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Ask
Auntie Pinko
July
12, 2001
Dear Auntie Pinko,
When my conservative friends bring up the subject of welfare,
and compare it to stealing money out of their pockets to give
to someone else, how does a liberal counter this argument?
John,
Bucyrus, OH
Dear John,
This is one of the more prevalent whines in vogue amongst
conservatives, and the ways of dealing with it are so numerous
that it would take more space than Auntie Pinko's column is
allowed to enumerate them all. For your convenience, I'll
distill them down into three basic responses: A moral response,
a social philosophy response, and a pragmatic self-interested
response.
The Moral Response
Auntie Pinko was taught from early childhood that, in fact,
human beings can, in eternal terms, lay claim to the possession
of nothing whatsoever, except for an immortal soul (you may
extrapolate what you like from this about Auntie Pinko's preceptors.)
In other words, all that passes through our hands in this
earthly life is, in fact, not "ours" but "God's," and the
only reason it is given us is that we may carry out "God's
work."
"God's work," it was explained to me, was the feeding of
the hungry, the care of the sick, the comforting of the bereaved,
the visiting of the imprisoned, and other attempts to prevent
and/or alleviate the suffering that humans inflict upon one
another.
This moral obligation to prevent and relieve suffering is
one impulse behind the creation of social programs which allow
us as a community to address these problems with a greater
impact and a longer reach than most of us can achieve as individuals.
And while these publicly-supported programs suffer much from
bureaucratic inefficiency and from the attempts of the selfish
to render them ineffective, they remain an important resource
to Americans trying to build a morally-infused community culture.
The Social Philosophy Response
While we would all like to think of the wealth we accumulate
as the result solely of our own effort, ingenuity, luck, etc.,
the fact is that "wealth" itself (and its expression "money,")
is a construct resulting from civilization. That is, without
the social and economic structures we collectively create
and support amongst ourselves, humans cannot have "wealth"
in any objectively measurable terms.
How did the money get into your conservative friends' pockets?
Is it a salary or wage their labor earned? Then it is dependent
on the ability of the community to provide their employer
with the infrastructure s/he needs to do business and create
wealth. Is it the money someone else paid for a product your
conservative friend created? Then it is dependent on the ability
of the community to ensure that wealth is distributed effectively
enough to enable her or his neighbors to make such purchases.
Reverend John Donne observed that "no man is an island,"
and in the construction of civilizations, humans have illustrated
this truth. We create systems to sustain our communities-and
these systems include attempts to minimize the impact of economic
and social inequities. We have not yet succeeded in creating
a society that transcends inequity - but it is very certain
that ignoring our interdependence and regarding our wealth
with a "mine, mine, mine" attitude is not going to improve
the communities we live in and depend upon for our (and our
children's) success.
The Pragmatic Self-Interested Response
In the most baldly self-interested terms, we as a community
pay for the programs conservatives usually stigmatize under
the term "welfare" because they offer us more bang for our
buck than prisons, court systems, mental hospitals, nursing
homes, reformatories, etc.
While it is costly to provide basic necessities to those
who (for whatever reasons) are unable to support themselves,
our attempts to do so generally cost less, in the long run,
than dealing with what happens when people don't have those
basic necessities.
To be sure, there will always be those whose pathology will
make prisons and mental hospitals necessary. And denying "welfare"
to anyone at all might indeed motivate some people to a level
of economic effort they may be disinclined to make under a
"welfare" system. But a realistic scrutiny of who benefits
from our public assistance programs reveals that the barriers
of age (the overwhelming majority of recipients are minor
children,) inadequate education, lack of access to job markets,
physical and/or mental disability, etc., prevent most from
supporting themselves fully in a laissez-faire capitalist
system that values mere labor at the cheapest possible rates.
Auntie Pinko is firmly of the opinion that we should, as
a society, be investing vast amounts of money in the systemic
upgrades that will enable us to reduce our welfare rolls in
the long run. But unfortunately, conservatives seem disinclined
to "have their pockets picked" for those efforts, as well.
Thank you for writing to Auntie Pinko!
View Auntie's Archive
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