My friend Pip has a blog called Great Expectations. She’s only got a couple of posts up but she’s asking some really interesting questions:
Are there white middle-class butches? If so, where are they? I found Judith/Jack Halberstam’s book, Female Masculinities, particularly disappointing in this regard. It seems that J/J identifies as butch (??). But although she shows how butch history has been ignored by middle-class feminism, she doesn’t admit that being an academic means that working-class butch history doesn’t simply belong to her. She doesn’t use this opportunity to share her own experience of butchness, and instead uses the (often extremely personal) stories of others to illustrate this story. It’s this kind of behaviour that allows white middle class men/women/butches to claim a rich history and identity, while hiding our privilege over others of the same gender (just like white women using pictures of black mothers to symbolise the fertility or spirituality of all women).
You should go and check out her blog, leave some comments and encourage her to write more.
*******
Also check out Super Babymama who has been writing an excellent series of posts on the reality of life on food stamps. As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.
As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.
I don’t have a right to free speech, because Maia hasn’t rented me a hall for my presentation or bought me a color laser printer to do the transparencies.
Oh right, those things have nothing to do with “rights” in any sane conception of same. I keep forgetting that rights do not confer an obligation on third parties to pay for them.
It’s deceptive to talk about “Maia,” or any other individual person, paying all of the relevant costs. It wouldn’t be fair for me to expect Robert to pay for the costs of building and maintaining the road that goes to my house; that doesn’t mean it’s unfair of me to expect the taxpayers (including myself) to pay for the roads we all share, including the one I live on. There’s no reason that a safety net we all share can’t also be an expense borne by all taxpayers together.
Because you’re a libertarian, you think that a society that allows people to go without essential care, or that allows children to grow up malnourished, is “sane.” Whereas a society in which every person has the right to basic medical care and food is not “sane.” This is one reason that almost no one who isn’t white and reasonably well-off is a libertarian.
If letting people
starve and diebe malnourished and medically untreated needlessly is insane, then I choose not to be sane.Because you’re a libertarian, you think that a society that allows people to go without essential care, or that allows children to grow up malnourished, is “sane.”
Not really. Because I’m a libertarian, I think that society needs to be ordered around the basic idea that those who can care for and feed themselves, ought to. I’m amenable to any negotiated social contract that takes care of the people who can’t take care of themselves, as long as its broadly voluntary across society. (Voting for it through a democracy or a republic is sufficient.)
What I think is nuts is the idea that you can have a right to something that requires someone else to do work. The language of rights is emotionally powerful and appealing, and it’s natural for those on the left to co-opt it, to argue for the civil privileges they want to give people. But the things they (you) are arguing for are privileges, not rights.
I don’t automatically object to creating new civil privileges. I do object to bad or dishonest conceptualizations around those privileges.
Few rights come for free, Robert. The wealthy family living in the rich area of town has a right to property in part because my taxes help pay for cops who enforce their property rights.
The free speech rights of radio station owners depends on the cops and the FCC to shut down local, small-time radio operators who infringe on their radio frequency.
The right to vote requires millions of dollars in adminstration and technology which, again, is paid for by taxes.
The right to a trial requires paying countless court personell and a judge out of taxes, not to mention conscripting 12 folks to do the work of being the jury.
The idea that something isn’t a right if implimenting it requires someone else to work would mean that there’s no right to property, no right to a trial, no right to vote, etc.. Your conception of “rights” appears to be contrary to how rights work in practice.
What exactly is the difference between having a right and feeling entitled?
OK, this is a novel. Forgive the length; I didn’t have time to write a shorter comment. I’ll shut up for a while after this and let you shoot holes in it.
We’ve decided as a society that certain rights do exist. As such, the state (the entity charged with much of the enforcement of rights) has to pay the freight, which as you note is done through taxes.
But we haven’t mostly-consensus-decided that there’s a right to food. We have mostly consensus-decided that we don’t want anybody to starve, and have put in place a rather extensive network of private and public sources of food, so that people won’t starve. It seems to work, at least insofar as there don’t seem to be many starving people here.
It should also be noted in the specific examples you give, there are other means by which those costs could be distributed. We’ve elected to distribute them via the state, for reasons of efficiency or impartiality, but there are no reasons in principle or practice that they could not be done via voluntary social cooperation or through private organizations. Informal jury systems and vigilantes can work – we just think, probably correctly, that having cops and courts works better.
Even so, you are correct that the implementation of any right will involve exertions by other people. However, those exertions are generally voluntarily chosen, or implicitly assented to as part of the social contract. We don’t (as a society, obviously your mileage varies) agree that getting a meal is a human right; some of us know too many people who would never work another day in their life. We do agree that we don’t want people going hungry, so we try to put a floor under society.
