Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: angry

More Right Americans Don't Have

You don't have a right to: health care, child care, elder care, food to eat, a place to sleep, a place to stand, clothes to wear, or a decent job. You have to pay for all those things except for the last. That's an ugly state of affairs. It results in a lot of human wreckage, which does not merely torment the individual victims, but spills over to affect their friends, families, neighbors, coworkers, and many others.

The current trend towards "every man for himself" is not, in fact, a society at all. It's an anarchist principle. It leads to the disintegration of vital social and cultural infrastructure in ways that harm everyone.

Here's an article about the further loss of retirement funds.

Retirement Savings Lose $2 Trillion in 15 Months
Nancy Trejos, The Washington Post: "The stock market's prolonged tumble has wiped out about $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings in the past 15 months, a blow that could force workers to stay on the job longer than planned, rein in spending and possibly further stall an economy reliant on consumer dollars, Congress's top budget analyst said yesterday."


Remember that few people have a real pension anymore; instead, they're expected to gamble successfully and retire on the winnings. Except now the market is crashing, so people are losing instead of winning. That means they'll have to retire later, or not at all. This is a moral problem, because it's indecent to force elders to keep working until they die, especially if they're not really up to it. It's a practical problem, because many elders aren't healthy enough for a job that will actually support them, and many are forced out of the workplace for being old. Even if they retire, they may not be able to afford the skyrocketing costs of food, medicine, and utilities. That's a disgrace, and it's not the elders who should feel ashamed when they can't pay their bills. Those who have already given a lifetime of work should be supported in their old age, and if they are not, shame on the younger generations.

Here's an article that talks about how women are disproportionately impacted by poverty and the withdrawal of social services.

The Terror of Loving and Losing
Cathy Albisa, On the Issues Magazine: "Data and common experience reveal that it is women who primarily take care of the sick without pay, raise and nurture children, or make sure the elderly in their orbit eat well, get medical care and are protected from the threat posed by loneliness and isolation. As a result, the benefits and deficits of the system of social support - and the level of protection of economic and social rights - have a disproportionate effect on women."


Are you a woman? This doom could happen to you. Are you a man? Think of the women you love: your mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, wife or girlfriend. This could happen to them. Most teachers are women; most nurses are women. Do you want them to be healthy, lively women capable of doing a good job? Or do you want them to be miserable broken wrecks limping through life and maybe hurting your or yours because they're too shattered to do things right? This, too, is unnecessary human wreckage. This, too, affects everyone and diminishes everyone, if not directly then indirectly. It is wicked for a society to withhold the resources people need for a decent life and then punish them for not having said resources.
Tags: activism, economics, gender studies, politics
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  • 15 comments
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ysabetwordsmith

ysabetwordsmith

October 9 2008, 06:58:44 UTC 12 years ago

A serious drawback of insurance-based health care is that any chronic condition can make you either uninsurable, or the cost so high that you can't afford it. Even if you can get insurance, most won't cover "pre-existing conditions." So if you ever lose the coverage you had when you discovered the problem, you're out of luck. Furthermore, employers may discriminate against employees, including refusal to hire someone, based on medical conditions -- even though they're not supposed to -- because of insurance issues.

I don't know the tax specifics, sorry. I have heard that Americans pay more for health care but get less than civilized countries with a public health plan.
jl_johnson

jl_johnson

October 9 2008, 11:18:59 UTC 12 years ago

You know, I've been hearing a lot of flack about 'universal health care', especially from the Republican camp, for years now, and I can tell you, from a personal point of view-it isn't socialized medicine, it's civilized medicine.

ysabetwordsmith

ysabetwordsmith

October 9 2008, 15:55:17 UTC 12 years ago

I think the anti-health care crowd has done such a thorough job of creating a false dichotomy that people have forgotten the world is infinitely flexible. If you don't like a given system then you can always construct something different. You start by making a list of problems you want to solve, and positive goals you want to reach. Then you look for ways of achieving that, and you design a system that will do so. You can borrow from somebody else's system if you want to, but you don't have to if you hate theirs. And if you're smart, you'll listen to the experts -- in this case, doctors, a vast majority of whom favor a single-payer system. There are more options than just the "socialized medicine" one, and even that has many different variations across different countries.