Joy & Austin 29: RV Living

[nausicaa]

17 hours ago, byzant said:

Sorry but this is nonsense. What is a government for if not to ensure the basic needs of its citizens are met.

Well, plenty of people don't think that's the role of the government. I don't. Some think it's only there to protect personal freedoms. Some think it's to have a small standing army and break up monopolies. Some believe it shouldn't exist at all. You do have to prove this is the government's role before moving forward in your argument rather than just assuming we all agree on this and dismissing anything else as nonsense. 

And to give some insight into conservative thought (in the traditional sense of the word, not Trumpsters): It's not always about the belief that the rich do a better job of helping out the poor. It's the question of, to what extent should a government entity be allowed to take money from some to give to others? The belief is predicated on personal freedom and government boundaries, not efficacy.

I think if progressives addressed this foundational belief first, they would go farther in convincing those farther right of the utility of a wider social safety net. 

[lumpentheologie]

1 hour ago, nausicaa said:

And to give some insight into conservative thought (in the traditional sense of the word, not Trumpsters): It's not always about the belief that the rich do a better job of helping out the poor. It's the question of, to what extent should a government entity be allowed to take money from some to give to others? The belief is predicated on personal freedom and government boundaries, not efficacy.

One thing that bothers me about this view is that it tends to assume private property exists outside of the legal structure provided by government.  I don't really think it makes sense think it's illegitimate for the government to "take your money" when it's the government that allows that money to be yours in the first place.  All governments create the conditions for who can have what, not just progressive or socialist ones. 

Classical liberal (American conservative) ideas about government rest on the primacy of private property, and then they start thinking about government and how it should interact with private property.  But this has become more and more difficult to do credibly since the 18th century, as we have improved our understanding of how society works. (This is a major reason a lot of American conservatives hate the social sciences.)

[Irishy]

2 hours ago, nausicaa said:

And to give some insight into conservative thought (in the traditional sense of the word, not Trumpsters): It's not always about the belief that the rich do a better job of helping out the poor. It's the question of, to what extent should a government entity be allowed to take money from some to give to others? The belief is predicated on personal freedom and government boundaries, not efficacy.

I think if progressives addressed this foundational belief first, they would go farther in convincing those farther right of the utility of a wider social safety net. 

But this system of personal freedom is clearly failing. The US is the most economically unequal country in the entire world. Change is clearly needed. When a society becomes more and more equal after a few generations, it’s no longer a case of the rich subsidising the poor. 

[lumpentheologie]

2 minutes ago, Irishy said:

But this system of personal freedom is clearly failing. The US is the most economically unequal country in the entire world. Change is clearly needed. When a society becomes more and more equal after a few generations, it’s no longer a case of the rich subsidising the poor. 

I agree with you, but it's not clear to many Americans that inequality, even vast inequality, is a bad thing.  They counter by saying we have the most innovative society in the world, and inequality is the cost of advances in modern medicine and technology, etc. 

I mean, I think it's true that when you force a population of over 300 million people to compete or starve you do get a lot of really innovative things out of it.  You also get about 1 in 5 adults suffering from an anxiety disorder each and every year.  Personally I think it would be a lot more humane and innovation would potentially be just as encouraged if people were more insulated from risk when they try new ventures. (I'm starting my own business in Germany but I would never have done so in the US for fear of ending up homeless if it didn't work out.) And, if we stay in the high-population/low-safety-net model, China will beat us at that game in 50 years anyway. 

[ModestisHottest]

26 minutes ago, Irishy said:

But this system of personal freedom is clearly failing. The US is the most economically unequal country in the entire world. Change is clearly needed. When a society becomes more and more equal after a few generations, it’s no longer a case of the rich subsidising the poor. 

While I definitely agree with your sentiment I don't think this is technically true.  I'm not very well versed in economics but it looks like there are a lot of countries with more income inequality. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality  

In any event, we certainly have a big income inequality issue here for sure. 

[byzant]

6 hours ago, Irishy said:

@nolongerIFBxyou have removed all of Jane Doe’s dignity by expecting her to rely on your charity because you feel that that system is better for you, for YOUR levels of compassion and empathy. 

