economics and the push for children to not learn trades but being trained monkeys who know how to take tests has had a huge impact. I work in the trades and don't have a college education but I make just as much money without the debt of some kid who got their Bachelors in Political Science and works at Starbucks.

Do you know what started the removal of home economics? I want to say it was "budget reasons" like everything is revolving around public schools but just interested in your take.

@wolfhnd I have trouble seeing how religion would have any impact on that whatsoever.

@BlackoutNJ You've probably also developed a more creative sort of mind than the political science major who works at Starbucks too. If they're working at Starbucks for long, they probably just kind of followed along with the crowd and thought, "I'm going to go to college because that's what society tells me I'm supposed to do." And the Starbucks worker will retain that un-creative, un-directed type of thinking, whereas you're better set to have a lifestyle that can adapt to life's changes and you're better set up to get what you want out of life, because your mind has learned to work that way.

@MrShittles I agree with you. I just think we need more critical thinking being taught to young adults but I think they are finally crash landing with the idea that college is the be-all-end-all for furthering your education.

Retirement is a ruse. I will work and build wealth for my children and grandchildren until I can no longer do so, then die without using any of what I have saved. My children are to carry the wealth forward to leverage the fertility and productivity of the family. It is not to be squandered on consumerism.

Everything must be devoted to the building and strengthening of the family unit. The family is the building block of the nation state.

@JamesWallace But we don't know how best to build the family unit, and I see no possible way removing social security would help it...except in the sense of perhaps pressuring people to have kids more or making them more reliant on their kids...keeping in mind it may not necessarily do that. I mentioned before that it might cost many people more than they earn from it.

Our culture is not equipped to know how best to build the family unit yet. There is a lot we don't know about psychology and how best to build the family unit. We're probably best off not worrying about it too much beyond the more obvious stuff, in terms of laws, at least.

If we get rid of it, I want it to be because it costs people more than they gain from it. That may or may not be true for most people. I don't know yet.

@MrShittles individuals are shaped by public policy and dynamics. I do know how to build a family unit. I do not need government support to build my nuclear family with a stay at home mother. Everything needs to roll back if we are to advance as a nation.

@JamesWallace I disagree. I think we need government support to advance as a nation. In my mind, what a nation should do with its wealth is, once it has the resources to do so, it should spread its wealth around. Wealth gives people more time to be educated. It makes people less desperate. It makes people make more intelligent decisions. It improves and educates our society, improving it further.

The KKK and such forms when people get desperate. We're always going to think less clearly when we don't have full bellies.

@dd54 I certainly agree that education does not make people more intelligent. By "educated" I was not talking about college degrees. I was talking about various types of education...especially the type we're engaging in now: talking to people and learning about the world around us.

Even if the KKK were not desperate, there are reasons why in our ancient past humanitarianism really just wasn't that common of a concept. You won't find many heroes interested in "saving the world" before recent decades. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs isn't perfect...but if you're hungry enough, you're probably going to steal food and if you have to work constantly, you're not going to have time to engage in the sorts of intellectual exploration that would be more ideal.

@dd54 I have said nothing that implies I am "socially engineered." Saying that I am "socially engineered" implies that I am merely following along with the whims of society rather than arriving at my own conclusions through contemplating reality myself. I don't think I've given you any more reason to believe I do that than you've given me reason to believe you do that. Both of us have been somewhat vague.

@dd54 I have no idea what my country needs over the course of the next 20 years. I don't care about that. I'm always focused on the survival of the species over the long run. For that to happen, at some point we're going to require stronger governments to help us to adapt to the oncoming bottlenecks. I'm concerned about stuff that might happen forty years from now or later.

Now, Ideally, you'd state specific ideas about how to improve things in ways that you understand but I don't,, and I'll state my specific ideas about how to improve things in ways you haven't looked into. In that way, we can both improve society using our strengths.

The devisiveness created by just seeing me as someone "socially engineered" doesn't help anyone though. You might understand things about immigration, taxation, or the craving for personal freedoms I don't. I might understand things about the risk of solar flares knocking out our electrical grids, fresh water shortages that will require the constructions of lots of de-salinization plants, how necessary GMO's will become in the future, and the risks of automation.

