Large Economic Forces Make our Safety Net Necessary

We Are All in it Together

We are all “in it” together, and we must work together to assure our security, well-being and freedom. We cannot pretend that each of us can do it alone because there are large, economic forces in our world that an individual cannot handle alone. People do not deserve to be buffeted by those forces without support. Each of us has value as a person beyond what the market will pay for our labor, and because of that value, each of us has a claim on the community’s help in time of need.

We have seen those large, economic forces operating recently in our own Fox Valley community. Just a couple of weeks ago, we saw Kimberly-Clark, our community’s largest employer, decide to cut 5500 jobs and close 10 plants. Several hundred of the 5500 jobs will be cut right here in the Fox Cities. There is no point in blaming KC as if the company were out to make its workers’ lives miserable. The company is itself responding to large forces in the world economy that even it cannot control.  Today, we saw another example. Appvion, another major Fox Cities employer, is in the process of selling itself to a group of investors in order to avoid going bankrupt.  The company had already announced that it would cut about 200 jobs in Appleton.

An Individual Cannot Handle Big Economic Forces Alone

Can we say that the workers who lose their jobs are irresponsible? Can we say that they have only themselves to blame?  Of course not. Can we say that that they should have anticipated something like this and put aside money to live on?

We know that is not realistic.  Median household income in the Fox Cities is less than $60,000, and most people do not earn enough when they work to save enough money to support themselves for very long if they become unemployed. Even if people save diligently all their lives, they are hard put to it to save enough to live on in retirement.

Safety-Net Programs Make Life Bearable

We can make life bearable only by working together, and we have created safety-net programs to help us when we need help, as almost all of us do, sooner or later.  We have created funds for unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid so that when we need help, there is money available to provide it.

Some people want to say that we should not have such programs because the value of a human being is determined by the market for his/her labor, but most of us know that is wrong. A person is more than worker. A person deserves humane treatment. A person deserves to be helped when he/she needs it, and we must all be prepared to recognize that principle. 

We Cannot Allow Our Safety-Net to Be Shredded

We cannot allow our safety net programs to be shredded merely because a few extremely wealthy people want their taxes reduced.  Today, in Madison and in Washington, there is talk of gutting the programs on which we all depend in order to pay for huge tax cuts for the very wealthy.  As Americans, we know that this is wrong, and we cannot allow it.  Our society must continue to cushion the insecurity created by large economic forces over which an individual can have no control.