The Undeserving

My wife is having great fun connecting to people on Facebook; friends from high school and college and some former work mates. To some extent most of their pages reveal we share similar interests and values between us; others are somewhat on the opposite end of the political spectrum. The people who use their social networking to promote their differing political and/or religious views do give her some concern, though she mostly remains silent and so she does not write her differing opinions on their walls. But my wife is not without opinion, most of which ends up falling on MY poor ears.

I am of a different mind, though, and rather than remain silent, I feel compelled at times to present an opposing view in the (often vain) hope of perhaps swaying an opinion. As these issues often weigh heavily on my mind, I found myself continuing to mull over the comments left on one my earlier blogs where I voiced my criticism of the Tea Party Movement. Within the repartee between this commenter and myself, there seemed to run a consistent underlying premise: that through some malfeasance or failing on their part, certain people in this country are “undeserving”, they have not “earned” the right to enjoy the benefits others are apparently entitled.

This concept that many believe that certain segments of our population are "undeserving", I am beginning to feel, is what is behind this denouncing as "Socialism" any benefit from society that people feel is undeserved or unearned. My conclusions are drawn from my own personal observation and experience over recent years.

For example, a while back I heard an article on National Public Radio about a woman who was recruited to conduct public meetings to discuss health care reform. This presenter thought contacting churches would provide a receptive audience, speaking to congregations about the need to extend health care to those who were under, or not, insured. The salient point here was that this presenter assumed that church and religious organizations would eagerly embrace the concept of providing medical services to those in need. After all, religion supposedly promotes charity, compassion and helping the less-fortunate; she truly believed that their religious spirit would appeal to their hearts and their sense of humanity. WRONG! Instead these supposed Christians were completely affronted by the idea of extending benefits to people who hadn’t earned the privilege – and especially not if such benefits might cause THEIR taxes to increase.

Then yet another piece of the puzzle, drawn from my own personal experience: During the first half of my career I worked in the banking industry. I was brought up in a staunch Republican household, so as banker and businessman, the policies of candidate Ronald Reagan resonated strongly with me and therein went my vote. Yet within a short period following, major changes happened in my life – layoff, divorce, debt and poverty, then remarriage and later a completely new career. I married a woman who had been a single mom on Welfare but who had worked her way out of poverty. My new wife actually worked FOR the state Welfare department at the time we met. Freshly unemployed myself, I recall telling her one day “There’s no way I could EVER do your job”. Well, never say never - my second career found me as a Welfare Caseworker.

Previously as a suit-and-tie Republican banker I recalled having held strong opinions about the “work ethic”, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. I had a low opinion of the “lesser classes” in our society with whom I had little to no contact with. Now as a caseworker, I was deeply and intimately involved in understanding how the other half of society in this country lives. It was a very harsh lesson in reality. I had to release a lot of myths I had held about this segment of the “undeserving” in this country.

In my recent conversation on my Tea Bag post, the commenter repeatedly asserted that through some act, or lack of action or being responsible, was the alleged reason my relatives did not have adequate medical coverage. The allegation was that these members of my family (which clearly he was projecting on society at large) had made some type of bad decision or poor choices which resulted in the source of their deprivation. Not so; illness, death, disability, layoff and unemployment, events all completely beyond the control of my family (and again, society at large) were the reasons.

These completely naive and ignorant assertions, tabulated along with many similar experiences as a Welfare Worker, and in my understanding about the resistance to any sort of health care reform, solidified a belief which I now strongly hold:

There exists a large proportion of our population who are absolutely terrified that someone is going to get something that they don’t deserve, some benefit that they didn’t earn and to which they should not be entitled.

Though I would like to lay this set of beliefs squarely at the feet of Conservatives, I think this is likely pervasive throughout the social and political strata. Somebody is afraid that if someone else gets “more”, then there will be “less” for the them and they are angry as hell about that prospect.

Having lived in both economic extremes, I can sympathize with the mind set that ours is a country of opportunity; that through hard work and diligent effort, one can attain a good life. But people often forget that the “good life” can be transitory; things can change in an instant and with no warning. That troubling lump on your body you wake up to one day could have a very chilling diagnosis or you could be one of the 40,000 people a year who hop in their car and drive away from their house and never come home. No one is immune from random unforeseen events of tragedy, some life choices are made for us with neither our approval nor warning.

When I was a banker in my three piece suit, I thought that people who didn’t have what I had simply needed to just pull themselves up by their own boot straps. But when I later shed the suit for Dockers as a Welfare Caseworker, I learned that some people don’t have boot straps.

Footnote:
I thought I would present a few “fast facts” about the welfare system and welfare clients.

