You'll find that Americans really believe in personal responsibility to an absurd extent. And if you're irresponsible enough to lose all your ID (forget why, who cares?) then you clearly deserve to die in a ditch somewhere. It's a brutal philosophy that permeates everything about the country.
Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft?
EDIT: After thinking it over, I guess identity theft isn't a big concern. It seems pretty unlikely that someone would actively exploit this system to get someone's ID, then their birth certificate, then somehow get a loan in their name, or something along those lines. I hope someone with more experience can chime in either way.
On the contrary, I suspect that is the most likely explanation. See, if there were any other explanation then the government would go out of its way to provide people without identification with the right identification.
> There has to be some way to prove your identity
There are many ways, for instance in some countries several citizens themselves in the possession of valid identification go together with you before a judge and swear on the penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are.
> and people have tried to impersonate others.
Yes, and guess what that valid ID is meant to reduce?
> Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft?
Well, given that we have fingerprinting and biometric information these days it is hard to think of what else - short of DNA - we could give up to offer 'that kind of system' but don't worry, it will still happen and probably in your lifetime.
I like that approach. I wonder if there's some way to campaign for it here in the US.
It seems more likely that the lack of this system is just what you get with lowest-common-denominator governance, so there are probably ways to change it for the better. If we could think of a way to add economic incentives to implement it, then it might have a chance.
Just like snow equipment is mandatory to have in your car but nobody cared until you cause an accident or traffic jam because you didn't put chains on.
> The term "compulsory" may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Possession of a card may only become compulsory at a certain age. There may be a penalty for not carrying a card or other legally valid identification (a passport, for foreigners); in some cases a person may be detained until identity is proven. This way the police can identify fugitives
On the list are 14 out of 28 EU countries if my count is correct. And a few more European non-EU countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_ca...
I know there are other cases where you must prove your identity, but in the case of voter impersonation fraud, to pull that off at a scale large enough to affect a major election requires a massive logistical effort. You must:
* Obtain the registered voter rolls for every polling place. This is the easy part.
* Know a priori which registered voters will and won't vote on election day. Why? Because if you show up and say you're John Doe, and the polling place has marked that John Doe has already voted, you won't get to vote. If that happens enough times—especially if it happens to the real John Doe, after a fake John Doe voted on his behalf—alarm bells are raised.
* Shuttle your team of voter impersonators across the city or county or whatever N times so that they can each fraudulently vote enough to tip the election in your favor.
This enormous scope is why almost all known cases of voter impersonation fraud are in elections for offices like "dog catcher" in a rural town: the scale is small enough that you can tip an election with a handful of your closest friends, and you might also know a corresponding handful of registered voters around town who have said they're not planning to vote. Laws that require a photo ID to vote are malicious at worst, and wrongheaded and pointless at best.
A case was just before the Supreme Court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws...
This seems like a pretty extraordinary claim made pretty casually.
What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves?
It seems much more likely a case of straightforward government dysfunction enabled by all the usual factors that make the government suck at accomplishing things.
If the government ID infrastructure ran as well as Facebook's ad targeting department, we would have no problems of this kind whatsoever.
Less social security to be paid out.
Once homeless the way back is super hard, and to receive social security you have to have a registered address and to have a registered address you need ID.
So good luck reversing that.
That, and fewer people voting for democrats.
You might want to rethink that statement. I suspect that the government ID infrastructure works flawlessly for about 99.9% of users. The FB ad infrastructure does not work that well.
A theology that holds that god rewards the just and thus the poor must be so because they're wicked and/or a fucked up reading of the phrase "the poor will always be with you"
A desire to 'prove' an economic philosophy that the poor brought it on themselves by creating a self perpetuating spiral of doom and then pointing to people that get caught in it as proof.
Racism and a general supposition that these policies affect those people over there to a sufficient degree that these people over here are an acceptable loss.
Just being a fucking dick.
>“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
>Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.
No seriously, some people have a really fucked up reading of "the poor will always be with us" and some of those people are actually in charge of things.
for some context on that particular bible quote: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2017/03/03/ignorant... Jesus is solid on this one, that doesn't mean people don't build their beliefs on some weird interpretations of what some one once told them Jesus said.
I'm aware that this isn't a nice thing to say, but are you really disputing that the sentence stands alone as a fact?
You know Mark and Deuteronomy. Do you know Matthew? "You shall know them by their fruits." And: "[T]hen will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Christ himself would not call these men Christian. Why should you or I take them at their word when they call themselves so?
I said fucked up theology (among other possibilities) is a reason people would intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves
Can we compromise on "heretical corruption of Christianity"? I should think that'd be imprecatory enough for just about anyone - it certainly has more and sharper teeth than inaccurate and mere milquetoast 'theology'! - and it has the added virtue of not perpetuating a condition in which one such as myself finds it every bit as difficult and trepidatory to come out as Christian as, in an earlier time, he did to come out as gay. Perhaps that's not something with which you feel any need to concern yourself, even to this quite literally nominal degree; I can't say that isn't fair enough, but I would esteem it a kindness if you did.
It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices.
That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes.