The Safety Net Fallacy
Yesterday’s CNNMoney contains an article entitled “Debt ceiling impasse imperils safety net.” “Safety net” is an interesting choice of words. When we think of a safety net, we tend to think of the thing that’s supposed to catch the tightrope walker if he falls. Ordinarily, he doesn’t fall (otherwise, people wouldn’t pay to go to the circus). It’s there in case of a rare accident.
The article characterizes as “safety net programs” unemployment, tuition grants, food stamps, subsidies for housing and child care, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Nearly everyone aged sixty-five and above, however, is eligible for Medicare. While Medicaid and food stamps sound like safety net programs, the article cites figures that undercut that assumption: that one out of every seven persons receives food stamps, and that Medicaid is “the primary payer for two-thirds of the country’s nursing home residents.” As in the case of Medicare, nearly everyone becomes eligible for Social Security as well.
Many of these programs therefore have nothing to do with a “safety net.” For example, Americans can usually fund their own retirement without government assistance. If people often have difficulty meeting their own foreseeable medical expenses, that is because of market inefficiencies, as I argued in an earlier posting.
Progressives and conservatives disagree, of course, over what type of genuine safety net is appropriate. Progressives inevitably look to federal bureaucracy to help the needy, while conservatives look askance at solutions that hobble economic growth (and therefore job creation), expand the role of the federal government in our lives, and often foster patterns of dependence.
These disagreements are beside the point when it comes to our current budget problems, however, because a “safety net” does not bear responsibility for the bloated federal expenditure. The reason expenditure is out of control is the fact that the government is attempting to do for most people what most people are able to do for themselves.
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
"Safety net" was once Family, but the left has all but destroyed it with government taking Its place.
Jun '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
L.T. Rahe:
The reason expenditure is out of control is the fact that the government is attempting to do for most people what most people are able to do for themselves. ·
I agree. The pattern that has worked throughout history is the linking of generations: children are raised in an intact family, they desire to become adults, they marry, the married couple have children, the children are raised by both parents, the children become responsible adults and the pattern repeats itself. Of course there are exceptions (death of a spouse or a marriage that ends in divorce after the husband and wife try to make it work).
Government has created a bazillion programs to solve society's problems. But the only pattern that creates a stable, confident society in the long term is the pattern described above. And a side benefit of it is that the family, whose generations are linked, feels it both an obligation and a privilege to care for family members.
We can tax, redistribute, create safety nets in case someone slips through another safety net, ad infinitum and none of them will come close to family taking care of family.
Aug '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
The safety net was family, church, voluntary associations. The federal government has replaced family, church and voluntary local associations. This was done on purpose to destroy local communities and replace it with the federal government so we are wards of the state.
Dec '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Ron Swanson
The safety net was family, church, voluntary associations. Jul 24 at 10:40pm
I fear that the greatest harm done in redirecting those in need away from local intervention by the groups you mentioned, and onto a centralized "safety net" is that the understanding poverty is foolishly reduced to mean merely a lack of resources. In my opinion that is rarely if ever the case.
If you only provide a way to pay a man's bills or feed his hunger, his spiritual poverty or poverty of supportive relationships will continue to keep him from success. And in the end, mere financial assistance can mask greater needs or even serve to enable the most destructive courses of life.
Edited on July 25, 2011 at 7:29pmMay '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
The safety net has become a hammock.
This is not to disparage people who genuinely were in need and were helped by having a safety net. I know people who went on food stamps because they were genuinely in need. (I can't say they wouldn't have found other help without it though-- there are other safety nets such as family, friends and charities.) But they recovered, got on their feet, and immediately stopped using the safety net.
The outrageous thing is when they would quit, the government worker would typically push them to continue in the program, saying things like "Your situation still qualifies to receive aid. Are you sure you don't want it?" or "You know, if you registered just one more child, you could still qualify."
I personally know others who are resting securely in the hammock, using welfare to survive, and having kids to stay in the programs. Since I know them personally, I don't look down on them as people. They are just confused; they don't know any better, because this is all they have known and seen. It's tragic, but the government really has created a culture of dependency.
May '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
This is why we can call Social Security, Social Insecurity. Not primarily because it is an insecure program due to its Ponzi-scheme structure (though it is that too) but because it destroys the social fabric that people used to depend on.
I also personally know old grandmothers living alone in a dark apartment, unable to go out or enjoy life at all, very lonely, and yet they talk about having maintained their "dignity" by not being dependent on their children. Their children live in other states and hardly ever call or visit. Grandma's OK because she's getting her "social security" check, so we don't need to think about her.
In so many other cultures, this fake notion of "dignity" does not exist, and family structures are still intact. Old people live with their children and enjoy life with them. They don't see it as dependence, but as being with family. They pass their wisdom on to the little ones and live happily socially connected until they pass away.
Mar '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
The left is very good at weasel words. Government spending is "investment". Taxation is "revenues". Dependence on government checks are a "safety net". The left are masters at Newspeak.
Sep '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Ron Swanson
The safety net was family, church, voluntary associations. The federal government has replaced family, church and voluntary local associations. This was done on purpose to destroy local communities and replace it with the federal government so we are wards of the state. · Jul 24 at 10:40pm
It was most likely an unintended consequence. I f government would have set out to destroy local communities they would have messed it up and local communities would be much stronger now.
