BLEEP My Dad Says

There is a new television show starring William Shatner titled "$#@! My Dad Says." As you might expect, it is a show about the tensions and situations between a Dad (Shatner) and his sons. I watched one episode.  It was not nearly as clever as the last Shatner vehicle, "Boston Legal".

It brings back memories of my upbringing. My father is an impeccably honest and decent man. I've had my rocky times with him; he is like Shatner, he says things which are harsh and critical, but meant to teach,  said always in love. He is very bright, and has made a number of observations which I carry to this day that I've heard no where else. One he made a long time ago, I still use as an ethical yardstick.:

The difference between a true conservative and others is that when asked for food (or money for food) by a starving man, if the conservative feels the man could otherwise work, they will say "no."


His point was not that conservatives are uncharitable, but that a fundamental motivation is to keep what they have for themselves, and that they will look first for reasons to claim someone is "undeserving" rather than seek first to act in kindness. I understand that many may disagree with this sentiment.  I will tell you that I have seen this attitude and applied this test throughout my life and it has rarely been in error. To wit, the case of Mr. Cranick in Tennessee. The people of his county have effectively said, "You made your bed, sleep in it. You should not expect us to pay for your poor decision."

Fundamentally, all of us accept decisions have consequences.   Sometimes it is best to allow our children to fail so they learn the consequences of certain actions.  Mr. Cranick clearly isn't a child; but the fundamental point is still the same, some situations, such as giving him a ticket for speeding, or even sending him to prison for breaking the law, we fully accept are the right and proper consequences of poor decisions. Yet we do not simply allow a woman who stupidly goes out on a jet-ski without a life-preserver,  not knowing how to swim, to drown if she falls in the water. She made a poor, even painfully stupid decision, yet still we would expect the life-guard or the Coast Guard to try to save her, just as we would expect them to try to save us.

When money is involved, we now as a nation (or at least a very significant element in this nation) feels that fundamental services should be pay-as-you-go, and that if you fail to pay, well, "them's the breaks, sucks to be you." Some people obviously can't pay, but a more salient question is what do we do with those who could have, but due to their own lack of judgment, failed to? Do we let them drown because they failed to put on a life preserver? Is money so much more valuable to us than life, or someones entire set of possessions, that we need to allow them to die, or to lose everything, to "teach" everyone else the right lesson? Is this the correct kind of "forum" for teaching that lesson?

One of the more foolish things this approach brings about is that it saves no money. Like most things, prevention is always much less expensive than the cure. The county in which Mr. Cranick lives now will undoubtedly have to shell out far more than $75 in services to help support his family and so the policy of this community is fundamentally unsound because the residents of the town ultimately will pay more for Mr. Cranick's loss than they would have paid if they had prevented it. That applies to the ethical/emotional cost as well, as they will doubtless feel diminished, and should.

This inability to pay is emblematic of a larger issue facing us. As wages in the US have stagnated over the past 30 years, we have bought into an idea that by cutting taxes and services ,and believing that government is always wrong, we have decided to underfund our basic services and the preservation of our basic infrastructure. There recently was an article in the New York Times detailing the enormous negative impacts of a crumbling infrastructure in New Jersey. The Times also published a related article last year. The attitude that we cannot afford to ask those with the wealth to pay for the services, from which they derive their wealth, not only ignores the fundamental fairness question, but like Mr. Cranick, also ignores the undocumented and far larger costs of inaction.

