Fight for Democracy, Part 8: Help only the Deserving

Policy can be abstract, and while it is best driven by data and analytics, it's often very useful to think about it in terms of real people. But you can get too real - personal stories have a lot of power for persuasion but they can also be easily dismissed as mere anecdote, lacking connection to our own everyday experiences. Somewhere in between impersonal numbers and tales of strangers lies a sweet spot. A useful exercise is to consider one hundred people, a number small enough for us to grasp yet large enough to offer a realistic distribution. What do our decisions mean for the 100.

For instance, let's consider government aid programs. When people talk about cutting programs, their argument almost always is the same: some people who benefit don't deserve it. We all know some people deserve help, but it's hard to view their gain as our own, whereas when someone undeserving gains, whether through fraud or simply exploiting loopholes, it is viewed as our loss, and people hate to lose more than they like to gain. So people are always ready to cut aid programs to prevent getting taken advantage of, and they like to think such cuts will cut off the undeserving without affecting the deserving. That's not how it works. Most government aid programs already have stringent measures to prevent the undeserving from taking advantage of them. Not that they're perfect, but perfection isn't possible. Simply cutting the funding for a program affects everyone, and often reduces the amount of effort put forward to prevent fraud and waste. If you want to help anyone, you have to accept that some help will be siphoned off to those who don't need it. So what are the tradeoffs you're willing to make?

Let's say a hundred people receive food stamps. Food stamps have strict income requirements and stern rules for what they can be used for, but it is possible to get around them. Maybe 10 of those 100 are undeserving (actual estimates are lower, but let's go with a high fraud rate at ten percent). Is it worth reducing the benefits to the 90 who need it in order to root out the dastardly ten? To let 90 people end up hungry because they can't afford enough food? Does it matter that the majority of those 90 deserving recipients are families that include children, the elderly, or disabled persons? Even if it was 50 undeserving out of 100, would you be willing to make 50 people go hungry in order to stop a different 50 from getting a free ride? Or would you stop for a second and consider that only two percent of your tax dollars go to help the poor feed themselves, and be willing to let some people get over on you in order to keep children from malnourishment? What's more important, your pride or a hungry child?

On the other hand, let's look at mortgage interest deductions. It's really just another government aid program, reducing the tax burden of those fortunate enough to be able to afford a house. It also has some waste/fraud, people who cheat the system for their own benefit. But in this case, the 'deserving' people are generally those who earn more than the average American and include the very wealthiest individuals. If 10 people are unfairly taking a tax deduction, are you willing to cut the program and limit the tax deduction from the other 90 mostly well-off people who would still be fine without it? Yet, for some reason, I never hear this topic come up when people discuss government waste or people gaming the system, even though it costs five times more than food stamps and a higher fraud rate. Hmm.

The programs people always talk about cutting are largely the ones aimed at helping those most in need -  food stamps, Medicaid, Disability - when the program offering aid to the well off - tax deductions, business subsidies - often have much higher rates of improper usage. But we don't see those people. We all see the person at the grocery store buying soda with food stamps, the person with handicap plates who gets out and walks into the mall. Of course, we don't know their full story, don't know if they buy soda once a year as a special treat for their honor roll kid, or are in remission the day you spotted them walking pain-free. It's much easier to assume they are undeserving and thus there are too many undeservings out there. We don't see the tax cheat, we don't see the business use a loophole to avoid paying their fair share. We might know it happens in the abstract, but if they don't rub our faces in it we don't get angry about it. We should. We should be mad when people cheat the system. But we shouldn't let our outrage hurt the people who need help even if that means we live with a little outrage once in a while. Out of any hundred people I assume most of them deserve my help. How about you?

Relating this more specifically to government spending/policy: Homelessness. In general, it’s cheaper for the government to provide housing for the homeless than the cost of policing/treating/dealing with the homeless. It would save you all tax money, make your cities safer, and reduce the suffering of your fellow human beings. But it would provide homes for people who didn’t ‘earn’ it, so most people wouldn’t approve. So if it’s not about doing what’s in your best interest, or in the best interest of others, why would anyone object? Something really worth thinking about.
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/its-three-times-cheaper-to-give-housing-to-the-homeless-than-to-keep

Fight for Democracy, Part 7: What does the government do, anyway?

