Learning To Fish | The Myth About Welfare Dependency

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life." — Lao Tzu

This was the response that one commentator left on Facebook, under a politically charged photo of "Conservative Jesus", who in the world of Internet humor, represents the hypocrisy of conservative ideals and actions. The original poster's message was simple:

If conservatives observe and laud the indiscriminate giving of Jesus, why are they so quick to obstruct welfare that seeks to help others?

It all comes down to that favorite Christian jingle:

WWJD — What Would Jesus Do?

On the humor side of it, one might extract a barrel or two of laughs from the sobering irony of a Conservative Jesus who, in the presence of thousands who were starving, decided that mitigating the risk of welfare dependency was a far more noble cause than feeding the hungry. And so, though Jesus wanted badly to feed those in need, and despite his power to do so, his anxiety about a future population that might expect food every time they starved was too great.

Jesus had to do the responsible thing here folks: he had to make sure that the people's suffering meant something, and that those who would follow in his footsteps would come to know the irrefutable logic of letting people starve for fear that they may someday ask for food again.

So, getting back to the introductory quote:

Is teaching a man to fish better than giving him a fish?

Well, actually the answer is that both are probably good ideas—because a man dead from starvation can't learn to fish very well. It just doesn't work that way.

The important thing I'd like you to notice is the lack of context provided by such a quote. It's a nice attempt to justify the whole "giving is bad" viewpoint, but it quickly losses traction when examined properly. Having a grain of truth doesn't mean you've got the whole beach, and so, I thoughtfully responded to this person's logic with a more updated line of truth which more accurately reflects the context of modern political/economic atmospheres:

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, encouraging him to believe in himself, to believe that he is not worthless, that he is worth caring for and that the world is a place worth living in. 

Teach a man to fish so that you may take endlessly from his bounty, behind his back and throughout his entire lifetime, and you teach him that his efforts are meaningless, that he is worthless, and that the world is a unjust and evil place from which there is no escape except into helplessness." 

— Me

The myth concerning a population's dependency on welfare is based on two assumptions. 

The first assumption is that: 

the giving itself creates dependancy. 

This is what conservatives WANT you to believe, that if we just stopped the "handouts", people would learn to fend for themselves. The reality is much graver, as it turns out, human beings aren't very motivated by desperate circumstances and the hopeless promise of nothing. You can't push people near death, give them nothing to hope for, and then expect them to pull themselves up from the depths.

In psychology, learned helplessness is the really learned hopelessness. When a dog receives an electric shock as punishment for any action he takes, good or bad, he learns to lay down and just give up. People need to be continually supported by a system that ALLOWS them a reasonable chance to advance, and that advancement should be clear and reinforced.

The other assumption that goes along with the generated fear of a "welfare dependency" state is:

The idea that having to give means that others can't help themselves, or that they will never help themselves. 

I work with people on or below the poverty line every day of my life. I'm talking about people on welfare, food stamps, and many other government assistance programs.

Let me tell you something dead serious. 

I've sat down with these people, and in the many years I've been a social worker I can tell you that not one of those people have ever expressed feelings of content for collecting government benefits. They find it degrading, embarrassing, and many fantasize about not only work, but being a "whole person", a "productive citizen in society". Most of them cite (quite accurately) the cut in social program funding that used to make their lives easier; they cite rising food costs, education costs, medical costs, and pay cuts.

Look, I'm all for teaching people how to do for themselves—that's a given. But if we're going to live by a philosophy that encourages people to be able to fish for themselves, society also has to be willing to provide supportive services in conjunction with welfare monies; society has to ensure that its lessons of fishing don't end up worthless in a town without fishing rods or bountiful rivers. A man who knows how to fish will certainly starve if the rod he needs costs more than he could ever afford.

This is the crucial detail overlooked by those who would cut welfare and social program spending because they believe welfare doesn't work. It's a self perpetuating cycle of destroying those who are less fortunate:  

Give welfare monies but cut spending on complimentary supportive programs that make welfare gains effective———————————————>

—————————>Poverty and Unemployment grow due to lack of supportive programs——————————>

—————————>Conclude that welfare doesn't work—————————————>

—————————>Cut Welfare monies and make further cuts to complimentary supportive programs——————————————>

—————————>Poverty and Unemployment grow due to cuts—————————>

—————————>Conclude that welfare doesn't work—————————————>

and so on….

And so we see that such philosophies that mean to discredit welfare, while containing a grain of insight, were also produced in a time where the fish, the river, the rod, and the knowledge weren't owned by anyone.