But the basic assumption is that if you want to eat and you are able, you should go and work. If you are afflicted in some way, then of course from common decency you will be aided. But you aren’t entitled to it; it’s a gift.
There is actually a moral reason to take this position, and it has to do with fairness. The Christian ethic (and I believe the Jewish ethic agrees) holds that people who are in material hardship through no fault of their own – widows, refugees, orphans, the aged, the disabled, etc. – should be cared for. And not just cared for – loved and lavished upon by the community.
At the same time, both traditions hold that able-bodied young people should by and large get their butts out to work, in no small part to pay the bills for the widows and orphans. If these high-performing people run into trouble, they deserve help and compassion, but they’re expected to be net contributors to the anthill.
Now take this framework and add the idea that people have a right to food, a right to material support, not predicated on their condition, but as a baseline human right. Well, such a right is unlikely to be provided acceptably well by a system of private charity initiatives, taking care of local hardship cases. Those charities end up saying no to some people. You can’t say “no” to a right.
So to make sure that people get their rights, the government has to get involved. The government doesn’t say “no” to rights, or isn’t supposed to, anyway. So they make sure people get their right to a meal. Being the government, they have to be fair – they have to treat people in similar ways.
But we can’t afford to treat everyone lavishly; we can’t provide an above-average diet to 100% of the population. And we know from bitter experience that if we provide too much to people, the natural minority in any group that looks for the easy way out will settle in and do nothing – and we know from common sense that the membership in that minority grows larger the bigger the do-nothing benefit is.
So we end up providing a crappy level of service – a level of service much like the one being described by the original blogger Maia linked. We don’t want anyone to die, but at the same time we don’t want to make it an attractive lifestyle for anyone. So it pretty much sucks, but you can make it.
Some people would ask why private charity wouldn’t pick up the slack in this case, and “upgrade” the deserving poor to the lavish status they ought to have; the answer is that human nature makes it hard to get us to pay twice for the same thing. If you’re paying the taxes that it would take to make food a right, a “feed the widow” drive at your local church is not going to get a lot of traction, particularly on April 16. (The day after tax day, for non-Americans.)
The blogger Maia linked to is, from what I understand, a disabled single mother. In my worldview, she ought to be getting lavish support and having all her reasonable needs taken care of by the community. In the world built by Maia’s worldview, she gets a crummy allotment and goes short.
Which, I’ll admit, is what she’s getting now – but then, I’m not a fan of the status quo in this area so I don’t have to defend it. Liberal statism winds up in the same depressing ghetto as socialism, in this instance.
Can someone be butch if they are asexual? How about if they are a pre-op trans-neuter? Is it just a matter of style?
[smacks self on forehead, goes off to do Wikipedia search]
There is actually a moral reason to take this position, and it has to do with fairness. The Christian ethic (and I believe the Jewish ethic agrees) holds that people who are in material hardship through no fault of their own – widows, refugees, orphans, the aged, the disabled, etc. – should be cared for…At the same time, both traditions hold that able-bodied young people should by and large get their butts out to work,
Just to make trouble…Isn’t this also the Communist ethic? “From each, according to his abilities, to each, according to his needs” and all that. But it isn’t always easy to know who is genuinly in need or disabled. A person with major depression can’t work if they do not receive treatment, no matter how able bodied they appear. Nor is it easy to both raise a child alone and work. Shouldn’t people trying to do be considered “deserving” of aid?
Just to make trouble…Isn’t this also the Communist ethic? “From each, according to his abilities, to each, according to his needs” and all that.
Yes, it is. Not all of the stated aims of Marxism are evil. There’s a reason it appeals to so many people.
But it isn’t always easy to know who is genuinly in need or disabled.
True. Who will do a better job, the distributed wisdom of a million private decisionmakers, or a federal bureaucracy that is not legally permitted to use common sense and discretion?
Nor is it easy to both raise a child alone and work. Shouldn’t people trying to do be considered “deserving” of aid?
Not automatically, but a lot of the time.
*delurks*
Robert,
I’m not sure where the line you draw between a right and a gift is. At first you seem to be saying that the only difference between a right to vote (that other people have to pay for) and a right to food (that other people have to pay for) is that we haven’t, as a society, yet decided that food is a right (through voting). But immediately afterwards you seem to be saying that we have decided enough food that you don’t starve is a right and that this is why the ‘deserving’ poor are not getting ‘lavish’ support. ? So which is it?
In my opinion, even if we accept that society has not yet decided that food is a right (which I’m not sure I agree with) how does that prevent a bunch of people (us, for example) from saying that it should be a right and attempting to make it so. In a democracy where one needs to get a certain number of votes rights don’t come into existence spontaneously, you have to campaign for them.