• ~ The original program I worked with was called ADC (Aid to Dependent Children). It is now called TANF (Transitional Assistance to Needy Families). Most welfare recipients are children (the money goes to the parent, of course). Only a very few states provide cash benefit assistance to childless adults. To be eligible to receive benefits, the household must suffer “deprivation”, insufficient income. One cannot cause their own deprivation; for example, one cannot intentionally quit a job to be eligible for welfare.
• ~ Most state welfare programs require participation in job placement or work search activities unless the dependent child is an infant. (Personally I always chuckled at the hypocrisy that society expected middle-class mothers stay home and raise their kids but expected welfare mothers to go to work).
• ~ About 5% of welfare recipients receive benefits for very short periods of time. These clients generally have higher education, work experience or other skills that make them readily employable. Often their deprivation is due to temporary setbacks such as job layoff or divorce. Another 45% of welfare recipients may be employable but need assistance with job skills, education, training, clothing, housing, transportation, child care or other issues which may be barriers to employment. The remaining 50% of welfare recipients have major barriers to employment such as drug and alcohol addiction, physical and/or psychological problems, suffer physical, mental or sexual abuse, may be involved in the criminal justice system or have issues which otherwise make them unlikely to be employable. In most cases several of these issues are factors in the families lives.
  
• ~ Welfare grant amounts have increased only fractionally in comparison to the rate of increase in the cost of living and inflation to where today the amount of a welfare grant allotment seldom provides sufficient funds to meet any of the most basic needs such as rent, utilities or food; households must also seek housing assistance, Food Stamps and other forms of community assistance to survive.
• ~ Welfare clients receive medial care as a component of their welfare grant eligibility through state administered Medicaid programs.
• ~ Welfare costs represent roughly 1% of the federal budget.
  

WTF R U Look-n At?

So I wandered over to my local community exercise room, expecting to use some of the weight equipment there to limber up my aching Rotator Cuff (shoulder, for those of you not anatomically astute). Sitting at the weight machine with his back toward me, is a young man. His head is down, he's not moving – I wonder, is he praying? No... maybe just getting into “the Zone” before pressing 280 pounds, I think. So I wait a bit… wait some more... Then I notice… he is sitting there “Texting”. He is sitting on the goddam weight equipment, thumbs dancing away, Texting.

Ok, I know… here comes “Old Man Rant”, but seriously, the attraction to typing out a text message on a 9-key pad COMPLETELY eludes me. Why doesn’t he just call and, you know, talk to the person?!

I encountered this same techno-phobia back when voicemail first came into vogue. I was a Welfare worker and my clients frequently (and I mean, frequently) called me to ask when they would get their benefits or if their Food Stamps were in. I almost NEVER answered the phone – why? Because I was almost always already talking to someone else. These morons never figured out how to use voicemail to reach me... Never!

Instead, they would try to get to me through the receptionist. And being the kind-hearted and enabling simple soul that she was, she would transcribe their message onto those little colored phone message pads then drop them on my desk. And even though I repeatedly reminded her that the clients could leave forty-colored-while-you-were-out notes worth of information in a ten-second voicemail – it was all to no avail.

When I would wrap up my initial intake interview with new clients, I would point out to them that it would be a rare occurrence for me to answer the phone because, just like I am talking to You right now, if somebody calls, I can’t talk to THEM because I'm already talking to YOU!! -- Get it?? Leave a detailed message – that way, when I call you back, I will already have your answer. But they never got it… which was probably a good indication why they were in the Welfare Office to begin with.

E-mail makes way more sense than "texting". Hell, stuffing a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean makes more sense than "texting". I’m pretty damn fast typing on a standard “qwerty” keyboard -- but no matter how fast I am, I can ALWAYS talk faster than I can write. Besides I love the sound of the human voice. IMHO

From the tonight show with Jay Leno – the top text messengers versus Morse Code.

Myth of the Market – Pt 1

In the 1980's I wore a leisure suit, tapped my toes to Funkytown and was a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. I worked for US Bank and firmly believed that president, Jimmy Carter, was a nice guy but a complete wimp. The country was wallowing in recession and inflation and I felt that Ronald Reagan had a plan -- Get government out of the way and free up business to generate jobs and prosperity. A rising tide, surely, would raise all boats.

I had just entered my 30’s in 1980 – hell, what did I know? Not much, as it would turn out. The biggest transfer of wealth in our nation’s history had begun under my nose; “trickle-down economics” as it was called.

So I waited patiently for my share of the pie. Instead, what I got was a “pink slip”. Corporations got their tax breaks and the money flowed. Unfortunately the “trickle” was plugged off just inside the board room of US Bank, and every corporation in America. Soon, US Bank announced the first “downsizing” (layoffs) in its long history as an Oregon corporation. My share of the trickle dribbled to me in the form of an unemployment compensation check.

I was fortunate and soon landed a job with the State of Oregon as a Welfare worker. I was given the rare opportunity to see how the other half lived. This experience was one of many that caused me to split from my family tradition and became a Democrat. Up to this point, as a staunch Republican, I had firmly believed that people had a responsibility to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But now as a Welfare worker, I discovered that many Americans didn’t have bootstraps.

The backbone of Reaganomics, was the dependence on tax cuts - Just lift those burdensome taxes off the backs of business, and they will, out of sheer delight (apparently), open their hearts and their doors and hire people. Uh, well, not living-wage union people, though… minimum wage people. As if to underscore the “we mean business” message, Reagan fired all of the rebellious Air Traffic Controllers. It was great theater - and highly effective. And wages (adjusted for inflation) in all sectors of the economy began a sure and steady decline – a decline which continues to this day. The exception to this trend being the skyrocketing rise of executive compensation to obscene levels. So much for “the Market”.