When Funding's Not Enough
Want to read something that dramatizes every reason that the "welfare state" is a failure? Here goes, from the Seattle Times:
A lack of funding to educate the public has limited the effectiveness of a four-year-old law created to protect newborns from abandonment, a nonprofit group said after a teenage mother allegedly left her newborn near a drainage pond in Marysville late Saturday.
Get it? Because if the mother had known she could drop her baby off, she would never, ever have decided simply to leave it to die.
Please. Even a "teenage mother" shouldn't have to be told that it's easy to drop off her baby, just to prevent her from killing it. You don't need to know there's a program in order to leave your baby somewhere where it will have a chance of being found and therefore living, rather than being abandoned near a drainage pond. And hasn't anyone ever heard of "adoption"?
All the funding in the world won't fix the heart of someone willing to leave her own child to die.
A lack of funding to educate the public has limited the effectiveness of a four-year-old law created to protect newborns from abandonment, a nonprofit group said after a teenage mother allegedly left her newborn near a drainage pond in Marysville late Saturday.
Get it? Because if the mother had known she could drop her baby off, she would never, ever have decided simply to leave it to die.
Please. Even a "teenage mother" shouldn't have to be told that it's easy to drop off her baby, just to prevent her from killing it. You don't need to know there's a program in order to leave your baby somewhere where it will have a chance of being found and therefore living, rather than being abandoned near a drainage pond. And hasn't anyone ever heard of "adoption"?
All the funding in the world won't fix the heart of someone willing to leave her own child to die.
posted by LadybugUSA at 8:32 AM
5 Comments:
It certainly seems that there is a mountain of evidence against the notion of throwing big government and more money at any "problem".
Just like the stupid liberal bumper stickers that came out in Colorado a few years back "welcome to Colorado, 49th in education funding". Whoop-de-do. Colorado isn't 49th in the level of education...doesn't that disprove the stupidity of the argument? In fact, Money magazine ranked Colorado Springs as the best city in the country to live in, with the highest marks for education.
duh.
Amber, I think your story about your mother is an excellent one of how welfare is not always a terrible thing. Amid all the conspicuous consumption in our country, there is a prevailing belief that only a total couch potato loser could fail to make ends meet. This is false, but it lingers because it is much easier on the conscience to give the finger to a couch potato than to a single mother struggling to feed the kids.
I do not advocate the cradle-to-grave benefits that those on the right loooooove to exaggerate and tag me with. (This tactic is a common ploy -- if they can portray someone else in extreme terms, it's much easier to dispose of them.) The fact is that there will always be a certain segment in our society who, for a number of reasons, need a hand. I think welfare should be a temporary thing, but it does not need to come with a sermon, as it would if my tax money were to be funneled through churches.
Amber, I appreciate what you’re saying, and for the most part I agree with you. I also share your disdain for those punks with the expensive sneakers intent on bilking the system. (I would hasten to add that in every economic stratum of our society, there are those who bilk the system in different but equally selfish ways. None of them are excused.)
The only thing I take issue with is that there is no role for the federal government in all this, that it should just be a voluntary, organic effort that springs up on a local level. This is a quaint notion, and indeed it would probably work just fine across 80% of America. But what about those communities where there is a lack of will to help out? Does the struggling mother with a few too many kids (in the eyes of the townspeople) who “brought this on herself” need to get lost and find another town with more benevolence and money?
And what will then happen to the spirit of goodwill in the towns on whom the disadvantaged have essentially been dumped? Chances are the goodwill there will start to dry up when they find they’ve gotten a reputation for being nice people.
There have to be minimum standards for how low we can allow American citizens -- and their innocent children -- to sink, despite what the social Darwinists in our midst think.
I agree with you about the need to phase out the welfare payments. Yes, daycare is the biggest financial obstacle for many.
And what you are describing in your small town sounds very similar to my own surroundings. The jobs filled by people approaching middle age are ones I did in high school. And many of these jobs pay at or slightly above the minimum wage. There is an economic polarization going on in our country. Not a healthy thing for our republic. (And no, I do not think we can or should all be financially equal.)
Those who strongly oppose the redistribution of wealth would do well to consider raising the minimum wage, or start forking over more welfare and Medicare dollars. With the the rising cost of housing, fuel, and utilities, the $10,700 a year for a full-time minimum-wage worker doesn't go very far.
And that leaves nothing for health insurance, which many of these workers need since the big box corporation's priority is the shareholder, not the employee, forcing Mom and Pop to follow suit. But people expect them to run out and buy insurance and not clog the emergency rooms.
And I know we've been there before, but a minimum wage increase would not eradicate itself through higher prices. The $80 a week extra (if the min wage was raised by two dollars) for someone only making $206/wk now, would most definitely not be eaten up by any inflation caused by the raise when distributed across the entire economy.
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