Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

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

medical coverage. Even at that there are those who are trying to make it harder for those who depend on that assistance to retain it without jumping through hoops in the hope that they'll miss an interview or not get some letter delivered in time thus triggering a period in which they will be ineligible. Then there are the disabled who receive about $600 per month form Social Security, Medicaid coverage that is so restricted that one may die before receiving treatment and SNAP benefits for food that runs out by the middle of the month. If that is incentive to not work then maybe you should give living on that a try for a month or two.

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.