So, if I (or we) do believe that enough food not to starve is a right there is a serious problem with your proposal for how to take care of widows and children, etc.
The problem is if something is a right you shouldn’t have to beg to have it met.
Private charities have a regrettable tendency (along with all the good they unarguably do) to judge those in need according to their own standard (often religious), to discriminate, to wish to humble the people in need of aid, etc. If you’re giving a ‘gift’ you can put any conditions on it that you wish, if you’re providing a ‘right’ then you should not.
But immediately afterwards you seem to be saying that we have decided enough food that you don’t starve is a right and that this is why the ‘deserving’ poor are not getting ‘lavish’ support.
Getting enough not to starve isn’t a right. It’s just something we want to see.
Just because we want to see things doesn’t mean we consider them rights. I want to see everyone have a happy monogamous relationship, but that doesn’t create a right to one or imply I think there is one, nor do I have a right to have my preference enforced on others who might not want it.
In my opinion, even if we accept that society has not yet decided that food is a right (which I’m not sure I agree with) how does that prevent a bunch of people (us, for example) from saying that it should be a right and attempting to make it so.
It doesn’t. Go nuts. But I hope you fail and will oppose you, for reasons I’ve outlined here and elsewhere.
Dianne:
Being neither a Christian nor a Marxist, I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the Christian ethic allows individuals to amass wealth far beyond what they need and what others have, as long as the basic needs of others are being met. AFAIK, the Marxist ethic is more egalitarian and frowns upon this sort of thing.
Who will do a better job, the distributed wisdom of a million private decisionmakers, or a federal bureaucracy that is not legally permitted to use common sense and discretion?
Neither. The distributed millions won’t take into account anything that they didn’t see on the latest made for TV movie of the week and the feds…as you said. That’s why it’s best to just say that anyone in need should get aid. Screw whether they deserve it or not. Some people will be allowed to be lazy butts, but at least no one will go without.
I believe the Christian ethic allows individuals to amass wealth far beyond what they need and what others have, as long as the basic needs of others are being met.
I’m not a Christian either (or a Marxist for that matter), but I seem to remember something about the eye of a needle, a camel, and a rich man getting into heaven. It sounded pretty negative towards the collection of wealth to me, but what do I know?
Screw whether they deserve it or not. Some people will be allowed to be lazy butts, but at least no one will go without.
And the permanent incentive thus created to be lazy will propagate down the generations like a virus and eat our civilization as if it were a candy bar.
The downside of doing things your way is that we once again turn to the little people who struggle and work and say “Fuck you. You’re a chump.” I can think of no more effective way to devalue and demoralize the bottom-line people whose labor fuels our economy than to make the rewards available for being a lazy shit roughly equivalent to the rewards available for being a hard-working person on the bottom rungs of the system.
Why is it the bleeding Republican on this forum who is having to stick up for the actual, breathing, worker?
It sounded pretty negative towards the collection of wealth to me…
It is, broadly. (Wealth honestly gained and used for good ends is fine. It’s not the point, but it’s fine.) Wealth for it’s own sake is nihilistic and I’d go so far as to say evil. Wealth created and used for the benefit of people, on the other hand, is a positive thing.
We’re supposed to be good stewards of our resources, and if we prosper through hard work and blessings that’s great – now pay for a science lab at the school and build a church, please. It isn’t our money, at bottom, it’s God’s money. (This does not mean that having a lot of it means having God’s favor, although a lot of people jump to that conclusion.)
These are actually fairly murky waters, at least for me, theologically; where would Jesus come down on carbon emissions trading? Beats the heck out of me.
Wealth created and used for the benefit of people, on the other hand, is a positive thing.
Does that mean that Bill Gates is, in fact, on the side of good? (He’s giving away a lot of his wealth to help people who are in great need and who are largely being ignored by national and international aid agencies.) Thinking positively of Microsoft will be a new experience…
where would Jesus come down on carbon emissions trading?
He’d probably tell people to give away their SUVs and walk once in a while. (I have no idea about the carbon trading either, but I really think that SUVs–outside the context of far rural areas where one actually needs 4-wheel drive–is clearly conspicuous consumption.)
Incidently, what are you doing surfing the net at 1 am? Go get some sleep already.
And the permanent incentive thus created to be lazy will propagate down the generations like a virus and eat our civilization as if it were a candy bar.
Bacteria. Viruses don’t eat candy bars. Has it happened to any civilization anywhere ever that the civilization has collapsed because of too good a welfare system?
Several potential protectors:
1. People are primates. Primates get bored with inactivity. I’d work even if I were independently wealthy or completely supported by the government or whatever.
1b. Primates are social and respond to peer pressure. Not working is looked down on.
