someone here mentioned that disagreeing with kollel life in the amount it is happening today would be going against rav ahron kotler. to say such a thing is nonsense. kollel, the way rav ahron restarted it is very similar to what FDR did during the depression with social security. he created a system taht was only supposed to last up to 30 years, to get the ball rolling again, so to speak. unfortunately, like social security, we are keeping kollellim filled way too much now, and the system is going, like social security, bankrupt. it is a poncy scheme, like social security. rav ahron’s idea was to restart torah learning after the churban europe. he did not want thousands upon thousands of men sitting on their tucheses having to survive on their inlaws. i will never accept that, as teh gemora down to some of the latest achronim vehemently opposed making money through learning. teh audacity of people to say that it is better for them to learn then get a job is pompus. a large majority of tanaim and amoroim had jobs, and they were able to raise the dead. when one kollel yungerleit raises a dead person, maybe we can talk about how lumdish he is, and how he needs to be learning as a job. yes, there are many taht we should support, but i think that kicking alot of these people out of kollel, and having them get a job, which is by the way a mitzvoh aseih, and having them be koveiah itim, would allow yeshivaos to give the guys who truly deserve it a much higher salary, so they can live like menchen.
for instatnce: a yeshiva gives the salary of 20 thousand a year to 500 guys. leave one hundred, and watch the number raise to 60 thousand which is a decent salary, one that he can feel proud of, and one we can feel proud to have. this whole notion of the more the merrier is not jewish. many major halacha seforim we use today were penned by someone who had a job.
rambam was a doctor who only took pay from the king. (not from the jews he saw, he felt his parnossah the rebonah shel olam wanted him to have was from the king. he actually gave out sefer harambam for free to any community that wanted it. with the freedom to copy it as needed, since he felt it was what was needed.)
rashab was a banker
rif was supported by a community to write his seforim (which is a job, think artscroll)
ramban was a doctor
chofetz chaim had a store (which failed, i guess he was too honest ;-))