Social Insecurity Health Insecurity

All the buzz is about “economic stimulus programs.” I don't know if one can draw a direct line between plant care and economics, but I do know this much; if you want to revive a dying plant, you do not pour water on the top branches and hope some of it drips onto the ground. You pour water on the roots and let the roots feed the plant. If you give a dollar to every American, you will give away about $315 million. Most of that would end up at some store or another, or go to pay rent or gas or food (70-80% of it). If you gave $315 million to the ten richest people in the country, it would all go into savings, or in a drawer, and may or may not be spent soon. If you want to revive the economy, give money to the poorest people, people who can't make ends meet, and I guarantee it will all end up back into the economy immediately. They can't sit on their money because of lack of confidence. They HAVE to spend to make ends meet.

Many Americans have a problem with that, it seems. We would much rather give half-a-billion dollars to people who have the most (banks) and who are able to sock it away (because it isn't needed) and hide it (because their affairs are so complex), instead of the people who could use it to make a house payment or put another week's food in the pantry, or even buy a winter coat or a new tire for the car.

It isn't really an economic problem as much as it is one of perspective. We look at people who wear thousand-dollar suits as somehow morally superior to those who wear clothes they find at Goodwill. Somehow, we have been trained to think that a person's ability to make money is the same thing as a person's moral standing. We equate a big bank account with success, success being something that is earned by the Horatio Alger types. We believe that people who are down-and-out must have done something wrong, made major mistakes, been lazy, not tried hard enough, etc.

We miss the fact that the vast majority of people who are poor, also work. They work at least one job. Sometimes two. Sometimes more. They don't sleep enough. They don't have health insurance and cannot afford preventative medical care. They are one medical disaster away from homelessness. And we blame them for their poverty, if not overtly, than covertly.

Welcome to the wakeup call. Sometimes you don't do anything wrong. Sometimes you wake up in the morning young, healthy, employed, and with rising prospects, and go to bed the same day with an IV (intra-venous line) in your arm. The next day, you realize life as you know it is over. You're still young, but you are no longer healthy, you are going to be fired (because you're too sick to work) and your employer is going to be able to cheat you out of disability because, their lawyers have infinite resources and you don't. You are broke. Your fiance walks away that day because he can't handle it, so now you're alone. If you have a family that isn't supportive, well, it's a cold, hard world, baby.

We have to find a way to divorce health care and jobs. Because when you become too sick to work, but your diagnosis is a few months away, you will lose your health care when you need it most. And if you think there are government programs to help you out, you are in for a rude awakening. The level of poverty required before you qualify for medical assistance is truly staggering. Consider this, as you read...in order for medical assistance (in this state) to pay for any of your medical costs, you have to “spend down” your income so that you only keep about $650 a month. Everything else goes to the government. Only then do they pay for your medical. Think about living on $650 a month. Oh, and you can't have more than $3,000 in assets either, and an inexpensive car. Can you live on $650 a month?

The reality is, that we truly crush the poor before we help them. We only give food to the food shelves once it's inedible. We gladly donate canned goods that are three years past their expiration date, and cereal that has been on the shelf for a year or two past it's “best by date.” Yumm. If you haven't eaten truly stale cheerios, you just haven't lived.

But the guys in their thousand dollar shoes and three thousand dollar suits who dreamed up derivatives and CDO's (collateralized debt obligations) and other such mutated investment instruments; those guys are entitled to billions of our hard-earned dollars because, well, we trust them to be better stewards than those selfish, lazy infidels who are so ungrateful they don't appreciate five-year-old cereal.

We don't and cannot differentiate between those who are impoverished for reasons completely beyond their control, and those we believe are somehow undeserving. It's easier to paint everyone with a broad brush. If you're young and you're broke, you must have done something wrong. You should have saved for the possibility. I mean, don't people have the smarts to save enough for their retirement before thirty two? I sure didn't (someone even asked me that once). We are told to save 3 to 6 month's income for emergencies. But it takes an average of a year and a half to get disability. And MS is for life. What do you do when 3 or 6 months is up, and you're still young and single, so you don't qualify for anything. Family, right? Well, it's just not there for everyone.

I never imagined I would end up homeless at age 32 because I got MS and, within a week, I had no job, no fiance, no family that would help (that's a different story, I don't even want to go there), and no other resources. I called everyone, from my senator, to every “faith-based” organization, or community service I could find. I got the same answer everywhere. You're 32, single, with no kids, and we can't help you. Period. It didn't matter that I could no longer walk, stand, or hold a hairbrush or bathe myself. It only mattered that I didn't have kids, and was 32.

You have no idea how cold it is outside until you don't know how you're going to find shelter when you're sick and scared and alone.
I did get food stamps 4 months later. What I was supposed to eat in the meantime is still a mystery. I thank God for friends.

I never did ask “why me?” but I do ask this. How can the richest country in the world be so cold-hearted when people who, by no fault of their own, find themselves in such circumstances, but at the same time, we can hand out $billions to people who caused the biggest financial crisis since the great depression?

Yes, I do believe there were plenty of people who took advantage of easy lending. But I don't think anyone went from bank to bank, begging to be given a mortgage without providing proof of income. In fact, I know that banks and mortgage brokers refused to talk to people interested only in a fixed-rate mortgage. I tried to get one. But they wouldn't return my calls when I said I had VA benefits and wanted a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. It was the kiss of death. End of conversation. They had other things to market, all of them fancy adjustable rate mortgages that I could refi out of before they reset. I didn't bite. I still rent. Some people aren't as smart, or they're more gullible or they are a little bit greedy. But added together, each of those individuals cannot equal the culpability of the people who made such loans possible in the first place. It was all about making money.

But in this country, we water our plants from the top down. So it will be interesting to see if sending the bailout money to the richest and most culpable of institutions will be more effective than watering the tree from the roots. I know how it works with plants. We will see how it works in economics. Current indications are not promising.

One thing we as a society must also learn to do; and that is to value people by some other measure than the cost of their wardrobes and homes and cars. How much money a person can make or earn has nothing to do with whether or not they are good people, moral, or educated. We need to stop making moral judgments that people who have nothing deserve nothing, and people who have everything deserve it all. It simply isn't true. It is true that some impoverished people are lazy. It is also true that some uber wealthy people are good and moral. But to assume that one's net worth equals their human value is just as prejudice as any other prejudice. It is a fact-free assessment based on incorrect assumptions that need to be reexamined. Our society is desperate for a reevaluation of who is, and who is not, worthy of help.

Giving money to the (poor wretches) at the bottom would be like mainlining cash into the economy. People who cannot dream of saving are usually behind the 8-ball to the degree that a cash handout would get spent on immediate needs. They will spend. People will have to rehire to serve them. I do not understand how this can be so hard to see. Water the plant from the roots. - Rant off -