A Matter of Priorities

[paft.livejournal.com]

Sean Hannity: Craaaazy Uncle Joe Biden added to the looooong list of lies, and this was one of the most, well, outrageous things said by anybody in the administration, directed at single moms. Talk about a new low! Listen to this:

“This is about freedom. How many of you are single women, with children, in a dead end job. You’re there because of your health insurance. You would rather have the opportunity to spend the next couple of years with your child, if that was your choice, until they get into primary school. You’re now trapped in that job because if you leave you lose your health insurance. Now, you’d be able to do, make an independent choice.”

You don’t have to work, somebody else will pay for it!

A few weeks ago, I brought up the right wing hysteria over the presumably horrifying prospect of workers no longer being trapped in jobs they want to leave because they can’t afford to give up the heath insurance. Hannity is still going on about it. Here he expounds to two Fox liberals who plainly are having a hard time believing what they’re hearing.



First of all, Hannity’s response relies on the assumption that anyone who leaves a job they dislike because they no longer need it for health insurance must therefore be spending their days eating chocolates and watching soap operas. In fact, what this means is that someone can, if they’ve saved enough money, choose to work part-time, or perhaps move to another job that pays less, but is more in line with what they want to do. And even if a single mother has saved up enough to take a year or two off of paid employment so she can stay home with her young children, that does not mean she isn’t working, and working hard.

But what fascinates me is what this shows about the right wing vision for the United States. People like Hannity hate the idea of raising the minimum wage, or instituting a living wage, and they hate the idea of the government providing some form of aid to fulltime workers who, in the absence of that living wage, end up relying on food banks at the end of the month. They want workers to be desperate, afraid, trapped. Workers in “dead end jobs” must be consigned to poverty, even when they work hard, long hours at those jobs.

In the minds of people like Hannity, the American worker must be preoccupied only with making as much money as humanly possible. Any endeavor outside of this (like raising children) is simply contemptible. Interested in fields that aren’t especially high paying? Teaching? Nursing? Social work? Creative endeavors? Too bad, loser. There's a good chance you're going to have to choose between doing what you love and being able to support a family or paying for medical care or caring for elderly parents. And forget subsidizing any artistic avocation with a part time job, or one that simply offers a modest salary.

If you don’t want to dedicate your life primarily to making money, there’s something wrong with you.

*

Comments

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

... You’re there because of your _rent_. You would rather have the opportunity to spend the next couple of years with your child, if that was your choice, until they get into primary school. You’re now trapped in that job because if you leave you lose your _apartment_. Now, you’d be able to do, make an independent choice.”
You don’t have to work, somebody else will pay for it!

[paft.livejournal.com]

You really don't get nuance, do you?

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can explain?
You have to pay to the rent, and you also have have to pay for the healthcare (via insurance or out of pocket).

Well, if someone has saved enough food money to stay at home for a year, but not enough to pay the rent all this time - how is that different?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll explain.

Before ACA, many people found themselves trapped in jobs they wanted to leave because that job provided their only access to healthcare. The risks of leaving and possibly losing that coverage were simply too high. You could end up finding yourself unable to get badly needed medication or treatment, and in fact, facing bankruptcy. In short, your life could depend on you keeping that job.

That puts an unacceptable burden on the worker, who should at least have some level of freedom to change jobs if he or she wants to.

Funny you should bring up rent. Currently, my husband and I live in an apartment we would be unable to afford without rent control. In fact, without at least some rent control, the chances are everybody but the wealthy would be priced out of the city where I live.

Neither my husband nor I expect to be live rent-free. We pay our rent in full every month. But it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to afford to live somewhere in the environs of the city we both love and have lived in for well over two decades.

Society is a balancing act. We have free speech -- but that does not include the freedom to destroy another person's life by spreading lies about, or the freedom to release private information about a private citizen, or the freedom to incite other people to attack or injure another person. We have the right to buy and sell -- but not to the extent that we can gouge customers on necessities like food, shelter, and medical care. We have the right to defend ourselves -- but not to the extent of shooting dead the teenagers we see crossing our lawn.

If you can't understand that, you can't understand society.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

"In fact, what this means is that someone can, if they’ve saved enough money, choose to work part-time, or perhaps move to another job that pays less, but is more in line with what they want to do."