Dec '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Agreed, but you missed out on an important one; getting other people's money is an 'entitlement'.
Almost makes you want to declare a 'kinetic military action' against the federal government, doesn't it?
Aug '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
When was the last time an entitlement program was pitched as a "last resort safety net", instead of an "obligation" we had to our fellow man?
Dec '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
liberal jim
Ron Swanson
The safety net was family, church, voluntary associations. The federal government has replaced family, church and voluntary local associations. This was done on purpose to destroy local communities and replace it with the federal government so we are wards of the state. · Jul 24 at 10:40p
m
It was most likely an unintended consequence. If government would have set out to destroy local communities they would have messed it up and local communities would be much stronger now. · Jul 25 at 9:40am
I'm inclined to agree with you. I know several somewhat naive, yet good-hearted individuals that continue to work for Gov't programs and NGO, and vote for Dems because they feel like social welfare programs do more good than harm, and their shortfalls are simply in need of a wiser technocrats reform and/or oversight.
However, I'm not fully swayed. I think activist social progressives, as well as social conservatives understand that the two world views are incompatible and cannot coexist. And because of this knowledge the more radical leftists push a dramatic agenda to replace old social norms, not just modify them, while conservatives fight for their existence.
A great example of this is the President's adherence to the ideology of tax increases. The fact that many of them will reduce government revenue, illustrates his fundamental goal of wealth redistribution, the pursuit of which cannot be squared with individual liberty. For one to grow, the other must recede.
Edited on July 25, 2011 at 7:47pmMay '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Beasley
I fear that the greatest harm done in redirecting those in need away from local intervention by the groups you mentioned, and onto a centralized "safety net" is that the understanding poverty is foolishly reduced to mean merely a lack of resources.
An important point. There is an excellent book on this subject called A Framework for Understanding Poverty.
Mar '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Starve the Beast
Almost makes you want to declare a 'kinetic military action' against the federal government, doesn't it? · Jul 25 at 10:21am
Careful,Big Sis will put you in the crazybase...
Mar '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
liberal jim
It was most likely an unintended consequence. I f government would have set out to destroy local communities they would have messed it up and local communities would be much stronger now. · Jul 25 at 9:40am
I think it was Thomas Sowell that said "If you put the government in charge of deserts, pretty soon there'll be a shortage of sand".
Apr '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
"Americans can usually fund their own retirement without government assistance."
Really? I'm not here to suggest that the current situation is sustainable or desirable but there are some realities that no one mentions.
More than once, Mark Steyn has mentioned the 40 percent of people in this country working in low-skill, low-paying jobs. They're not going to save the money needed for a nursing home or retirement. A so-so nursing home will set you back several thousand dollars a month.
Family is great but it's not the Waltons where the old folks are lucid and mobile. A lot of the folks in nursing homes are senile and some of them are not easy to deal with (i.e. combative); others are bed-bound and require near-constant attention (which is costly).
Raising the retirement age seems to me the only way out of this mess but that brings it's own problems: fewer jobs for people entering the workforce and/or massive age discrimination (how may 65-year old software engineers do you know?).
We need to address reality.
May '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
They might be able to if they and their employers were not beggared by FICA taxes which effectively prevent many people from adequately funding their retirement.
Mar '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
KCRob:
We need to address reality. · Jul 25 at 2:35pm
The only way to do that is to tell people flat out "we can't afford this sytem. Start putting money away now, and tell your kids to make sure a room is set aside for you at their place".
Over the past 60 years, we have so sold ourselves on suburbia, that when the crash comes... and it is coming... it's going to be a hellish shock when people realize that the "Waltons" model of doing things existed a very long time for good reasons. I think if we can avoid the kind of "pack 'em into high rise socialist housing towers" fate that's befallen Europe, American families will look more like the Waltons than Leave it to Beaver in the future.
Mar '11
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
Nick Stuart
They might be able to if they and their employers were not beggared by FICA taxes which effectively prevent many people from adequately funding their retirement. · Jul 25 at 5:51pm
That's part of it, but a greater part of it is that Americans expect the government to take care of them in old age now.
Nov '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
There is also a problem in that the Medicare piece of the "safety net" is more like a trap. My father, for example, pays out of pocket for concierge medical care outside the insurance system. He is still working, well after any conceivable retirement age. Yet we have created such a monstrous insurance system that he was forced to go on Medicare, because the cost of health insurance at his age was prohibitive for the small business where he works. He is the last person who would want to take any government benefit, but he really had no choice. There must be many more people who are similarly trapped in the net.
Dec '10
Re: The Safety Net Fallacy
L.T. Rahe
Beasley
I fear that the greatest harm done in redirecting those in need away from local intervention by the groups you mentioned, and onto a centralized "safety net" is that the understanding poverty is foolishly reduced to mean merely a lack of resources.
An important point. There is an excellent book on this subject called A Framework for Understanding Poverty. · Jul 25 at 1:28pm
Thank you kindly for the recommendation Ms. Rahe.