44 Incompetence

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The fact that over half of Americans receive some kind of government assistance is prima facie evidence that people of average intelligence can't survive without help; not to mention the people receiving assistance from their family or church, or aren't on assistance but should be. We have to be aware that many, many people are incompetent to compete in our modern technological society. Back-in-the-day when there were unskilled jobs, low technology & paternalism, more folks would have blended in but not now. Worse, even a high-IQ child raised in a low-IQ home will be dysfunctional. Add to that the large component of the population that is underage, taking psych meds, disabled, incarcerated, traumatized, etc., and it's a shitshow where a minority of the population basically carry the rest on their backs.</p> <p>I know this concept isn't palatable to many people's internal narrative but that doesn't change the fact that lots of folks have economic, medical or social difficulties, or all three. These people don't have bank accounts & couldn't write a check if they did, and they have to use debit cards, if they can even get one. Their financial manager is the cashier at the Payday loan place. Plus, most are overweight, and have other health problems, and a lot are estranged from their family, and their only friends are bartenders & smoke-buddies. They can't make anything like a rational decision: it's stream-of-consciousness living.</p> <p>This estimate doesn't even include the irrational & ill-informed or those with the Millennial-generation mindset of no Life Goals that will "only do something meaningful.” And often people that seem to have it together are actually in trouble with one or more aspects of their life but they have the money to hire the necessary expertise to cover the deficit. Examine anyone too closely & you'll find one or two major faux pas: medical, finances, legal, that if not handled adequately is going to ruin a person's life. People without the same economic means to handle complicated situations in their life should be able to get some help but we can't train personal responsibility, independence or competence. Who does the training? What if the training fails? What is the training? This is a problem of tremendous magnitude. I'm not speaking from contempt, I'm just laying out the groundwork for the situation our country has to deal with and doesn't because, really, the only solution is government intervention, and before you knee-jerk that it's not government's job to be every citizen's wingman, remember that they're here too and there's a lot more of them than there are of you.</p>