RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] speaking of apocalyptic horsemen...

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Russell Horn wrote:

> Mike Miller wrote:
> > OK, if by "the rational thing from a biologists perspective" you mean
> > "what most intelligent people would want to see."  We agree on that.
> > I'd like to see social systems that promote reproduction of the most
> > intelligent and healthy people.  I think we can do a lot better than
> > we are doing now.  I'm not saying we should be coercive like the
> > Nazi's were (e.g., sterilizing the putatively mediocre against their
> > wishes), but we can change the tax code and welfare regulations in
> > accordance with the principle that 'better' people make 'better'
> > children.
>
> Would it not be better to use tax payers dollars to reduce the levels of
> poverty so that more people have a chance of being "better" people
> rather than employing another tax subsidy for the bourgeois middle
> classes?

We aren't doing that?


> We are talking about a poor underclass who are denied adequate health
> care and who's children have no access to many educational tools.
> perhaps by waging war on poverty, rather than on other countries, by
> spending dollars on Social Security and Hospitals rather than cruise
> missiles, you could bring many of the poor up to the standards of your
> "better" people.

A "war on poverty"?  How old are you?  We've had that too.  It was Lyndon
Johnson's term:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1964johnson-warpoverty.html

My point is not that we should give less money to helping poor people.
It's just that we should consider that our policies do affect
how/when/which people reproduce, and this matters.  We could make
strategic changes and get better outcomes, and we could easily do this
without redistributing money by social class.

Mike
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