It depends largely on how the Charity is setup. And beyond that, it depends on the individual.
What people refuse to accept is that at some level, an individual that has his needs met, simply won't improve their lives if they don't want to.
When people are actually starving, is when they will actually change in some cases.
Several years back there was a blog about a lady who ended up in a messy divorce, and had no skills. She ended up on welfare and public housing for just a few weeks. The reason she was only on it for a few weeks, was because she met people in the public housing, who had no desire, no will, no motivation, no self-worth that caused them to want to change their situation.
This terrified her, and she got a job as quickly as she could and fled from the public housing, because she knew if she stayed there, she would end up with the same mentality.
Now she has a nursing degree, and a stable job.
The one good thing about most Charities, is that they push people to move forward with their lives. The shelter I was at, required that you meet with counselors to move forward with your life. Now you could still live there, and eat there, but you had a specific amount of time, and you had to meet with potential employers. If you refused to do anything, then you had to leave.
Government generally doesn't care about that. As long as you vote for Democrats which hand out free goodies, they don't care how long you are on the government dole. You can waste your life away in poverty and misery, so long as you vote for Democrats.
Red:
??? Say what? What "depends?" I wrote that in a nation where both charity and state sponsored/run welfare exist, there remain homeless and hungry people. That doesn't "depend." It is so.
If you want to make the case that the preponderance of those people are voluntarily destitute, by all means do so. I don't think that such an argument will be convincing for a quick visit to any homeless shelter to ask the people there and who depend on the shelter's largess will find few, if any, folks who have chosen homelessness and hunger as the state of their existence and who have cast off their financial resources to be so.
Green:
Perhaps that explains why all those "working poor" folks don't do what it takes to boost their financial fortunes so they can become working middle class or working "better off than middle class." I'll be sure to point
JimBowie1958 to your post. He'll find it most informative regarding his great concern for folks who find themselves underemployed, or at least paid less than they are accustomed to being paid. I'm sure it never crossed his mind (nor mine) that those folks are contentedly living their lives because "their needs are met" and don't really deserve, need or want his advocacy. That should be a load off his mind; now that you've spoken and pronounced their circumstances as being willful, there's no need for him to press on with his UBI ideas.
I don't agree with Jim's overall conclusions about the UBI, but I don't agree with you either because one implication of your remark as presented is that the needs one must have met can be satiated in a static way. Well that's just not so. For example, I could stop working and I would still have housing, food, entertainment, etc.; however, I would have those things only until the money runs out. Then I'd have to change dwellings, pare back on some of my expenditures. Eventually, I could be in a position where my needs aren't met.
Additionally, needs come in varying degrees. The types of needs we are discussing in this thread are the most basic sort of needs there are.
Of the needs at the base of the "pyramid," folks will generally do whatever they have to in order to have them met. People don't just stop striving to fill the needs superior to biological/physiological needs merely because they have food and shelter.
Blue:
That makes no sense at all given that Democrats are the champions of the idea that government can solve the ills of the people governed. If voting Democratic were to foist one surely into poverty and destitution, there'd be no viable tax base that can fund the government.
And yet I have met people who did not strive to self-actualize. I know several in fact. So while you claim it's not true, the facts are it is. People who have been in those situations, say the same thing.
In the 1990s, I was working at Wendy's. We had a lady come in, and get a job, and on her first day told us she intended to only work until she could qualify for food stamps again. She even gave us the exact date she would qualify, and shockingly stopped showing up for work.
Now this lady will never leave her position as a low-wage worker on the verge of poverty. Where is your claim that she will be motivate to self-actualization? Where is the pyramid in her life? She works as little as possible, and has living off the government as a goal.
Lastly, what Democrats claim, and what Democrats do, are two very different things. If the Democrats actually pushed a policy system that fixed the problem, the problem would go away and they would lose their voter base. If everyone was rich, they wouldn't be able to gain votes by proclaiming themselves a solution to the problem. Their "solutions" have never solved anything. That's not up for debate, it's just fact. The only debatable aspect is that you claim they really believe it will solve things, and I say that they know it won't solve anything. They know it won't. Why do they still champion government solutions? Votes. That's why. They want you to vote for them.
Have you ever met someone on welfare that believed Republicans wanted what was best for the country? Of course not. Democrats know this. The Democrats never give their own money to help the poor. Republicans do. Democrats give other people's money to help the poor. Why? Because they don't care about the poor. They care about votes. Always have.
Red:
There's a lot of striving to be done between securing basic needs -- which is what this thread is about -- and self actualizing. You're earlier remark implies that upon fulfilling their basic needs folks often enough don't want to strive to fulfill "higher level" needs. That just isn't what I've observed. Might there be some folks who are content to live as might a cloistered monk and be content to fed, housed, clothed and strive to meet any other needs except that of securing "oneness with God" or live some other sort of similarly ascetic value/lifestyle? Sure, there are some folks like that, but I don't think many, if any, of the folks whom one will find living in shelters and unable to feed themselves are among them.