2. Helping those who can’t or won’t work doesn’t preclude helping those that can and do but are still poor. One example is earned income credits. A program put in place by that icon of evil Bill Clinton. Sure you don’t want to come back to the relatively light side of the force?
3. People have goals other than simply having enough money to survive. So people will continue to work to cure cancer or create art or build a business or become rich. Even if they don’t have to to survive.
Getting enough not to starve isn’t a right. It’s just something we want to see.
Sorry about the multiple posts, but…What does it mean for something to be a right and how is that different from something we want to see?
What does it mean for something to be a right and how is that different from something we want to see?
The first question is much too large. No can do.
The second question seems obvious to me, and I don’t know why it puzzles others. (This is not me saying ‘”you guys suck”. This is me not getting it.)
You would have sex with your husband if you both wanted to. He doesn’t have a right to sex with you. (You wouldn’t have sex with some stranger. He doesn’t have to right to sex either.)
I would give my wife a kidney if she needed it. She doesn’t have a right to my kidney. (I wouldn’t give my 95-year old grandfather-in-law a kidney. He doesn’t have a right to it either.)
I will give a hungry man a meal if he needs one. He doesn’t have a right to be fed.
I’d work even if I were independently wealthy or completely supported by the government or whatever.
Good. Ten people will be glad to glom off you. Hope you’re productive.
Primates are social and respond to peer pressure. Not working is looked down on.
Now. In a society where there’s a long-term commitment to the idea that you don’t need to work if you don’t feel like it?
Helping those who can’t or won’t work doesn’t preclude helping those that can and do but are still poor.
Not material. Those would be deserving poor and thus already covered.
People have goals other than simply having enough money to survive. So people will continue to work to cure cancer or create art or build a business or become rich. Even if they don’t have to to survive.
No doubt. They will do less of it, however, and over time that adds up.
Has it happened to any civilization anywhere ever that the civilization has collapsed because of too good a welfare system?
Rome. You may have heard of it. ;)
I disagree with Robert. I think there are some things that are rights. I don’t think society’s opinion changes their status one way or another. Everyone is born with them. Self determination, freedom of expression and association, freedom from force, freedom to work and own property, the right to defend those rights, among others.
I think the state was created to preserve those rights. It’s done a very hit and miss job of it so far. Pretty good for straight white men, less so for everyone else.
I’m not a fanatic. I understand that for the system to work some or all of these rights will be diminished by necessity. And I think using the coercive power of the police state to steal the fruits of a persons labor for the purposes of wealth redistribution is perfectly fine compromise.
I think a safety net is clearly a great benefit, but I don’t think that it’s a right for healthy adults.
I think one thing missing from this discussion is the concept of the relationship between rights and government. If something is a right then no one can legally deprive you of it or prevent you from obtaining it. The government’s role is to ensure through the power of the state that no one does this. However, the fact that something is a right does not mean that anyone can be required to provide you with this. The role of the government is to protect you from people who would prevent you from exercising your rights, but it is not to provide you with whatever the right is.
So, the government guarantees the freedom of religion. If I wish to worship God in my fashion, I have every right to do so. I can solicit funds (or work to earn them myself) and build a church. If the Church of the Holy Mugwump doesn’t like it and marches down the street to stop me, the State will send the police to stop them. But my right to freely practice my religion does not obligate the State to take money from the members of the Church of the Holy Mugwump (among the rest of the population) and give it to me so that I can build my church.
If people have a right to food, the State is obligated to ensure that no one can interfere with my efforts to earn enough money and to go to the store and buy it. If people have a right to a decent home, the State again is obligated to ensure that no one prevents me from building or buying one (e.g., regardless of my race or sexual orientation). But the State is not obligated to buy me one.
The government’s job is to make sure I have every opportunity to take care of myself. It’s job is not to take care of me.
Dianne:
Actually, the EITC’s been around in some form or another since 1975, and has since been expanded in 1986, 1990, 1993, and 2001. And it’s arguably the least objectionable of the government welfare programs, in that you do have to work to receive benefits. But this doesn’t help with the problem of distinguishing between those who are truly unable to work and those who are just unwilling.
Also, the Clinton (slash House Republican) years are nowadays remembered fondly by many libertarians, not without good cause.
Sure. And so would I (though I would probably take longer vacations). But you’re not the marginal case, and neither am I. There are people who, given an opportunity to spend life on the dole, will do it. For example, I have a friend who is very intelligent, but who, at the age of 25, has spent the last five years living with his mother, neither employed nor in school, just because it’s the path of least resistance.
Which is why social welfare programs haven’t led to total societal collapse. But for this to work, there has to be a stigma associated with receiving government assistance (and private charity, too). And this is something that Superbabymama and many of the commenters and posters here are working to eliminate. A society that relies on peer pressure to keep people off welfare can’t afford to be “welfare-positive.”
