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Feb. 13th, 2012 11:59 amI should be studying for my upcoming history exam. But I'm feeling frustrated enough that it's overcoming my usual anxiety about school. I want to say that I'm frustrated about politics today. But it's not politics exactly. I don't know what the term is. Maybe there are several. It feels like lack of empathy. Lack of understanding maybe. There are a few things that are upsetting me, but the one I'm singling out is the demands for people receiving financial assistance from the government to pass drug screening to receive those benefits.
One rationale is to ensure that public money is not being spent inappropriately. But mandatory drug testing fails at that. It enforces this stewardship on one category of spending (illegal drugs) and ignores other categories of recreational spending entirely. Why is it okay for someone to use public money to buy cigarettes, but not marijuana? Arguments that no leisure spending at all should be acceptable are misguided. People are not machines and should not be treated as such. Without going so far as to provide a whitelist of things that are ok to buy using welfare funds and scrutinizing their every purchase, it's not possible to end all non-essential spending. Nor should it be. Providing people with not a shred more than bare survival minimums is inhuman.
What are the bare minimums anyway? Prison conditions? Concentration camp conditions? Bread and water, or fresh fruits and vegetables? What's the bare minimum in terms of interviewing clothes you're allowed to purchase as you look for work? Do expenditures for Christmas presents for your kids make the cut? I don't think these questions can be answered. I think the best way to manage these issues is something like we have now; a system that provides a set amount of benefits that recipients are expected to make reasonable choices about the use of.
I feel like there's this conception of moral superiority by those who have a solid job-based income over those who do not and are receiving benefits from a social welfare program. A feeling that we should have the right to tell them what they can and cannot do, as though their condition is an indicator that they lack ability to make good decisions and need to be nannied and hounded to make sure they don't do something naughty. But they're just people like everyone else who should get to make their own choices. The great majority of people buy soda, coffee, marijuana, cigarettes, alcohol, or any number of other unnecessary items. They get to make that choice on their own as individuals. Everyone should have that right. Arguing from a position of keeping public aid money from going to non-essentials either needs to include illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and more, or it needs to exclude all of them.
Arguing from a position of legality versus illegality is a little bit more valid. To me, the distinction is fairly arbitrary and not rationally defensible. It's unreasonable for tobacco and alcohol to be legal, and pot to not be. And it's still easy to fall victim here to some perceived moral superiority, looking over aid recipients' shoulders to see that they aren't doing anything wrong. My argument against drug testing strictly in terms of preventing illegal activity is that it holds those subject to it to a higher level of scrutiny than the general public. I don't see any justification for that, beyond the societally entrenched view of unemployed and poor people lacking moral fiber and having the power to exercise that kind of control.
There's no justification financially either. In cases where it's been done, the amount of money withheld from people who choose to use illegal drugs has been less than that paid to institute the screening programs. Drug screening food aid recipients is a money loser.
But there are tons of people posting these appeals to stop all these immoral poor from stealing public money to spend on getting high. "They" aren't doing it any more than "we" are, and people need to get off their moral high horses and realize that they're actually just running around with a stick between their legs, if not up their collective asses.
One rationale is to ensure that public money is not being spent inappropriately. But mandatory drug testing fails at that. It enforces this stewardship on one category of spending (illegal drugs) and ignores other categories of recreational spending entirely. Why is it okay for someone to use public money to buy cigarettes, but not marijuana? Arguments that no leisure spending at all should be acceptable are misguided. People are not machines and should not be treated as such. Without going so far as to provide a whitelist of things that are ok to buy using welfare funds and scrutinizing their every purchase, it's not possible to end all non-essential spending. Nor should it be. Providing people with not a shred more than bare survival minimums is inhuman.
What are the bare minimums anyway? Prison conditions? Concentration camp conditions? Bread and water, or fresh fruits and vegetables? What's the bare minimum in terms of interviewing clothes you're allowed to purchase as you look for work? Do expenditures for Christmas presents for your kids make the cut? I don't think these questions can be answered. I think the best way to manage these issues is something like we have now; a system that provides a set amount of benefits that recipients are expected to make reasonable choices about the use of.
I feel like there's this conception of moral superiority by those who have a solid job-based income over those who do not and are receiving benefits from a social welfare program. A feeling that we should have the right to tell them what they can and cannot do, as though their condition is an indicator that they lack ability to make good decisions and need to be nannied and hounded to make sure they don't do something naughty. But they're just people like everyone else who should get to make their own choices. The great majority of people buy soda, coffee, marijuana, cigarettes, alcohol, or any number of other unnecessary items. They get to make that choice on their own as individuals. Everyone should have that right. Arguing from a position of keeping public aid money from going to non-essentials either needs to include illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and more, or it needs to exclude all of them.
Arguing from a position of legality versus illegality is a little bit more valid. To me, the distinction is fairly arbitrary and not rationally defensible. It's unreasonable for tobacco and alcohol to be legal, and pot to not be. And it's still easy to fall victim here to some perceived moral superiority, looking over aid recipients' shoulders to see that they aren't doing anything wrong. My argument against drug testing strictly in terms of preventing illegal activity is that it holds those subject to it to a higher level of scrutiny than the general public. I don't see any justification for that, beyond the societally entrenched view of unemployed and poor people lacking moral fiber and having the power to exercise that kind of control.
There's no justification financially either. In cases where it's been done, the amount of money withheld from people who choose to use illegal drugs has been less than that paid to institute the screening programs. Drug screening food aid recipients is a money loser.
But there are tons of people posting these appeals to stop all these immoral poor from stealing public money to spend on getting high. "They" aren't doing it any more than "we" are, and people need to get off their moral high horses and realize that they're actually just running around with a stick between their legs, if not up their collective asses.
