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Should we pay for water?

Should we pay for water?

  • Total voters
    68
Phys251 said:
Banning or taxing rainwater collection is done for the exact same reason that in many states, it is becoming increasingly legally difficult to live off the grid.
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Only if you educate the people to boil rainwater first. Then drink it after it cools down. Otherwise, you may end up with a damaged liver especially if you're drinking rainwater in places like Detroit that is an industrial city.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
No. Housing, which includes water, in my opinion is a basic human right and should not have to pay for it. It should be provided.
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I don't totally disagree.

I think that every human being should be entitled to basic necessities.

A 6' x 8' covered dwelling heated to a maximum of 68 degrees, 64 ounces of clean water, and 2,000 calories worth of rice, beans, and some green vegetable per day would take care of the absolute basic minimums.

The problem I have is when the government starts paying for 2 bedroom apartments and providing people with cash they can use to buy whatever they want (yes, I know they can't buy WHATEVER they want, but they still have a choice and there's no reason to even give them that much).

Naturally if folks want, and are capable of, working for more then I don't see where government has any basis for standing in their way.

But if folks are entitled, as humans, to have everything they need to live, then morally the only thing society owes them is EXACTLY what they need to LIVE and not one cent more.

Society doesn't owe anyone comfort, entertainment, opportunity, or a choice.
 
grip said:
The reason I brought this up, because if a major US city has half its population unable to afford basic water supply, it speaks to how broken our capitalist system is becoming.

Walmart advertises, they'll provide $250 billion worth of new US production. That's one company trying to rebuild public image, with a $.25 trillion dollars. Yet half of the citizens of Detroit can't afford freaking water, something is wrong.

A socialist gov't isn't the answer but it's going to become a necessity if corporations don't put something back in, instead of leveraging their ability to hoard money. Starbucks is going to start offering a free college education to its employees.

Paying workers more, with better benefits would be a big step in the right direction, and stimulate the economy dramatically putting funds in the hands of spenders.
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I suspect something is wrong in Detroit, but it is not a failure of the Capitalist system.
There are a lot more problems there, than people not paying their water bill.
 
Gaius46 said:
Your right to life means someone cannot take your life except in certain circumstances. It does not mean someone has to take affirmative steps to preserve your life.

Inidividuals should be billed for water usage. It costs money to purify and deliver and if you're on the hook for your personal usage you might act in ways that conserves water.

And frankly it's not like it's a huge expense. I think I pay about $10/month to the local water company.
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Of course not, don't take things out of context. This is one of those things which should be a shared minimal expense of the community. No one has to make affirmative steps to preserve but they should not be allowed to take affirmative steps to prevent.

Which is why I said a "cost plus" method should be established.

You may pay $10, but others, like me have had to pay upward of over $100/ a month. These kind of payments afford huge bloated salaries for bureaucrats.
 
Rainman05 said:
Only if you educate the people to boil rainwater first. Then drink it after it cools down. Otherwise, you may end up with a damaged liver especially if you're drinking rainwater in places like Detroit that is an industrial city.
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Great point. People indeed should receive access to free classes on how to safely manage rainwater.
 
Phys251 said:
Banning or taxing rainwater collection is done for the exact same reason that in many states, it is becoming increasingly legally difficult to live off the grid.
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Have you thought about why that is? MUNICIPAL water districts require a basic level of funding to continue operations and provide masses of people in their district with clean, safe water. To keep this at a cost even the poor can afford they require that all within the district participate in the funding. The more folks who go their own way, the more costly the necessary service becomes for everyone else in the district. Remember, these districts are non-profit.
 
clownboy said:
Already answered in subsequent posts.



You're begging for the return of mass water and mosquito bourne disease throughout densely populated areas.



Already the case.
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Than you really didn't have to respond

No, but water companies would love you to keep perpetuating that.

No, it's not.
 
Phys251 said:
Great point. People indeed should receive access to free classes on how to safely manage rainwater.
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Don't people already learn that kind of stuff in school?
 
grip said:
The reason I brought this up, because if a major US city has half its population unable to afford basic water supply, it speaks to how broken our capitalist system is becoming.

Walmart advertises, they'll provide $250 billion worth of new US production. That's one company trying to rebuild public image, with a $.25 trillion dollars. Yet half of the citizens of Detroit can't afford freaking water, something is wrong.