Not entire civilizations, AFAIK. My impression is that this has happened in some communities and subcultures, but I don’t have hard data to back that up. And remember that welfare in its current form has only been around for a generation or two. It may well take longer than that to eradicate the middle-class ethic.
The EITC became hugely more significant under Clinton than it had been before; that’s something Clintonites can legitimately take credit for.
And Dianne didn’t claim that the EITC helped with the problem of distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving poor, so your objection is irrelevant. She claimed, correctly, that it helps the working poor. Her (correct) point is that we don’t face an either/or choice between helping nonworking poor people and helping the working poor.
Robert writes:
And then later, writes:
I take this to mean that Robert believes that if food and other basic survival needs are considered rights, the result will be huge numbers of people dropping out of the workforce.
This is an empirical question. What is the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) in the US, versus the LFPR in European countries in which food and housing is considered a right?
There is a difference, and as Robert predicted, Americans are more willing to work than their counterparts in “right to eat” countries. But the difference isn’t large; it’s insignificant during the prime working ages of 25 to 54, and nonexistent from ages 30 to 44.
As for the other ages, Europeans are somewhat less likely to be working as teenagers and in their early twenties. And they retire earlier, to the extent that by the time people are in their 70s, over 20% of Americans and under 5% of Europeans are still in the labor force. These differences seem benign.
So Dianne is right, and Robert is wrong; for the great majority of workers, having a right to food will not cause them to quit working. Although people like Brandon’s lazy friend exist, they are a small minority.
Amp:
It’s deceptive to talk about “Maia,” or any other individual person, paying all of the relevant costs.
O.K. To adapt Robert’s analogy to fit this, it would appear then that it’s a suppression of Robert’s right to free speech if the State does not take money from you and I and Maia to pay for Robert’s hall and the color laser printer he needs if he can’t afford them.
There’s no reason that a safety net we all share can’t also be an expense borne by all taxpayers together.
There’s no reason that the expense of hall rental and printing presses and radio stations sufficient for all of us to use can’t be an expense borne by all taxpayers together; and free speech, unlike housing and health care, is a right guaranteed to all Americans.
If letting people starve and die be malnourished and medically untreated needlessly is insane, then I choose not to be sane.
Fine. That’s your choice. And you have every right to work your butt off and give your resources to whatever agency you choose to fund (or create) in order to define and fight those conditions.
But when you talk of rights, you’re not using the same language that other people are. You’re talking about rights and compelling other people to fund the object of those rights for people who are either unable or unwilling to exert themselves productively enough that they can fund those themselves. Your “rights” are a different concept than the generally accepted concept of what the word means. What you call “rights” is better known in the United States as an “entitlement”, which is the word used to describe Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, etc.
European countries in which food and housing is considered a right?
Actually, having food and housing is considered a right in both Europe and the U.S., and to imply that it’s not considered a right in the U.S. is deceptive. The difference between the two (and Europe is hardly a uniform grouping, the practices vary from country to country) is that in Europe, you have not just a right but an entitlement to a certain level of these things. It would be more correct to say “European countries in which food and housing is considered an entitlement?”
You’re very fond of making arguments from absurdity. But in the real world, we don’t face the choice of providing no help at all, versus providing expensive personalized aid to every single individual.
In the case of food, I think that we should make food stamps (or whatever those credit cards issued by the state are called – in Oregon, we call them the “oregon trail card,” but I’m sure that’s not universal) way, way more generous. That doesn’t mean I think that each person’s right to eat should extend to the state paying a personal live-in chef to move in to every person’s household, or that we have to pay for $200 meals at the most expensive restaurants.
If we don’t take the simpleminded approach you describe, Ron, we don’t have to provide a laser printer to every citizen. Instead, we can ask “okay, there’s a right to free speech. How does it make sense to implement that? And there’s a right to the basic necessities of life, including food and shelter. How does it make sense to implement that?” There’s no one-size-fits-all solution; saying the government should, where needed, provide food does not logically commit me to the proposition that the government must buy Robert a laser printer.
In the case of free speech, you could argue that the most effective approach is to consider free speech an example of a “negative right”; it’s the right to be left alone, the right not to be interfered with.
In the case of the right to eat, however, making it a negative right obviously isn’t enough. This needs to be a “positive right” — a case where society will help out actively, rather than just refraining from interfering.
Sure I am. It’s only right-wingers who pretend, disingenuously, not to understand what’s meant when I say “every person should have a right to food and shelter.” My guess is that you know exactly what I mean, even if you pretend not to.
Whether or not you understand, the vast majority of English speakers understand that when I talk about a “right to food and shelter for all,” I’m advocating some sort of large-scale government program guaranteeing everyone enough to eat and a place to live. The word “rights,” in ordinary English, refers to both negative and positive rights.