What you describe is the complete lack of a safety net for all citizens. That is how people, especially children, get left behind. The problems associated with economic inequality are devastating to society. They go far beyond poverty. Those few dollars you save on tax will literally cost lives and affect the overall happiness of entire societies. 

The truth is that there should be minimal need for charity in any country.

This a thousand times!!! I really couldn't agree more. 

[nausicaa]

1 hour ago, Irishy said:

But this system of personal freedom is clearly failing. The US is the most economically unequal country in the entire world. Change is clearly needed. When a society becomes more and more equal after a few generations, it’s no longer a case of the rich subsidising the poor. 

I would be surprised if U.S. is the most economically unequal country in the world, or even if it's in the worst 10%. But I would be interested if there is a study that determined this and by what metrics. 

Some who espouse the belief of personal freedom aren't actually looking for "success" or "failure" as a lot of Republicans and Democrats define it. They aren't look for efficacy, but rather freedom. Economic equality isn't the goal of governments in their minds. 

2 hours ago, lumpentheologie said:

One thing that bothers me about this view is that it tends to assume private property exists outside of the legal structure provided by government.  I don't really think it makes sense think it's illegitimate for the government to "take your money" when it's the government that allows that money to be yours in the first place. 

I think that's a fair point and struggle with it myself. I think the argument a lot of fiscal conservatives would make is that the government only exists to protect existing rights and then let the chips fall where they may, versus guaranteeing equality. Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Then again, what defines "opportunity" is rife for discussion and could be used to support progressive points about school funding, nutrition, and policing.

There are anarcho-capitalists though who take your point and basically argue that there should be no government and we should all duke it all out amongst ourselves. I mean...I guess they're consistent? ?

[laPapessaGiovanna]

38 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Some who espouse the belief of personal freedom aren't actually looking for "success" or "failure" as a lot of Republicans and Democrats define it. They aren't look for efficacy, but rather freedom. 

Like the Nauglers. 

Sorry, but a state that in the name of "freedom" lets children reach adulthood as deeply ignorant and lacking the most basic skills to cope with life in a civil society as the young Nauglers are, is at very least profoundly flawed.

Not to mention that on average three children every week are sacrificed to the second amendment god. All in the name of freedom.

When I was a child in my ebil socialist country I was taught that freedom is the best thing, but that my freedom ends where other people's freedom begins. Children, future adult citizens, should have the freedom to grow up without the burden of their parents stupidity and ignorance. Their parents' freedom should end where their freedom begins.

[Irishy]

2 hours ago, nausicaa said:

I would be surprised if U.S. is the most economically unequal country in the world, or even if it's in the worst 10%. But I would be interested if there is a study that determined this and by what metrics. 

 

The most popular metric is the Gini Coefficient. Total economic equality is 0 and the worst inequality is 1. The USA scores .47. You are right, it is not the absolute worst. There are several African countries worse off. But that’s not a great benchmark.

https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/

Edited September 11, 2019 by Irishy

[SassyPants]

I live in the US and am currently involved in a 3 year generosity project at my UU Fellowship. The #1 thing I learned during this process is that in order to give freely, one has to learn to be a very gracious and accepting receiver. I have found that many in my community, myself included, are not fully comfortable with being gifted or with the idea that at some point in life, everyone will have a need, be it physical, psychological or financial. I think American values very much perpetuate this attitude. Americans are hammered with self reliance, boat straps...from the get go.

Charitable giving requires both generous givers and grateful receivers. It’s a balance-

[nausicaa]

35 minutes ago, Irishy said:

The most popular metric is the Gini Coefficient. Total economic equality is 0 and the worst inequality is 1. The USA scores .47. You are right, it is not the absolute worst. There are several African countries worse off. But that’s not a great benchmark.

At least the numbers I'm pulling up, the U.S. is 59 out of 158 (#1 being the most unequal, #158 the most equal).

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/rankings

I'm probably getting us off topic here, but is anyone else surprised Ukraine is ranked as the most equal? Iceland and Slovenia are expected, but is there a social welfare system I am unaware of in Ukraine? 

