GOP: The Pennywise Party
February 11, 2023
One thing the Republicans have done very well is to convince a huge bloc of the population that cruelty is cost-effective—that cruel policies are always the most financially responsible ones. But are they, really? At best, cruelty often turns out to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
We’ve all heard the famous saying, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Imagine a fishing village where there are 10 poor, unemployed people who rely on public charity. Because the villagers aren’t (yet) so cruel that they want their homeless neighbors to starve to death on their quaint cobblestone streets, they allot approximately $1,000 per person per year from the village coffers to provide the poor with fish to sustain them, roughly $20 per week per person. Democrats on the island might suggest a solution to invest in $500 in fishing equipment and fishing lessons per person so the poor can be weaned from the fish handouts, become self-reliant, and eventually begin to pay into the tax system, contributing to the village coffers rather than draining from them.
“bUt i PaID FoR mY fIShINg rOd!!!” The Republican villagers would protest loudly, angrily shaking a finger in the air. They would simultaneously insist without merit that the one-time $500 investment would be tantamount to giving derelicts $500 in taxpayer-funded equipment every week to pawn for drug money. The island Republicans’ “financially responsible” counter-solution would be to cut the amount of “free” fish to be distributed to the poor. Instead of $20 in fish per person per week, they would insist it should be cut down to $10 worth. To further make sure those receiving the village largesse were “worthy,” they would insist that any poor person who wanted to eat would have to first submit to a drug test. And they would insist this was the financially sound decision, even though the town would need to spend an additional $50K per year hiring someone to oversee and implement a drug testing program.
The Republican plan might be successful in one way—maybe two of the ten who had received village charity could turn elsewhere. Maybe one could go back to a family that had disowned them. Maybe one could go back to an abusive partner. And maybe another would feel so desperate and hopeless that they would commit suicide.
The remaining seven who had no other alternative would then be hungry all the time, without hope, and with nothing to lose. It’s inevitable that many of these would turn to crime, which would mean that the working villagers would lose property/money to theft. They would be forced to invest more of their own money in security systems. Naturally they would then want to expand the police force to protect them from these desperate, hungry people, and the police budget would be increased by at least $100K per year. And then the budget for prisons would need to increase by $500K per year.
So now, instead of roughly $5,000 of village taxes going to buy fishing rods (money that would eventually be paid back into the system) under the Democrats’ plan, the village under the Republican plan would need to raise about $650K per year to test and police and imprison people who could otherwise potentially thrive. Okay, even assuming that the Democrats’ plan would actually cost more than $5,000—maybe four of the ten villagers have physical, mental, or substance problems that always kept them from keeping jobs, and therefore need more help than fishing equipment and training, it’s still unlikely that the tally would be anywhere near the amount required by keeping people hungry and hopeless.
And it’s true that many of those Republican villagers adamantly against Democratic “frivolous spending” in this regard (“bUt i PaID FoR mY fIShINg rOd!!!” ) may very well have worked and sacrificed to achieve their fishing success. They may feel less fortunate than their wealthier friends and peers who received state-of-the-art fishing gear for birthdays and other milestones. They may have worked extra jobs, skipped important events, wore old hand-me-down clothing in order to set themselves up for future success. Because they made these sacrifices, they’re incapable of understanding that they’re still more fortunate than others. They can’t grasp that other people who also worked and sacrificed and wore old hand-me-downs may not have had the luxury to save for long-term success—they may have worked to put food on the table, or they may have been unable to work because they had to take care of a sick family member full-time. Or perhaps they were ill themselves.
I once heard Republican ideology described as being fueled by outrage at the thought of someone they consider an inferior being treated as an equal. I don’t think that’s exactly fair, but I would revise the definition to say that a Republican is constantly fueled by the outrage that someone they consider unworthy might be catching a break.
But what the Republican villagers are right? What if, by their definition, some of the 10 potential fishing rod recipients weren’t technically “worthy?” What if two had plenty of opportunities when they were young, but (god forbid!) were dreamers who sought another lifestyle but were unsuccessful? And what if one was in fact the cartoonishly entitled and undeserving person the Republicans imagine—someone who squandered every advantage, living a life of hedonism and self-indulgence and then feeling “entitled” to village taxpayer largesse? Even then, is it financially responsible for the village to spend $650K a year to punish this one person who may or may not even be real?
