linnposts.com

A recent letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune written by Ben Weiss, a staff member of a non-profit agency serving the poor, offered a word to the wise all of us might heed.

In his letter he pointed out several facts a man named Jake Werner had not considered when he asserted in a separate letter to the editor that adequate public assistance is already available to poor adults and children who need help.

“All who are challenged to pay for heat have access to heating assistance,” Werner asserted, except, as Weiss noted, he apparently didn’t know that the energy assistance program in the county where Werner lived ran out of funds a week after the April date when utilities get to shut off people’s heat, while Minnesota had cold weather and even snow into May this year.

Further, Werner insisted that there was “no reason” any child should go hungry because of public school breakfast and lunch programs. Unless, of course, as Weiss pointed out, “it’s Saturday. Or spring break. Or there’s no one else to stay home with the 2-year-old. Or it’s too cold to wait at the bus stop in an unlined hoodie and tennis shoes without socks. Or the alarm didn’t go off because the electricity is disconnected.”

Werner also blamed children for not taking advantage of after-school programs, ignoring the fact, as Weiss once again noted, that the programs work only “if you have a way to get there on a weekly basis. And if they don’t charge random $30 fees. And if you don’t get evicted three weeks into the class. And aren’t the only one available to watch the 2-year-old.”

Weiss went on to mention the fact that he had seen “kids stuff their feet into secondhand shoes a size and a half too small, for months on end. Kids who don’t have toothbrushes at home, or Band-Aids, or scissors to open a clamshell package from Target. A 10-year-old who wished he could be locked overnight in an all-you-can-eat buffet — until he realized they didn’t actually keep restocking it all night.”

After reading Weiss’s letter I realized something I may have known at some level, but it had not fully registered with me.

Not only do people like Jake Werner not know all the facts about social programs to help poor families, they think they do because they see everything through the lens of their own personal circumstances.

It appears as if it never occurred to Werner that the heat assistance program where he lives might run out of money, why kids don’t have access to school food programs or afternoon recreation programs, about kids wearing second hand shoes too small for them or not having a toothbrush or band-aids or scissors to use at home.

In all likelihood none of that was what he experienced growing up so it didn’t occur to him that these were things poor families deal with every day.

I don’t blame people like Werner for seeing reality through the lens of their own personal circumstances. We all do.

What I do blame them for is refusing to admit that this is what they are doing, that they have no idea about the kinds of circumstances adults and children in this country face every day because those circumstances lie outside their point of reference.

They believe everyone should be able to make something of themselves because that is what they did. That would make sense if the personal circumstances of all Americans were the same.

But they are not, and the failure to take that reality into consideration is one reason why people like Jake Werner make uninformed claims or offer unjustified criticisms of social programs.

Conservatives believe liberals like me enable people in need to stay people in need while refusing to get beyond their own worldview shaped and limited by the world they have known.

The Republican healthcare bill is a perfect example, especially the claim that it protects people with pre-existing conditions.

That assertion is true unless and until you lose your job and the insurance it provided. At that point you must get a new job with insurance immediately, otherwise you have to buy Cobra to quality for continuing coverage.

But Cobra insurance is very expensive, so how is someone unemployed supposed to pay for it? They can’t so they don’t. Boom. If someone in the family has a pre-existing condition, the family will automatically be thrown into a high risk pool with premiums as expensive as Cobra or higher.

The Republican bill sets aside money to help people like this pay the premiums, only the amount is a third the amount that will be needed to prevent millions from losing insurance, not unlike a heating assistance program running out of money before winter is over.

Of course, Republicans in Congress and voters who support what they are doing don’t live in the circumstances of the people whose lives they are affecting, which is why they talk about the bill covering pre-existing conditions with a straight face.

In the world they live in what they are saying is true, but in the real circumstances of the people whose lives they are playing with it is not.

This happens all the time in a variety of ways because it is not easy for any of us to walk in another person’s shoes, to know the kinds of circumstances they face that we have never faced.

But it is easy to know that you don’t know those circumstances. It is easy to admit that what you believe is true about programs to help people in need may be skewed or half correct or not even close to being accurate.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that the way you view the world is limited by your own experiences and circumstances.

But you do have to be a person who wants to know as much as you can about the circumstances others face before you criticize a program designed to help them or support a law or policy that might make those circumstances worse.

As a liberal who grew up poor, I may be supporting social programs that make people too dependent on government assistance. And it is possible that there are more effective and constructive ways to help them than what is being done now.

At the same time, conservatives who criticize social programs often have views that show they they don’t know much at all about the real circumstances people those programs help confront all the time.

Perhaps if all of us made an effort to get beyond the worlds we live in in order to see the world Americans in need live in, we might surprise ourselves by developing more effective ways to provide assistance that would empower them to attain the economic independence they want for themselves.

Who knows…maybe Jake Werner and Ben Weiss should meet for coffee and see where it leads?