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Falling Through The Holes In The Government “Safety Net”

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

In the past couple of weeks, the readers of Louisville’s C-J have been seeing one front page story after another about the suffering of people who are losing the government programs on which they have been depending for help.  From a single mother who will not be able to get free child care for her new baby, to mentally ill individuals who are losing the ability to obtain free care, to elderly patients who will no longer be able to receive nursing home care, the record is full of people who are “falling through the holes in the government safety net.”  Some of the stories of human suffering are truly heart rending.  Of course, the C-J’s agenda in putting all these articles front and center is to promote the idea of raising taxes, but I would like to propose another way of looking at the situation.

When I was a child, my father worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry.  Since that industry is heavily dependent upon government contracts, it is a very volatile industry.  Just a slight change in the priorities of the government would result in a huge shift in aerospace industry employment.  Sometimes there was a great demand for aerospace engineers, and sometimes large numbers of highly talented engineers were released from their projects and found themselves pounding the pavement looking for work.  When my father started working in the aerospace industry, he was working on a highly confidential government project.  After many years and no doubt billions of tax dollars spent, the project was simply shut down, and the people who had spent years developing specialized skills and knowledge were scattered all over the world.  We later moved to Texas to support the Apollo project, and I again watched the boom and bust cycle continue for people working in aerospace. 

Fortunately, my father was able to continue working all the time, but he did eventually leave the aerospace field and applied his skills in an area that was somewhat less volatile.  As I read these stories of the many people who are dependent on government programs, I am reminded of our experience of my father’s job and the jobs of many others being dependent on changing political priorities and the swing of one vote.  While the aerospace engineers have skills that they can offer to various industries, so they were not completely dependent on the government, many of the people highlighted in the C-J’s stories are much more dependent.  It seems to me that it is very uncharitable to put such helpless people in the position of being so dependent on volatile political decisions and the blowing of political breezes.  With a change in political priorities and a change in one vote, people who are truly in need can suddenly find themselves on the street and without help, as the C-J stories show.  Anyone who truly feels compassion for these people surely should wish something better for them.  And there is something much better, which, unfortunately, has largely been stamped out of existence by these heartless government programs. 

Before the government decided to be the “safety net” for people in need, telling us that the measure of our charity was the measure of our willingness to be taxed and to cede control to government, there were voluntary programs that helped people in need.  For example, there were mutual aid societies, which people joined and supported, with the understanding that, if they fell on hard times, the mutual aid society would help them.  Churches and other charities also supported a wide variety of programs, from charity hospitals to schools.  In addition, family members helped each other, and neighbors helped each other.  We still have the vestiges of such enterprises, but they have lost much ground to tax-supported government programs, which give lots of money and power to bureaucrats, but which are not good for the people who are truly dependent and in need.

Unlike the government programs, the voluntarily-run programs are not so volatile.  They have a long-term commitment to serving people, and their funding is not subject to the shifts of political breezes.  Also, these enterprises are able to treat each individual as an individual and thus are much less subject to “abuse of the system” than are government programs.  So, for example, if the voluntary enterprise knows that an elderly person has children who can afford to help with her care, it will push for the family to pitch in rather than having to toss a truly needy person on the street.  In addition, while government programs have perverse incentives that actually encourage more dependence, voluntary programs would really have the best interests of the person at heart.  For example, voluntary enterprises would not punish people for working to improve their own situation as do government enterprises; on the contrary, voluntary enterprises would encourage people to help themselves and others and to become less dependent. 

If the resources that are now drained through taxation for government programs were freed up to be used in voluntary programs, the people who are truly in need would be much better off, because, instead of depending upon a government “safety net” that was unconstant and uncaring and that shifted with the weather and the tides, they could be helped in a voluntary arrangement, in which there would be long-term support, individual treatment, and a true interest in their betterment.

So, I would like to suggest that the C-J stories about people falling through the holes in the government safety net make a very strong case for removing these programs from government control and funding.  Instead of raising taxes and further tying our hands and preventing us from being able to use our resources to help people in need, we ought to be moving in the opposite direction.  People who are truly in need certainly deserve better than a government safety net that is full of holes.  They deserve true caring and compassion, which can only happen in a voluntary, privately-funded arrangement.

As Thomas Sowell has said:  Mystical references to "society" and its programs to "help" may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
-- Thomas Sowell

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