[Fundie Bunny]

13 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

At least the numbers I'm pulling up, the U.S. is 59 out of 158 (#1 being the most unequal, #158 the most equal).

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/rankings

I'm probably getting us off topic here, but is anyone else surprised Ukraine is ranked as the most equal? Iceland and Slovenia are expected, but is there a social welfare system I am unaware of in Ukraine? 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

Here the US is ranked 39, outranking absolutley no other developed country

[Dandruff]

How much should people who have chosen to be fiscally responsible be expected to subsidize those who choose to not work and have as many children as possible?  I'm talking about government aid paid by people's taxes for folks who are actively producing more takers while not supporting them.  I'm not talking about providing aid to people affected by illness, disaster, abuse, or other actual disablility/crisis because I'm fine with that.  If a family was supporting ten kids and then is struck by some nightmare, I'd say help them.

Grifting from idiots is one thing.  If people want to directly hand over their hard-earned income, or whatever, to some begging fundie family with double-digit numbers of kids it's essentially their problem (at that point).  If a fundie family then doesn't have much "reportable" income, and goes and gets government aid, it becomes taxpayers involuntarily supporting the fundies' choices.  Of course no one wants the kids to suffer, but it becomes a Catch-22 of people having non-stop kids while expecting and getting the system to help support them.  And the kids then learn how to do it.  I don't know what the answer is, though.

I give to some charities and I don't worry about who they're helping.  My choices of charities provide enough of a filter for my comfort.  On rare occasions I offer small amounts of cash to individuals who look like they need help; e.g., an elderly person searching through a trash can for food.  OTOH, I'm beyond sick of being hit up for money by what appear to be able-bodied men on the street.  I'm older and relatively small and they seem to go for me before asking for money from people their own size.  They may think I can be easily intimidated, and they'd be wrong, but I don't like having to concern myself about a potential confrontation.  Screw that.

I suppose I may get some downvotes for this but not everyone needs to love me...or even like me (not that I don't appreciate being loved and liked).

[Bad Wolf]

One problem is that as people start to work and get out of poverty, they lose some important benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps. 

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, Bad Wolf said:

One problem is that as people start to work and get out of poverty, they lose some important benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps. 

Right...people are essentially penalized for doing the right thing!

1 hour ago, Dandruff said:

How much should people who have chosen to be fiscally responsible be expected to subsidize those who choose to not work and have as many children as possible?  I'm talking about government aid paid by people's taxes for folks who are actively producing more takers while not supporting them.  I'm not talking about providing aid to people affected by illness, disaster, abuse, or other actual disablility/crisis because I'm fine with that.  If a family was supporting ten kids and then is struck by some nightmare, I'd say help them.

Grifting from idiots is one thing.  If people want to directly hand over their hard-earned income, or whatever, to some begging fundie family with double-digit numbers of kids it's essentially their problem (at that point).  If a fundie family then doesn't have much "reportable" income, and goes and gets government aid, it becomes taxpayers involuntarily supporting the fundies' choices.  Of course no one wants the kids to suffer, but it becomes a Catch-22 of people having non-stop kids while expecting and getting the system to help support them.  And the kids then learn how to do it.  I don't know what the answer is, though.

I give to some charities and I don't worry about who they're helping.  My choices of charities provide enough of a filter for my comfort.  On rare occasions I offer small amounts of cash to individuals who look like they need help; e.g., an elderly person searching through a trash can for food.  OTOH, I'm beyond sick of being hit up for money by what appear to be able-bodied men on the street.  I'm older and relatively small and they seem to go for me before asking for money from people their own size.  They may think I can be easily intimidated, and they'd be wrong, but I don't like having to concern myself about a potential confrontation.  Screw that.

I suppose I may get some downvotes for this but not everyone needs to love me...or even like me (not that I don't appreciate being loved and liked).

