I'm not arguing against the improvements to the average person in the last 100 years, but I am saying the system that exists TODAY produces poverty, desperation and homelessness on the bottom end, and massive wealth to the top, and a hollowing out of the center, and that we should do something about it. Its easy to argue that it was the worker protections and safety that enabled the economy and the middle class. Since 1979 worker productivity and wages have diverged, and all the resources have funneled to the top.
> Instead of letting people become the best they can be, they will languish in average or low because the safety net allows them to just sit
We're not concerned with people being the best we can be. Else education wouldn't be on a shoestring budget, housing costs wouldn't force two parents to work with no pre-k childcare, our colleges wouldn't cost 10x that of other countries many of which are free, we'd provide healthcare not tied to employers so that people could take risks, we'd mandate maternity and paternity leave for parents so that they can bond with their children instead of leaving them with attachment disorders.
People are undeveloped for those reasons - it costs a lot of money and society is filled with middlemen maximizing the profit of every single human need. Our birth rate is horrible because its expensive, there is little hope for a better future, and there is no support within the country to have kids. We have a massive child poverty problem, and we can't even fund school lunches.
If you cared about people being the best, you'd care about that, not making sure that everyone gets punished. The system benefits business owners and investors, and everyone else serves them.
> I am not advocating for cutting protections for disabled people
Yet protections and programs continue to be cut!