Recently Steve Kelley, our County Judge
Executive, made statements on television in which he alleged that our
entitlement society incentivized people to remain on some kind of
benefits. Since welfare really doesn't exist any more then I
conclude that he means Social Security, SNAP or medical coverage.
You know, any time you have anything
that provides sustenance to the poor or disabled there are going to
be a certain number of abusers of the program. However, many, if not
most, of those who receive these benefits actually have jobs that
just do not pay enough to afford food security or
Creating more hardship for these people
is a knee jerk reaction of people who just don't want to see any of
their tax dollars going to help people who can't work. The causes of
poverty and reliance on this pittance are much more complicated than
that and most people just don't want to have to think hard enough to
examine the root causes. The root causes have to be acknowledged and
examined to have any impact on the number of people who are gainfully
employed contributors to our economic system.
First and foremost is parenting.
Training and education have to start young and generational poverty
is anathema to growing a successful child. Just about anyone will
agree with that but then they just stop and blame the parents. That
is not the answer. It's not even the question. The question is what
can we do to enable those parents to do a better job. Both of my
parents were reared in poverty. What they had to lift them were the
frontier nurses and those saints who rode mules to deliver books to
families up in those hollows. They brought not only books and
medical treatment. They brought the outside world to my parents.
Times have changed. Population in those days was a third of what it
is now so methods have to change to handle the numbers. Social
programs and social workers have been under the knife for over 30
years now. Without sufficient workers to go to homes and enable and
teach families how to properly care for and educate their children
the problem simply CAN'T improve. If families are left without care
and instruction for prevention of health disorders we will inevitably
be inundated with emergency cases and people whose health has
deteriorated to a point that it is expensive to treat.
We have deprived our education systems
of funding for things so basic as textbooks and paper so how in the
world can we expect kids to learn? How can they learn if their
stomachs are growling? We have treated our educators with disrespect
for so long they are dispirited and now we are trying to deprive them
of the one thing that gave them a sense of security. Their pensions
went a long ways toward making their decision to teach acceptable and
now we are trying to deprive them of that reward. I really don't
know how we can live with ourselves if we fail the poor and the
people that work for them. Relief from poverty is essential to give
a child a sense of security in order to succeed. Sure, many have
lifted their own way out of poverty but it is not even remotely a
thing to be expected.
What happens to a kid that fails to
survive his upbringing and then is released into a world to sink or
swim. Often they descend into anything that will give them a break
from the anxiety and depression and sense of failure and often that
anything is drug abuse. Once there it is an expensive and desperate
road back and often it just can't be achieved without assistance. I
want you to understand that assistance is not useful if it is just
incarceration and rehab. If there is not something productive to
replace that addiction then recidivism is almost certain. On this
end of the root cause it is expensive to deal with and we have
woefully underfunded the resources necessary to help those people
recover. Harsher penalties will not do the job. Our prisons are
packed with non-violent offenders whose only offense was falling into
the trap that was laid for them decades earlier. As the old ad used
to say, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” Prisons
are expensive to build, expensive to run and are excellent schools to
create career criminals. You would think we could be a little
smarter but we allow disproven ideologies to affect our choices and
often we make it very difficult indeed to succeed.
So, disencentivize the use of social
programs? Give me a break!! That may be candy to the ears of some
people who vote but it will not help a thing. First, we must accept
that digging out of this hole will take 25 to 50 years. Enough time
to raise a generation IF we do the things that are necessary when the
life of our citizens begin. Then we must accept that living in
poverty without access to basic needs such as food and health care
deprives our society of useful citizens. We must acknowledge that
non-violent offenders need to have opportunities to reenter society
and by that I mean jobs even if they have to be created by
government. It's not like we don't need things done after all. My
parents began to be able to see hope for their children following the
Social Programs created following the Great Depression. That could
be a good model. But the key is catching them young and giving them
the resources they need.
My take is that we bring this on
ourselves. Next we may examine what has to be done to enable these
fixes to work. That is the message that our politicians need to be
carrying instead of threats.
