Monday, July 17, 2006

Darned Welfare Cheats!

Suppose I was aware of a household that was overextending itself. There are 20 people living in the house (counting a goodly number of children), but they only make $10,000! They have to spend nearly that much just on their housing and heating the house (well, that and air conditioning – it gets hot around here).

Plus they have to buy food (and they like fast food and pre-packaged food and that stuff don't come cheap), and they really need a van or two to transport all those people and you know how much gas costs these days – and what poor gas mileage vans get! Also, some of the teenagers feel like they need a sports car to fit in.

And, since they don’t live in the best of neighborhoods and it’s not that safe, they feel like they have to have a security system and at least a few guns for protection. And ammo’s not cheap these days, you know.

They really just don’t seem to be able to make it on that $10,000.

What should we do?

Wouldn’t the compassionate thing be to help them live this way? I know they can’t afford to right now, but maybe later they will be able to afford to, or if not them, maybe their children could improve their living conditions.

Perhaps if my church could slip them a few bucks here and there, and if they could get a bit of that good ol’ cheap money that flows freely from the banks of the River Welfare, then with a bit of charity money, maybe they could make it?

No?

What’s that, you say? No, they shouldn’t be living such an extravagant lifestyle because they are simply spending way more than they are taking in or have hopes of taking in any time soon? You say that they’d only be creating a debt that someone else would have to pay and to do so is morally wrong?

Well, I do know that household. It is called Western civilization, although their tribe has spread far beyond just the West. Their home is the earth and it would appear that they are writing checks that the earth or their grandchildren cannot cash.

Are we living beyond our means? Ought this be encouraged, celebrated even?

We sure seem to hate it when we’re talking about the poor doing it, but when it’s (nearly) all of us, does it become acceptable?

15 comments:

Wasp Jerky said...

Clearly they're terrorists. Just shoot them. That's what Jesus would do.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

We are certainly living way beyond our means, especially in the U.S. And the system is set up so that the poor will pay for this extravagance long before the rich who are doing the most damage. In fact, Robin Hood in reverse, we are robbing the poor (and the earth, and future generations) to give to the rich. How sick is that?

D.R. said...

I agree, people in the U.S. live well beyond their means. Credit card companies flourish in the U.S. economy, promising people a good life using slogans like, "Life takes Visa." I love listening to Dave Ramsey and hearing about people realizing this and changing their lives by living below their means, paying off debts and then having more to give to others.

Dan Trabue said...

To be clear, DR, while I don't disagree with you, I'm talking about living beyond our planet's limits. The way we try to live (and are exporting around the world) is not sustainable. I forget the exact numbers, but it would take something like 4+ planet Earths for everyone to live the way we do.

And everyone is striving for this. These are the checks we're writing that will soon be bouncing.

François said...

What to say... I agree...
I personnaly think that it can't go on very long.
I'm living a part of the year in Africa, and what we (Occidental world) are making them "pay" is a daily and terrible reality... Sad.

D.Daddio Al-Ozarka said...

I'm sorry, but....LOLOLOL!

Dan Trabue said...

Thank you for visiting, Francois. Come back anytime and pay no attention to the man behind the Daddio label. He's off his meds.

D - with facts and not screeds - what part of what I've said do you disagree with? Are you against personal responsibility or living within our means or is it that you think this is an infinite world?

Kim said...

Yup. Sounds like Affluenza!

http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/

D.Daddio Al-Ozarka said...

I just thought the comments were pretty funny, that's all!

It's okay, ain't it?

Dan Trabue said...

The poor people of the world and our children paying for our sins is a funny comment? Living beyond one's means is a funny comment?

Sorry, D, I don't get it.

D.Daddio Al-Ozarka said...

I have a keen sense of humor, Dan. Know anyone else that way? LOL!

I'm sure wasp-jerky can understand my humor even though we disagree by reading through the predictable comments.

Humor, Dan. Humor is GOOD for you! It can be found most places!