I don’t know that the concept of “rights” is consistently applied even within the law. When I want to speak rigorously, I try to avoid the term altogether.
That said, I don’t know if I could distinguish between entitlements and rights. The US Supreme Court has held that depriving someone of access to public assistance or public schooling without due process of law violates the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on deprivation of property and equal protection of the laws. See, for example, Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970) (“[Promotion] of the general welfare” requires “uninterrupted provision [of public assistance] to those eligible to receive it.”); Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 168 (1951) (Frankfurther’s concurrence) (Due process is available to the extent withholding entitlement would mean recipient risks being “condemned to suffer grievous loss”).
More generally, courts and commentors understand property rights to embody an owner’s judicially-cognizable interest in predictability and security. See Reich, The New Property, 73 Yale L.J. 733 (1964); Grey, The Disintegration of Property, 22 Nomos 69, 69-77 (1980). To the extent that entitlements provide predictability and security, they look a lot like property.
Stripped of the “rights” discussion, I understand Super Babymama et al. want the discretion to have society pay for their choice to have kids, etc. Robert et al. express concerns about the incentives Super Babymama’s policy would create, and want the discretion to withhold their funds from paying for other people’s choices to have kids, etc.
O.K. It’s of course quite true that it’s a bit of an absurd argument, and that there are choices between no help at all and free everything for everyone. That, after all, is how the public aid systems in the U.S. all work, anyway. But, what’s a right and how do they get implemented?
“okay, there’s a right to free speech. How does it make sense to implement that?”
The way we have; by guaranteeing that every person has a right to say what they want (except the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater), and to do their best to earn enough money to implement it to whatever level they wish themselves. The same way that any other actual right in America is implemented.
Whether or not you understand, the vast majority of English speakers understand that when I talk about a “right to food and shelter for all,” I’m advocating some sort of large-scale government program guaranteeing everyone enough to eat and a place to live. The word “rights,” in ordinary English, refers to both negative and positive rights.
When you are talking about that, I understand that you are talking about a government program, as do most people. But that doesn’t mean that what you are talking about is actually a right. Nor does it mean that everyone understands it as such.
Again, look at the rights that everyone agrees on in America. The freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble, the freedom to practice religion, etc. If you were to talk about those, no one would think that you were advocating a large-scale government program to fund them. This is what you call a “negative right”. Interesting how you tie “negative” to the rights that are actually guaranteed in the Constitution, by the way.
It’s only when you are paradoxically talking about things that the Constitution does NOT guarantee that it’s understood that you are talking about a government program. When you do that, you are talking about what is known as an “entitlement”, and that’s what they are called whenever legislators or budget makers or political scientists or journalists talk about the Federal budget.
The use of “positive rights” when one is really talking about entitlements is a conflation of the concepts of “I have a right to go get ‘x'” and “If I don’t have ‘x’, I am entitled to have the State take resources away from other people and provide it to me.” They are two separate concepts and should not be confused by calling one a “negative right” and one a “positive right”. Thus, the right to free speech is just that; it’s understood that no one has a right to take resources from anyone else so they can exercise it. But a proposition to create a “right” to food and shelter is not a right at all, either negative or positive; it’s a proposal to create an entitlement.
And I think most English speakers understand that. A heck of a lot more people could define “entitlement” than could define “positive right”, I bet. Certainly you’ll see the word “entitlement” used in the mainstream media; I have never seen the term “positive right” ever used.
As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.
So I see no reason why anyone would consider that Superbabymama does/did not have as much right to have a child as anyone else. The problem is not one of a question of rights, in contrast with areas of China where women are being given forcible abortions (. It is a question of whether having had a child Superbabymama is entitled to have her child supported to a particular standard of living if she does not or cannot do so.
There also is no question of how much food she is being allowed; at least, I presume that no one is actively stopping her from going out and earning enough money to support her child to whatever level she can. It’s an issue of how much (money for?) food the State feels that she is entitled to get from them, and how that amount is determined and what it can buy, and whether the State is wrong or right in providing that level of entitlement.
I don’t know why Superbabymama cannot support her child without resort to money from the government. Not knowing that, I make no value judgements as to whether or not she should be given money by the government. But that’s immaterial to the question of rights vs. entitlements.
Your comments show a shocking amount of comfort with the idea of starving and homeless children.
In practice, we all have whatever rights the government we live with is willing to implement and enforce.
Ron, is it your impression that court buildings build themselves? That judges, DAs, and public defenders, not to mention court reporters, bailiffs, guards, and the hundreds of other folks who keep our court system running are all volunteering, and organizing the whole thing themselves?
