In the Netherlands, abortion is freely available on demand. Yet the Netherlands boasts the lowest abortion rate in the world, about 6 abortions per 1000 women per year, and the complication and death rates for abortion are miniscule. How do they do it? First of all, contraception is widely available and free — it’s covered by the national health insurance plan. Holland also carries out extensive public education on contraception, family planning, and sexuality. An ethic of personal responsibility for one’s sexual activity is strongly promoted. Of course, some people say that teaching kids about sex and contraception will only encourage them to have lots of sex. But Dutch teenagers tend to have less frequent sex, starting at an older age, than American teenagers, and the Dutch teenage pregnancy rate is 9 times lower than in the U.S.
I endorse evidence-based medicine, and evidence-based activism.
“wouldn’t you rather earn something than have it just handed to you?”
Yeah when it comes to actual awards and fancy goods, but when it comes to basic needs, basic human decency, and accomodations, those things should always be handed to people. No one should have to “earn” those things.Value people as people, not base it on how much they produce.
yeah but that creates a severe dependency that could be exploited easily, and creates a slippery slope @musical-clarity
Actually studies show that people who live in places with universal income (who are given money with no strings attached just for being citizens) do far better work than those who don’t and are more enthusiastic to do work.
This is because they still want nice things and will work for those but the part of their energy that was devoted to worrying about if they have enough money to pay the rent and bills this month is now freed up to do other things.
Some people will always be lazy and take advantage of the system, but they are always a tiny percentage and it seems ridiculous to me to punish the majority and severly hamstring their abilities just because a handful of people will simply live of basic income rather than work.
When I was about ten years old, my dad called me into his home office for a moment. There was a bunch of incomprehensible code up on his computer screen.
“Press the enter key,” he said. I did. “Thanks,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to do it myself.”
And that’s the story of how I sent out one of the largest spam email campaigns of the 1990s.