Governments help people. That’s their job. Everyone likes to hate on the government; everyone can find problems with it and point out its excesses and errors. But a nation can’t exist without government. We would have no society, no structure by which to live, no protection from hordes of barbarians from other lands. Government is not just essential to society but it’s really the definition of what civilization is. So the question is: how does the government best help people?

Protecting the nation is very helpful. Everyone agrees on that. But I think most people would agree that it isn’t really necessary to spend ten times as much doing that as any other nation on earth. We really aren’t in that much danger. What danger we do face - nuclear aggression -  isn’t deterred by us having more bombs or more planes or more ships. Terrorism is fought with intelligence and probably more cost-efficiently with diplomacy. We’re doing fine on the protection front.

Law and order is also a great way governments protect people. But this is mostly a local issue, not a federal one. Take time to research who is running for District Attorney, but don’t pretend that your Congressman is going to affect murder or burglary rates in your town.

No, our federal government largely helps people by providing an infrastructure to conduct business and a social safety net that keeps people out of misery and illness. That means an interstate freeway system with bridges that don’t collapse, rail and public transportation that gets people to work, agencies that ensure our food is safe, our water drinkable, and our cars don’t explode. That means Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps - what a lot of people call welfare. These are good things that are worth spending money on because even if they do not help us directly they improve the lives of everyone around us, which allows them to contribute to society - which we benefit from as members.

It’s been shown a lot of people tend to view the government mostly along welfare lines: they like gov’t if they like welfare, hate gov’t if they hate welfare. Fair enough, but the problem is that most people don’t understand how much, to whom, and for what, that welfare really goes. Getting a more accurate picture of welfare will help you get a much better picture of what our government does and hopefully make you consider how we should spend our money (which means deciding who get to spend it).

Our government spends less than 5% of its budget on cash-assistance welfare programs. We spend less about 2% of GDP on welfare programs. We spend twice as much on defense than we do on all types of welfare programs combined.
https://econofact.org/welfare-and-the-federal-budget

Welfare isn’t just for the poor. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/18/who-receives-benefits-from-the-federal-government-in-six-charts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2bfbcca60965)
Lots of it goes to the elderly and disabled (okay, they might also be poor, that they’re not the ‘poor’ most people think of). More of it goes to white people than any other group. Fraud rates are low for most programs (a couple of percent). When people commit fraud, it’s mostly not reporting all their income. Of course, if you’ve ever been paid in cash for a job or not paid taxes on out-of-state purchases, then you’ve committed ‘fraud’ too. The amount of money our government spends on helping able-bodied people who are down on their luck is quite small and actually very effective.  If you hate the government because you think it’s a boondoggle to help out lazy poor folk, it’s like wanting to close down your local hospital because it wastes disposable towels instead of using washable linen: fair complaint if you separate it from any meaningful context, a negligible cost in the real world.

But Welfare isn’t just giving money out. When you avoid paying your fair share of taxes (even if it’s legal), that’s really just you taking advantage of government services (like roads and defense) without having to pay for it. That’s Welfare. A good chunk of that goes to the middle-class, mostly through tax breaks. So if you itemize your deductions, if you’ve put in solar panels, you’re effectively getting government welfare. If you’ve ever ‘fudged’ your taxes, expensed a personal meal as a business deduction, you’ve committed fraud. You might want to think more carefully before you decry ‘welfare cheats’.

The rich also get all kinds of welfare. After all, their money mostly comes from investment, not salary, so even if they pay a higher income tax they pay less through capital gains taxes, through corporate tax breaks, through direct government subsidy of business (like the fossil fuel industry receives: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidie ).

Everyone gets welfare and that’s okay. Demonizing the few who get it directly, especially those who are already disadvantaged in society by the color of their skin or what gender they were born, is not okay. We are  rich country. We are great. We can afford to help people.

Fight for Democracy, Part 6: What is a Democrat?

Since we are in a two-party system (read Part 3) and you have to pick sides, let’s look at what Democrats represent.

