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There were two top level comments yesterday that I didn't get a chance to respond to before they got buried. Fortunately, they dovetail nicely with one another, enough for me to create a new top-level explaining my take on things. The first of these asked what a conservative was, and while I don't really have a horse in that race I did come across Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles. In many ways, Kirk is a relic, as it seems unlikely that he'd fit in with what calls itself conservatism today. But look at the first principle:
Now, I'll say as a preliminary matter that Kirk and other right-wing intellectuals suffer from the same problem as left-wing intellectuals in that they tend to speak in a kind of psychobabble that on the left results in Academicese and on the right in Biblical allusions and references to other people who have been dead for 200 years, and with both one predisposed to agree with the arguments finds himself nodding along without realizing that there isn't much there to even agree with. That being said, this principle illustrates conservative thought better than anything else I've read. As a liberal, I disagree with it as a matter of principle, and I could make a lot of normal, rational arguments about why it's wrong, but I don't find that very interesting. What I find much more interesting are the weird ways in which belief in this principle manifests itself among conservatives, and how these manifestations have convinced me that it's wrong more than references to Seneca or Thomas Aquinas ever could. And to see those manifestations, you need look no further than the discussion on food stamps that followed.
It's apparent to most that this board leans somewhat to the right, and I noticed several themes among what was said. I'm not going to call anyone out by name, but I will quote where appropriate. The most common one, both here and in popular discussion, is the desire to prohibit purchases of certain items, which some states have already begun doing. As a said in an earlier post on the topic, these items generally fall into three categories:
You can name certain staple items that nobody finds objectionable, like ground beef, chicken breasts, eggs, milk, etc. But then you get to the edge cases. Everyone agrees that grains are a staple of the diet. But what counts as a grain? Consider the following:
Someone in line behind a woman whose shopping cart contained a bag of rice, a box of spaghetti, Oreos, Ritz crackers, Chex, Nutri-Grain bars, Knorr alfredo noodles, pancake mix, Mrs. T's pierogis, and bakery Italian and was paying for it with food stamps nobody would probably bat an eye. But the person whom I originally compiled this list in response to insisted that everything but the first two should be excluded. A number of people below commented that food stamp recipients should be given no more than a basic subsistence diet.
Now, I don't have a problem with prohibiting pop and candy as some states have begun doing, at least not in and of themselves. The concern I have is that if I get 50 people who believe in some version of the above and ask them to make a call on a bunch of selected items, I'm not going to get any consistency out of their answers. There's no line everyone agrees on. The obvious response is "Well, nobody's going to agree on everything, but you have to draw the line somewhere." Well, we did draw the line somewhere, 60 years ago: No prepared foods, no alcohol, no tobacco. Everything else that's a food product is fair game.
Some people proposed away that would seem to skirt the problem by suggesting that the government provide food directly, "like they used to do", or focus on core items, like WIC. First, the government didn't used to operate the Food Stamp program like that. What they probably have in mind is government programs where agricultural surplus products were processed into shelf-stable products like powdered eggs and distributed to low-income people. While there are no longer dedicated pick-up locations, this program never went away, the food is just distributed through food banks and programs like Meals on Wheels. WIC is a different animal entirely in that participants are limited to purchasing specific items each month. But it's not a general food program, as it only deals with a few limited categories. Excepting things like fruits and vegetables which are usually sold generically, program guidelines limit eligible items down to specific brands. The program was developed to address specific nutritional needs of pregnant women and young children, and was never intended as a general food program. It doesn't scale as such.
I will briefly touch on the even more ridiculous idea that the government should just provide Hello Fresh or MREs, if only because it leads nicely into my next point. These items cost around $10/meal. Current guidelines for a single person max out around $10/day. I don't know what advantage these have that's strong enough to warrant tripling the program cost, an interesting supposition considering that many seemed to think that the $300/month that's budgeted for an adult is entirely too much. Now, I don't want to comment on this based on personal experience because my own food consumption is not that of a poor person looking to stretch his dollar; I spend a lot more than that on food, but since I'm not on assistance I assume I'm allowed. But keep in mind that the government doesn't set these amounts arbitrarily. If you want to know what goes into it, feel free to take a gander at the USDA publication Thrifty Food Plan 2021, and you'll get an excruciatingly detailed look at how they determine these things based on sample menus, nutritional requirements, and current prices, down to details like how a 12–13 year-old male's consumption of seeds, nuts, and soy products should total 92c/week following an economical budget.
