Paradoxes of Faith

Once again, compassion trumps cold-hearted capitalism. The New York Times ran a great article (again) about how the short-term (and yes, it still costs money) treatment of those without insurance actually saves economic resources in the long run, as the poor and uninsured wind up being healthier and consuming less resources in the long run when their bodies can actually function as they were created (or at least to the best of their ability).

Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics 1998, beautifully contends in his book Development as Freedom, that poverty isn’t inherently quantifiable in terms of sheer cash & capital, but instead is a poverty of assets, entitlements, and what he terms “capability deprivation.”

In short, ‘Poverty as Capability Deprivation’ is a look at the causes and sustaining factors of poverty with a wider aperture than the sheer $1-$2/day lens that is often used (both positively and negatively) to categorize poverty. Capability Deprivation – essentially, the lack of the ability to perform as one could/should/or was created to function, manifests itself in many forms: A person having physical or mental disabilities; Being a woman in a patriarchal society (guess who gets to eat first, go to school first, get medical care first in these societies…hint, they have Y chromosomes); and especially overlooked, being poor in a rich country. Now, there are many others, but this is the one justifying the focus of this particular article.

Being poor in a rich country is deceptive reality. On the surface, you have more than most entire families in the rest of the world. Homeless men and women in the US live like the middle class in Ethiopia, at least in terms of their raw possessions and general geographical mobility. However, the cost of living in affluent nations and areas is a strangling tournequet on the lives, pocketbooks, and health of the poor. The poor spend a disproportionate amount of their income on housing and food. They spend a disproportionate amount of their income on (not-so-)simple transportation to and from their jobs. They spend a disproportionate amount of their time and income simply trying to sustain their families in general.

Now, I say ‘disproportionate’ because, well, their spending is just that. Food doesn’t necessarily cost more for the rich – that is, unless you’re a fat, pretentious bastard who can only shop at Whole Foods in La Jolla, but then you have other issues. In general, housing doesn’t cost more for the middle class (though, again, if you’re the pretentious dude in La Jolla, we’ll talk about other things first). In fact, as much as they would love it, the freeways are not less congested and transportation is not more efficient for the upwardly mobile, either. One can only eat so much. One can only live in so many neighborhoods. There are only so many routes by which one can commute to work. And so, if you’re filthy rich, you suck it up and pay your dues (then complain about how high they are and subsequently vote Republican to lower your dues, because hey, you “earned” the right to have lesser dues, right?) and move on with your life.

Not so easy for the poor – caught between paying for shelter, food, transportation to work (often multiple workplaces), school supplies, gasoline, sales taxes (that ever so subversive tax that conservatives forget to look at when they say the poor and ‘illegals’ don’t contribute to society, but instead suck it’s economic blood. Myopic argument, but again, that’s for another post) – they try to make a living – amidst the poverty of their deprived capabilities…the Poverty of Capability Deprivation.

So, can we take one more (or one first) step towards ridding the poor of their poverty, benefiting all of tax-paying (and non-tax-paying) society, and set an example for the rest of the world to follow (except for all those beautiful Scandinavian and Latin American countries who have actually already led the way in this regard….but hey, we’re America, if we can’t be first we might as well not play, right – so at least we can pretend to lead the way and benefit some folks) – and start universalizing health care. It benefits the poor now. It benefits the nation now. It benefits our economy in the long run. So, how about it, Church? America? Red States? Blue States? Can we stop fighting about things that don’t matter (like what Nancy Pelosi will spew forth when she becomes the first woman Speaker of the House), and focus on issues that do? Namely, ensuring that again, we live out the words of Yahweh, Jesus, and Paul (in Exodus 16, Luke 4, and 2 Corinthians 9) and fight for a society in which everybody has enough and nobody lives in excess…..

Let’s start with the economics of basic healthcare.