OK, so I said in my last post that \u201cthe State has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that its citizens\u2019 basic needs are met\u201d which I guess means that I\u2019m not a libertarian, though I would prefer, in general,\u00a0that the State meet that responsibility in the most prudent manner, in the way that best meets the need while minimizing the apparatus of the State.<\/p>\n
And now I\u2019m thinking about the different kinds of human needs and how the State meets those needs (and whether I think that\u2019s the right way or not).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Food:\u00a0 food stamps, of course.\u00a0 Everyone on the left laments that the food stamps are insufficient and point to the demand for food from food pantries as evidence.\u00a0 (Or, as the Trib featured, summer food distribution programs for kids who are accustomed to free school lunches during the school year.)\u00a0 I don\u2019t know \u2014 even though I\u2019ve only seen anecdotal accounts of food stamp fraud, rather than solid statistics, if everyone on food stamps could barely feed themselves with their food stamps, then it would seem rather improbable for there to be any food stamp fraud at all.\u00a0 And the sums given for monthly food stamp benefits don\u2019t look that outrageous to me \u2014 though I suspect that part of the problem is that families who qualify for partial benefits, still expect the food stamp allotment to cover all their food costs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Anyway, the question I ask myself is:\u00a0 is this the best approach to helping the hungry?\u00a0 Should we just have government food distribution centers, where anyone with income below a certain level gets an allotment of rice and beans and a couple boxes of powdered milk?\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I suppose the food stamp program would be somewhat analogous to the subsidized exchanges (though not to single-payer Medicaid).\u00a0 In principle, people can use their food vouchers to buy the food that best meets their own needs \u2014 that\u2019s almost a free market approach, right?<\/p>\n
Second human need:\u00a0 education.\u00a0 For tertiary education, we\u2019re perfectly happy with a voucher system (e.g., Pell Grants) for the low-income.\u00a0 But for elementary\/secondary education, we give it away to everyone, whether poor or not.\u00a0 Imagine if education were like food, and only the needy got vouchers while everyone else had to pay full price:\u00a0 certainly, many upstanding citizens would pay their tuition, but others would conclude that even though the government\u2019s formula told them they could afford to pay a given amount of tuition, they would believe that the cost was unaffordable and refuse to pay the tuition bill or (assuming\u00a0there is no compulsory education in the thought experiment) decline to enroll their children in school in the first place, or withdraw them after they learned the basics of reading and writing \u2014 and as a society we believe that it harms society to have uneducated children, who ultimately grow into uneducated adults.<\/p>\n
Right now, people are generally OK with the notion of the State providing healthcare to the poor in the same way as we provide food to the poor (though there\u2019s no consensus, in either case,\u00a0on what to do with the \u201cvoluntarily poor\u201d, those who aren\u2019t actively looking for work).\u00a0 But I\u2019m inclined to think that healthcare is more like education \u2014 that the system of the government providing healthcare benefits only to those who meet very narrow income cut-offs just leaves too many people deciding for themselves to forgo insurance coverage.<\/p>\n
Enough for tonight \u2014 I\u2019ll try to elaborate on this later.\u00a0 (Remember, I\u2019m still working this out!)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, so I said in my last post that \u201cthe State has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that its citizens\u2019 basic needs are met\u201d which I guess means that I\u2019m not a libertarian, though I would prefer, in general,\u00a0that the State meet that responsibility in the most prudent manner, in the way that best meets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n