On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 07:14:47 -0800, Gaile Pohlhaus <
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> Bonnie (et al),
>
> My comment was said with tongue fully in cheek (note smiley face)--meaning something like exactly what you say below--I don't think that we should care for our citizens by divvying out "benefits" to households, the logic leads to all kinds of absurdities. The retirement worry (which is a real worry for folks who choose not to have children even as they/we contribute to society and the lives of children in other ways) was meant to highlight that point as well. One should not have to have children (or a whole lot of money) in order to make sure that someone is there when one becomes vulnerable and/or infirm due to old age.
>
> Apologies for other interpretations abounding...
>
> GP
>
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 11/7/08, Bonnie Mann <
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>
> > From: Bonnie Mann <
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> > Subject: Kids/Pets
> > To:
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> > Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 6:20 PM
> > Folks,
> >
> > The posts suggesting that folks who don't have kids
> > should get some equal benefit package as folks who do seem
> > to me to be based on the same logic that is being
> > criticized. The history of these "family
> > benefits" is that the one with the right to the benefit
> > is the wage earning male (the one who matters to the
> > society) who can bestow the benefit on his wife and kids by
> > virtue of their relationship to him, instead of folks
> > receiving benefits because they are human beings with human
> > needs. Kids should be insured period, not only if they have
> > parents with employers who provide benefits, or parents who
> > can afford insurance...not, that is to say, by virtue of
> > their relation to a parent at all. To suggest that
> > one's children receiving what should be a basic human
> > right somehow needs to be made up for by bestowing an extra
> > benefit on those who don't have kids is to continue to
> > see the right to the benefit as accruing to the
> > "productive" (i.e. worthwhile) adult, rather than
> > to the ch!
> > ild. Call me species-ist, but to suggest that middle class
> > pet owners should get their pet's insurance covered
> > while thousands of poor children are uninsured, that to do
> > so would be to somehow equalize a fantasized inequality
> > between employees with kids and employees without kids, is,
> > well I don't know what to call it....awful. Sorry for
> > the tone of this, but as someone who came up out of poverty
> > to my university job and has multiple nieces and nephews,
> > not to mention sisters and brothers and cousins, without
> > insurance, and sees everyday what this means in terms of
> > their health, I am surprised by the suggestion that a parent
> > receiving health benefits for their children somehow
> > constitutes a "privilege" over other folks who
> > have health insurance for themselves already but no
> > children. When I was fourteen both of my eardrums burst
> > from an ear infection because my mother couldn't afford
> > to take me to the doctor... once my father died and I was no
> > longer related to a unionized e!
> > mployee of the Oregon sawmill, I had no separate right to!
> > health
> > care and neither did my mother or siblings. Would it have
> > seemed like a move toward "fairness" if the
> > university employees in the next town who were without
> > children got to insure their pets?
> >
> > Bonnie Mann
>
>
>
>