Name:   copperline - Subject:   Feed them and they will come Date:   7/3/2012 4:46:36 PM

This isn’t stray dogs and cats.  i wouldn’t know how to operationalize & implement the ideas you have.  That’s the problem i’m having.  For instance, if children are deserving of our help… you can’t really give it to them without somehow aiding the parents who bore them.  And just telling people to stop having children isn’t working, that’s why we try sex education and fund planned parenthood.  if people were always practical and rational, generous and self-disciplined this wouldn’t be such a problem.  

i’d be the first to admit that social programs have more in common with blunt instruments than scalpels though.   

An idea like ending assistance at some arbitrary point sounds good, but isn’t simple to apply.   Cutting people off comes with an immediate cost in human terms, cutting an adult off means their children go, too.     When you look at the food stamp program and see some people buy junk food, i don’t like it.     Same with cigarettes.   But you can’t throw the entire baby out with the bathwater.   And when it comes right down to it, you can’t easily make distinctions between those that need and those that don’t, those who will use the program to pull themselves out of a hole and those who just stay stuck.    A 6 month window of assistance won’t do that.     Over the years, i just comforted myself with the notion that most people won’t choose to be poor if they can help it, nor would they put up with the humiliations and hassles of the welfare system if they can get to a better alternative. 

The safety net isn’t unlimited, i assure you.   i’ve sent many a person out of my office having no idea how they were going to make it because there was no program, no funds, & little to no personal capacity to solve their predicament.   i once sent a fellow out of the ER who was completely delusional but had no insurance, and the next day he wrestled a gun away from a policeman and caused the local elementary school to have to be shut down.   Other people wanted to work couldn’t walk the distance to the job that was available.  it gets complicated quickly and there are no easy answers that i can see.  

i’m concerned too that we are in for a more difficult future….. and i vacillate between thinking about the suffering of individuals & a dispassionate macro-economic view sometimes.   But in the end, we talking about real people, not theory.