Assuming we can get past the cognitive dissonance of how the same government that’s so massively incompetent, if not venal, in the performance of functions you don’t like will miraculously perform sufficiently, if not spectacularly, when it comes to the execution of Biden’s “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill, the contents of which remain largely a mystery because, as Bernie Sanders contends, the media has done a crappy job of selling to the public as the bros expected it to do, the next question is “why?”
Some proponents of President Biden’s plans are inclined to grant Mr. Manchin’s point and then argue for programs like the child benefit on the grounds that it is a worthy kind of charity.
The better argument is that Mr. Manchin is wrong. Paying taxes is not a form of noblesse oblige, and the social safety net is not a philanthropic project. This nation’s prosperity is a collective achievement, and Americans are entitled to share in that prosperity. Americans also need government support to contribute to that prosperity. A basic goal of providing more help to parents with dependent children is to allow those parents to engage in paid work and to allow their children to become flourishing members of society.
This raises an interesting point, and one that has greater merit than the New York Times editorial articulates. A nation functions on the backs of those who do the most menial of jobs as well as the most illustrious. The garbage needs to be picked up, even though we don’t build statues to celebrate sanitation workers. Shelves need to be filled so we can buy the common necessities of life, even though we don’t know the names of the shelf stockers. Take any “lowly” job and consider how well society would function without them.
We need them. We can’t do it without them. And they are not well-paid for their efforts, as important as they may be to society’s well-being, for the pedestrian reason that they require no special education or skills, and can theoretically be performed by pretty much anyone willing to put in the effort to do so.
The Times’ claim that “this nation’s prosperity is a collective achievement” is not as shallow and platitudinous as they make it appear. But does that answer the question of whether this is some debt owed them?
It is hard to persuade an aging nation to pay for child care. Only about a third of American households include dependent children. While older Americans may have raised children, they may also recall a time when raising children was considerably less costly.
This isn’t a fair representation of the issue, although it feeds into the younger generation’s assumption that the olds are just selfish and greedy, caring only for themselves and unwilling to throw a bone to the young and struggling. Then there’s the “considerably less costly,” for which no cite is provided and reflects a childish grasp of the relative costs.
The “social safety net,” which was a liberal (not progressive) ideal so that nobody should starve or die for lack of basic medical care in this nation of prosperity, was directed not toward those who earned or deserved it, but toward those who desperately needed it. So what if they made terrible choices in their life that gave rise to the circumstances? We still don’t let them die. This was not a matter of duty, but of charity, a reflection of our good will toward man rather than their having done something to deserve it. Many did. Some didn’t. It did not matter. They were human beings and we would not let them starve.
Granted, it didn’t work that way much of the time, but we’re not looking at government incompetence at the moment, since we’re now on the fantasy side of how groovy the government can be.
But if we’re being asked to provide novel services without regard to need at other people’s expense, a very different concern is raised. We are no longer talking about the social safety net, but about some amorphous debt owed to people whose contribution to our national prosperity is anything but clear. Some will be hard-working poor who are very much a critical cog in the gears that keep society running, but others are not, some for reasons beyond their control but others because they either made poor choices or decided not to play the game at all. They too have made a choice.
There are plenty of families who raised their children on their own dime, or at their own sufferance, because that was the only available option. And they managed, sacrificing their own wealth or dreams for the sake of their children. For most of us, the sacrifice was more than worth it as our children turned out to be the greatest treasure of our lives.
And many of these same people are now trying their best to earn enough, save enough, to cover their current cost of living, inflation be damned, as well as save for retirement, help out their own kids when needed and perhaps even enjoy a bit of the good life for which they went to work every day, even when they didn’t feel like it or some traumatic event happened a thousand miles away that made them sad. Not everybody is Bezos. A lot of these now-childless couples were sanitation workers or shelf stockers too.
Do they owe a duty to you because they struggled through it, made sacrifices, made the choice to go without a Starbucks mocha frappuncino or an Apple iPhone 37? The willingness to give for the sake of others isn’t necessarily the question. They may very well be willing to pay for the social safety net so that no one dies because of poverty in America. But they don’t do this because you don’t feel like making hard choices for yourself and demand your entitlement to a life without sacrifice. They don’t owe you. And they aren’t the “noblesse.” They’re just decent, hard-working good people. And they’re charitable.
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