We don't actually. Our national priorities are terrible.
Homelessness is on the rise. Every year, pandemic or not, more people fall into real economic trouble and that has been going on for decades now.
A majority are impacted today, and that was true before the pandemic.
I am not saying a majority are without food and shelter, though those numbers are a lot higher than they should and could be. I am saying the struggling majority face costs and risks that generally exceed their income.
Living paycheck to paycheck, one accident, illness, emergency event away from real, material loss.
This is all going on while a few make a lot of money, even during a pandemic, and?
It is entirely unnecessary.
The first thing people say is something along the lines of being unwilling and or unable to pay to remedy things because [judgement of some sort.]
Lazy, their fault, whatever it is.
I have A / B tested this for years too.
Another hard fact is a great many people are willing to pay more in their own lives to avoid paying for what they see as personal failings of some sort or other.
That judgement again.
Again, pre pandemic, there were not enough jobs that pay people enough to exist and show up for work.
That is still true and it is all worse now because of the pandemic.
Is there any wonder at the trends, given the harsh realities?
Not really, but there is all that judgement too.
They deserve it for [reasons]
And none of that speaks to the fact that it is simply not necessary.
Up thread I posed a question:
Working people should make enough from their labor to exist reasonably and show up for work and huge numbers of them don't.
Either we require companies to fully fund their labor, or we have government do that, or somehow we need people to be able to live much lower cost, lower risk lives.
Which is it?
Fact is we need a lot of basic labors done and will need that for the foreseeable future.
That means some of us will be doing those labors, those labors will be necessary, will benefit all of us in that our own time is more available to do what we do too.
If a big employer does not pay the labor enough, and government fills the gap, how come we judge those people so poorly? How come we make it as painful as we can to get that help?
How come we fail to see the massive demand for basic labor being met and the resulting high value it adds to our lives ignored?
Take your shit. My shit, for example.
I really do value all the labor involved in making my shit disappear. I assume you do too.
Doesn't everyone?
What if we had to do that ourselves? It stinks, where do we put it? How do we transport it? To whom? And for how much?
Now, think about all of us having to manage that directly, how inefficient it is, how much time we lose having to deal with it?
That would be crazy, right? Huge opportunity. Someone would start up, and handle our shit and we would pay them and they would profit by consolidating efforts...
My point here is people will work. It makes a lot of sense.
What does not make any sense is seeing basic labors in such a negative way, like a failure, or lousy people getting work they deserve and all the other garbage seen and heard day in and day out.
Here is another way to see it all.
When my wife was sick, and we had to give up our home for lack of health care coverage (ugly story, not our fault), suddenly I was a home maker in addition to the breadwinner.
Life breaks down into thirds. One to work one to be humans, do what we want to do, and one to sleep.
Asking people who do not get enough from their labor to exist reasonably and show up for work to work more only goes so far.
When life is nothing but sleep and work, other alternatives start to look more attractive. Crime? Mooching off others? Living in a camp? Drugs to escape the brutality and pain of it all?
Maybe drugs to keep sleep at bay started and became chronic?
This is going on all over the place too.
And then one more brutal part:
All those negatives. Basically valuing basic, necessary labor, that generally adds a lot of value to our lives, as low as possible doesn't really help motivate people, does it?
Is there any wonder you wonder as you do and suggest the harsh conditions are necessary as you did?
None at all! You are not alone.
And no judgement from me either. None implied, intended.
I am just trying to suggest we are doing ourselves no real good this way.
There are real problems brewing and we, as a nation, are not having anywhere clise to a healthy conversation about how to get past them, improve and in general run the place better than we are currently running it into the ground.