When the economy goes south . . .

According to today's Waterloo Courier, reports of child abuse were up 11% in 2009, a rise that is attributed to the familial stress induced by the economic downturn. This news comes on the nheals of Jim Bunning's solo filibuster on extending unemployment benefits to the millions of Americans out of work for a year more more. In the remarks of Jon Kyl, his Republican colleague from AZ, Bunning has a real point: "unemployment insurance provides a strong disincentive to look for work." He's likely serious, since this is only an extreme version of a very American tendency to either consciously refuse, or unonsciously fail, to connect the dots between distal events in the socio-economic environment and their personal lives.

In a sense, isn't this the "rationale" for Republican opposition to a "government takeover" of a healthcare policy that, they really believe, belongs in the hands of the private sector. Government "intervention" --though it exists in the VA and in Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP -- in the health of Americans serves to enable obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, refusal to accept personal responsibility for keeping oneself well. I honestly believe that this sensibility is sincere: that this as other cases of "American exceptionalism" is predicated on the "cultural" premise that not only do we NOT have obligations to provide a safety-net or floor of universally-met human needs, but to do so interferes with the Darwinian instinctfor survival. Those that have what it takes to survive need no one to help them survive and thrive; only the weak, the losers, and the unfit need this help. If we help them we do a disservice to Nature's Law of "surival of the fittest." Thoughts?