The context of this discussion is the people on welfare. And in that context, I maintain my prior statement, that people who fulfill their basic needs, often do not strive to higher level needs, and that is exactly what I have observed.
I have even met people who were still in school, and openly said their expressed goal was to live off welfare.
Thus far, none of the men or even women, I have seen at the shelter, were incapable of providing for themselves. Unwilling..... Unmotivated.... perhaps even uncaring to provide for themselves. Not not incapable.
Your anecdotal observations are, I'm sure, precisely as you describe them. Mine are as I describe them too. In the context of people on welfare, I can only remark on the people whom I've mentored as they are the poor folks whom I know well enough to comment on what they think and thought over long periods. Each of those individuals came from homes that depend(ed) on government handouts for food and housing, yet they all have worked toward being or are high achievers as adults. They weren't unmotivated, they were just poor and had nobody to show them what to do and how to do it in order to transform their situations from that of needing to be given food and shelter to that of having the opportunity to provide plenty of those things for not only themselves, but others, as well as pursuing their own "higher level" goals.
But those are merely anecdotal experiences and observations. I would no more say they are representative if the norm than I would accept that your diametrically different anecdotal observations depict the norm. The phenomenon you've observed as well as that I've observed are both outcomes indicated by multiple theories of motivation:
Drive Theory, Field Theory, Social Learning Theory and Attribution Theory. It's not a question of whether the behavior exists. The question is whether one predominates among welfare recipients more than the other.
Other:
And what exactly is the difference between an monastic living a life of extreme asceticism and a welfare recipient?
- As goes their financial wherewithal and obtaining food, clothing and shelter, nothing other than the sources of their subsistence differ. Monastics receive their subsistence effects from charitable organizations, welfare recipients receive theirs from governments, some of which my deliver the subsistence effects via charitable organizations.
- As goes the subsistence-receiving individuals' demonstrated behavior, however, there is a clear difference: monastics seek some level of satisfaction beyond merely being fed; they act to fulfill needs beyond the most basic needs. And let's face it, a monastic's "oneness with God" is a "self-something" need they are fulfilling, even if it isn't self-actualization, for their "oneness" isn't doing anyone else any good at all.
I'm always confused and skeptical of this idea:
They weren't unmotivated, they were just poor and had nobody to show them what to do and how to do it in order to transform their situations from that of needing to be given food and shelter to that of having the opportunity to provide plenty of those things for not only themselves, but others, as well as pursuing their own "higher level" goals.
What exactly does that mean? Because I don't know anyone that was "shown". My parents never "showed" me nothing. They told me I had to work for what I want, and it was up to me...... to work for what I want.
They never said "this is how you get a job and work". I just wanted money, and the employer wanted work, and between the two mutual exchange, I worked, and got paid.
All you have to do, to succeed in life, is work. Honestly. That's it. I know people who started off working for McDonalds, that now have their own store. How do you do that? Well, you apply to work at McDonalds. You work. Consistently. You get up in the morning, go to your job, and do your job.
Is there anyone who doesn't grasp that? Anyone that needs to be shown how to "wake up", and shown how to "go to work", and shown how to "do your job"?
I never was shown any of that. It was pretty obvious from the start. In fact, I haven't done an interview with a company yet that didn't start off with "This is the job you are expected to do, and this is the shift you are expected to do it. This is the pay you will get if you do the job".
What part of that needs "shown"? Explain. What is that they don't get? Even the poorest of parents, can give this basic knowledge. You don't need schooling, or college, or a trade apprenticeship.
And that is literally all that is required. You show up, work, and do a good job. Eventually you'll get promoted. You move up the ladder, and when you get to managment, they'll ask you if you want to join the McDonald management classes. You become a store manager, and work hard, and eventually they give you your own store.
From there, you can either borrow money to buy your own store, or save money to buy your own store.
And see what really aggravates me is while you are making up these excuses (in my opinion), as to why these people can't succeed because they "have not been shown".... people come here from all of the world, start businesses and become millionaires.
How do you explain how an uneducated Egyptian can come to the US, start working as a janitor at a hospital, and end up Director of Build Services making six-figures?
How do you explain a poor Jamacian coming here, opens up a food store, and ends a multi-millionaire CEO?
How do you explain Farrah Gray, at 6 years old, with is single mother who had a heart attack, living in object poverty, starts selling things door to door, and eventually ends up multi-millionaire CEO to Farrah Gray Publishing?
How do these people all magically make it with no one to "show" them how?
Mexican immigrant came to the US, didn't have a work permit. So he just opened his own company making drones. He literally was baking circuit boards in a kitchen oven, to make his drones. If anyone should have an execuse to be impoverished and hopeless, here's a guy not legally allowed to work.... and he just opened his own company is now is a multi-millionaire.
Explain? How do these poor, uneducated people, come here and become filthy rich... while born and bred Americans somehow are incompetent with a public education and subsidized college, and need to be "shown" how to work and succeed? Is there some super secret government "show immigrants how to succeed" program that we are denying natural citizens?
