Some Heavy Thoughts

Written by craig

 Placing blame is an art best practiced by politicians and bureaucrats. At times, this is done with such skill, such elan, that one can only admire the true genius behind the facade

'Want to see a truly rough place to have to survive and raise kids? Look at some of the projects around Brooklyn. I work near an especially large one, and the air is frequently punctuated by sirens and gunshots. (The gangs have kids set off fireworks to mask the timpani of bullets.) Now, they were built for all the right reasons; people needed affordable housing. 

Unemployment is above ten percent for New York City as a whole, and the rate in the projects is much higher than that. From a practical standpoint, the jobs are just not there. When you stack thousands of bodies into bins of brick and concrete, the price of land starts to soar and heavy industry, dependent on cheap plentiful land, leaves.

But wait, there's more. Mayor Bloomberg announced the other day that the life expectancy for New Yorkers is now 82 years for women and 76 for men. Housing is already impossible to get at a decent rate, and now young people can't even count on their parents to do the decent thing and die so the next generation can have the apartment! But, this is just the background stuff, not the actual gem I promised at the beginning. 

So, how then is one to survive? Well, security companies are doing a booming business since 9-11. Still, this adds to the cost of doing business and so adds to the pressure for companies to "get out of Dodge." The aging population is increasing the demand for home health aides but the US government is running a little (actually, a lot!) short on cash right now and Obama's promised/threatened to drastically reduce the Medicaid and Medicare funds that pay for these services. ('More background, but we're getting closer.)

Public Assistance had at one time provided a modest but dependable living for many of the thousands of souls trapped in the towers of despair. With good reason, that all changed in 1996 when the Welfare Reform Act put a two year cap on assistance and created tons of back-to-work programs. The theory was nice; "stop paying all those lazy people to sit on their butts, and make 'em get out and get a job!" Again, we see all the right intentions. Gosh, those politicians must really love us! Oh, but I forgot . . . there aren't any jobs out there for them to get. 'Minor detail, and even closer to the inspired stroke of genius I've been promising.

Well, it seems that I overlooked one other source of income . . . what about disability benefits? This actually takes care of the problem from a couple of angles. For every person whose back is out, or is big-time depressed, or is too afraid to leave the apartment alone (okay, I'm not even going to travel through the projects alone, either!), you have to have a social worker, medical support staff, and a host of other service personnel to take care of the individual. As a consequence, we've seen a skyrocket in the number of people considering themselves disabled over the past few years. 

And now, the "piece de resistance." No self-serving politician or bureaucrat would ever accept responsibility for any of the above, but the numbers of people considered disabled is continuing to rise. So, what to do, what to do? The "best" solution would be one that blamed the individuals themselves, but how does one do this without ticking off a large voting block? It has to point the finger away from the overcrowding, the lack of jobs, the hopelessness and desperation caused by the above-mentioned good intentions. It can't look too liberal, or too conservative for that matter. Ideally, it might even lay the foundation for even more bureaucracy.

So, who do we ultimately blame? 

This analysis revealed a positive trend in overall disability prevalence among adult New Yorkers over the three-year period 2001 through 2003. When stratified by age, disability rates also trended upward in all age groups, including the youngest age group. Recent studies have confirmed that disability rates are rising among Americans younger than 60 years. Obesity, leading to musculoskeletal problems and diabetes, is implicated as the primary cause of this increase.4 [Emphasis added.]

Peace.