Without a Net--Is It Safe?
I started this article in April; it's still a work in progress, but it makes the point I want to make...
In the circus, high wire or trapeze acts that perform without a safety net to take a great risk, just to amaze an audience with their skill and bravery, but hopefully not their foolhardiness. The risk, of course, is serious injury or death if these highly skilled and experienced entertainers make a single mistake. Of course, they earn good money for taking such risks, and the decision to carry out dangerous exploits is theirs to make. Hopefully, they also provide themselves and their dependents with health and life insurance.
Life is uncertain. Some activities, jobs, professions, and amusements are more dangerous than others. As a teacher, I had my students read a book called The Giver about a place without risks. Making a world perfectly safe required removing much of what makes life worth living. For junior high teenagers, the word for such a world is boring. Creating absolute safety makes living mind-numbingly dull, monotonous, routine, and pointless.
Many in the United States think they want to live in such a place without considering what they the results would be. The plans for creating absolute safety include two main kinds of provisions—those that prevent danger and those that prevent consequences. Both sap the vitality out of existence, one directly, the other indirectly.
I have lived much of the past 10 years without a “safety net.” At times, I had no regular income; at others, my income was low. For 7 or 8 years, I had no health insurance, even though I am diabetic. I never asked for welfare, and I wasn’t able to get unemployment, the one time I tried. I managed never to be homeless, never to lack food, and never to be without my diabetic prescriptions. In part, I had been wise and never built up a large debt. Even in America today, when prices are so much greater than when I was a child, a person with little debt can survive on a remarkably small income.
However, I also had help. During these years, people gave me cars, 3 different times. All three were donations related to my Christian work--first as a peacemaker, then as a teacher, and finally just as a church member. My church was also generous and bailed me out of a couple of rough spots, including a major plumbing emergency. Friends kept my cars running, fed me on numerous occasions, and provided substantial moral support.
Since the Great Depression and the Roosevelt Era, the United States has tried to take over more and more of the sorts of things I got privately. The belief is that welfare, universal medical care, and Social Security can and should take care of everyone. Of course, as the government assumes more of these responsibilities, it removes more of our choices…and more of our money to pay for them. Everyone must wear seatbelts, not to make us safer, but to prevent costly injuries and extended care that the government provides. The attack on smoking is about health only because the consequences of smoking are so costly to the government. Some would say that both of these are beneficial, so what is the problem? Will they feel the same when the government begins to regulate what we eat, “for our own good?”
Social Security provides a good example of the “risk” of having the government provide for “safety net.” The government takes a certain amount of the money we earn. It doesn’t invest it as an insurance company or bank would do; it spends it. However, it promises to give us or our dependents certain benefits if we are incapacitated or die. These promises have been routinely increased, encouraging people to count on them as a primary source of income after retirement and, thereby, discouraging people from providing for their own future by saving, insuring themselves, and investing. Furthermore, the government’s promises are inferior to what the same amount of money could actually provide if wisely (and conservatively) invested. The assumption is that what the government does is safer. This belief falls under the category of “ignorance is bliss,” because the government is far less trustworthy than what their laws require, for example, banks or insurance companies to be.
The government has no money! Does this statement surprise you? Money comes from only one place, apart from counterfeiting; money comes from producing goods and services. People who create, work, and serve earn money. The government gets money by taxing people who create, work, and serve and by charging them fees. Some taxes are necessary to allow the government to do things that only the government can do well—fight wars, make treaties, provide civil order and justice, make roads, and print money. Many things the government does private citizens and organizations could do better and cheaper. Some things the government does simply take money from some citizens and give to others, which expands a dependent class of citizens, the longer it continues. Finally, most things the government does cost too much because the government tends toward huge bureaucracies of people with huge salaries. The government, unlike private, profit-making businesses and unlike private non-profit organizations and charities, has little if any incentive to practice thrift. Non-profits keep expenses down due to limited donations. Profit-making businesses keep expenses down to maximize profit. The government allows expenses to increase and government to get bigger and simply raises taxes to pay for their injudicious spending.
In other words, the government takes your money, creates an enormous organization to take care of your needs, takes more of your money as the bureaucracy gets even bigger, and gets so big and so impersonal that each of us gets far less than we have paid for! When I was young, kids complained of being only a number. Now, we hear people complain about big business and even big government while expecting the federal government to do more and more.