Our areas of knowledge may not be mutually exclusive...but all that's lost if we just focus on thwarting the "bad guys" rather than suggesting our own, specific, ways to improve society.

I don't care much what happens to America. In my mind, it's just a factory that has the purpose of producing the technology to help the rest of the world to survive. That doesn't mean you're wrong if you do though. I'm just focused on other things.

Replace them with stay at home mothers, generations live together and pool resources. Reduce mobility and live near families. Don’t take career opportunities that tear at your family’s fabric. Family and a connection to land and a place are critical for family growth and stability. Accept that we may not live as long, but that our families will flourish and go on. All our current entitlement programs rely on replacement migration in order to remain solvent.

@JamesWallace I hear what you're saying but we are now talking about a full cultural change in America. Majority of Americans leave home when they enter adulthood and this creates situations where people are sometimes forced to live farther from each other due to economics. Example, your parents did well in life to live in a nice neighborhood and own a home but you can't live in that area due to you being a broke college student or you work a low paying position. You may have to get a roommate and live 30 minutes away. I bring this up to point out that in order for what you're saying to happen, we would need a dramatic shift in cultural changes in a short period of time.

It is one thing for us to culturally like having large family units living under the same room roof or even in the same town...but a lot of people don't. Not every family unit is a healthy family unit. Mixing economics and family sometimes doesn't work either.

I have a friend that lives in Pakistan and they operate in this model. The grandparents, the parents and the children live in the same home. This is cultural for them, so they are used to it but I would also guess it is also economical for them as well. It's also culturally mixed in with Muslim faith how they see family.

I do understand what you're saying in regards to replacement migration though, that's a good point.

@JamesWallace I love first world nations because they completely naturally drastically reduce birthrates. They accomplish what China did with its birth limits, through just rising standards of living. Ideally I'd like for us to develop clean, cheap energy technologies to spread over the world, so that other nations can develop higher standards of living, so that their population growth rates would slow to, and then we no longer have an overpopulation problem.

If we people can't care for themselves in their old age, they're going to have more kids which will lead to overpopulation problems. They'll have fewer personal freedoms. We'll be reducing quality of life. My uncle had a dad who didn't want kids, but people didn't have as many resources to not have kids back then, and it was just kind of expected by society to have kids, so he had kids. My uncle has some horror stories from that...like his father picking up his sister after she broke something and looking like he'd slam her onto the ground as his wife cried.

I am not necessarily opposed to getting rid of social security, but like I've said many times, if we get rid of it, I'd want it to be because it may be more like a sneaky system of taxation than something that actually assists people. Which would I be better off doing? Paying into social security or investing? I'm not sure. I haven't looked into that enough.

@BlackoutNJ the cultural shift would be no different than the cultural shift to this current state of the family that occurred in the 20th century. The family unit as is it is clearly not working. Too many divorces. Too many young people wasting their 20’s and 30’s utterly lost. It works in Pakistan because they have different expectations for their lives. Television has corrupted our expectations and convinced us to pursue a value system that is clearly not working. As for parents living in neighborhoods that are out of reach, I get that. I know it all too well and guess what, many of them are so isolated it’s depressing! As a parent I will be pooling resources, having multiple homes on rural property for my kids. I don’t look at it as subsidizing their lives. I look at it like we are all one, my money is theirs. It all goes to the children and the family, none of it goes to selfish purposes. We’ve all become too selfish and we are going to pay the price by being replaced.

@JamesWallace I agree, we have become very materialistic. I will say that you're right about being older and depressed. My mother moved to Georgia on her own and she keeps asking when I'm going to visit. It's very difficult to do that when you're a plane ride away.

Divorce is an interesting issue. I don't think people should give up easily but I don't think people should be forced into staying in an unhealthy relationship...it's just not good for anyone. I think we should have more open discussion on healthy emotional relationships rather than using marriage to replace your emptiness. I know people who get divorced and they realized they aren't even fully sure as to why they married that person.

I respect what you want to do for your children. Not a bad idea.

Independent people are harder to control. They realize a bribe for what it is.