I am all for working hard and for a long time, and responsible breeding.  As higher income workers, we have paid through the nose while the wealthy and famous seem to have so many $$$$ advantages that workers do not enjoy. People at the bottom have little to offer up and often suffer from other inequities like poor performing schools and lack of the basics. It seems in our current systems there will always be a % of those folks, but wealthy and corporate welfare bothers me far more. Why should wealth be handled any different than income? If you hold the vast majority of the wealth and resources, you can’t expect those with less to pay your share too. It just doesn’t work in a consumer based economy. The wealthy can only buy so many pizzas and cars. If no one else has money, the entire system folds.

[princessmahina]

It annoys me that there are people out there who are totally irresponsible, refuse to work, and rely on government aid and charitable giving for an income (Cough rodrigues family cough). 

 

But I can’t say that I’ve ever begrudged help to the children. They’re innocent in their parents mistakes and/or laziness and I’m 100% fine with my tax dollars helping them out. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

3 hours ago, nausicaa said:

I'm probably getting us off topic here, but is anyone else surprised Ukraine is ranked as the most equal? Iceland and Slovenia are expected, but is there a social welfare system I am unaware of in Ukraine? 

Why did you expect Slovenia and not Ukraine? Especially considering that in that list 6 out of the first 7 countries are from the former Communist block. 

Anyway I am not surprised, the Gini index must be interpreted, it's a rough indicator borne out of an algorithm that doesn't take into account many variables. It takes into consideration only the expendable household income and compares the difference between how many people have how much expendable income in a country. Welfare isn't necessarily taken into account. IE a country where most people are more or less equally poor (by our developed countries standards) and there isn't a small part of the population that can spend a disproportionate amount of money compared to the rest of the country will fare better on the Gini index than a country where there are many poor people, but also many more people earn a decent living wage and a very very small minority possesses fortunes that amount to many billions.

The index isn't ideal to make comparisons between different countries without taking into account other variables. It only tells you how much difference there is in a specific country between the income that the poorest families can spend and what can be spent by the richest families. It is a very useful data that must be read together with other economic indicators. The fact that my country scores similarly to Vietnam isn't particularly meaningful, it's more meaningful that we score so much worse than Germany, since our social structure, welfare laws and economic indicators can more fairly be compared to those of Germany than to Vietnam. 

Similarly, what is significant about the United States isn't that it scores at the same level as Cameroon, but that it scores so much worse that the European Union, that's not a country, but an economic area that can be better compared for social structures and economic development to the US.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

3 hours ago, Dandruff said:

How much should people who have chosen to be fiscally responsible be expected to subsidize those who choose to not work and have as many children as possible?  I'm talking about government aid paid by people's taxes for folks who are actively producing more takers while not supporting them.  I'm not talking about providing aid to people affected by illness, disaster, abuse, or other actual disablility/crisis because I'm fine with that.  If a family was supporting ten kids and then is struck by some nightmare, I'd say help them.

Grifting from idiots is one thing.  If people want to directly hand over their hard-earned income, or whatever, to some begging fundie family with double-digit numbers of kids it's essentially their problem (at that point).  If a fundie family then doesn't have much "reportable" income, and goes and gets government aid, it becomes taxpayers involuntarily supporting the fundies' choices.  Of course no one wants the kids to suffer, but it becomes a Catch-22 of people having non-stop kids while expecting and getting the system to help support them.  And the kids then learn how to do it.  I don't know what the answer is, though.

I give to some charities and I don't worry about who they're helping.  My choices of charities provide enough of a filter for my comfort.  On rare occasions I offer small amounts of cash to individuals who look like they need help; e.g., an elderly person searching through a trash can for food.  OTOH, I'm beyond sick of being hit up for money by what appear to be able-bodied men on the street.  I'm older and relatively small and they seem to go for me before asking for money from people their own size.  They may think I can be easily intimidated, and they'd be wrong, but I don't like having to concern myself about a potential confrontation.  Screw that.

I suppose I may get some downvotes for this but not everyone needs to love me...or even like me (not that I don't appreciate being loved and liked).