I have three experiences that demonstrate the degree of the problem. The first is the federal government, starting with the INS and its dealings with refugees and immigrants. This huge federal agency is cumbersome and slow. With the addition of responsibility related to terrorism and national security it has become even worse, raising the question of whether a central national agency should be in charge even of this. People complained about FEMA after last years’ hurricanes, acting as if they really believe that a single federal agency is the best way to get help to people. The government provides money for foster families for unaccompanied minors and for tutors like I have been, and perhaps that is a legitimate role since immigration is a national matter. Yet, the real help for these kids is the personal help of people who actually care about the individual young people.
My second example is unemployment, which is a state government matter. I filed for the first time after my school laid me off. I filled out lots of paper, talked to different people every time I went to the unemployment office, received several conflicting opinions on my situation, and ultimately never received a dime! I never talked to anyone who knew me or cared about me. I doubt anyone ever thought about me again after our conversation. Compare those people to my friends and fellow church folks. The help that got me through this last difficult decade came from people who knew me, understood my situation, and cared about me.
My third example involves both state and federal governments, which have assumed more and more control of public education. We have known about the failure of public education for several decades, yet it has only declined further. The earliest complaint was that school didn’t pay teachers well enough. Today, private school teachers often earn less and yet do a better job of teaching. The public schools and teachers unions still say they need more money. Now, the federal government pays for a huge federal education department, which doesn’t teach a single student. Federal laws and regulations require more and more from the schools, and still the schools are failing.
My experience is with refugee students, who must go to school even though they don’t know any English. Schools and educators who actually cared about their students would find a way to give them what they most need—English. Without English, they cannot learn anything else, even though they must sit in math, science, and history classes that they cannot understand. I’m not sure if it’s the inflexibility of the over-regulated schools, the pre-occupied, self-involved professional educators running the schools and teaching the classes, or a system that has become so removed from real learning that no one notices a few more kids who can’t learn. However, if the government does everything the way the government does education, then I don’t want the government to do anything for me!
The original genius of the American constitution was in believing in and protecting individual freedom. The closer to the individual any task, the better. Allowed to function, as intended, every home, every local community, and every state is a laboratory of freedom, ingenuity, and captialistic achievement. We've departed far from that into a place where one huge central power is in charge of far too much, with far too large and complex a structure, with far too much of our money. As a result, far too little is being done well. Hurricanes or medical care or education, the fed will never be able to provide an adequate safety net. It's efforts to do so will take our freedom and return very little. That is a safety net we can all do far better without.
In the circus, high wire or trapeze acts that perform without a safety net to take a great risk, just to amaze an audience with their skill and bravery, but hopefully not their foolhardiness. The risk, of course, is serious injury or death if these highly skilled and experienced entertainers make a single mistake. Of course, they earn good money for taking such risks, and the decision to carry out dangerous exploits is theirs to make. Hopefully, they also provide themselves and their dependents with health and life insurance.
Life is uncertain. Some activities, jobs, professions, and amusements are more dangerous than others. As a teacher, I had my students read a book called The Giver about a place without risks. Making a world perfectly safe required removing much of what makes life worth living. For junior high teenagers, the word for such a world is boring. Creating absolute safety makes living mind-numbingly dull, monotonous, routine, and pointless.
Many in the United States think they want to live in such a place without considering what they the results would be. The plans for creating absolute safety include two main kinds of provisions—those that prevent danger and those that prevent consequences. Both sap the vitality out of existence, one directly, the other indirectly.
I have lived much of the past 10 years without a “safety net.” At times, I had no regular income; at others, my income was low. For 7 or 8 years, I had no health insurance, even though I am diabetic. I never asked for welfare, and I wasn’t able to get unemployment, the one time I tried. I managed never to be homeless, never to lack food, and never to be without my diabetic prescriptions. In part, I had been wise and never built up a large debt. Even in America today, when prices are so much greater than when I was a child, a person with little debt can survive on a remarkably small income.
However, I also had help. During these years, people gave me cars, 3 different times. All three were donations related to my Christian work--first as a peacemaker, then as a teacher, and finally just as a church member. My church was also generous and bailed me out of a couple of rough spots, including a major plumbing emergency. Friends kept my cars running, fed me on numerous occasions, and provided substantial moral support.
Since the Great Depression and the Roosevelt Era, the United States has tried to take over more and more of the sorts of things I got privately. The belief is that welfare, universal medical care, and Social Security can and should take care of everyone. Of course, as the government assumes more of these responsibilities, it removes more of our choices…and more of our money to pay for them. Everyone must wear seatbelts, not to make us safer, but to prevent costly injuries and extended care that the government provides. The attack on smoking is about health only because the consequences of smoking are so costly to the government. Some would say that both of these are beneficial, so what is the problem? Will they feel the same when the government begins to regulate what we eat, “for our own good?”
