POVERTY AND THE GOVT

The coupon idea has been tried and failed actually cuzz the addict of whatever sold or exchanged the coupons for their high of choice. I've even seen people sell food stuffs they got from food banks for their high of choice. (North American efforts)

Health programs have also been an unsuccessful issue. Education and initiatives have been tried and failed. Mostly because people begin things and rarely follow thru on them

Where would you get the money from? Most countries are having fiscal problems now.

Hats off for Father Carroll and his counterparts around the world!

Various governments are doing far too little for the homeless and poor in general, while pumping great amounts of money into corrupt regimes as "development aid", which in many ways are counterproducive. While old auntie across the street is experiencing an unworthy old age, some asylum seekers are being lodged in hotel rooms and entitled to all kinds of benefits. If you open your mouth to object to this injustice, you are branded "a racist" and asked to mind your own business. But if the latest reports are true, the stream of refugees from Syria and elsewhere will only continue to increase in the foreseeable future, also in North America, wich will put an additional strain on the already meager welfare budget in most countries.

th_agree

There will always be freeloaders around that abuse a well-meaning system. But as long as such loopholes exist, we cannot do much about it.

What is impostant now, is to try to integrate the refugees as soon as possible with language studies, school and work + a proper place to live. Unfortunately, they seem to bring with them a disproportionate number of unwanted individuals in the form of thieves, rapists and extremists, which tend to stigmatise the entire group and thus create "an apartheid" of sorts in society, much based on prejudice and ignorance. If we're not very careful here, there may be explosions, also in the literal sense of the word.

I just returned from my regular Wednesday night 5 k "philosophy walk" with my two friends. One is an Iranian-born doctor. We discussed this issue tonight and he told us how it was for a young refugee to arrive in Norway in the 1980s. Although he is secular and no longer identifies himself as a Muslim, he is worried about the consequences of a too tolerant policy. We have already had situations in schools where ethnical Norwegian children are being harassed by Muslim immigrants because they have salami and pork liver paté on their sandwiches. I share his opinion that we mustn't lose our own identity in an attempt to make our country more attractive for refugees. The consequence is that many parents of Norwegian children now increasingly move their family away from areas with a non-Norwegian majority because they fear for the well-being of their offspring. Such actions pose a hugh blow to the idea of integration. And to just shuffle more newcomers into this mill without a proper plan or control will surely add fuel to the fire. We don't need to go further than to Malmö in Sweden to experience that. There, the police try to avoid patroling certain suburbs mostly inhabited by hardline immigrants with little desire to be integrated into the Swedish society, while burning cars on the streets and creating "a mini Middle East" of sorts.

With the risk of derailing this debate completely, my opinion is that prayers have no place in a school setting, no matter which deity they are addressed to. In a modern democracy, the promotion of one particular religion above others would be both improper and unethical. As a secular humanist, I prefer a society where religion plays a private rather than a public role, since it tends to exclude rather than include groups of people and thereby make integration more difficult. If parents want to indoctrinate their children with their preferred faith, fine, but they should do it outside the classroom. So if Christians for any reason have priveleges, it's only fair that the same should be valid also for Jews, Muslims and whoever, otherwise the situation wouldn't be equal to everybody and one could start talking about discrimination.