For the sake of discussion, allow me to stipulate the following and then ask a question:
There are, in our society, a certain non-negligible number of able-bodied individuals who simply do not want to work, to be self-supporting, or to take responsibility for their lives. Most of them are not particularly intelligent; some of them are barely educable. They lack self-awareness, motivation, goals, and direction, and do not seem the least bit interested in (or capable of) developing any of those qualities. They are lazy, improvident, imprudent, and frankly irresponsible; they make poor parents and pass on their inferior genes and social dysfunctions to their children. They possess a sense of entitlement (which they also pass along) and seem to believe that the world owes them a living. They are what previous generations would have described as “lazy bums,” “good-for-nothings,” “idlers,” “wastrels,” and so on. They number in the millions.
The question: what do we do about them, with them, to them, or for them?
I’m being neither facetious nor, I hope, unduly provocative. A lot of people believe (and no doubt for good reasons) that our social safety net is overburdened with undeserving individuals, and that hard-working citizens are being unfairly taxed to support them. This situation may be the unintended though predictable consequence of well-intentioned social policies—the tragedy of American compassion—or it may be the equally predictable result of cynical political stratagems designed to create a “dependent” class of individuals beholden to the government; but in either case, such people are among us, and I’m honestly asking, what should we do about it (them)?
I lean towards erring on the side of charity: we can’t be sure who among the poor are deserving and who are unworthy “takers,” so we should continue to provide benefits, doing what we can to screen and qualify recipients, adding reasonable work and education requirements when we can, setting limits on how long benefits can be collected, etc. But that describes, more or less, our present system (at least in theory), and many Americans are unhappy with it.
What are some better ideas? Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield has proposed reducing benefits for parents on public assistance whose children don’t do well in school—would that help? What other carrots and sticks can we use? And if our conclusion is along the lines of “Most of those people are just hopeless, they’ll take the carrots and then steal the sticks and beat each other over the head with them” the question remains: what do we do?
My good Jack,
Who is “we”, and under what circumstances do you and your concerns become “ours”?
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
H.M.: I don’t understand your question. If what I wrote is of no concern to you, then by all means don’t chime in on it.
My good Jack,
Of course you understand my question. You have stipulated a situation, but within it is buried the tacit, unquestioned assumption that “we” – not just you – are somehow already concerned with them to the extent that we should consider what to do “about them, with them, to them, or for them”.
So again, explain through what process this singular concern of yours has become an obligation for others beyond yourself. Once you have done that – explained how you become “we” and who “we” includes and does not include, “we” – whoever they may be – will know not only if but why this is or is not a concern for them.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
H.M.: I really think people can work that out for themselves. “We” will include anyone who, reading my post, feels included in it (or who wants to be included in it); and my concerns will be taken as “ours” by such people as are inclined to do so. Folks are free to ignore the post if they don’t feel it has anything to do with them or if they don’t share my expressed concerns. Or they can write something like “Such undeserving people are of no concern to me, nor do I feel part of any ‘we’ that is somehow obligated to do something, or nothing, about them.” If it turns out that my post expresses no more than what you call my “singular” concern, then I won’t get much of a response, will I? And then I’ll know the error of my ways.
Are you asking how a free society should deal with those “able-bodied people who refuse to work?”
That seems to be pretty effectively addressed through our prison system. Seriously, those who are able-bodied but disinclined to work are generally inclined to other, less savory, less legal pursuits. Those kinds of activities inexorably lead to prison…or the morgue.
But you added, the illiterate and “ineducable” to that group and that’s a somewhat different issue. There is some confusion in the way you worded this AND HM’s objection appears to be your setting yourself as the final arbiter of what “WE” (society) believe, with your initial stipulation. In short the objection seems to be, “What do you mean ‘WE’ pilgrim?”
My own issue with your stipulation is how you expanded it FROM the “able-bodied who refuse to work” TO those unable to work (for any number of reasons);“…Most of them are not particularly intelligent; some of them are barely educable. They lack self-awareness, motivation, goals, and direction, and do not seem the least bit interested in (or capable of) developing any of those qualities…”
Hmmmm, I’m not entirely sure I agree with your assessment, certainly not in all (perhaps most) cases. I often mused that absent welfare/public assistance, those worst off would be that army of social workers and other do-gooders who often exhibit far fewer “life-skills” or “coping skills” than do those they “serve.” At least most “welfare recipients” can boil water or change a flat tire. The same cannot often be said of their “helpers.”