The final broad theme had less to do with the program itself as the people who used it. Complaining about drug addicts using it. Being disgusted by fat people using it. Complaining about 25-year-old women using it. Saying it's clearly intended for people laid off from the mill. I bring this up last because it really goes to the heart of conservatism and the first principle. The idea underlying all of these objections is one of deserving. Certain poor people don't deserve access to government food assistance. Those who do don't deserve to derive any pleasure from eating beyond not starving. Cake and Pepperidge Farm brand bread products are luxuries you have to earn. Underlying all of this, of course, is a sense of moralism; alcoholism and obesity are moral failings and until you overcome them you're not deserving of assistance. Work is virtuous in and of itself so unless you're working you don't deserve any luxuries. Even the disabled don't get a pass anymore because we all know that they could probably work if they wanted to and they're just faking it to get their free Dr. Pepper and avoid work, which we all know they'd do if they were virtuous. Instead they're just moochers trying to ride off of the system. If any of us had any sense we'd do the same, except we're all too virtuous to ever dream of doing such a thing.
It's this last point that really sums it all up, the idea that the system is there to be gamed, largely is gamed, that there exists an advantage in trying to game it, and the self-congratulation that comes along with not gaming it. To make a seasonal reference, it's as if we are Christ tempted in the desert. Except anyone with half a brain knows that nobody on food stamps is getting any advantage from the system. For a single individual, the income limit is about $2600/month. Would you want to live on that in exchange for a benefit that maxes out at $300/month? And other dubious benefits, like reduced rent on a small apartment in a questionable area? And noticed I said maximum benefit; if you make anywhere near the limit you are only getting a fraction of that. I don't know how much but even if you're getting the whole thing it doesn't seem like a great deal. "But if I weren't working, I'd get the whole thing, and it might be worth it being poor if I didn't have to go to work." No, it wouldn't. You don't have to work, and unless your hobbies are watching daytime broadcast television or hanging around outside a Co-Go's, I believe you'd find yourself bored with the welfare lifestyle rather quickly.
Conservatives know this deep down, but they don't want to admit it because it conflicts with the First Principle. If there is an absolute, unchanging moral framework, then we can judge people based upon it. And to compound things even further, they are self-arbiters of this framework. They know what it is inherently, and if anyone tells them otherwise, they're just liberals trying to infect the culture. It makes about as much sense as someone confidently saying that frozen burritos are a luxury item that should only be available to the deserving. Because when it comes to any moral obligation on the part of ourselves, there is silence. No conservative criticizes food stamps on the one hand and speaks of an obligation to help the poor on the other. For all the Biblical allusions, I can't find the part where charity has to be earned through moral virtue. The moralism seems to be confused, solipsistic, incoherent. For his part, Russell Kirk was at least a generous man who was known to help strangers in ways that few of us ever will. But I'm not sure that he was really a conservative.
As I understand it, the Conservative position is something like that there are still jobs that kind of suck. Electricians have been going out in 50mph winds, working on the power poles lately. There are people repairing roofs in Phoenix in the summer. There are people collecting garbage on single lane dirt driveways, where they have to back all the way down the driveway to get to the garbage bins. There are people working in the South Dakota oil fields, and on Alaskan fishing boats. They have to both get paid quite a lot, and also get negative blowback from not working. There's a whole essential layer of work like that. I knew a man who was a sewage diver, and was married with kids.
A big part of the illegal immigration "jobs Americans won't do" narrative is about how high the floor for labor is, due to forbidding low labor and poor person lifestyles, while also providing more benefits.
Of course, I say this, but don't necessarily want to do those jobs as currently constituted (and couldn't physically do most of them), and am strongly in favor of further automation to make them less difficult.
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