While it’s easy to cast aspersions at the other side (whichever side that is), and perhaps more effective to fall back on emotional arguments, I prefer to stick with facts and figures, policy and positions. And I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I think most people who run for office (in either party) truly want to improve things and think they have better ideas. I’m sure most have other motives as well - we all like to make money, gain prestige and privilege, so they do too. It’s too easy to say all politicians suck (except mine). They just represent our country, and a lot of people in our country suck, so it’s only fair. So let’s not focus so much on people and personalities and look at core positions.

I’ll do my best to summarize what I consider important areas, but if you really want to know what Democrats stand for, just ask them. Each candidate will have their own variation of the fundamental agenda, but the Democratic Party itself lists it’s favored policies and positions right here: https://www.democrats.org/party-platform. If people actually read these I think they might be surprised at how much they agree with them - if you poll people on ideas instead of policy, the majority almost always sides with the Democrats.

Let’s start with healthcare. Democrats believe everyone deserves quality healthcare and profits should not come before people. The U.S. is the only rich country in the world that hasn’t found a way to provide reasonable healthcare to almost all its people, largely driven by government-provided care. Instead we have a for-profit insurance system that leaves many uncovered and costs more than any other country’s alternative. Democrats passed the ACA (Affordable Care Act) which actually reduced the uninsured by almost 30 million people and lowered the rate of growth of insurance prices. This included getting rid of pre-existing condition restrictions and lifetime caps on insurance payments. Democrats have offered a number of other alternatives that would provide more coverage for more people and ultimately at a cheaper price. Republicans have tried and will try again to pass laws that allow insurance companies to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions and to limit the amount of money you can receive in your lifetime. All the Republican plans will lead to fewer people covered (which means more deaths every year) and will do nothing to substantially slow the rate of price increases. I’ll discuss healthcare in more detail at a later date, but the differences are clear and fundamental.

Democrats believe the rich should pay more in taxes to pay for government services that affect us all. Republicans have repeatedly decreased taxes for the rich, including their recent corporate tax cut, which has created a large government deficit. Honestly, if we just went back to the tax structure we had in Reagan’s early years we’d have something close to what Democrats are asking for - not exactly rabid socialism.

Democrats believe that multiculturalism is what America was built upon (remember the Melting Pot?) and immigration that is controlled and allows for a path to citizenship will benefit us in the future. Republicans ban Muslims, deport Dreamers, and separate brown-skinned children from their parents. Every economic study shows that immigrants (legal and otherwise) increase our economic productivity. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-borns. Current illegal immigration is at a thirty year low. Immigration is not destroying this country, we don’t need to spend billions of dollars on a wall to stop it (especially because a wall wouldn’t stop it anyway), and we don’t need to demonize people who come to this country for a better life simply because their skin is darker and they don’t speak English.

Along those lines, Democrats believe that structural racism still exists today and needs to be fought and overcome. Our criminal justice system has institutional biases against people of color that need to be changed. This isn’t saying that everyone is a racist, or even that most white people are (though there are plenty: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/10/17670992/study-white-americans-alt-right-racism-white-nationalists). Systemic racism is less about how individuals think of and treat other individuals, but about how implicit biases and past events create a disadvantage for a class of people. Systemic racism comes from the historic racism in our country (hopefully we can all agree that racism and racist systems were prevalent in the founding of our country and long into our life as a nation). Democrats believe that we don’t simply wait for things to get better (equal) for our fellow Americans, but that we need to pass and enforce civil rights laws to ensure equality of opportunity. If you’re not sure what systemic racism is, whether it’s really a problem in this country, then you really owe it to society to do a little research: http://www.jbwtucker.com/ultimate-white-privilege-statistics/

Democrats believe that Climate Change is real and humans play a significant role in causing it. As our planet warms, our environment will change in ways that costs money and lives: sea level rise, fiercer storms, more wildfires. The best way to combat this, and save money and lives, is to reduce our use of fossil fuels and convert to less carbon-intensive energy production. That means fuel-efficient cars, supporting solar and wind instead of the huge government subsidies we give to coal and gas. And while Republicans, if they’re willing to talk about this at all, always decry the costs to business, the truth is a fast and committed shift to renewable energy would actually be better for our economy overall - just not for some of the players who currently dominate the market. Check out this report from CitiGroup, not exactly a bunch of environmental do-gooders: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/31/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-save-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars
https://newclimateeconomy.report/2018/executive-summary/