One can believe that our existing social programs amount to “dependency programs” without believing the chronically poor are “unworthy,” “undeserving,” or even “ineducable.”
I believe our existing dependency programs do more harm than good, primarily by undermining individual initiative. I also accept that poverty, like wealth creation is the result of specific behaviors. People have risen from poverty by developing those skill-sets and others have fallen into poverty by failing to abide by them.
I do not support, nor believe there is any great will to eradicate our “safety net,” such as it is. I DO believe that the very least we can do for those caught up in it would be to mandate, or at the least incentivize contraception so, at minimum, we wouldn’t be facing an ever-expanding number of people born into dependent and, for the most part, dysfunctional environments.
Beyond that a broader, and freer access to education and training MIGHT show that many such people are capable than more than many think they are. To do that effectively, education itself would have to be revamped and it would seem that this sort of “adult education” might be as good a place as any for such an experiment. Perhaps relying much more heavily on digital and online content than direct classroom participation, etc.
There are really very few people who are ineducable, it seems more likely that the less motivated and disinterested often get lumped into this group.
JMK: Thanks for your reply. I obviously expressed myself poorly, since both H.M. and you object to my supposedly setting myself up as the “final arbiter” of what “we” believe. I didn’t think I was doing that. I thought I was asking what others think “we” should do about the situation I described; and I thought that “we” clearly referenced “our society” to which I alluded–that is, I only meant it as shorthand for “we citizens of this country who have opinions and even vote on such things”. I did express my own opinion (“err on the side of charity”) but also noted there are other views on the matter and that erring on the side of charity might not be working; I cited without comment Senator Stacey Campfield’s idea, and he’s not someone I tend to agree with.
Perhaps I should have made it more clear that I was asking “What, if anything,should we do?” since it’s a perfectly acceptable option to say (as I suggested to H.M.) “Those people are not my concern and as far as I’m concerned ‘we’ aren’t obliged to do anything.” I wasn’t insisting that we are so obliged; I was only pointing out that such people as I described exist, and asking if there are in fact any useful things that ‘we’ might care to do to address the situation–I wasn’t saying that we have to.
I’m aware that my stipulated description was a hodgepodge that included some stereotyping. I deliberately conflated categories like “able-bodied and refuse to work” and “illiterate and uneducable” because (a) public discussion often conflates them as well, and (b) it’s not always easy to distinguish. Certainly one valid response to that would be to say, as you seem to be doing, that we have to first do a good job of screening and distinguishing between folks who truly need a safety net and folks who just like having one.
In any case, I really was looking for ideas like the ones you offered: “incentivize contraception” provide “broader, freer access to education and training,” and experiment with different educational approaches–so thank you for those.
Are you really assuming that anybody willing to work can get a job that will support him/her?
Wired Sisters: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not assuming that at all. I’m just asking what “we” (H.M. doesn’t like my use of “we”) are to do with people who won’t or can’t work–I’m taking it as a given that such people exist. We have a social “safety net” but it’s falling into disrepair and even disrepute. I hear such people castigated all the time (the two categories–”won’t work” and can’t work”–are clearly very different, but are often conflated and in any case are sometimes difficult to distinguish), and I would honestly like to know what, if anything, people think “we” should do about them: let them starve? Send them into exile? Put them into work camps? Step over them on the sidewalk and go about our business? Hurl Bibles at them? Put them in stocks in the town square?
I think it’s about your wording being “open to a lot of interpretation.”
I understood your use of the phrase “we,” but it does beg the question “where is the proof of any stated consensus?”
I think (just my opinion on this) that we do a lot that dis-incentivizes achievement and self-improvement in this country. In places like NYC, public assistance comes in at close to $40,000/year in packaged aid (section-8 housing, food stamps, Medicaid, clothing allowances, on top of direct support, etc)…it may consign such people to virtual “poverty reservations” (Housing Projects etc) BUT even worse is that it makes it economically infeasible for such people to take many entry level jobs.