Of course the fishing village is a hypothetical example, but there’s really no reason to believe that cruelty as a policy is cost-effective in real life. Blue states typically have stronger safety nets than red states. Residents of blue states may pay higher taxes, but overall they’re still better off than most of their red-state peers. The same goes for liberal countries across the globe. Those with stronger safety nets tend to be ranked the happiest countries, places with the best quality of life, etc.
Correlation is not causation, so it’s unclear if stronger safety nets and investment in people directly lead to overall prosperity. Perhaps other historical, geographical, and industrial factors also play a big role. But the success of blue states and progressive nations certainly proves that the Republicans’ premise is false—strong safety nets do NOT lead to poverty and financial ruin. And yet Republicans are still successful in conveying this narrative.
Some real-world examples include universal day care. Although many forced-birth advocates truly believe that they are “sAvINg bABbiEs,” any social media comment thread on the topic quickly reveals the visceral toxic misogyny that fuels the forced-birth movement. Liberals often suggest reducing abortions by providing universal day care so that those who want to be mothers don’t have to be plunged into decades of financial destitution. Misogynists immediately erupt with comments along the lines of, “I sHouLDn’T HaVE tO pAy FoR tHaT sLUt’S BabY!!! tHe wHoRE sHOuLD’vE kEPt hER LeGS cLOseD!!!” I imagine these judgmental haters watching Les Miserables, cheering on the death of Fantine, believing she got the fate she deserved.
Republicans seem to think it’s more financially responsible to force mothers onto welfare/food stamps than give them affordable day care options so they can keep working and paying taxes while advancing in their careers and becoming more successful and self-reliant. Even if not all people with unplanned pregnancies would need to turn to government assistance programs, the financial toll is still high. If a person who can’t work and care for a baby needs to rely on parents for financial support, then that keeps the parents from being able to save for retirement and take care of themselves, which means that they might need more assistance when they’re elderly. And the reality is, most wealthy countries aside from the U.S. offer some kind of affordable child care. Those countries are still financially solvent, even though they use tax dollars to invest in their citizens. Possibly because they invest in their citizens.
Healthcare is another example. Since hospitals can’t just let people die (fortunately, we’re not THAT cruel yet), those of us who pay for private insurance end up being charged more to offset hospitals having to write off charges for those who truly can’t pay. And it costs more to pick up the tab for people who have heart attacks, strokes, ketoacidosis, etc., than it would cost for blood pressure medication and insulin to keep people out of the hospital in the first place.
The border is another example. It’s undeniably a complex situation. People in Latin American countries would probably prefer to stay in their own homelands if the countries were safe and they had access to jobs and productivity. Some kind of targeted investment in the region to encourage prosperity could help curb the influx of asylum-seekers trying to cross the border. But Republicans would morally oppose any payment to another country as not being “America first!” Republicans insist on maintaining a world in which more desperate people attempt to come to the U.S. illegally, which means that they’ll eventually discover ways around the border wall…perhaps, I don’t know…an invention called a ladder. And then, instead of deciding to make targeted investments in central American countries, Republicans will insist on spending ten times as much to dig a moat outside the wall from coast to coast, which they can fill with alligators, snakes, or maybe sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. As if that’s financially responsible. Instead of stopping the influx of migrants by investing in the safety and prosperity of our country’s neighbors to the south, Republicans would happily use tax dollars to pay twice that amount to erect a giant monument to bigotry on the Southern border in the hopes that the corpses of desperate brown people will start to pile up on the other side. After a certain point, they can’t claim financial responsibility is still the motive.
In addition to lowering the quality of life, cruel policies cost us financially. Nearly every wealthy nation around the world invests in their citizens and provides meaningful social safety nets, and yet those countries still remain financially viable. Republicans may bask in schadenfreude when they punish “undeserving” citizens, ostensibly out of a sense of financial pragmatism, but the policies are obviously short-sighted and costly in the long term—the definition of pound-foolish.
