When they get labeled as "Entitlements", it really drives me crazy. That term always seems to be said with a sneer aimed at those who dare to accept assistance in their time of need and who are supposedly demanding to be given handouts so they can maintain their status as leeches on that portion of society that has the moral high ground by virtue of experiencing economic success. That somehow the great American dream is to live off of the dole funded by others just makes me so angry. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I know this firsthand. My mother and I lived in poverty, living in free housing (not the highest quality, not the best behaved neighbors, etc.), living from Welfare check to Student Loan check, eating the best meal of my day on the Free Lunch program, and yes in fact, eating government cheese (think Velveeta with more salt and less quality). Was it hard? Um, yeah. It never occurred to us to think to ourselves, "Boy, this is the life! Let's just do this forever and ever. Those fools with jobs who pay income tax are really wasting their time!"
So what did we do? We dug deep and focused on what it would take to make our lives better. My mother worked two part-time student work jobs to pay her way through the local college, and she busted her butt to get good grades. I saw her focus and her sacrifices, and I resolved to never let her down. So, I did what I had to do to maintain the highest grades and to stay out of trouble. I was bullied, but I never told anyone because I was afraid to rock the boat. I figured my best escape was to stay safely at home and lose myself in books and tv and a world of my imagination. It helped me get through a life with no luxuries, with barely more than the bare necessities of survival. Eventually, life got better as my mother's hard work slowly paid off (grad school, reasonable jobs, marriage to my step-father, and now a long career with the Federal government). I never forgot where we were, what it took to survive, and what it took to make it out of there.
Many of you will say that my family are the exceptions and not the rule for trying to rise above where we were. I disagree. I think we are the exceptions because we succeeded. We were blessed with talent to go along with our persistence and focus. Even we would have had far less of a chance to survive and eventually succeed if not for the governmental assistance we received.
If not for free healthcare, one of the many times I had strep throat might have done us in. If not for free housing, we might have tried to live in a friend's living room, I guess. If not for Welfare checks, student loans and student-work programs, my mother would never have gone to college and certainly not to grad school. Her odds of making it would have been a lot harder with her GED and a resume populated only with a 1-day stint at Burger King. If not for the Free Lunch program, we would've had less money for anything else. In those days, school lunches were fairly healthy, so that was nice.
The reality is that these programs combine to make a reasonable baseline for our citizens. It's not a great life, but it's a place where you can mount a comeback or make a fresh start. Our nation has enough money to ensure that our citizens can at least expect to have a chance to survive and to have a reasonable platform to create their own success. It not only improves the quality of life for the least successful of our citizens, but it also leads to more overall success for us as a nation.
Imagine that life is like a high wire act. The higher you climb up the pole, the higher the wire you can walk, and the more success you attain. Some people are better at climbing poles than others. Some were born higher up to start with. Some are better than others at walking on the wire. [In America, we are all led to believe that we have equal access to the poles and the wires and the success. In an ideal world, this would be true, but that's a matter for another time.] What happens when someone falls off of the poles or the wires? They fall to the ground and they die. Game over, man!
I propose that this web of governmental programs is a safety net. When you fall, you still fall, but you don't die. You end up at the bottom, but you have a chance to start over and work your way back up the pole to the wire and to the success. This safety net is high enough from the ground to prevent death, but not high enough to be deemed a success. In fact, nobody wants to stay there, they want to get back to climbing and succeeding.
This to me is Freedom within Boundaries. Without the net, the downside of exercising your Freedom by daring to dream, to try, to strive, to pursue success is too high. Fewer people will make use of their Freedom to walk the wire when death is a possibility. When you remove death from the equation, suddenly more people make use of their Freedom to try and be great. Greatness is not guaranteed to any man, but it becomes more of an option when the price for failure is lowered, if only by a small amount. This will cause a net (no pun intended) increase in overall greatness achieved by the overall society. This means that the price of the safety net is more than made up for by the overall increase in prosperity. It encourages achievement in place of complacency and fear.
The devil is in the details of execution, but the general concept of the great American Safety Net works for me. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.
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