Free Stuff
Whenever there's a discussion about government-funded programs, this question always comes up: who's going to pay for it? Where's the money going to come from? Especially social- and environmental programs are shut down, or reduced to irrelevance, by the ones asking this question. Here's why I believe this question shouldn't be asked in the first place.
source: YouTube
Let's first determine who exactly asks the question about the money. Historically it has always been the conservatives, of course. Conservatives have been, and still are, found in the part of the population that has most of the money. The very name of the ideology tells all we need to know: conservatives want to conserve the current state of affairs, they want to maintain current socioeconomic power structures, they want the status quo to last forever. The moment conservatives cry out for change, it's always born from a desire to change things back to where they were; when progressivism gains too much ground, conservatives become regressive. The rollback on Roe v. Wade is seen as the greatest victory of American conservatism in the last century for this reason; it's going back to the "good old days" when women had less rights and weren't allowed to make decisions about their own body as soon as they got pregnant.
The Republican Party views itself as the "pro-life" party when they are in fact the "anti-women" party. They say they fight for the right of the unborn to live, but they give up on that fight as soon as it leaves the womb. Any assistance for the mother or child they are against, as they are against anything they perceive to be a "free lunch". They are against free, universal healthcare, free education, free or affordable childcare, free or affordable school lunches... There's no such thing as a free lunch, remember? After they forced a single mother to give birth by making abortion a crime, both mother and child are left to fend for themselves. When that child then grows up to be part of a criminal street gang, because the mother lives in a poor neighborhood, has to work two or three jobs and can't afford to send her child to a good school, it's the mother's fault; she got herself impregnated after all. And when society is faced with all the extra costs on account of these criminalized young persons, mostly men, conservatives have but one solution; a for profit prison system. Anything but any semblance of a shared responsibility for these young men's lot in life, anything but having to pay just a little bit to prevent this sad state of affairs in the first place.
That's where we actually get to the reason why the question about the money is a stupid question. You see, that young person in the example above could have become a productive, hard working, tax paying member of society. If you just helped the mother by providing free healthcare, chances are she wouldn't have even considered an abortion. If you just helped her by making sure jobs pay a living wage, subsidized child-care, made school affordable and the school's quality not dependent on property taxes, that young child probably wouldn't have sought, and found, a sense of belonging in the local street gang. The money spent on giving that child an honest chance of "making it" isn't lost; it's paid back with interest on account of having one more productive member in society as opposed to an expensive drain on society. Conservatives however, even if they like to think in terms of "return on investment", refuse to see it as an investment in such cases.
Let me share with you the reaction of an English conservative, Davies Gilbert, who served in the House of Commons as Member of Parliament from 1804 to 1832, when government-funded education for children was debated in 1807:
"However specious in theory the project might be of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching them the virtue of subordination, it would render them factious and refractory, as is evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors; and, in a few years, the result would be that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them and to furnish the executive magistrates with more vigorous powers than are now in force. Besides, if this Bill were to pass into law, it would go to burthen the country with a most enormous and incalculable expense, and to load the industrious orders with still heavier imposts." -
source: Wikipedia
As you can see, the arguments against "free stuff" haven't changed a bit in more than a century. Going back to 1807 though shows us the arguments they nowadays won't say out loud; nowadays all that's left to them is the question about the money, the cost to society, which was, is, and always has been wrong. And it's not just with education of course. Money spent on a cleaner environment is earned back easily on costs prevented on having to clean up the mess of pollution, money spent on "free" healthcare is earned back with interest on costs of more expensive treatments when it's actually too late and patients end up in the first aid or emergency clinic. And affordable housing is earned back by the housed citizens who now have an address which enables them to apply for a job. But I would go a step further even...
Even if these collectively paid for programs didn't pay for themselves in the long run, I would argue they're still the right thing to do. You see, the economy is not sacred. Our capitalist economy isn't a law of nature; people tend to forget that. The question about the money is invalid in my opinion because there are certain segments of human existence that simply shouldn't be part of the capitalist equation. In a capitalist society there's no choice but to leave the provision of certain guarantees and insurances in the hands of the government. Let's take healthcare as an obvious example; America spends the most amount of money per capita on healthcare, and has some of the worst healthcare outcomes of the OECD countries. This is the result of that country's hyper-individualist, "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" and "I don't want to pay for someone else's unhealthy lifestyle" mentality. Let me explain.
People struggle to buy their own health insurance for good reason; what should be included in the package? That's a hell of a question to ask any individual. I don't know what exactly my insurance should cover, because I can't see into the future. I may think I'm healthy today, leading me to believe I might not need heath insurance at all. But I don't know. I don't know if tomorrow a bus will hit me. Health insurance is one of the many things best left to an economy of scale, which the government is in a perfect position to oversee. You look at the entire population and determine which medicines, treatments, and so on are used in what frequency and number. Then you use that data to buy the same basic insurance for everybody. This saves money and administration on all sides, but more importantly it elevates the overall health and well being of the entire population. The proof on this is already in, no need for debate, as is the proof for educating the people; it only has positive effects.
Conservatives don't want those positive effects though. Their wish to maintain their sacred hierarchies supersedes everything else, and if they have to kick the women back into the kitchen, effectively degrading them to breeding machines, they'll gladly do it. Like I said, the economy isn't sacred. It is to conservatives though, as capitalism is just another way to preserve the existing power hierarchies, and they'll dress it up as being "meritocratic" when in fact entire swaths of the population aren't given a fair chance to begin with. So, whenever the question comes up again, and it will, just say "I don't care who's going to pay for it." Everybody deserves a shot at a decent life and we all deserve to live in a society that cares more about the well being of its people than its bottom-line.
Please watch the below linked video from Unlearning Economics; love that name. It goes into much more depth on the topic of free stuff and provides even more reasons to dismiss the question about where the money's going to come from. It debunks every argument given by those who ask the question, and shows that the arguments against free stuff are given without any proof at all. And, like Christopher Hitchens said: that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. So I appreciate that the video goes into that much trouble to provide the evidence to debunk all the conservative arguments anyway...
Free Stuff is Good, Actually
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