This is a complex issue. I understand the conservative view that this is “poor people getting free money/handouts taken from others.”
But simple fact: Society is a pyramid, and always will be (even in the Federation of Planets).
Even if everyone had the education and training to be a CEO (ignoring all the other factors that often — but not always — set one on a path to such jobs such as family and friend connections, the money and ability to get the needed education, environmental benefits, age, physical and mental health, etc.), if everyone in the US actually was a CEO, who would do the work the CEO manages? And who would farm the food, ship the food, and prepare the lunch the CEO eats? Who would build or drive the CEO’s limo? Who would design and pave the streets that limo drives on? Who would clean the sewers that run beneath that road? etc. etc.
Society REQUIRES that we have people who do all kinds of jobs, most of them being much harder and physically or emotionally taxing than being a CEO, or even a tech manager. YET, not all jobs pay the same. Most people get paid in the hundreds of dollars per week, not the thousands or tens of thousands.
But does this mean that a teacher, who studied hard to earn a degree, and now works long hours every day to educate children, is less deserving of a decent life and secure retirement than a corporate middle manager who spends a good part of his day browsing the internet, and benefiting from and reporting on the work of others? Does it mean that a single mother who works long shifts on her feet as a grocery checkout worker yet is constantly one emergency away from being unable to meet the rent or pay all the utilities deserve less basic security than a CEO? Does it mean a person who works full time to pay the bills but has little left over to pour into savings and the stock market should fear for their retirement?
I would argue it does not.
Will there be the occasional person who scams the social safety net to get money without working? Yes. Just as there are many people who scam the corporate system and wall street to be extremely wealthy without doing anything equivalent to the amount of effort and risk an average worker would have to put forth to “earn” the same amount.
But to condemn hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, to constant stress and fear and hunger and lack of opportunity for fear that a small handful of people may get a little money without working as hard as you do for it is, in my opinion, spiteful and petty and shameful.
There is no perfect solution. But there is a moral solution.
So good on you, Seattle.