Democrats believe in finance reform to remove the influence of money from politics. I know, Democrats still take tons of money from corporations. But you can’t change the rules to the game unless you win, and our current game is set up to rely on such money. Maybe the Democrats won’t be better, won’t clean up our system if they are in charge. But right now Republicans are in charge and they are only making things worse - they’re changing the rules to not only allow more money but to be able to hide where that money comes from. The Democrats might not be better, but they can’t be worse. Democrats at least have some fixes in their platform (https://www.democrats.org/party-platform#campaign-finance) and quite a few candidates are refusing corporate sponsorship.

Democrats believe in reducing gun violence through sensible restrictions. Universal background checks, taking away guns from domestic abusers, require secure storage for households with children, limiting large-capacity clips and weapons easily converted to fully automatic firing. They’re not trying to ban all guns. They’re not suggesting anything that doesn’t have a majority of public support (https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/233627/ten-takeaways-americans-views-guns.aspx). None of these measures will qualitatively reduce your ability to hunt or own a gun for self-defense.

Democrats believe in giving women the right to choose. They believe abortion should be legal, though most believe certain reasonable restrictions are fine. Republicans, at the policy level, continually try to impose more and more restrictions with a stated goal of making abortion unavailable to women who want it.

Democrats are liberal, some more than others. That means their policies are driven by helping the less fortunate, supporting the disadvantaged and discriminated against, and welcoming people of different religions, races, sexes, and backgrounds. They are inclusive, and while this might create some tensions and may mean that your particular group doesn’t get all the attention or support you want, it’s a better way than the alternative. Republicans, whatever their words might be, clearly advocate for exclusion - no Muslims, no homosexuals, no Hispanics. Their policies explicitly favor the status quo, which means white, male power. It’s the difference between trying to do what’s right for others versus arguing that pursuing your own self-interest is somehow noble.

Democrats believe in democracy. They believe in one person = one vote. They believe in allowing and encouraging everyone to vote. Republicans have waged a decades-long battle on voting rights. From gerrymandering districts, to voter-ID laws which discriminate against the poor (when there is NO evidence of any significant voter fraud), to such petty practices as trying to close voting locations in black communities or restricting the hours of voting. The polling data and voting record is clear that there are far more Democrat-leaning eligible voters than Republican-leaning ones, so the Republicans only hope, the only way they’ve held on to power, is by rigging a system so a minority can rule. It’s the antithesis of the American Way.

Finally, Democrats want to hold the current administration accountable for its many ethical, moral, and legal failures, all of which require a Congress willing to act as an oversight against corruption. Republicans are turning a blind eye towards a violation of laws and norms upon which our democracy rests. If you have any sense of history, think about how your actions will be remembered, think upon what you will say to your grandchildren about how you lived up to your morals.

Fight for Democracy, Part 5: Advocating for Evil

You’re walking with a large group of people through the woods when the road splits into two choices. The path on the left is overgrown with weeds, the ground is wet, and the final destination is a slimy pond. The path on the right heads through a thicket of poison ivy before starting up a treacherous cliff with loose rocks, the sound of hungry bears and buzz of stinging insects comes from its foreboding shadows, and it ends up in a flooded canyon. Both bad choices, but one worse than the other - more dangerous, higher likelihood of failure and injury, possibly death. The group must decide where to go but there is no leader. What argument do you make?