That’s ONE of the reasons for our “illegal immigration” problem, which is really an “illicit employment” problem. BOTH Parties want the cheap migrant labor, and neither Party wants the extra mouths to feed from already over-stretched dole. That’s why we always wind up with bullshit half-measures on immigration with both Parties pitching their fondness for “immigrants” instead of their REAL fondness for cheap migrant labor that pays taxes here, but are ineligible for U.S. benefits.
JMK: I’ll work on my wording in future posts, lest I get taken to the woodshed again by H.M.
I received Section 8 assistance for about a year when I lived in Buffalo (circa 1991). I took a studio apartment in one of the most notorious buildings (crime, violence, drug sales) in downtown Buffalo, and thanks to Section 8, I only had to pay $125 a month; Section 8 in turn contributed $375 or so, for a total of $500 a month for a crappy apartment they couldn’t have rented for more than half that on the open market. As you’ve stated before, government and business collude; the landlord inflates the rent, the tenant gets a break (but also a crappy apartment), and the taxpayers foot the bill. People should be aware of that when they calculate the value of benefits people receive; sometimes, especially with housing vouchers, the value is vastly overstated. But you’re right–the poor end up in poverty “reservations” or publicly-subsidized ghettos, and the incentives to work even part-time (or to report the income) are negligible or even negative. It’s the same with disability; I’ve known plenty of people on disability who want to work but are terrified of losing their benefits and not being able to get them back, and they don’t trust the reassurances of case managers and social workers who tell them that won’t happen.
It seems that a big part of this (dependency culture) is rooted in the lack of productive jobs, which is an unfortunate byproduct of Corporatism. Employees are inordinately expensive and this benefits larger entities over smaller scale operations.
It is one of many ways that government protects its partnered industries from “rogue innovation” and the rampant job creation that such unbridled innovation would generate.
One of the unfortunate realities of all this is that we each decipher the individual calculus of these parameters on us. As an example, as a NYC firefighter I am (at over $125K/year with overtime factored in) overpaid for my services. Yes, I have a specialized skillset (in hazardous materials abatement) but the City of NY pays substantially higher salaries than do private contractors in my field and in the private sector I don’t get 24-hour tours and over 5 weeks paid vacation each year.
So for me, the trade off (more corporatism/less economic liberty) appears a sound bargain in my case…at least based on the “available information,” which is to say the least incomplete…BUT it almost certainly is NOT optimal for the most innovation and rapid advancement, nor for many (possibly a small majority, but at the least a very sizable minority) others in the U.S.
Our dependency programs exist to provide for those of us who lose the “musical chairs” jockeying for the available jobs. The prison or “Correctional System” exists to grind up those who are too rambunctious, those unwilling to settle for what’s offered without a fuss. It is through that bit of human sacrifice that tens of thousands of “good jobs (lawyers, judges, court, corrections officers, police officers, emergency service personnel, emergency medical personnel, parole officers, social workers, etc.) are generated.
JMK: Your last paragraph, in particular, resonates. We now have an economic system of “human sacrifice,” as you call it, with increasingly well-compensated winners and increasingly marginalized and hopeless losers. I fear it will only get worse: between outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and growing use of industrial robots (Robocop could be next!), opportunities for average workers of average intelligence and average skills diminish all the time. Corporate profits keep rising, average wages haven’t risen in decades, the politicians are in hock to big donors; really, it’s amazing there hasn’t been a revolution. I had friends who wondered aloud, back in 2008-2009 when Wall Street blew up and the real economy tanked, why there wasn’t rioting in the streets; my answer was, “Because we have a safety net and people aren’t suffering like they were in the Depression.” That’s the other dirty little secret of our modern state: food stamps, healthcare, welfare, housing subsidies–whatever other humane purpose they may or may not serve, they help keep an otherwise potentially restive populace in line; and as you say, we’ve got a booming “corrections” industry for the ones too “rambunctious” to submit. Well said, JMK, and thanks for the conversation.