Just a Bunch of Feathers
While departing from work the other day, I noticed a large bird lying upon the grass. Flies scattered from the corpse as I came close, and returned hungrily after I’d passed. I didn’t think much on this ghastly image until the next morning when I arrived at work and saw the mowers tending to the lawn. Instantly I thought of the bird and wondered if the mowers had disposed of the carcass. They hadn’t. Garbled feathers scattered the lawn where the bird had been. The body seemed to have vanished, and I thought to myself, it’s just a bunch of feathers; but upon closer inspection of the blades of grass I saw innards and other slimy remains of a life that once soared.
I was reminded of this scene upon reading this article by Thomas Sowell on poverty in America. His version of reality depicts the struggles of the poor as just a bunch of feathers and misses the blood and guts buried not even below the surface. The poor, you see, really don’t need government assistance with food, housing, and heath care because many of them have cars, cell phones, and—gasp!—color televisions. Low income people are more overweight than other Americas, a sure sign that they’ve plenty to eat, right? The elderly are the wealthiest segment of the population, so obviously they can pay for their health care if other segments can. That just about every one of them has a pre-existing condition couldn’t possibly present a problem, could it?
Look, Sowell thinks government entitlement programs are economically and politically ruinous, and I can respect that position even if I don’t conclude the same. But, for the sake of reality, can we at least recognize that government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare help real people with really serious needs and that cutting or eliminating these programs will hurt people who lack the sufficient means to care for themselves and their families? You want to argue there’s a better way to help the impoverished? Fine. Do that. But don’t cover your ears to the cries of the poor because some of them have a few material possessions you think they ought not to have if they’re reaching out for public assistance.
As for Sowell’s unsubstantiated claim that politicians propose entitlement programs and funding for the goal of creating vote-delivering dependencies, I’m sure he won’t mind if I throw evidence to the wind assume that politicians propose military operations and funding with the sole aim of generating irrational fear so they can play the saviors and stay in power.
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Given the connection of war to oil and of oil to campaign financing, lackeys of the ilk of Mr. Sowell are actually attempting to make a moral equivalence between what they judge to be financial imprudence on the one hand, and what is demonstrably mass homicide on the other. I think it’s past time to be adjusting the scales.
Hard to see how a piece like this fulfills Crisis’s stated editorial policy:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/about-us
Work with the poor and you’ll discover the truth about the poor. I’m guessing that Sowell, accustomed as he is to the verdant groves of Stanford University, rarely, if ever, has a genuine human encounter with people in real need.
Mark:
Actually Sowell grew up dirt poor.
Then he should know better.
“But, for the sake of reality, can we at least recognize that government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare help real people with really serious needs and that cutting or eliminating these programs will hurt people who lack the sufficient means to care for themselves and their families?”
I believe that Sowell would argue that those who are in need of aid do not necessarily receive aid, and that the vast majority of people who do receive aid are not in need of it.
Since you are speaking in persona Sowell, can you provide any evidence for this assertion? I would believe that there are many who need help who do not get it, but based on personal experience and other sources I am extremely skeptical of any assertion that “the vast majority of people who do receive aid are not in need of it.” This reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s famous “welfare queens”.
I work with the poor every day, and I don’t know anyone who receives what they don’t need, although I do know plenty who do not receive what they do need.
Dave,
Here is an old Vox Nova post by yours truly that provides some data on this.
As a general rule, most of the benefits of government programs end up going to people in the top half of the income distribution, and that includes programs that are explicitly justified as helping the poor. The issue isn’t really one of welfare queens. I doubt anyone would describe Warren Buffett as a welfare queen, but the government does send him a check every month.
You seem to have read the article through cynical lenses.
What I see Sowell arguing is more like, (1) not giving things to people doesn’t necessarily result in their not being able to get them (as in the case of cars, air conditioners and microwaves); (2) if we must help the poor, we don’t need to do it via government bureaucracy; and (3) let’s not bankrupt ourselves by maintaining government bureaucracies for people who are rich enough to support themselves.
let’s not bankrupt ourselves by maintaining government bureaucracies for people who are rich enough to support themselves.
I suppose you mean the defense establishment, the oil companies, Wall Street, and various other corporate interests? Or is this an argument for means testing individual entitlements? Surely you couldn’t possibly mean that the family with a rickety air conditioner in the window of a third-floor tenement apartment is “rich enough.”