A socialist gov't isn't the answer but it's going to become a necessity if corporations don't put something back in, instead of leveraging their ability to hoard money. Starbucks is going to start offering a free college education to its employees.

Paying workers more, with better benefits would be a big step in the right direction, and stimulate the economy dramatically putting funds in the hands of spenders.
Click to expand...
How does moving money from one spender to another equate to more spending?? If you increase a companies operating cost without a payback, they are going to either cut costs in other areas or increase prices. They are NOT going to cut profits. Do you understand that?? A company like WM is NOT going to cut profits, so if they had to pay their employees more, you would either end up with fewer employees, fewer benefits, lower quality products or higher prices. Right now, your average WM runs on a near skeleton crew (my wife works at one and I can guarantee you that they run thin, but push came to shove, they'd have no qualms about running even thinner) and your proposal would force out a lot of full time employees their full time jobs, cost a lot of marginal employees their jobs, and you'd see even more "outs" on the shelves, less help on the floor, higher prices and more self-checkouts.
 
longview said:
I suspect something is wrong in Detroit, but it is not a failure of the Capitalist system.
There are a lot more problems there, than people not paying their water bill.
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The Capitalist system is flailing on so many levels right now, the gov't can't provide funds fast enough. On one hand they're using the FED to pump $75 billion a month into the banking system and even more into social, safety net programs. We're losing the middle class faster than in the Great Depression and will have a large, working poor class juxtaposed against a super wealthy ruling class.
 
ChezC3 said:
Of course not, don't take things out of context. This is one of those things which should be a shared minimal expense of the community. No one has to make affirmative steps to preserve but they should not be allowed to take affirmative steps to prevent.

Which is why I said a "cost plus" method should be established.

You may pay $10, but others, like me have had to pay upward of over $100/ a month. These kind of payments afford huge bloated salaries for bureaucrats.
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Nonsense. Again, your cost plus method is already in play. Your water bill is based upon your usage and at a rate determined by the community's usage.
 
faithful_servant said:
How does moving money from one spender to another equate to more spending?? If you increase a companies operating cost without a payback, they are going to either cut costs in other areas or increase prices. They are NOT going to cut profits. Do you understand that?? A company like WM is NOT going to cut profits, so if they had to pay their employees more, you would either end up with fewer employees, fewer benefits, lower quality products or higher prices. Right now, your average WM runs on a near skeleton crew (my wife works at one and I can guarantee you that they run thin, but push came to shove, they'd have no qualms about running even thinner) and your proposal would force out a lot of full time employees their full time jobs, cost a lot of marginal employees their jobs, and you'd see even more "outs" on the shelves, less help on the floor, higher prices and more self-checkouts.
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Because the spender pays more for the product than the maker of it, so there's a net profit increase for the employer/seller. It's almost as easy as giving someone $20 for $40 worth of labor, then they in turn give you that $20 back for $10 worth of product. The employer/seller made $30 dollars off their investment and got the original $20 back.
 
ChezC3 said:
Than you really didn't have to respond

No, but water companies would love you to keep perpetuating that.

No, it's not.
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Then you have no clue as to living without someone else supplying your water or how water districts work.
 
clownboy said:
Have you thought about why that is? MUNICIPAL water districts require a basic level of funding to continue operations and provide masses of people in their district with clean, safe water. To keep this at a cost even the poor can afford they require that all within the district participate in the funding. The more folks who go their own way, the more costly the necessary service becomes for everyone else in the district. Remember, these districts are non-profit.
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Oh please, that has jack **** to do with it. The mere fact that many water networks are of vastly different sizes alone falsifies your argument; I leave that as an exercise to you to figure out why. This is one of the great advantages of a public service vs. a private service: A public service can be allowed to run at a loss if its benefit to society exceeds that loss, whereas a private service typically must run at a profit even if the value of its harm to society exceeds that profit.

Henrin said:
Don't people already learn that kind of stuff in school?
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They should. But even if they do, there's nothing wrong with having occasional refresher courses on life skills.
 
Henrin said:
Don't people already learn that kind of stuff in school?
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Not since the 50s. Really, I'm old, but not that old, Didn't anyone here live without running water in their home? We collected our from the public spring. Or you could go down to the creed and haul it up by the bucket. Went into our cistern, which we had to religiously keep clean.
 
