One of the many many things in life that I can't figure out and don't quite understand is the divisiveness of American political sentiment, especially with regard to liberal social welfare agenda. I can't for the life of me understand why people don't want the government to provide assistance and services to the American people, to provide a healthy safety net that looks out for the poorest amongst us. America is a proud nation that stands together tall, "one nation under God," yet we balk at collective measures to provide for the weakest members. I'm not a religious person, but wouldn't God vote liberal in this case?
I understand the arguments against waste and inefficiency and think that those criticism are necessary and valued contributions to the process of building a strong unified society. Wasteful and unneeded programs need to be slimmed down; the budget isn't there as a potluck. But the answer to inefficiency isn't to cut welfare and services, it is to improve them. And when we really get down to it, as a nation, we can afford a little inefficiency. It's shameful that we have the economic and techological prowess that we have yet even working families live in poverty.
We are a single nation united under a conscious banner and unconscious cultural mores. We subscribe to the same newspapers and watch the same TV shows. As society changes, for better or for worse, we are all involved (and responsible). This is nowhere more apparent than in the surge of single parent families that our nation has seen over the last generation.
Attitudes towards single parent families aside (and you are welcome to criticize or commend them), fact is it is not beneficial to the family (and thus not beneficial to society) for the parent to be working two jobs and never able to raise the child. It's well known and well cited (but more often ignored it seems) that it takes a village to raise a child. Our options are plain:
1) Condemn the family to poverty with a parent that doesn't work
2) Ignore the risks of a lack of guidance and applaud a parent that works and just finds someone to look after the kid.
3) Use government money to pay the parent to stay at home (living assistance welfare)
4) Use government money to provide quality child care.
The latter two options have obvious costs in dollars, but the first two options actually cost our society more. My favored option would be subsidized child care. This gets the parent out in the workplace, where they want to be, and frees up labor for our workforce, aiding the economy in general. The federal funds aren't raw expenditures but investments under this system. I think they are investments in the 3rd option as well, but not as good. The first two options just lead to shitty lives for kids who will grow up to be shitty parents.
Yes, there are success stories about children whose parent was never there while away working multiple low-paying jobs who were able to climb out of the poverty gutter and become successful. But that doesn't prove that it is possible for everyone. Just the opposite: it demonstrates that most people *don't* get out. If success in life is our gold standard, doesn't it make more sense to lower the barriers by supporting families?
I close by returning to my original question here: why is this such a hard thing for us to do as a nation? I think that in spite of our jingoistic revelations of unity, I think we view our fellow citizens with suspicion and fear. It's definitely there on a racial level, with the blacks as violent threats and the asians and Indians as intellectual threats. We are told we live in an age of violent threat from rogue nations and disease and that no matter what we do, we're going to get killed before we die. And that, my friends, is why we hoarde and hate and fail to look out for each other.
Posted by Nutrimentia at October 13, 2003 11:42 AM | TrackBack