So did my mom, in Oregon.
Maybe no so ironically, my wife lived on a 2 trailer desert compound on a plot 2 miles from visible city infrastructure and 5 miles from any sort of built structure for most of her childhood.
We don't live in a vacuum and there a reasons why people turn to drug use that the system exacerbates. But that is completely irrelevant, because this blog post is a systemic critique, even if it is told through the life story of an individual. To cherry pick one stanza of the entire blog post to dismiss it on the grounds that the father who left is a drug addict is one more example of the delusions or strategies of the moralizing capitalist.
You can, and you should. We all need a helping hand of a community, and a community to heal. We are social beings. And we carry the responsibility for not helping, too.
“A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.“The system is, that if you make unfortunate choices (such as moving away from your support network and carrying your life savings where you can forget them) and do not have anything (such as skills or low morals) to compensate, life is going to be hard. That has always been the case, that will always be the case. What the consequential decisions are, differs. But the basic premise of “f around and find out” holds.
Impoverished druggies living in the middle of nowhere do not contribute to “the system” and such should not expect an output from it
There is no “changing definitions” happening here. I could link to definitions of both community and system and point to the one I’m using and the one you seem to be using in an attempt to achieve shared understanding but the way you phrase things really don’t encourage further attempts to communicate.
I don’t see any discussion or argument presented
- free or greatly reduced cost of higher education
- replacing means-tested programs like Medicaid with universal versions. Medicare for all, for example, where you don’t have to jump through hoops or even opt in, is better than the dehumanizing system we have in place today. Also removes the barrier to slightly improving one’s life, since you won’t lose your aid after getting a 10% raise or w/e.
- cheaper housing, or public housing (god forbid!)
These are not pipe dreams, these are all things other civilized countries have. I don’t want to live in a world where you have to be either lucky or extraordinary to live a secure, modest life.
Which is hilarious, except that these people vote.
My wife is also from Oregon. Her grandma was “marry a random truck driver at 14 for a ticket out of town” poor. The guy abandoned the family and drank himself to an early death. And her dad was similarly situated to this guy—my wife lived part of her childhood in a converted barn. Her takeaway from her family history was the opposite: people are often incredibly self destructive and you can’t help those people.
The problem isn’t that lawmakers were never poor. Many were. The problem is that all the ones who were were high-functioning enough to escape poverty. So our systems for helping poor people assume a level of competence and administrative capacity that’s simply beyond the capability of a lot of poor people. For example, a third of uninsured people are actually eligible for Medicaid. Someone in my wife’s family racked up 50,000 in medical bills because they didn’t sign up for Medicaid despite being eligible the whole time.