You know what, I agree that it would not be fair for the US to subsidize the Rodriguii lifestyle. But I think that if the Rodriguii were Italian then Italy should help them. Simply because in my country schooling is mandatory and good healthcare is affordable. The state would make an investment in those children that they would pay back one day becoming skilled adults that can pay back into society. In the US they don't stand a chance at becoming adults useful for society.

ETA that small problem about the Rodriguii kids having a right to a better chance in life remains, but I guess that freedom is better /sarcasm

Edited September 12, 2019 by laPapessaGiovanna

[Dandruff]

4 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

You know what, I agree that it would not be fair for the US to subsidize the Rodriguii lifestyle. But I think that if the Rodriguii were Italian then Italy should help them. Simply because in my country schooling is mandatory and good healthcare is affordable. The state would make an investment in those children that they would pay back one day becoming skilled adults that can pay back into society. In the US they don't stand a chance at becoming adults useful for society.

Clearly it's not the kids who are the problem, it's the system/parents.  There should be better ways to not enable the Rod lifestyle while also protecting the kids.  I wish that the standard for outside intervention could be high enough - with sufficient staffing - to encourage more parents to do right by their kids or potentially lose custody.  I suspect that Jill and David would reconsider their "calling", and its effects on their twelve "blessings" (excepting non-dead Tim), if this was the case.

[Smash!]

How much should people who have chosen to be fiscally responsible be expected to subsidize those who choose to not work and have as many children as possible?  I'm talking about government aid paid by people's taxes for folks who are actively producing more takers while not supporting them. 

A coworker of mine has 7 children and he told me his wife wants more. He suffered from burnout because of it (if I understood him correctly) and is only able to work half time. Plus, I don't know how he could afford such a big family on only one income especially in our field, which is decent paid, but not highly. I could be wrong and they made ends meet in the past but this is not the point. Obviously they have more children than at least he can handle (I don't know about his wife only that she doesn't work) and that makes me angry.
But the way I see it, every system has people who abuse it and there's not much to do. Exact this abuse-argument was used a few years ago to drastically cut social welfare here. They didn't even take into account the exorbitant rise of cost of living here, namely health insurance, rent and public transportation. And the cut went through because the people believed those right wing parties [emoji37] While on paper our social net is very good, in reality it's a real struggle to live on it because the money was cut while the daily cost have risen.

[Irishy]

9 hours ago, Dandruff said:

How much should people who have chosen to be fiscally responsible be expected to subsidize those who choose to not work and have as many children as possible?  I'm talking about government aid paid by people's taxes for folks who are actively producing more takers while not supporting them.  I'm not talking about providing aid to people affected by illness, disaster, abuse, or other actual disablility/crisis because I'm fine with that.  If a family was supporting ten kids and then is struck by some nightmare, I'd say help them.

Grifting from idiots is one thing.  If people want to directly hand over their hard-earned income, or whatever, to some begging fundie family with double-digit numbers of kids it's essentially their problem (at that point).  If a fundie family then doesn't have much "reportable" income, and goes and gets government aid, it becomes taxpayers involuntarily supporting the fundies' choices.  Of course no one wants the kids to suffer, but it becomes a Catch-22 of people having non-stop kids while expecting and getting the system to help support them.  And the kids then learn how to do it.  I don't know what the answer is, though.

I give to some charities and I don't worry about who they're helping.  My choices of charities provide enough of a filter for my comfort.  On rare occasions I offer small amounts of cash to individuals who look like they need help; e.g., an elderly person searching through a trash can for food.  OTOH, I'm beyond sick of being hit up for money by what appear to be able-bodied men on the street.  I'm older and relatively small and they seem to go for me before asking for money from people their own size.  They may think I can be easily intimidated, and they'd be wrong, but I don't like having to concern myself about a potential confrontation.  Screw that.

I suppose I may get some downvotes for this but not everyone needs to love me...or even like me (not that I don't appreciate being loved and liked).

The biggest thing that jumps out to me in your post is that you assume that poverty, addiction etc is a choice. Children are not born with equality of opportunity. A child born to educated parents has significantly higher chances of attaining a college education. A child born to a single parent, or minority parent(s), addicted parent etc etc etc does not have the same equality of opportunity as the child of white middle class educated healthy parents. 

