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Jewish World Review /Nov. 11, 1998 /22 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759
Walter Williams
Family debasement
GOOD ECONOMISTS ALWAYS ASK whether the benefits of a social policy outweigh
its costs, and are there negative unintended consequences. Let's ask this
question about Social Security, keeping in the back of our minds the
biblical admonition, "Honor thy mother and father, as the Lord thy God
commanded."
Dr. Jennifer Roback, a research fellow at the Stanford University-based
Hoover Institution, penned an excellent article in the Oct. 5 Forbes
Magazine titled, "Chopping the Family Tree." The article gives us some hints
why parents are not honored as they were in the past. My summarization is
simple: We don't honor our parents because, through the tax code, we can get
somebody else to honor them. That might be a bit too cynical, so let's look
at Roback's analysis.
Roback says, "Families are less likely to care for their aging members at
home once socialized insurance schemes are in place." That is a terrible
human cost. Many lonely old people languish in nursing homes or hospices,
awaiting the grim reaper, because their care is paid for by government
through Medicare. Social Security and Medicare make it convenient for
children to forget about their parents' physical and emotional needs.
Roback also points to a geographical fallout from Social Security: "Without
Social Security, it is unthinkable that so many elderly people would be
living in Sunbelt retirement communities, so far away from their children."
Heightened isolation of older people produces other socially destructive
consequences. Throughout most of human history, households included more
than two generations, meaning they consisted of children, parents and
grandparents. In cases where grandparents weren't actually in the household,
they were in close proximity.
Their absence removes the accumulated wisdom of the elderly from the home.
It deprives young mothers of assistance and instruction in child-rearing.
Instead, they are left dependent on day-care centers, manuals and nannies.
These substitutes have nowhere near the value of loving grandparents living
in the home or nearby.
Also, for most of human history, elderly people died in the homes and in
the presence of their children. Grandchildren had a ringside seat and could
observe old age and death close up and, at the same time, be taught their
responsibilities toward the aged. When the elderly are kept at arms length,
we're cut off from the lessons of this universal reality.
There's another fallout from Social Security. For most of human history,
parents had to rely on their children in old age. Roback asks, "How many
parents would stand for their adult children's avoiding work or
responsibility if those parents knew they would have to rely on lazy kids
for support in their old age?" Roback says, without government-guaranteed
support in old age, parents would be less likely to permit their children to
squander family resources to "find themselves." Parents who knew they would
have to depend on their children would have greater incentive to assure that
their children were productive.
Government programs of elderly assistance such as transportation back and
forth to the doctor, home care and other senior-citizen services makes being
inattentive to our parents' needs more convenient, but it comes at a huge
cost to the structure of the family.
Another negative consequence of Social Security is the powerful political
bloc of senior citizens seeking to enhance their entitlements at the expense
of everyone else. Politicians love this, and to keep this constituency, they
must demagogue about programs for the elderly and saving Social Security.
But we might ask just how much reverence we should have for a system that
has severely weakened mankind's oldest institution -- the
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