Saul Schubak, the vice chairman of the National Coalition Party’s youth wing, has unleashed a storm due to his views on poverty. Schubak wrote on Facebook that people who aren’t fit to parent should not receive child allowances.
He writes on his original post: ”Child allowances should be definitely eliminated. It’s absurd that we give support to weaker material [parents] to reproduce and then we wonder why there are drug-addicted children that are taken into protective custody from their alcoholic parents.”
Schubak’s views were strongly criticized because they hinge on eugenics, a disgraced pseudo-science that was used before the end of World War 2 to justify racism and ethnic inferiority of other groups.
After the National Coalition Party distanced itself from Schubak’s view, the young National Coalition Party youth leader patched up his original comment by admitting that it was ”a bit indiscreet,” stressing that he wants child allowances to be scrapped for all socioeconomic groups.
Just like racists use the ”we-want-to-debate-openly-immigration” argument, which is only a byword or phrase to bash immigrants, Schubak uses the same tactic to scorn the poor and vulnerable
It’s amazing that whenever these people want to “openly debate” an issue in society, it’s commonly about those groups that are the most defenseless and that have the least means to defend themselves against such attacks.
To what extent can we or should we debate the watering down of our human and Nordic civil rights?
Those that want to undermine and fuel greater social differences and income gaps in our society, not only reveal their contempt for our Nordic welfare state values.
Schubak’s Facebook page picture of him attending the Republican presidential convention speaks a thousand words about his values and political views. His comments about Finland’s poor is no surprise.
Saul Schubak appears to like Mitt Romney. Said Romney: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. …
En tiedä teitkö sinä tätä huomausta mutta musta sanat köyhät laiskat ihmiset, jotka elävät lapsi lisillä kuulostaa pelkiltä koodi sanoilta, joilla yritetään hyökätä ei-eurooppalaisia ryhmiä vastaan.
Kun ei-eurooppalaisilla mielletään, olevan isompia perheitä ja olevan myös köyhiä. Tämä voi olla vähän ylitulkintaa mutta mitä sinä ajattelet.
He’s a pup, and a stupid and naive one too. Based on the criteria he’s put forward, you could make a case for his parents having to repay all of their child allowance received to give him an education that he has clearly squandered.
It’s a total red herring to mention parents who are alcoholics, as where there is evidence of such, social services are likely to take a care order out and place the children outside the home. Cleary a more effective though less popular way to affect rates of alcoholism is to reduce availability, through higher taxation of alcoholic beverages.
He should take a look at microsimulation, an economic model being developed in Finland now, which with a relatively small investment of 1.5 billion, poverty could be eliminated in Finland. This amount was less than the cost of tax reductions put in place in 2003-2004. Imagine, child poverty in Finland totally eliminated!!! That’s the other end of the scale from Schubak’s thinking.
Child allowance (enacted in 1948) is one of the universal benefits that helped Finland emerge from being a rural backwater into a leading information economy. It was a key means of evening out inequalities between children and therefore ensuring greater social mobility between generations. It’s still not great because inequalities still exist, but it has clearly helped.
Be interesting to observe the social mobility that has taken place in Saul’s family.
Anyhow, let him spout – the idea will have zero traction in Finland.