For example, here in Ireland, approximately 50% of college students qualify for a financial assistance grant. But when you look at students studying medicine (the college course that requires the absolute highest grades) that number drops to about 15%. Does that mean poor people are more stupid and less likely to make it into medicine? No. It means that those students that do make it, are more likely to have had the advantage of private schools, tutoring, interested and involved parents, and a drive to succeed created by example set and the higher expectations of parents. 

With the increasing restrictions on abortion in the US, the absence of free contraception and lack of sex education, having more children than you can support is often not a choice. 

Whilst I understand your irritation with large grifting fundy families, this kind of cheating occurs in every society. People in Ireland often express concerns over generational unemployment and people that work the system to their advantage. Unfortunately that is just the way it is with a safety net. You cannot catch the most vulnerable people in society without catching a few bad apples while you’re at it. 

[lumpentheologie]

15 hours ago, nausicaa said:

Some who espouse the belief of personal freedom aren't actually looking for "success" or "failure" as a lot of Republicans and Democrats define it. They aren't look for efficacy, but rather freedom. Economic equality isn't the goal of governments in their minds. 

The problem with this is that it only embraces a very narrow definition of freedom.  It's essentially the freedom to dispose of your property as you see fit, and to a lesser extent to do what you want with your body. That's far from the freedom to self-determination, and it actually undercuts most people's ability to self-determine.  It's not, for example, the freedom to get an education or to start a family without having to worry about being driven into poverty at any moment. It's not the freedom that you get from a healthy body that has benefited from access to healthcare and from laws limiting the damage that can be done to it from work or from pollution.  It's not the freedom to have access to birth control regardless of whether your employer approves of it. 

It also means that those who have more wealth will have more freedom, and those who have less will have less freedom.  And most of what determines whether you have more or less money, and therefore freedom, will be out of your control. You mentioned equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity will never exist, or even come close to existing, under such a narrow definition of freedom.  I don't think even socialists actually want equality of outcome, either, though. What we want is equality of opportunity and a minimum outcome floor, where people have right to a life that meets the standards of basic human dignity: not being homeless, not dying or becoming disabled from lack of medical care, not being ignorant of basic knowledge and skills, and not being hungry or malnourished. 

15 hours ago, nausicaa said:

I think that's a fair point and struggle with it myself. I think the argument a lot of fiscal conservatives would make is that the government only exists to protect existing rights and then let the chips fall where they may, versus guaranteeing equality. 

This argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny if you ask where those "existing rights" come from, though.  If you accept that the only meaningful rights are legal rights, then there are no rights outside of government. If you want to find another source for rights, you could claim certain ones (but not others) are given to people by God, but in that case you're essentially legislating your religion on others who don't believe it. This is the tack modern American conservatism has mostly taken. The only other option is to try to claim some "natural rights" but this means you have to try to theorize a "state of nature" that has never existed historically and ends up being so informed by individual and cultural bias that you may as well throw out the idea of nature and just admit we should have a government that gives us what we think is best.

The idea of a state of nature was respectable when the US was founded though, and the founding fathers pretty much wrote the constitution with John Locke in one hand and Livy in the other. The US has a lot to be proud of for basically starting modern democracy, but one downside of the stability it has enjoyed over the last 250-ish years compared with European countries is that America is struggling to adapt the original version to the modern world, while most other developed countries are enjoying democracy 4.0.  You see this in Americans having the right to own all kinds of guns that would still be pretty much useless against a modern military force, undercutting the founding fathers' intention of militias being a check on potential tyranny. We don't, however, enjoy the right to healthcare, or to leisure time, or to not be discriminated against because of our sexual orientation, rights people in many other countries take for granted. 

 

[nausicaa]

9 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Why did you expect Slovenia and not Ukraine? Especially considering that in that list 6 out of the first 7 countries are from the former Communist block. 

My understanding was that Slovenia was spared a lot of the damage that the rest of Yugoslavia experienced and its economy bounced back quickly. It is also a member of the EU. 

