God bless the entrepreneurs and risk takers — the capitalists, who let go and hurtle through space without a safety net. They dare far beyond the norm, and create from thin air the jobs and the wealth that we the working class possess. Today in Castle Rock another one hit the ground.
Meanwhile, we debate health care and financial system reform, favoring bigger government with testimony that depicts workers losing their life savings to medical bills or foreclosure. The sad stories touch a nerve and have over time transformed our concept of the safety net.
We now want a net to keep us from falling not below the safety level — where survival comes into play, where society must intervene — but to any level below where we currently are.
A friend of mine is drawing unemployment after losing her part-time job. The company collapsed it with another part-time job into one full-time position. No guarantee, but the job might have been hers, had she been willing to go full-time; she chose not to. Her husband’s income puts them in an upper bracket, yet now she’s on welfare. She can rationalize and enjoy the handout as a refund on a lifetime of excessive taxes, but it certainly can’t be considered a safety net.
Denver Post columnist Susan Greene recently wrote of a woman who wanted heavily subsidized health care — heavier than CoverColorado’s subsidies — to avoid using her savings. The unwritten assumption: since she was frugal enough to sock it away and has earmarked it for retirement, the rest of us should be required to pick up the tab for her emergencies and rainy days. Her nest egg must be guaranteed — cradled by the “safety” net—with the rest of us forced to pay for her health care (and unemployment) to keep it so.
I work for a corporation that employs hundreds of thousands and procures excellent health care for each of us. For that, they own a goodly chunk of my soul. It’s a tradeoff, without question. A number of people aren’t willing to make that tradeoff, or aren’t in the habit of making the wise daily choices that convince corporations to employ them. Their health care, consequently, will not be as good as mine.
Getting and staying married is another such choice. With the cost of losing independence of action comes greatly improved odds of financial independence. Never mind the benefits of love and emotional support and old age with a partner; we’re talking reduction in fixed cost per person, division of labor (the stuff Adam Smith was talking about), and doubling the odds of obtaining quality health insurance.
But rather than acknowledge and accept the risks of choosing to be free of corporate and marital obligations – akin to the “actions have consequences” lesson we teach our children—we string up “safety” nets to guarantee a cost-free choice of independence. Safety from marriage, safety from renting instead of owning, safety from spending our own money on our own problems.
Wealth and poverty don’t appear spontaneously from the vacuum. They are the sum of a long history of choices, mostly good ones for the former, mostly poor for the latter. We pretend away this history by taking a snapshot and calling for a fix to the picture of obvious inequity. The result is a net strung ever-higher, guaranteeing not safety but choices.
Entrepreneurs can list every one of their poor choices — and quantify the nest eggs that were liquidated as a result. They can also describe the lessons learned, and what they’re now doing differently. Here in Castle Rock the entrepreneur who landed hard knows exactly which costs brought him down, and how to slash them. He’s already lining up investors — capital, for a new beginning, and a continuation of the jobs he provides.
He has also chosen to marry, which was the right choice without one second of financial calculation, but which will nonetheless be part of his future history of success.
Allan Harris (apedroharris@yahoo.com) of Castle Rock is a finance manager and novelist.