Our fathers, and their fathers before them, funded roads, built schools, and paid taxes sufficient to hand our generation a country with some of the best infrastructure in the world.  For 30 years we've lived off the fat of their infrastructure labors, rather than our own. Partly due to fear, we've acquiesced when the messengers of the rich, the "free-market" propagandists told us we could no longer afford to build bridges, no longer afford to pay for schools because if we didn't stop taxing the rich at 70% (income tax) jobs would flee, but if we did lower taxes, our jobs would be safe(r) or saved. Of course, when we cut taxes (primarily on the rich) believing both of these silly claims and also buying into the idea that some of us don't deserve help - our jobs left anyway. What's more, and perhaps worse, is that our country was the most prosperous it has ever been when the tax rate was at 70% (the period from 1950-1980) at least if we look at average hourly wage and general standard of living indices. We had more free time in the 60s, we had affordable health care, we had roads that worked, we had the ability to fund our projects and schools, and by and large our spouses could even afford to stay home and take care of the kids. There are many economic factors which played into that affluence of the 60s, but one of those which never really mattered was the tax rate on the richest of us quite simply because when they could not "keep" more of the profits for themselves, most business owners reinvested those profits in expansion or, heaven forbid, in wages and benefits for their employees. It is for this reason that in fact cutting the marginal rate in half (as we did in 1981) for the richest of us may well have had exactly the opposite effect we desired, it seems to have offered the rich enormous incentive to ship jobs offshore to maximize personal wealth, rather than getting them to invest onshore. The reality that this has occured (that jobs fled and the rich got richer) is beyond dispute. We are running, not walking, down the path to remake our country in the image of Mexico, rather than, as we have often heard, Mexico is attempting to remake itself in our image. The wealthiest of us, not due to being demons or evil, just due to a basic human instinct, self-preservation manifested as greed, have effectively killed the great American Consumer Economy which has/had been the engine of the world's economy for the past 50 plus years.

Yet, that still is only looking at this issue from the practical sense, from the sense of money in my pocket, "what about my job" sense. Abraham Maslowe talks about hygiene factors in his "Hierarchy of Needs" - these needs are motivating points which are absolutely necessary to meet before higher-level motivations will be addressed. Self-preservation (jobs, income) certainly is one of those baseline motivations. People worry about how they'll feed their children and pay for their home. People are deeply worried about their jobs certainly, and they should be because it is clear virtually no US company will pause even for a second to abolish their job and move it to China or India if the profit margin is good enough, but the cure to this isn't to simply give the rich more money, nor is it to create a vicious cycle of chasing our economic fortunes down the rat-hole by trying to compete in the labor market with 2.3 Billion people who work for next to nothing. As well, the solution also is not for states (like Minnesota) which have educated, skilled labor pools and functioning infrastructure (ok, except for that pesky bridge which fell down) to attempt to cut our own taxes to the bone to compete with states like South Dakota. A state which due to much lower population density has a far lower need for infrastructural support. Such actions will either fail to protect our jobs or will cause us our country to become something very different and very much worse a place than our fathers gave to us.
The more basic issue of fairness, though, is still the one that haunts. When I look at the world, I think back to the lessons my father taught me. I consider whether I would stand by while another person died or their livelihood burned to the ground, or their dog died in a fire, simply because he or she hadn't paid the butcher's bill. I hope and pray to God that I am better than that. I hope that I am wiser than to use punitive lessons with enormously harmful costs to "teach" others to pay up, and I hope I'm wise enough to see the hypocrisy in my doing so, for in the end didn't I refuse to pay up? Lastly, when I think of my FATHER, I think also of another lesson He taught me - namely:
Matthew - 25:36-44 (NIV)

34“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.

There is another lesson of my Father - (also from Matthew - Chapter 23) - which I hope I also have heard...

1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. "

These are the words of both my father and my Father, and for them I am eternally grateful. I will leave you with one other thought, how much difference is there between standing around watching a man's pets die, and standing around watching Jews be herded into ghettos or cattle cars. When we become so callous to the suffering of those around us that we fail to act we must acknowledge that we have cheapened ourselves, perhaps even to the point of becoming something we would never have thought we could become. Conversely, when we act while others stand by idely, we often become something we are happy to recall and the person we, and our fathers, dreamt of us becoming when they spoke to us in our youth. God grant me the wisdom to say things of a similar nature to my son also.

Consider this last point when you wonder if it is right to shield those who benefit most from lowring taxes from paying those taxes, and thus reduce their sharing in our mutual burden. I personally think you are being fooled for their benefit alone, but more importantly, if you do not pick up the load, who will?