Social Security provides a good example of the “risk” of having the government provide for “safety net.” The government takes a certain amount of the money we earn. It doesn’t invest it as an insurance company or bank would do; it spends it. However, it promises to give us or our dependents certain benefits if we are incapacitated or die. These promises have been routinely increased, encouraging people to count on them as a primary source of income after retirement and, thereby, discouraging people from providing for their own future by saving, insuring themselves, and investing. Furthermore, the government’s promises are inferior to what the same amount of money could actually provide if wisely (and conservatively) invested. The assumption is that what the government does is safer. This belief falls under the category of “ignorance is bliss,” because the government is far less trustworthy than what their laws require, for example, banks or insurance companies to be.
The government has no money! Does this statement surprise you? Money comes from only one place, apart from counterfeiting; money comes from producing goods and services. People who create, work, and serve earn money. The government gets money by taxing people who create, work, and serve and by charging them fees. Some taxes are necessary to allow the government to do things that only the government can do well—fight wars, make treaties, provide civil order and justice, make roads, and print money. Many things the government does private citizens and organizations could do better and cheaper. Some things the government does simply take money from some citizens and give to others, which expands a dependent class of citizens, the longer it continues. Finally, most things the government does cost too much because the government tends toward huge bureaucracies of people with huge salaries. The government, unlike private, profit-making businesses and unlike private non-profit organizations and charities, has little if any incentive to practice thrift. Non-profits keep expenses down due to limited donations. Profit-making businesses keep expenses down to maximize profit. The government allows expenses to increase and government to get bigger and simply raises taxes to pay for their injudicious spending.
In other words, the government takes your money, creates an enormous organization to take care of your needs, takes more of your money as the bureaucracy gets even bigger, and gets so big and so impersonal that each of us gets far less than we have paid for! When I was young, kids complained of being only a number. Now, we hear people complain about big business and even big government while expecting the federal government to do more and more.
I have three experiences that demonstrate the degree of the problem. The first is the federal government, starting with the INS and its dealings with refugees and immigrants. This huge federal agency is cumbersome and slow. With the addition of responsibility related to terrorism and national security it has become even worse, raising the question of whether a central national agency should be in charge even of this. People complained about FEMA after last years’ hurricanes, acting as if they really believe that a single federal agency is the best way to get help to people. The government provides money for foster families for unaccompanied minors and for tutors like I have been, and perhaps that is a legitimate role since immigration is a national matter. Yet, the real help for these kids is the personal help of people who actually care about the individual young people.
My second example is unemployment, which is a state government matter. I filed for the first time after my school laid me off. I filled out lots of paper, talked to different people every time I went to the unemployment office, received several conflicting opinions on my situation, and ultimately never received a dime! I never talked to anyone who knew me or cared about me. I doubt anyone ever thought about me again after our conversation. Compare those people to my friends and fellow church folks. The help that got me through this last difficult decade came from people who knew me, understood my situation, and cared about me.
My third example involves both state and federal governments, which have assumed more and more control of public education. We have known about the failure of public education for several decades, yet it has only declined further. The earliest complaint was that school didn’t pay teachers well enough. Today, private school teachers often earn less and yet do a better job of teaching. The public schools and teachers unions still say they need more money. Now, the federal government pays for a huge federal education department, which doesn’t teach a single student. Federal laws and regulations require more and more from the schools, and still the schools are failing.
My experience is with refugee students, who must go to school even though they don’t know any English. Schools and educators who actually cared about their students would find a way to give them what they most need—English. Without English, they cannot learn anything else, even though they must sit in math, science, and history classes that they cannot understand. I’m not sure if it’s the inflexibility of the over-regulated schools, the pre-occupied, self-involved professional educators running the schools and teaching the classes, or a system that has become so removed from real learning that no one notices a few more kids who can’t learn. However, if the government does everything the way the government does education, then I don’t want the government to do anything for me!
The original genius of the American constitution was in believing in and protecting individual freedom. The closer to the individual any task, the better. Allowed to function, as intended, every home, every local community, and every state is a laboratory of freedom, ingenuity, and captialistic achievement. We've departed far from that into a place where one huge central power is in charge of far too much, with far too large and complex a structure, with far too much of our money. As a result, far too little is being done well. Hurricanes or medical care or education, the fed will never be able to provide an adequate safety net. It's efforts to do so will take our freedom and return very little. That is a safety net we can all do far better without.
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