The problem concerning the connection between welfare and dependency has nothing to do with welfare in general. Welfare is good. Welfare helps those who can't help themselves. The dependency on welfare we see today is not a product of "too much entitlement", but rather, it's indicative of the lack of support needed to make welfare effective in the first place.

The economic and political systems that surround welfare do not allow for welfare to be reasonably effective. What has emerged, essentially, is a "no-win" battle for those at the bottom. How can we expect those requiring government assistance to reach for higher education when the average middle class family can barely afford it? What results can we expect from urging families to keep kids in school when public schools no longer have the resources to educate those children properly? There is no solution to such equations but the very dependency that conservatives fear.

When you give people enough to eat, but no other resources to better themselves, THAT creates dependency. 

When people feel that poverty is their only choice, that no other REASONABLE alternative exists, THAT creates dependancy. 

And so, we can see that welfare doesn't function very well when it's not supported with other services and options that allow people to maximize the advantages of government support.

The privatization of many social and civil services in tandem with welfare handouts is a conflict of interest. So when people talk about the lack of results of welfare, they need to ask more questions about the environment in which that welfare exists.

If the private services and opportunities surrounding those who require welfare are not available to them, how can we expect anything more of them? 

How can we expect that $300 a month plus food stamps are going to be enough to help encourage someone to get a higher education, when the average tuition costs $15,000 a semester? 

The Bottom Line

The true efficacy of welfare is not the exclusive product of welfare services themselves, but rather the quality of the nurturing environment in which it exists. You can't give people money for food and housing—and then defund their educational opportunities, decrease their job opportunities, decrease their wages, and health benefits—and expect them to get somewhere. Welfare services and programs must exist in conjunction with other favorable political/economic conditions that encourage the maximum efficacy of such monetary assistance.

Where We Go To Die

I went to visit a patient of mine at a rehabilitation/nursing home where she had been ordered to spend the remainder of her post surgery recovery. 

From the street it was, as most had hoped, the very show behind the curtain we all sign up for: a romance of acceptance, of our waning power and ability, the slow drowning of skin and memories in a whirlpool of time, and the unique heroism of that last stand against our own demise. Dressed up well enough, the immaculate orange brick exterior gave no hint at the tragedies deep within its walls. And for that suffering which those, unseen, bore to end, there was an uneasy air about the streets where it lay, and the injustice stuck to your feet.

There was no enthusiasm in my step for walking through a door so well known to stop the steps of others, the lame and whispered third act of decline. I didn't care for it—and no one else did either. And so, before facing my own future, I stalled, performing a deed I had imagined might help to buy the favor of that force which controls the mortality of humankind: I held the front door, pressing my bodyweight hard against the glass and metal frame to allow an elderly woman and her wheelchair-bound husband through.

"Thank you" she called out awkwardly with her back towards me. Her head cocked from side to side, measuring the space with weary eyes that glistened as she passed over the threshold. Her husband sat oblivious to our efforts, gazing at the space that drew away from him as he exited the entrance tube.

After identifying myself, the receptionist pointed to a cramped foyer behind me where a gathering of riders waited for the elevator. They were employees of the facility. One of them, an older lady, shouted to a short filipino man leaning against the wall behind me, "Hey, you, what's up?" The two began to speak in Tagalog, with the man interjecting with perfect English, "Really? Why?"

The light above the elevator doors seemed to jump randomly between floors, so that it could never be learned when you might enter one. Strangled by impatience I walked up to the receptionist window, who was now engaged in an important phone call about how willing she was to smack her cousin for "actin' a fool". 

"Are there stairs? I'm young and pretty athletic."

She pointed me to the left and down the hall without looking up.

The stairwell doors on the fourth floor led me into a short hallway flooded with white light that fell from a low hung ceiling. The corridor's path was crowded with the confusion of wheelchairs parked against its walls and floating in between. Towards the middle of its length sat a string of elderly women who at first glance appeared to be congregating, but after drawing nearer, revealed themselves to be islands of perfect isolation.

Where my client's name appeared in red, I entered a dark room with the shades drawn. Nearest to the door lay a small old woman, who I had failed to identify. The shape and size of her body crowded so far to the edge of the mattress that she gave the impression of being nothing more than a lone pillow ornament. Her cheeks pulled the skin away from her nose to form a smile that made her eyes disappear behind years of speechless wrinkles. She stirred in my direction, a recognition of what changes in the air and lighting my presence had brought. For a moment it seemed as though she might speak, but the words never came. The tone in her throat stayed there, never evolving into an expression of herself, of her story, and a part of me became aware of regretting that I never knew her.

