The Mother of Dependence

When asked about his prolific inventiveness, Ben Franklin famously replied, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  He had invented the library ladder to reach books on the upper shelves of his own library, bifocals to address his own eye problems, the Franklin stove to more easily keep warm in winter.  As it so happens, necessity is the mother of far more than invention.  For one thing, it creates dependence.

Local leaders in Washington, D.C., have recently issued a fascinating “Food Stamp Challenge” to people to empty their refrigerators, and then provide groceries for a week for their family for $30, the typical income for those on the food stamp program.   It is similar in its aim to exercises like having to get around in a wheel chair for two days, which sensitizes the one doing it to the problems faced by those with disabilities.  It dispels myths about the easy life of the poor.  Those few who have tried it state that it has changed their entire understanding of why people are dependent on food stamps.  Said one, "I think it sends a very strong message to put us past this notion that people aspire or desire to get handouts as though one wants to be in that situation.”  A dreary, bare-bones diet of mainly starchy, canned foods – no fresh produce, no quality meats, minimal or no desserts, etc. – is all that is possible.  Food stamps enable at least a slightly less dreary way to enable the survival of your family.  And survival is what it’s all about, not preference.

I know.  When I was growing up, my mother’s income from her sweat shop job was $25 per week to support a family of four at home. That was back in the 1940’s with ground meat at 25 cents per pound, but that $25 also had to cover rent and utilities and clothes. And as a teen, I was the one who did the grocery shopping and paid the utility bills.  You walk to grocery stores all over town to find the cheapest prices, develop a necessary taste for canned beef, learn to enjoy left-over mashed potatoes as fried potato patties at the next meal, and think of swiss steak as a special treat.  Even fresh tomatoes from farming relatives in the summer get canned to help carry you through the winter.  As a kid, I dreamed of sirloin steak, but never had one until I was in college.  I was 16 when I first held my own $5 bill in my hand.  We survived fine, as have many others in similar circumstances over the years, but our life style was not based on preference.  Nor is the life style of the poor in our inner cities today.

That’s why some politicians talking of eliminating food stamps programs and similar programs for the poor because they “foster dependency” seem so tragically ridiculous.  They believe the poor have made rational choices in a rational free market, and must be “cured” of their preference for dependency. They think that the mother of dependence is laziness.  People who can say that have never gone to bed hungry.  They propose it, they say, because of the severity of the federal budget deficit.  But budgets have moral dimensions that reflect the priorities of our values, and that seems an area in which those politicians are tone deaf.  The U.S. has been continuously at war for 10 years, and this is the first time in American history that taxes on the wealthy have gone down during war.  Our founding fathers and all who followed them knew that the extraordinary expenses of wars are funded by tax increases and not by cutting aid to those in need, yet our response to “nine-eleven” was to “go shopping.”  I remember during WW2 living with rationing books and saving pennies from that $25 per week to buy “war stamps.”  Today, war deficits are funded by cuts in food stamps, Medicare, student loans and other programs for those with special needs.  We have lost our moral way.

The truth is that we are driven about by a variety of myths; they, whether containing truth or not, create the social forces that shape our government and our public policies.  Some, like the first Thanksgiving or that any child can grow up to be President unite us, while others serve only to divide.  And this myth of the poor being poor by choice because of a preference for dependency is one of the great dividers.  It is a leftover from the Protestant Reformation, when it was believed that prosperity indicated the special favor of God, labeling those who possessed it as Heaven bound. Being poor meant you were overloaded with vices, and headed down.  Its only modern purpose is to insulate those capable of helping the poor but too callous to do so from any sense of responsibility.  A “Food Stamp Challenge” might be a worthy exercise for all politicians.