Henrin said:
If it needs provided to you how can it be a right?
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The state can guarantee it is provided to all households. Something can be provided to you and still be considered a right.
 
clownboy said:
Yeah, except it's not and never has been, anywhere on the globe.
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I doubt they charged for use of caves back before there were houses. Since he is a socialist and supports the greenie weanies, that is probably what he wants for the future.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
So what? Any system needs labor.
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True.

And taxes are the labor of others. What you advocate when you claim water should be provided to all, is that all people have earned the right to have a commodity provided to them, completely irrespective of circumstances and the labor they have or have not provided. This is different than saying no one should be blocked from a source of water. I don't think you are going to find anyone - not even the most ridiculous caricature of a fat-cat capitalist - who thinks people should be blocked from resources. The common logical fallacy favored by those on the left side of the spectrum is to conflate access with provision. This is a clear example.

To illustrate the fallacy in effect, take the example of healthcare: I do not think I should pay for someone else's healthcare... and this does not mean I want the poor to die. I also do not think someone should pay for my healthcare, and this does not mean I want to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt and eventual bankruptcy. It also does not mean I am rich, or cruel, or stupid. It means I advocate a market based approach to solving the problem largely created when the government started putting their dirty little hands into the health system.

In the case of basic staples of life, like water, labor should be required for use, be it the price of a well and a pump, or a fair use fee for municipal services. Baring that, go down to the river and boil your drinking water. I don't care. But don't expect me or the guy next to me to pay for it because you can't provide for yourself (barring mental illness and legitimate disability).

If the air we breathe required expensive treatment and capture systems in order to provide oxygen safely, I would also advocate people get off of their ass and find a way to earn this commodity, too.
 
Phys251 said:
Oh please, that has jack **** to do with it. The mere fact that many water networks are of vastly different sizes alone falsifies your argument; I leave that as an exercise to you to figure out why. This is one of the great advantages of a public service vs. a private service: A public service can be allowed to run at a loss if its benefit to society exceeds that loss, whereas a private service typically must run at a profit even if the value of its harm to society exceeds that profit.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I detail how municipal water districts work and you, who obviously know nothing about it, think that the size of the district has anything to do with it. You, again obviously, have no clue as to how tight their budgets are or the service they render non-profit.

You want to live like sardines, where the basic resources of life have to be shipped in to accommodate your lifestyle, that's going to cost. Even public enterprises cannot operate at a loss forever. That just pushes the community deeper in debt.
 
grip said:
The reason I brought this up, because if a major US city has half its population unable to afford basic water supply, it speaks to how broken our capitalist system is becoming.

Walmart advertises, they'll provide $250 billion worth of new US production. That's one company trying to rebuild public image, with a $.25 trillion dollars. Yet half of the citizens of Detroit can't afford freaking water, something is wrong.

A socialist gov't isn't the answer but it's going to become a necessity if corporations don't put something back in, instead of leveraging their ability to hoard money. Starbucks is going to start offering a free college education to its employees.

Paying workers more, with better benefits would be a big step in the right direction, and stimulate the economy dramatically putting funds in the hands of spenders.
Click to expand...

A municipal water system is hardly an example of a capitalist economy at work. It's actually quite the opposite.
 
clownboy said:
Interesting, I detail how municipal water districts work and you, who obviously know nothing about it, think that the size of the district has anything to do with it. You, again obviously, have no clue as to how tight their budgets are or the service they render non-profit.

You want to live like sardines, where the basic resources of life have to be shipped in to accommodate your lifestyle, that's going to cost. Even public enterprises cannot operate at a loss forever. That just pushes the community deeper in debt.
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If we made a ranked list of the most important inventions to modern society, I guarantee you that running water would easily crack the top 5. Maybe even the top 3. There is a very clear reason why access to running water and disease proliferation are inversely related. So your whole cost argument is pretty much shot. Having running water is AT LEAST as important as having police and other basic civil protections and institutions, no matter how much it costs to get it. The only alternative is to pack up and move.

Now if you're trying to say that people who live lavish lifestyles consume more resources and that they need to scale back, then tone down the rhetoric and in exchange, I'll hear you out. Because then you would find that we would have some common ground here.
 
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