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

D. R., even though Dan was talking about living in an ecologically unsustainable way (and so was I, but I was making the point that the poor will feel the pain of this first--especially the poor of the Global South), your comments still show a point of major agreement, I think. I'm not against all credit--microloans for start up money to small businesses in the Two Thirds World seem to be a much better (and sustainable) answer to global poverty than just charity, for instance. But the credit card debt in the U.S. is huge. There used to be "usury laws" which prevented credit card companies from charging above 8%. Naturally enough, this meant that fewer cards were available, too. One had to earn that kind of credit. Then, in 1982, those laws were abolished and college students (even my dog!) were mailed credit cards--and here we are.
Now,notice how the government models this type of irresponsible behavior: It promotes tax giveaways (I refuse to call them "breaks") for the ultra-rich which cuts off major sources of revenue. Then, it engages in a war costing over 1 billion per month on top of a military budget that is greater than the next 15 nations combined. Then it promotes an economic system which exports jobs and produces nothing and depends on high consumption to "work." The result: huge debt that won't be paid off in our grandchildren's day!

And the ecological debt is at least as huge. This is bad stewardship in a humongous way. Will the Judge of the Earth not have something to say about how we've treated our neighbors, future generations, and the rest of Creation?

Eleutheros said...

Dan:"To be clear, DR, while I don't disagree with you, I'm talking about living beyond our planet's limits"

Since I first read these comments I have been thinking along Michael's lines. The one has a great deal to do with the other, our personal irresponsibility within our own economic system has a lot to do with our irresponsibility to the planetary ecosystem.

Did you know (if you've paid attention in your Eleuthronomics lessons) that in the modern monetary system, money does not exist apart from debt. For one dollar to be created in the US system, someone has to agree to borrow it, to go into debt for it. When people pay off their debts, that money goes out of existence. Everything that appears to be a historically robust economy is not based on precious metals, manufacturing capacity, agricultural or mining output, but rather it is essentially nothing more than promises come up with something of value in the future, a pile of IOU's.

As to future generations paying off that debt, they won't. They can't. In every case where an economy or a government has based itself on continued and accelerated borrowing, one of two things has happened:

1) The government creates inflation so horrendous that it wipes out all the debt of the government and its citizens. When debt is high and savings are nil, no one much complains about inflation since it makes it easy for them to discharge their debts.

2) The government and its people default.

The western-style global economy will try the former as it always has, but I wonder if we haven't gone too far this time and the latter is the only possible result.

Chance said...

"The poor people of the world and our children paying for our sins is a funny comment? "

Interesting statement, in that you call it "sins." I have no doubt wastefulness is a sin, but here is what I have issues with. At what point, exactly, does consumption become a sin? Is it if someone drives an SUV, or if they have their AC blowing all day? Is there a certain gas mileage we are morally obliged to have? This isn't to disprove your point, I think you make an effective one, it's just a hard issue I am struggling with right now.

Concerning the individual, we can sin due to lack of moderation, like drinking too much, eating too much, etc... On a global scale, this is more difficult, because now we must make decisions for other people. I am not saying we should avoid such collective decisions when environment is involved, but how we decide what is moral for other people? "Don't" morality is easy on the individual or collective level (don't kill, don't steal), but "moderation" morality is very difficult on the collective level.

Dan Trabue said...

An excellent point, Chance. And part of why I think these issues are so difficult for us to come to grips with.

We're all for personal responsibility (most of us) but when it comes to corporate responsibility, things get blurry.

The individual responsibly driving a car, for instance, does no serious damage. There's plenty of oil in the world for one person to drive and the environment can handle a certain amount of smoke.

BUT, can 2 Billion people all drive every day and not have a negative effect? No. And so, the individual is doing no real harm there, but the collective IS doing serious damage to the world. How do we create a sense of corporate responsibility?

One thought I'd have is to work to ensure that ACTUAL costs are reflected in our purchases which will, to some degree, allow the Market to help things (how about that?! A capitalist answer from me!).

It doesn't cost us $3/gallon to drive our cars at the rate we do. It costs $3/gallon PLUS the 3 million killed in auto wrecks, PLUS the 1 million killed by air pollution, PLUS the loss of clean streams, PLUS the loss of tourism dollars that result because of the dirty streams, PLUS the loss of clean air, PLUS the days lost from work due to the effects of dirty air and on and on...

Our gas prices are WAY artificially low. If they reflected actual costs, then people would drive less, consume less, pollute less corporately and individually.

And that would be a start.