But then they wouldn't be forced to work in the metaphorical salt mines, which is all that those lazy, mooching non-one-percenters deserve!

(/sarcasm)

I find it ironic (is that the right word?) that many of those decrying this opportunity for some women to break free from the paradigm where two incomes are required for basic survival are the same ones who decry women leaving the home and working in the first place. Make up your minds, conservatives!

[paft.livejournal.com]

It's not about them caring about the well-being of the kids left at home. Never was. It's about controlling workers, and in particular female workers. Women's choice about ANYTHING, whether it's reproduction, sex, or work, is an anathema to them.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Exactly. You see it with the pro-life movement as well. Their words and behavior (and refusal to actually listen to statistics of what approaches actually reduce abortion rates) give the lie to their contentions that their goals are "saving babies," and reveal that their real focus is on punishing women who dare to have sex.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

What I find ironic is liberals suddenly struggling to put a positive spin on high unemployment and stay-at-home moms now that the president has the correct letter after his name.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it bother you that you can't argue a point without engaging in gross misrepresentation?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I'd ask you the same question.

Probably get a similar answer.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Capitalism as an economic system relies on what morality considers vice to function. Logically it follows that its defenses require putting lipstick on a hog and telling people the porker's Helen of Troy. Why this continues to surprise people, I don't know. That being said, someone who treats a Nazi Holocaust Denier as a respectable human being is already morally wrong for merely existing, so.....

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Economics != Morals

You are making the very common mistake of conflating one for the other.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I have never made any such mistakes. Capitalism's apologists, on the other hand, are always keen to note how an ideology reliant on greed and selfishness is more moral than bloody-handed Bolshevism. In reality, that just means that the shit sandwich is said to be better than the douchebag.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I have never made any such mistakes.

Bullshit, your comment is a complete non-sequitur otherwise. Likewise your response.

But by all means continue to explain how an ideology that has repeatedly resulted in misery and murder on a level that would make even a Spanish Inquisitor blush is the morally superior choice.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Not really. By relying on greed and selfishness, China recently saw the largest reduction of extreme poverty in human history. Capitalism can't be justified morally, it's the results that matter and capitalism has created the wealthiest societies in human history. Marxism might be a more moral alternative, it just sucks to live under it.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

We are all "someone else" to someone else.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Meaning?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Exactly what it says.

[paft.livejournal.com]

In other words, nothing.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Other outrageous ideas: Retirement. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

So say we all.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Look, we both know that these are Ponzi schemes, solvent only so long as the population and economy are growing.

That said, you are right after a fashion.

Sooner or later government and society will renege on it's promises, and there will be a crash followed by a boom. A few generations later people will have forgotten the step that got them into this mess and the whole process will begin again.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of an old Wizard of Id cartoon showing two people watching the wizard waving his wand at ocean waves. "You have to hand it to the wizard. He'll force that tide to go down if it takes him twelve hours."

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

"Eventually" always seems far removed until it isn't.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

While they bear similarities with ponzi schemes, by definition they are not so. When you think of social programs in terms like profit, investors, etc instead of what they are by nature, which is usually insurance or a transfer-payment plan, of course you'll jump to the conclusion that something is amiss. Stop treating government like it's a business out to make a profit and you'll start to see that it's a system by the people for the people.

A quote I found on another site:

"There's a lot of confusion about Ponzi schemes and Pyramid schemes in this thread. Ponzi schemes are based on fraudulent claims of investment. The investors don't get there money back because it was stolen and never invested. Pyramid schemes are clearly unworkable and just rely on people believing they will profit by getting in early, and someone else who invests later will get ripped off.

Social Security has been sold by politicians as something it's not. It is just a plan for the government to pay people money. The money is collected from taxes. That's all there is to it. Some people don't like the plan. Some people do. It will definitely fail financially if payouts exceed collections, but the payouts and collections can be modified at any time, so there is no circumstance which would ever force financial failure. On the other hand, politicians don't need to be forced to mess things up, it seems to come naturally to them. It's effecacy as a social program can be debated forever without resolution. "

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

It will definitely fail financially if payouts exceed collections

Payouts only exceed collections so long as the population and economy are growing, IE there need to be more young people paying in than old people paying out. The working population needs to produce enough to support both themselves and the non-working population.