An Individual Plan

Divine Intervention

“he ain't heavy, he's my brother”

The Hollies

In Nashville there is a man with an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a master's degree in divinity. One would expect a person with those credentials to be involved in social work or ministry and he is. Just not in the traditional way where one gets a job with a federal agency or a church. Instead he makes skateboards. The Salemtown Skateboard Company builds custom skateboards and employs two young black men who otherwise would likely be on the streets or drawing a government check. In this area of Nashville, the federal government is the leading means of support. In an interview I watched the owner of the shop made a crucial statement. He said, “ it is not enough to just give them money. They must also learn how to make a living. But it's cheaper to just give them money.”

In that statement lies the crux of misunderstanding and misapplication of our entire social welfare system. Our system was never designed to just toss money at the problem. It was also designed with an education and support component the purpose of which was to teach the recipients how to learn skills that would sustain them in a life without government support. But, he is right. It is cheaper to just give them the money and that is what we do. It is a short term solution that compounds the problem into an inter-generational dependency. It is an indictment of government in general and our Congress in particular upon whom falls the responsibility of seeing that government initiatives are funded in a manner to insure success. Ultimately the fault is our own because we get the government we elect. Of course, there has always been a significant number of those Congressmen who disagreed fundamentally with the idea of government even having a role to play in the personal lives of citizens preferring instead to permit the exercise of free markets to create the initiative to learn to sink or swim. There is no doubt that will work if you are willing to allow those who fall on hard times to perish and I mean that literally. It will work if you are willing to allow those people who are downsized out of jobs to be unable to take care of their families. In the absence of social programs there exists no other option. If that is an untenable proposition then some sort of social programs are necessary and then the problem becomes how to operate them effectively with the least burden on society. The problem here is that many times operating them effectively seems to be in contradiction with the least burden on society but I would postulate that is not so.

I have met very few who do not feel that society should offer a hand up to those who have fallen but I hear a lot of them say they don't want the slackers to benefit. Well, who doesn't want that? But, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Fact of the matter is that most don't think past this point to see the inherent problems in determining who should receive help and who should not. This is not a problem that was unanticipated by those who designed and advocated for social support networks. They didn't just want to hand out money in perpetuity. They wanted to create productive citizens who could contribute to our nation but it takes money to run those operations.

Talk to any social worker of any description today and you will find a person who is expected to do more with less. You will find a person who is carrying double, triple or more times the case load he or she was in years past. You will find a person who is unable to be more than a pencil pusher because of the reporting requirements of the increased caseload and then sometimes that person is subjected to administrative and sometimes criminal penalties for failure to do the job well. Is that fair?

Who is responsible for that failure? Is it the overworked caseworker or is the fault of those who couldn't budget adequate funding to accomplish the mission? Agencies have been forced to lay off staff until the failure of the mission statement is assured and then the search begins for someone to blame. Heads must roll. Failure to adequately fund these efforts in the early years to teach people how not to be burdens on society has led to succeeding generations of people who know no other way to live other than from the largess of their government. So, what do we do?

Will Anderson and Jason Henley are showing us what to do. They understand that they may never influence directly any more than the two young men they hired off the streets of Nashville but if they can teach them how to work for a living, be good men and become good fathers then that is enough. They don't have to change the world but they can pay their employees well more than minimum wage.

The task for government is more daunting but there are solutions. First, there must be an adequate number of caseworkers to effectively monitor those who are being helped. But then, can we enlist the help of private enterprise to reach more people? Yes, we have done this in the past with success but then we deleted the funding for it. Can we allow people to work and still receive support to help out while they move toward self-sufficiency? We are on the way to providing access to health care but there is great ideological resistance but this is a basic need. The free marketers say the best way to accomplish these goals is by cutting costs to businesses so they can hire more people. Businesses say the work force is too unskilled but the evidence is that businesses are too interested in the goal of maximizing profits to be a reliable, willing participant. If Will Anderson and Jason Henley can do it then why can't a wealthy corporation do it? They can but regardless of what the Supreme Court says, corporations are not people and they do not have the same hopes and goals as real people do.

My take is that it plainly can be done and should be done. The payoff is a few generations down the road when the problem of inter-generational dependency is lessened and the rewards of a contributing citizenry kick in. We just have to look a little farther down the road.