Mark writes, “Or is this an argument for means testing individual entitlements? Surely you couldn’t possibly mean that the family with a rickety air conditioner in the window of a third-floor tenement apartment is “rich enough.””
First of all, let’s not forget that it’s Sowell’s argument, not mine. But I’ll take a shot at interpreting his meaning. He writes:
“The desperately poor elderly conjured up in political and media rhetoric are– in the world of reality– the wealthiest segment of the American population. The average wealth of older households is nearly three times the wealth of households headed by people in the 35 to 44-year-old bracket, and more than 15 times the wealth of households headed by someone under 35 years of age. If the wealthiest segment of the population cannot pay their own medical bills, who can? The country as a whole is not any richer because the government pays our medical bills– with money that it takes from us.”
I take this to mean that being elderly in and of itself should not entitle you to Medicare, since being elderly in and of itself does not mean you’re poor. Let the elderly who can afford to, pay for their own medical coverage.
Sowell’s comment about the elderly is a rhetorical device I have seen him use before: conflating means with distribution. In other words, he looks at the average over a very large and diverse set, and interprets the set in terms of its average without looking at the underlying distribution. The net effect is to make it sound as though “rich elderly” are getting “free” medical care they don’t deserve. The reality is much more complicated.
It also raises the question whether social welfare programs actually accomplish what they set out to do. Questions about what works, what doesn’t and why those that don’t succeed fail. These are fair questions for those interested in actually applying CST.
People cover their ears to the cries of the poor because other people exaggerate the cries of the poor to further empower the state and/or to make profits from it. Trying to pry the plugs out without offering a plan doesn’t help, or rather it simply tries to tip the scale in favor of ‘helping’ them further under the present system, without any plan, even extending the present system. The poor are sinners, just like the rest. They have been known to use visits to the emergency room to put bandaids on their booboos, to the tune of about 1500 per bandaid. In the emergency room, someone’s there to listen, and it’s warm, or cool as the case may be. I’m not maligning the poor saying that–everyone who works with poor populations knows how it goes. But as a system, we can’t afford it any more. We need the plan, and meanwhile probably need to keep our ears stopped up from both sides.
Here’s one plan: stop insurance altogether. Let’s pay cash for services, and let charity offer help to those who don’t have it. Charity already helps subsidize huge sections of care. The price of services would fall, closer to their true cost; that isn’t supposition, countries which presently do not have insurance have cheaper and more accessible health care, if less sophisticated. You can still find out the cost of service for various medical procedures in Mexico (try doing that here!), and you can still afford it, although our wasteful system of insurance is leaking across the border. We could have a catastrophic fund for the big-ticket items for individual cases. People would be rewarded for staying healthy in a cash system, and individual behavior is, as you know, a very large item in the present cost of care, especially regarding the big ticket items now, diabetes and other expensive illness associated with over-eating, breast cancer, which is highly associated with abortion and use of hormones to trick the female body into infertility, and HIV, which is associated with a constellation of dare I say sinful behaviors, which neither private insurance nor government figures for: all pay the same.
There is no solution to either government or insurance funded health care in a secular state. It is too dangerous to give a state that does not constrain itself fundamentally on the sanctity of human life the power to pay the bills, and we just can’t afford the Republican free market solution. Younger and wise heads than mine ought to entertain the scenario that could develop if we took back the country state by state, but constitutional protection of life might need to be applied at a federal level to be plausible. Or we could secede state by state. Form a new Catholic union.
But there is no solution in our present circumstances, except to pay cash and help the poor privately, that I can see. We can’t have single-payer in our atheistic state, and that’s the only affordable solution. They kill babies legally now, when they can see they’re babies, because it’s profitable or at least avoids an expense. They will kill old people for the same reason as soon as they can push it through, they will vote on their reality shows which illnesses are sexiest and deny the rest health care, there’s no limit to the perfidity of liberals.
If you want to hear the cries of the poor, you’d best be ready with some solutions, or you’re helping the cause of either state control, or free market madness.
Matt writes, “Then he should know better.”
Um. Better than what?
David writes, “Sowell’s comment about the elderly is a rhetorical device I have seen him use before: … The reality is much more complicated.”
He is disagreeing with the idea that age should automatically entitle you to Medicare. Seems pretty simple to me.