Ukraine on the other hand is not a member of the EU, seems to have suffered a lot more damage from the USSR, and still is experiencing issues with Russia. It also seems to share a lot of cultural similarities to Russia, which is currently basically an oligarchy and has always had a large number of poor people with a small rich elite (I'm neither an economist nor a Slovenian or Ukrainian expert so all of these are just overall impressions). 

[justodd]

I once had a friend who had the great misfortune to be diagnosed with advanced leukemia on her wedding night. She spent the first few months of marriage in the hospital, and there were many points where they didn’t think she was going to make it. This was someone who’d experienced a horrible illness at literally one of the worst possible times in her life, and knew exactly how expensive and stressful it was, so I was shocked when the concept of universal healthcare came up in conversation a few years later and she spat at it like it was a snake ready to bite her.

She was adamant that universal healthcare would result in death for many because they wouldn’t be able to receive care in time, and firmly believed that she wouldn’t be alive if she hadn’t (and these are her exact words) “had the freedom to write a check,” the doctors in the ER would have let her die on the table because other patients with things like broken arms were ahead of her and she wouldn’t have been a priority. I tried explaining that emergency rooms typically prioritize patients with more serious issues over less serious ones, so chances of a broken bone being put ahead of someone practically on death’s door were pretty slim, but she just wouldn’t hear it. Same with my questions about people who couldn’t just whip out a checkbook when faced with the same diagnosis. It really upset me, because my husband at the time and I had a really rocky financial situation, rarely had health insurance, and I come from a family where pretty much everyone gets cancer at one point or another, and she couldn’t see that the “freedom” she was so adamant about protecting was something I’d likely never have.

For years, I said that if/when I finally got a cancer diagnosis, I’d likely take my own life fairly early on, because there was just so much potential for it to completely destroy me financially, even if I managed to survive. I hit my diagnosis just before Christmas, and I’m lucky that I had insurance and only required one surgery to deal with it. Just for the very minor case I had, I would have had to pay close to $50,000 for my treatment if I hadn’t had coverage. That’s more than I make in a year, and I can’t even begin to imagine how long it would take me to come up with that kind of money. I’m not unique in this circumstance, and tons of people have it way worse. Even with insurance, I’m on the verge of declaring bankruptcy because this year’s bills are being added to already existing medical debt from when I didn’t have insurance and I’m feeling pretty hopeless about ever digging out of it. I’m in my forties, with no savings, no cushion, little to no chance of resolving things, and pretty much stuck with no hopes of ever retiring because I have too much debt to ever save enough at this late point in the game.

Where is my “freedom?” 

[Dandruff]

8 hours ago, Irishy said:

The biggest thing that jumps out to me in your post is that you assume that poverty, addiction etc is a choice.

Sometimes people are actually the cause of their own problems...and sometimes they're not.  I specifically referred to people who choose to not work and have as many children as possible in my earlier post.  I wasn't taking on the entire situation of people who might need help.  I believe most people understand the relationship between unprotected sex and pregnancy and can also afford condoms.  Not all, but most.  I also believe there should be more education on the subject.  There's no turning back after an innocent child has been born into a situation of neglect and/or abuse.  Once they are, human decency - even if the parents lack it - requires that the community provide support, and the problem tends to be perpetuated in environments where core beliefs don't prioritize self-sufficiency.  As I also wrote, I don't know what the answer is.  We try to protect lives by requiring that people obtain driver's licenses before driving, or flying, or practicing medicine.  Anyone who's fertile can legally go ahead and have children they don't want and can't or won't properly take care of, over and over again.  How do we minimize that without infringing on what we consider to be basic human rights?  How does society meet the needs of the needy while also not encouraging problematic choices?  Children shouldn't have to suffer and sometimes die because their parents are actively scheming or trusting that someone else will take on responsibility for their well-being instead of them.  Perhaps early monitoring and support to all young families would help, though I'm not sure how well the concept would be tolerated in the US.  I suspect it could be accomplished though, if people and the powers-that-be cared enough, and that it would eventually reduce suffering and economic burden.