Forum Post: Our Right to Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness

To begin with I will say that I am against violence and any actions that end in the breaking of the rule of law, protests can be successful without such behavior. However with that note now behind me I would like to say that one of the most important points that this protest has made is in the form of the right to a gaurenteed income for those making fewer than forty thousand dollars a year. If one were to dismantle the current broken welfare system and replace it with a basic stipend for all within such parameters then those who are either in poverty or completely homeless can be afforded their right to live. Unlike what the opposition spouts, the idea that such a benefit would eliminate the desire to work is laughable. With our basic needs met we can then be left to pursue work for what we want rather than the endless cycle of working only as a means to survive. With the incentive to work only for the right to live extinguished we can then achieve the goals that have been shattered by reality, left to put what funds we obtain not into the ever inflating expenditures of food and rent but in the dreams we all share. Also to those who claim that they rose to reach the American dream, coming from nothing and somehow now emerging as millionaires I will say that is not thanks to your own doings but rather a serious of fortunate events. Equal work does not mean equal pay in this country. We can work eighty hours a week at three jobs and emerge with nothing but a portion of food and an eviction notice on our door while the stock broker next door works four hours a day and makes one thousand times more. This is the truth, a sorry state of affairs for a country that guarantees the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness when as things stand the bulk of the country can barely meet the first so called inalienable right.