The Job – Urine Test
I haven’t posted for some time since I’m trying to get my dissertation proposal together, but I got the following email today from family. I felt compelled to respond, and while the position is simplistic, it felt good to try writing it out, so I offer it up to you all, too. Correct me where I’m wrong and augment my claims where I’m weak!
The email:
THE JOB – URINE TEST (I sure would like to know who wrote this one! They deserve a HUGE pat on the back!)
I HAVE TO PASS A URINE TEST FOR MY JOB… SO I AGREE 100%. Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have ?no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them. Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their ASS, doing drugs, while I work . .. . Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t. Hope you all will pass it along, though…. Something has to change in this country — and soon! AND I DON’T SEE ANY CANDIDATES FOR PRES THAT WOULD HAVE THE GUMPTION TO DO ANYTHING.
The response:
Hi,
I know the email suggests deleting it if I don’t agree and circulating if I do, but I feel a short response is in order.
While the inversion is fairly clever, this little joke is horribly damaging in the way it stereotypes welfare recipients. The idea that all people on welfare don’t want to work (any less than the rest of us!) is simply wrong. That some of them resort to drugs out of despair or distraction is by all means the case. (However, I’d point out that we see this response at all levels of society. I lump the recent rise of anti-depressants into this category. They’re just more expensive than street drugs.)
Though it may be difficult to see in wealthier areas, our economy thrives on driving wages down and extracting as much work as possible out of us. And it does so by threatening our livelihoods with unemployment and starvation. Welfare and other social services are the only means we have to keep the economy from literally killing those for whom there is no work. In addition to the fact that I see people on the subway carrying job application forms on a regular basis, I remember that about a year ago some store was opening in Midtown and offering something like 100 jobs. Two or three thousand (!) people lined up to apply. I’ll bet the odds of getting a job at that place are lower than getting into Harvard. So people obviously want to work. How many jobs do you have to get turned down by before you want a stiff drink?
After a while, people lose hope and have no money, so they get pushed together into low rent neighborhoods where many people (though by no means the majority in most cases) are in similar straits. This can only make their problems worse. To the contrary of the implication of the joke, because our welfare and social services are so poor and underfunded, many people are forced into undesirable activities just to survive. Just read about the slums of Nairobi (or thousands of other places) to understand the plight of our own impoverished people in starker detail. (Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums is a good place to start.) For a healthier perspective on what social welfare can do, look at the Netherlands or Norway. Though by no means perfect, these prosperous nations take a greater percentage of taxes up front (note that there are studies that show that costs work out about the same after Americans have paid all of their private costs), but they also provide a much more stable foundation for people to live their daily lives.
“But we have all these immigrants willing to work”, you say. Indeed. Many immigrants work two even three jobs, sleeping a few hours a night, to make what a minimum wage job would pay in 40 hours. Our forefathers and mothers were enlightened enough to know that 18th century working conditions (16 hour days for perhaps enough money to pay for a roof and enough food to get you to the next day) is an inhuman life to impose on our fellow human beings. Eventually we got reduced work weeks, minimum wages, and social welfare. American citizens are entitled to these benefits and immigrants aren’t. So, since the crummy wages (low income) immigrants do get are better than they would have at home and since they have no recourse to the social generosity that actually makes us a civilized people, they work their butts off at multiple jobs, making it even harder for welfare recipients to find new work.
If the complaint is that other people are undeservedly taking our hard-earned money, then the complainer is simply uncivilized and selfish. If the complaint is that we have to work so hard and so long and see so little of it in return, then we need to push our lawmakers build a better system by hardening the cap on hours worked, raising minimum wages, enforcing these standards, and providing better social services.
I fear that our wealth and the baby boomers have made America one of the most selfish and uncivilized countries on the planet. The dire plight of welfare recipients demonstrates not how undeserving they are but how barbarous we are.
I quote: “Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t. Hope you all will pass it along, though. … Something has to change in this country — and soon! AND I DON’T SEE ANY CANDIDATES FOR PRES THAT WOULD HAVE THE GUMPTION TO DO ANYTHING.”
Best.
Nice scribbling. I’ll pass it along. Thank you cuzproduces.
It’s amazing how Republicans hate BIG government; but in BIG Business (Corporate America) feel that they have a right to your pee cup! The email was laughable at best–your rebuttal, brilliant. Thanks for the good read.
Personally, I like to beat an argument on its own terms… I would tend to spend less effort justifying the destructive habits of despair, and simply point out the “big government” costs of the proposed bureaucratic solution.
How long does it take to pee in a cup? How many people have to work in the testing facility to maintain the integrity (it’s really their pee), check people in, receive the samples, actually do the testing, handle all the paperwork….. I can’t imagine the savings from payments withheld from the percentage of current beneficiaries who abuse substances could come anywhere near close to covering the operation of the testing facilities and additional administration.
Does the person behind the email really want to pay even higher taxes just so some government functionaries can handle poor people’s pee?
Unfortunately, this is a familiar pattern.
People who claim to want government to be “run like a business” are invariably the same people who demand the most unbusiness-like inefficiencies. Take the mandate for the IRS to heavily audit the Earned Income Tax Credit; no risk management professional would ever dedicate so many resources to an area with such little potential for recovery!
Then there are the “accountability” measures to “control” costs, that instead of streamlining the processes to reduce overhead actually add more levels of approval and audit (more overhead) and add more lowest-bidder requirements, which ultimately increase costs from delays and otherwise unnecessary replacements.
It is a clever strategy – a sort of self-fulling prophecy. Except for most of these people it’s not a strategy at all. It’s just another example of their bigotry being used to distract them from their own self-interest. Just like the “tax cuts” that shift the burden of national wealth acquisition from the beneficiaries to those responsible for productive work.
I agree that defeating an argument on its own merits is a great way to go, Jay, but I don’t think you quite succeed in doing so. You’re absolutely correct IF we all agree that the number of people who are taking drugs and receiving welfare benefits is a small number. My main concern with the original email is that it implies that the author holds exactly the opposite view of the situation. The person ‘obviously’ thinks that most people on welfare are also on drugs (and thus ‘undeserving poor’) and that ‘we’ would be saving lots of money if we set up testing facilities. So we would need some sort of statistics to back up your counterargument to have an effect.
That said, my goal wasn’t simply to defeat the argument but to point out deeper systemic causes for the situations in which these people (to the extent they exist) live. I want to show that they’re not undeserving but railroaded and that therefore from the start the policy conception doesn’t address the sickness, only the symptom. If we stick to simply defeating an argument on its own terms, we wind up implicitly accepting its frame of reference, which is often where the real problem lies.
Gotta pee…
And, you know, Lori, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about big business internalizing the social management they deny big government. It really does align social administration with business objectives. Intriguing…and yet so depressing.
I think addressing an argument like this through its own logic can help clarify its weakness. By focusing attention on the (seemingly obvious) fact that even underpaid lab techs and receptionists, used equipment, and low-income neighorhood building rents would cost enough that it would require an astronomical number of recipients for the proposed solution to start breaking even, it becomes impossible to sustain the illusion that the proposal is motivated by a concern for government efficiency.
Then I think it becomes easier to discuss the other possible motivations and their implications.