The natural instinct is to bitch and moan about your lousy choices. Point out the bad about each one but eventually, when it finally comes down to taking a vote, you know you’ll choose the one on the left, but you still won’t like it. The problem comes when you realize some people want to go right. In fact, many argue vehemently to the group that the right path is better, and if you sit by and grouse about the left path you’ll notice a lot of the people start to nod their heads. You see, most people haven’t bothered to check out either path very closely and just want someone else to do the thinking and tell them where to go. Maybe you get a little worried and start to argue for the left path, but they’ll just point out all the bad things you said about the left path a moment ago. You’ve undercut yourself, and while a clear and rational approach would judge each path on its own merits, the truth is the mob mentality is often swayed more by passionate argument than facts and logic. Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so much time complaining about what you know is the better of the two choices, even if it’s far from perfect. Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so much time wishing for a third choice, longing for a straight path on solid ground directly cutting through a beautiful valley. Maybe your time should have been spent comparing and contrasting the two choices that exist and arguing strongly for what you know will be best in the end.

When the final vote is taken and the group heads off, you will know that you made the right choice regardless of what everyone else does. But that doesn’t matter to the group, especially the weakest of its members. And those are the people who you really have a responsibility to help. Those who were never taught wilderness survival, those too poor or disadvantaged to even see the wilderness. The young and the old who depend upon the group for their survival. Maybe you’d be fine with letting some people meet a gruesome fate as just reward for their folly and arrogance, but would you do so at the cost of innocent lives?

In a lesser of two evils scenario it is an oft-mentioned truism that both choices are evil. Yet what really matters in any choice are not the similarities but the differences: one evil is lesser. So you should clearly choose the path on the left, the lesser of the two evils. We all know this even if we try to come up with some other third option, some excuse to avoid making the difficult decision. But if it’s really just the two choices, the choice is simple. What’s difficult is getting everyone to make it. And that’s where the decision-making process of a group is much different than the thought process of an individual. It’s not just the decision you make, but how you arrive at it, the way you discuss it with others, the words you choose and the attitude you bring - it all helps drive the decisions of others, especially those who may not be able to work their way through to the clear choice on their own. If you recognize the importance of choosing the lesser evil, you need to recognize the necessity of fighting for something you do not like.

Fight for Democracy, Part 4: Checks and Balances

Since we do live in a two-party nation, it’s important to understand how that relates to the actual functioning of our government. Perhaps the most important, but least focused on aspect, is the way it allows control of Congress.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate rely on committees to do much of the heavy lifting of governance: they introduce bills, review and investigate them (and other matters), and refer them to the rest of the chamber for actual votes. The Senate also approves judicial and executive appointments which gives them a large amount of control over the other two branches of government, and again, a lot of the review and the confirmation hearings for these judges are in committee. And the leadership of the committees, decided by majority control, determines what even gets discussed in the first place. That means whichever party is in control gets to determine the agenda, not just the outcome of that agenda.

So having even a slight majority gives one party a significant power advantage over the other. While this does make a difference in what laws actually get passed, perhaps it’s biggest impact is on the idea of checks and balances upon which our three-branch system is designed. If one party controls all three branches there is fundamentally no mechanism to reign in corruption and abuse in the government. [note: this idea should terrify those people who think government is a bad thing, but right now those are the people supporting this situation.] Congressional committees are the ones who investigate fraud, who investigate potential crimes and cover-ups, who review government policies for legality and effect, who censure violators of ethics rules, who can subpoena information and release it to the public. The only hope to check a corrupt and immoral Executive Branch is a Legislative Branch who views it as a competitor. Sure, partisanship might lead to a waste of time, money, and attention like the Benghazi hearings, but that’s a better alternative than the ignoring of real matters of life and death - like the 3000 Puerto Ricans who died because of the Administration’s inept response to Hurricane Maria, or the 500 children still separated from their parents due to immoral border policies.

If you see the rampant corruption in the current Administration and think the Democrats should do something about it, you need to realize only the party in the majority has any tools to do anything of substance. The Democrats need a majority. That’s why it isn’t necessary for all those Democrats to be perfect, why we don’t need a universally progressive slate, or everyone advocating for the exact same policies and ideas. Even ‘bad, neo-liberal, DINO’ Democrats count towards that majority and will give the party power. No one seat, no one race, is separate in its consequences from the system as a whole, so it’s important to vote for Democrats at every level in order to return our government to an approximation of what it was meant to be: a system that represents everyone and limits the power of those in charge in order to protect everyone.