Social Programs Are Not Socialism

Creating More Taxpayers

Right about now, the conservative noise machine is cranking up with the "Oh Ye Dirty Socialists" song. They look at plans to make health care available to the masses, and the apoplexies start. They complain that liberals want to give people services they do not pay for. They call such programs "gimmes for people who do not contribute." They never stop to realize that we pay for them anyway.

Below a certain income level, it is impossible to contribute. A single parent whose job skills put them in a minimum-wage job is in a pickle. A woman who cannot afford daycare cannot work. A person cannot afford daycare if it costs as much as he or she makes. In New York State, according to National Association of child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, a woman making minimum wage of $6.55 an hour ($13,100 annually) cannot afford the average cost of daycare for an infant, which is $13,437 annually. This same person would spend an average of $10,500 for rent. What is such a person supposed to "contribute"? More to the point, how is this person supposed to live? The basics have already consumed almost twice as much as he or she can make working full time.

There are ways to cut corners to make the money go further, but a single parent at a minimum-wage job is between a rock and a hard place. Health insurance? Fuhgeddaboudit. These folks take their sick kids to the emergency room, then they get a bill, which goes with the other bills they cannot pay. Then the "contributing" members of society pick up the tab by paying $75 dollars for an aspirin during a hospital stay. It seems like a high price to keep from giving someone access to a regular doctor because they cannot pay the cost of insurance.