There was a call from inside the mouth of the open bathroom just over my right shoulder. It was my client. In the hardship of her recovery she had lost the luxury of her pride, and in her need for aid, had surrendered the former dignity of her youthful vanity. It was something you could hear in her voice, a faint hint of disgust lay just inside the ringing of her desperate plea for a nurse—a nurse so alarmingly absent. By every measure she was exposed and vulnerable and I didn't want to see that; I wanted nothing to do with it. This was not the way I knew her.

Just as I had turned toward the door for help, a brisk wind swept by me and I felt the phantom presence of some unknown person in the room. It was the nursing aid, having passed just behind me, was now calling to my client in an unnecessarily assertive voice.

"Is she in there?" It was a question born out of pure anxiety for the situation.

"Yes, she's using the bathroom," she answered blankly. Her tone reflected the suspicion that I was an idiot for having asked.

A cry echoed from the bathroom walls.

"Oh God, don't come in here," she pleaded, and I assured her that I had no intentions of doing so.

"I'll just wait in the hall until she's finished," I said in the direction of the nurse's aid. Before leaving she made sure to remind me of her job description and how dedicated she was to it.

"I don't know where her nurse is, but I really don't do this. I think she went downstairs but she didn't come back."

She followed me as I left the room and called out, in Tagalog, to a woman that seemed to be in charge at the large desk where the hall opened up. The woman in charge answered her in English, and then switch back to her native language to address a clean cut man sitting beside her. The tone and inflection in her syllables, though foreign to me, echoed the universal message of frustration as she picked up a receiver in a hurry. She called for the nurse who had gone missing using perfect English, slammed the phone down, and switched back to Tagalog.

My goal was to remain largely inconspicuous as I crept closer to the main desk, trying to find a spot on the wall that would make me as invisible as my client's nurse.

A cute old woman scooted by me in her wheelchair, pulling herself along a rail that jutted harshly from the wall. Her eyes remained a mystery under the shade of large sunglasses that swallowed her entire face as she smiled.

"I like your sunglasses," I remarked.

"Why thank you, I like yours too," she said. 

Her eyebrows had popped just above the frame of her shades, and her mood shot up to greet them. There was a delight in her voice, the tune of the welcomed upset of believing I hadn't noticed her.

I had forgotten I was even wearing my $5 shades and withdrew them from my face.

"Thanks. We look cool don't we?"

"Oh yes." Her voice dropped with conviction.

Leaning against a wall across from the nurse's station, I watched the floor work itself around the residents scattered on the sidelines. An elderly man sat with a deck of cards strewn across a tray for a game he played alone and barely at all. The man next to him sat staring, his eyes fixated on some faint memory that no one else could sense.

A loud and boisterous black man waltzed down the hall in a bright orange t-shirt and jeans, swinging a set of keys around his index finger. It was his habit that he should be at exactly half the hallway's length before attempting to communicate with someone by shouting. He darted in and out of rooms talking about  the function of the telephones, the tail end of every conversation being completed as he walked out, his back to the receiver of his messages. He called out to another man at the other end of the hall in Haitian French, then switched back to broken English as he strolled farther away and into another room.

Across the way I caught sight of a sign that read, "Dayroo", and wondered for a moment if the missing "m" ever made a difference.

I was on the verge of running out the door when there came a cry to the left of me. Down the length of the hall sat an elderly woman in tears. She slumped endlessly into the back of her wheelchair where the damp and depressive green color of her t-shirt hung too low on her neck. The lady with sunglasses pulled up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to decipher a message between sobs.

"They're gonna move me…" she said through tears. Her face contorted and her head fell deep into her chest. "I want to stay here."

Two nurse aids buzzed in and out of the door next to the old women, weaving around their chairs and speaking in Tagalog.

The woman in shades called out past me and towards the main desk, "Can somebody help her?" 

The wailing grew louder, its echo warping down the length of walls and a ceiling that seemed all too eager to collapse inward, on all of us. As her sobs filled the air, mixing with the languages of caretakers unmoved, I began to feel the isolation grip at my throat. And all at once, a phantom heaviness pulled at my spirit, forcing me down and inward—into a place where no one could hear me. And no one did; no one even looked up.

There's a depressing sort of nonsense about the coporatizing of human affairs and the complicating of death; the process misses the point. One man said something that struck a chord with my own internal fears when he said,

"If I ever get like that, I'll just rock myself down a flight of stairs."

That man is a comedian, and although the audience laughed, I like to imagine that most of them had committed to that very plan. I know I did.