Sometimes I feel like the chronicler of the insane. Or maybe I’m the one who is crazy …
I read things that are so obviously counter to what many of
us believe in, and the values we expect this country to have, and yet this
stuff just blows by the vast majority who either don’t see the idiocy or have
decided that it’s perfectly okay. It’s
downright scary.
The other day, NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed some guy –
“single working dad” – who was up for a raise, but instead asked for a pay cut
so he could keep his childcare benefits.
Now the point they were apparently trying to make was how
unfair the system is that to preserve benefits some people have to keep their
earnings below a “cliff” level. Earn too
much and you no longer qualify for food stamps, housing assistance, or in this
guy’s case $1700 a month to subsidize child care for his three kids. Worse yet, because of budget cuts, the income
qualification cutoff was lowered in his state from $50000 HHI to $41000
HHI. Hence his request for a pay cut, so
he’d keep his benefits.
There are so many things wrong with this story. First, it’s another variation on what I like
to call “children as hostages” stories.
Next, where’s mom? Why is this
guy taking care of three kids on his own?
If you can’t afford to support three kids, why in God’s name did you
have them?
And since when – and in what perverted universe – does it
make more sense to praise this guy as a hero/victim when he’s clearly gaming
the system rather than someone who tries to increase their earnings to be more
self-sufficient?
Hell of a life lesson to be teaching his kids.
But I’m sure there are many who read this stupid story and
thought “how sad for him.” Others
probably thought “hey, maybe I could do that, too.”
Instead of a hero, this guy’s the poster child for a lot of
what’s wrong today.
When government makes it much more financially attractive to
underachieve and avoid success, then something is way, way off kilter in our collective
value system.
Yet you know it’s not unusual anymore. It’s becoming the norm. This chiseling, gaming, and rampant abuse of
originally well-intended programs is epidemic.
Hell, it’s actually encouraged.
The government clearly is trying to make more and more of
the public dependent on its programs. From food stamps, to free meals at public
schools, to subsidized child care, housing, mortgages, student loans, and even
cellphones, it’s fostering a nation of junkies who crave that next hit of government
largesse to get through the day.
And will vote however necessary to keep the fixes coming. That’s the key.
Every “fix” creates more problems as people and institutions
learn how to twist them to their advantage.
The consequences may be unintended, but certainly not
unpredictable.
One reason daycare has become so expensive is because
providers know their customers are often getting some kind of tax credit or
subsidy to offset the cost.
Colleges and universities know students can borrow more
through subsidized loans so they‘ve been able to raise their prices far faster
than inflation.
Students know they can borrow for practically anything
remotely considered “education,” regardless of whether it has any probability
of leading to a decent paying job. Then,
because they know they can defer payments until they graduate, and college is a
lot more entertaining than work, they stay in school adding even more debt.
So now student loan debt is approaching a staggering 1.1-trillion
dollars; larger than credit card debt and only surpassed by mortgage debt.
But I’m pretty sure many of those students aren’t terribly concerned
about paying that back. They expect
something will happen so they won’t have to pay the full tab. And why shouldn’t they?
Consider this: The
Huffington Post ran a story on May 17 about how outraged many Democrat
legislators were that the Department of Education was slated to make a profit –
that’s right a profit – of about $51 billion on student borrowers this
year.
Now the only reason this program is showing a profit at
present is that the spread between student loan interest rates and the interest
rate at which the government borrows is temporarily large. The CBO expects the interest rate the
government pays on the money it borrows to double over the next decade.
But that doesn’t matter, of course. Those enraged legislators called for an
immediate and significant restructuring of the program to provide “substantially lower interest rates and debt
forgiveness for struggling borrowers. “ In essence, they
want to make sure that the program doesn’t turn a profit; at best, in their
view, it will lose money down the road.
Let’s see … we’re drowning in debt as a nation. A branch of the government is actually making
money and there’s a movement in Congress among Democrats to make sure that ends
ASAP.
You couldn’t make this up.
Logically, when you lower the cost of something, people
consume more of it and use it more wastefully.
So what we want to do is encourage more students to borrow even more
money, get further in debt, and then let those who have no intention of
paying back loans they wasted on getting a degree in something that has no
market value off the hook entirely?
Have I got this right?
Hell of a concept.