Of course not. The right to a trial is a Constitutional right that requires a huge, perpetual government program to organize, and that is paid for entirely out of tax dollars. So is the right to vote. These are positive rights, in the sense that to be meaningfully implemented they have to be organized and paid for by government.
Your belief that US Constitutional rights never require government programs is, to put it mildly, mistaken.
I have no idea what you’re implying here, Ron.
As for your continued harping on the little “it’s not a right! It’s an entitlement” argument, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree. The way I’m using the word “rights” is the way most English speakers use the word; my usage of the word is correct and legitimate.
The definition of the word you prefer is, as far as I can tell, a narrower definition used mainly by right-wingers and libertarians. That’s perfectly fine; you have every right (heh) to use specialized jargon. However, in the context of “Alas,” I will continue to use the general definition of the word “rights,” rather than the libertarian jargon you prefer.
Just because a right is not expressly (nor even implicitly) mentioned in the U.S. Constitution does not mean that it does not exist. The 9th Amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not deny or disparage other rights retained by the people. Thus, for example, even though there is no right under the U.S. Constitution to a state-funded education through the 12th grade, all that means is that there is no *federal constitutional* right. Instead it is a right that is established (and whose boundaries are set) by federal and state legislation, and in some cases by state constitutions.
So, to my way of thinking, the distinction isn’t between rights and non-rights, it’s between constitutional rights and non-constitutional rights.
There is a difference, and as Robert predicted, Americans are more willing to work than their counterparts in “right to eat” countries. But the difference isn’t large…These differences seem benign.
There are some pretty significant areas under that graph – particularly in the 50 to 70 range, where all the most experienced and best people (for many/most jobs) are concentrated, and where there is a big difference.
I would also note that the no-worries European welfare model isn’t that old; not much older than me, if not younger. A small difference now becomes a large difference after multiple generations further distance society from the time when work-or-die was prevalent.
But let’s say that you’re right, the difference in participation is trivial. And let’s also say that I’m nuts and there will not be any increased acceptability for the work-free lifestyle as time and generations pass. In short, the problem is as bad now as it will ever be, and it seems like it isn’t that bad now.
Eyeballing that graph, I’d say there’s about a 2% difference in the total workforce participation. (Actually I’d say it looks more like 5% or so, but 2% should be conservative enough that it won’t be argued.) That is, if 100 Americans will generate 100 work-years in a 12-month period, 100 Europeans will generate 98 work-years over the same time period – with the missing 2 WY going to the slacker youth and lighthearted early retiree. Fair enough?
Ampersand:
Really? I understand that you pay taxes, and that taxes are used to provide government services to the rich part of town, but you’re not actually subsidizing them, are you? That is, aren’t the taxes raised from the rich part of town sufficient to pay for the government services provided there?
Ditto radio stations. They pay taxes on their profits, and property taxes on the land they use, plus a licensing fee to the FCC. These are presumably sufficient to cover the (fairly minor, I’d think) expenses associated with shutting down pirate radio stations. Besides, government has granted itself a monopoly on police services. Even if you wanted to hire someone to catch burglars or shut down pirate radio stations, it would be illegal.
The right to trial by jury isn’t really a right in the sense that you say food or health care is a right. It’s a restriction on the power of government. It’s not that anyone is owed a trial—it’s that the government isn’t allowed to throw people in prison without good cause. And the way we determine whether there’s good cause is a trial by jury. So the beneficiaries of trials are not the defendants, but the general public, because a trial is a necessary part of the process of getting criminals off the streets and into prison. And it just so happens that the general public is footing the bill and manning the juries.
Elections are kind of the same thing. Voting isn’t really an individual right so much as a(n allegedly) necessary process for selecting and legitimizing a not-as-bad-as-it-might-otherwise-be government. We don’t hold elections so people can exercise their right to vote; we hold them because it’s (again, allegedly) the best way we know of establishing a government. The costs are born by the taxpayers in general, and the benefits (such as they are) are likewise spread among the general public.
What these all have in common is that the people who benefit from spending are also the ones who foot the bill. Welfare is different, because the set of taxpayers and the set of welfare recipients are largely distinct. There’s some intersection, but not a whole lot (except in the case of Social Security). It’s one thing to force people to pay for the government services they use, but another entirely to rob Peter to pay Paul. This isn’t to say that the latter is necessarily wrong, but the distinction is still important.
Ampersand:
Regarding labor market participation, rates in the US and Europe, raw international comparisons of stuff like this are nearly useless. There are a couple of reasons why we might expect labor force participation rates to be lower in the US than in Europe. Chief among them is the fact that fertility rates are much higher in the US than in Europe, and many women drop out of the work force after having children. Unless those are male labor force participation rates, this fact alone makes it surprising that the rates are no lower in the US than in Europe
Also, US labor force participation rates are underestimated by a few percentage points. At least, that’s how Europhiles explain the fact that the unemployment rate in the US is so much lower than in Western Europe. Don’t they say that there are many people who want to work but have been unable to find jobs for so long that they’ve given up, so instead of counting them as unemployed, we just say they’ve dropped out of the labor force?
