How do you feed the poor?

Do you give the poor fish, or teach them how to fish? Let's say it's going to be a government sponsored program. The taxpayers will say that you teach him how to fish so that he can provide for himself so he doesn't become dependant on our tax dollars. With this new skill though, he may find that he is an incredible fisherman and get all the fish so that there aren't enough for everyone. Then, if teaching people to fish ends up not working because of lack of resources, there must be a system to make sure that everyone has enough. It's liberty versus equality. If everyone is free to do what they want then not everyone will have an equal opportunity to provide for themselves. If you make sure that everyone has the proper resources to provide for themselves then you limit the liberty of people to do as they wish.

If we're talking about larger social problems like unemployment, lack of skills, and so on, where do you start? I would say with education, so you can give everyone a fairly equal start to then do what they can with their abilities. They can proceed into college, into a trade school, or choose to get into a job that requires little or no real training...like fast food. In my state, we're facing an across-the-board budget cut, which means that programs that are guaranteed a specific percentage of the budget, like education, will lose a ton of money. In my town we're looking at losing almost 1,000,000 dollars each year which translates to upwards of 30 teaching positions. This turns into a larger teacher/student classroom ratio. With kids who speak a first language other than english, this is going to mean less attention thus less success. For kids whose first language is english, this has several consequences; they range from less extra-curricular activites, to potential resentment of the ESL kids if they put this all together. If test scores become lower as a result of California's budget cuts there will be less federal funding. It's a downward spiral.

The only reason I write this is to get it out of my head. I just had a conversation with a guy and I took it to the point of questioning a bond measure that is going to raise money to build a new middle school - considering the financial state that our district is going to be I think this bond measure is a bad idea. I'm trying to develop a good argument against the bond measure so I can have a conherent conversation with people as to why I think it's a bad idea. And, that's why you just read this. Haha...thanks for wasting your time!