Foolish Choices
Sometimes it seems that we apply too broad a brush in trying to solve problems. For instance, in the case of the sub-prime mess, not only did we bail out a lot of upright folks who had gotten nailed by unforeseeable (sorta) national economic trends, but we also took care of millions of people who were downright greedy, and perhaps stupid and dishonest as well; those people who lied on their applications, for example. We also didn’t send to prison those realtors and bankers who facilitated those liar loans.
The broad brush also applies to all the people who get health insurance coverage through their employers but aren’t dinged for smoking cigarettes or drinking too much alcohol. Hundreds of thousands of these self-abusers get a break that the rest of us have to pay for.
Then there are the obese women who decide to bear children. An article in the New York Times speaks of the tragic consequences of obesity and pregnancy. They don’t do well together; the mortality rate is stunning, and even among those who survive – mothers and infants – there are often life-long complications.
The costs of obese motherhood are concomitantly enormous. Where a regular hospital birth might be $13,000, the births of some obese women will wind up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. And who do you suppose picks up the tab? Obesity is most often a plague of the lower classes, of course, who lack the education to take better care of themselves.
What these situations all have in common is that the perpetrators are treated as victims, and society pays for the errors of their ways.
Americans are a noble people who are more than willing to give a leg up to people who want to earn their own way. But they have a right to resist spending money on those who are incurring self-inflicted expense. As one wag said, "We don’t want to be taken for, or by, fools."
©2010 SetonnoteS
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