Ampersand said:
I’m not white or reasonably well-off, and I looove me some libertarianism. I’m actually African American and flat-broke most of the time, but I suppose I fall into that small minority you referred to.
A single-payer health insurance scheme ( or any other variation of government-run national health insurance) does not guarantee that everyone will receive health care. Rationing of health care takes place in countries like Canada and Britain where thousands of people die every year on a waiting list for treatment.
I also know some non-white and non-well-off libertarians. To be honest, though, I think there are two other reasons why libertarians are usually at least reasonably well off:
1. Libertarianism is an out-of-the-mainstream political philosophy, and out-of-the-mainstream political philosophies tend to attract people who actually think about politics. People with low intelligence tend not to think much about politics. So there are very few libertarians who lack the cognitive ability to do a middle-class job well. I’m not just saying this because I’m a libertarian; it’s probably true of Greens, too.
2. Libertarian values are more conducive to success in a capitalist economy than left-wing values. We like commerce. We think the profit motive is just spiffy. We’re not only willing to sell out to corporations—we’re positively enthusiastic about it.
That said, there are some radical libertarians who drop out of mainstream society and work odd jobs under the table in order to avoid funding government activities with their tax revenues. Their values are not conducive to success in a mixed economy.
I would add 3, relatively few people are able to put aside their own personal needs and situation for a theory. If you’re hungry and out of work (whether because the economy has tanked, because capitalism is evil, or because you’re a lazy sack), the idea that everyone is on their own unless they can voluntarily reach an agreement with someone else to help them is frankly unappealing. If you’re a member of a minority group that has been historically discriminated against in contract, hearing “just make it a contract” seems out of touch, even if your basic philosophical inclination is to prefer contract to coercion.
I share the view that Attribution Theory plays a role. Poor people will tend to attribute the causes of their poverty to forces beyond themselves. Similarly, rich people will tend to attribute the causes of their wealth to forces within themselves; it is the self-made man who worships his creator. Consequently libertarianism will be more appealing to the rich.
That said, I also share Brandon Berg’s suspicions that people who disapprove of capitalism, or think it is rigged, may tend to exert less effort in trying to win the capitalist game than people to embrace the system uncritically and whole-heartedly. Even if the more pessimistic attitude is more accurate, and it may nevertheless be self-defeating and self-reinforcing. Some self-deceptions may be adaptive.
After many months not commenting at Alas, what do I find? Anti-feminists in number, along with the frothy sex poz feminists. What a shock.
What’s upset you about this thread, Ginmar? To me it looks as if it’s about libertarianism, hardly touching feminism or women’s issues at all. Is it that you think libertarianism is evil and inherently anti-feminist?
Or do you mean the linked posts? I can see how Pip might be classified as “sex positive,” though I have no idea whether she is in fact, because she’s doing the deconstructing gender thing. Perhaps you find that frothy and a distraction from your feminist concerns? Superbabymama looks to be taking particular sides in various blog wars, (for example, she’s trans-friendly and actively supports WOC bloggers) so maybe that’s what is bothering you? The referenced posts are very factual ones about poverty, and I would be hard pressed to classify them as either feminist or anti, either sex positive or radical and anti-porn.
With respect, this is a derail. Could y’all take it to an open thread?
Rationing of health care takes place in countries like Canada and Britain where thousands of people die every year on a waiting list for treatment.
Can you provide a link to a credible study that shows that “thousands of people die every year on a waiting list for treatment” in Canada and Britain? Can you also link to a credible study that indicates that no, or very few, US citizens die each year on a waiting list for treatment.
This is, frankly, a stunning claim. Thousands of people in Canada and Britain (and you can add France, Sweden and any other 1st world country with single-payer health care to that number) seems like extreme hyperbole. But, if you provide the links you can change my mind.
Jake Squid Writes:
Lives At Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick is an excellent book to read comparing national health insurance schemes around the world with the US system. It’s exhaustively researched and I can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re interested in health care.
But, I digress.
500 heart patients die on waiting lists in Britain. Link
Thousands of NHS cancer patients are dying unnecessarily because waiting times for life-saving treatments are growing alarmingly. Link
Wait times also occur in the US but they are substantially shorter than those found in Britain or Canada and thus far fewer people will be dead or in excruciating pain while they wait for treatment.
The book I suggested is full of data from the WHO and OECD supporting my claim about greater rationing leading to more deaths.