Critical thinking – draft self-evaluation
Critical thinking – draft self-evaluation
Introduction
For the purposes of the critical thinking and self-evaluation assignment I have chosen the topic “All forms of government welfare should be abolished”. My position for this topic lies in the fact that government welfare should not be abolished; moreover, it requires further research and development, so that it can ensure meeting the needs of the target.
Critical thinking
Before providing arguments to support my position on the topic, let me express my vision of the main reason, which called forth the opinion that provides for abolition of government welfare. To my mind, appearance of such an idea stems from technological and developments and ideological changes, which supported experimenting with governmental functions. The view of governmental functions is tightly interconnected both with trends, mentioned above, and the type of society. For instance, for capitalist societies with predominance of laissez-faire principle, it is quite natural that people should take care about themselves, using their own efforts and resources, while the government’s most important functions concentrate on protecting the person and property (Gildenhuys, 2004, p.348). On the other hand, socialist societies are unimaginable without a developed system of social welfare. However, it is important to understand practical impossibility of creating purely capitalist or purely socialist societies against the background of modern intensity of states’ influence one upon another (Iversen, 2005). So, in practice every state and, therefore, every government performs a range of functions, peculiar to different societies’ types. Therefore, abolition of one of functions, natural for governments, is going to lead to appearance of imbalance within the whole mechanism of government’s functioning.
Secondly, it is important to remember that all modern industrial states can be characterized as welfare states. So, abolition of governments’ welfare function will lead to strong need to reframe the concept state in extremely variety of states.
It is also worth mentioning that from the very beginning of states’ existence, one of governments’ key functions with respect to property was its redistribution, aimed at guaranteeing wellbeing of all community members.
Furthermore, after we have fully understood that abolition of one of governments’ top functions is a kind of reform, which will require significant shift in both theoretical and practical approaches to government’s functions and activities, let us try to understood why we need social welfare function and how it is connected to such universal fundamental values of humankind as democracy and human rights. Social welfare is prerequisite for the existence of true democracy due to the fact that natural and social contingencies should not be key determinants of life opportunities of community members (Gutmann, 1988).
Moreover, part 1 of article 1 of Universal Declaration of human rights states that every person should have the right to such a standard of living, which will be adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family (UDHR, 1948). Such a standard includes food, clothes, housing, medical care, necessary social services, the right to security in such cases as unemployment, sickness, disability, old age, widowhood etc. Provisions, regarding ensuring the right to necessary standards of living, can be found in other international legal acts, supranational law and national legislation.
In theory abolition of government welfare may deal with economics, state’s finances and so on. In practice such a reform means state-founded poverty, loss of an only source for living for lots of vulnerable groups’ representatives, lack of hope for tomorrow, forgetting about equality of opportunities and huge protests. I believe that once there is no social welfare and governmental support for those in need, societal relationships will change forever. People, who will be doomed to striving for survival, will become uncompromising and cut-throat. The level of crime and corruption is likely to become really high. The results of the survey I have conducted for implementing the assignment also show that people tend to establish links between such phenomena as abolition of government welfare and growing rates of crime and corruption. So, in other words, it may be stated that lack of government welfare means going several centuries back to the uncontrolled state of fight for living.
The topic of my position paper is “All forms of government welfare should be abolished”. There are people, who adhere to the position, manifested in this thesis. Opposite position(the one I am defending for the purposes of this assignment) lies in stressing the need of preservation all the forms of governmental welfare. Moderate positions can be based on the claim that some of the forms of government welfare should be abolished, while the other ones should be preserved. To support my position I have included evidence from such fields as history, law, political science. The link to the survey I have conducted before completing the assignment is included. All the arguments I have included are directly related to the theory of unacceptability of abolition of government welfare, which stems from combination of varied factors, included historical, political and legal ones. The talk is going to be presented before my class. When preparing my talk, I was considering the aim of making my classmates double-check the idea of abolition of government welfare and realize all the consequences, which may take place in case such a decision is adopted. To do so, I have established a chain of arguments from the most theoretical and general ones to most emotional and impressive ones. When constructing phrases, I tried to organize them so, that people get the direct association between adoption of the regulation under study and consequences. My position meets the needs of the audience as it emphasized the need of government welfare for everybody, who is in need. To make the audience more prepared to thinking about the talk, it might be beneficial to tell the story of the discourse under study. Moderate positions, which include through analysis of current government welfare options, may cause the audience not to accept the position, presented in my paper. Illustrative materials can be used to make the talk more persuasive.
References
Gildenhuys, J.S.H. (2004). The philosophy of public administration: a holistic approach. Stellenbosch: Sun Press
Gutmann, A.(ed.). (1988). Democracy and the Welfare State. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Iversen, T. (2005). Capitalism, democracy and welfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
United Nations. (1948). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved 8 September 2913 from http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
