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A Weird Sort of Depression (VDH)
Prof. Hansen nails a topic that I've often discussed with my colleagues at the University.
The American poor live better than many, many people on this planet. We have more affluence and use that, in the ways Prof. Hansen describes, to provide our poor, even our illegal immigrant poor, with a live that they simply couldn't have in most of Africa, much of South and Latin America, and big chunks of Asia. Be it medical care, food, clothing or cell phones, our poor do better than the poor of the world, and as Prof. Hansen notes, better than the upper middle class of the 1960s.
It's progress, I suppose, though at some level it is also grating, since as an upper middle income person (for which I make no apologies) I am to a fair extent supporting this. A progressive person would point out that it's the price I pay for my own success.
But I fear that our poor, precisely because they live a life in America that they couldn't live elsewhere, are being robbed. Robbed of their incentive, robbed of any desire to get ahead, robbed in the end of their own dignity.
I take care of the poor in my clinic at the University. Frequently my interview with such a patient is interrupted. By their cell phone. "I'm with the doctor now, honey, hush," they say, as they answer and then look at me with some embarrassment. I shrug. It's just the way things are.
I'm grateful that we don't have starving beggars on our streets (we do have professional beggars in our intersections, and I wish the Chicago cops would do their jobs). I appreciate that only the hard-core are homeless. I pitch in and provide medical care. This is all good.
But I wish we had a better ethic about it. In that I think Prof. Hansen and I would agree. |
Posted by: miscellaneous 2010-08-04 |
