I keep reading dire numbers about the USA.
For example, one list shows the infant mortality rate in the US as higher than in 28 other countries. The main cause, apparently, is premature births.
The life expectancy in the US is about 50th in the world. Lower than Bosnia, for example.
And although this is bad, it doesn’t mean what some people think it means. It doesn’t mean, for example, that I’m likely to die before my brother-in-law in Australia (7th longest life expectancy).
It doesn’t mean, for example, that I might expect to live longer if I moved to Canada (8th longest life expectancy).
Why doesn’t it mean these things?
Because I’m privileged. The life expectancy is an average. It includes people with no access to preventative healthcare and little education about healthy lifestyles. It includes people who can’t afford medication or fresh vegetables.
Infant mortality is the same way, and my baby isn’t any more likely to die in infancy than one in Japan, for example (4th lowest infant mortality rate).
So yeah, we know that in this country there are lots of people who suffer without adequate healthcare. That’s an issue. But it shouldn’t be confused with the question about whether our healthcare, when available, is any good.
What’s the life expectancy of a guy who’s had good health insurance and some money in the bank for his whole life? I don’t know. Without knowing, I hereby declare that it’s among the very highest in the world. And of course, I declare that the infant mortality rate for that guy’s children is among the lowest.
I have lived in rich and poor parts of this country, in middle-class and very poor neighborhoods, and many, many people who were getting by on less than $5,000 a year, and yet I have never in my entire life met US citizen who “can’t afford medication or fresh vegetables.”
I do not believe such a person exists.
I have. For example, when I was teaching college, one of my students was unable to afford his textbook, despite getting a subsidy specifically for that. He also couldn’t afford to pay any child support to his son’s mother, who inexplicably didn’t want him involved in the boy’s life. After paying for necessities, like a steady supply of marijuana and hundreds of pairs of “Air Jordan” shoes (who *doesn’t* need these), his budget was all tapped out. I could give you more examples, but you probably get the point.
There are something like 750,000 homeless people in the US. Do you two believe that they can afford tylenol to reduce a fever? Or how about antacids, since acid reflux has been shown to lead to more serious conditions? Let alone prescription drugs for chronic, but not life-threatening conditions. Even epileptics devote whole Web sites to information about the hoops you have to jump through to get cheaper or free meds (including begging your doctor for samples).
Do you think that they’d fill their bellies more at the vegetable aisle or Taco Bell? What if they aren’t homeless, but have a family to feed?
Anyone can get care for an emergency, but lack of preventative care, or care for chronic conditions, lowers life expectancy.
I don’t understand whether you’re saying that no one goes without medicine, or that everyone who does is choosing to do so for non-financial reasons.
There are something like 750,000 homeless people in the US. Do you two believe that they can afford tylenol to reduce a fever?
I suspect that a large percentage of the transiently homeless can. For the chronically homeless, I imagine that the percentage is significantly less.
For the intransigently homeless– including many with serious but untreated mental health conditions–the percentage might be very low, but lack of tylenol is perhaps the least of their problems.
I don’t know how the 750,000 number breaks along these kinds though.
What does “can” afford mean to you? If you have to choose between food or medicine, that I say that’s not being able to afford it. Same goes for any other basic necessity.
I know there really *are* a few who honestly can’t afford necessities. They serve as more evidence of the waste and mishandling of money in our socialist programs. What I’ve seen much more of is people who choose very badly how to spend their limited but sufficient funds. There’s even a whole class of people who live in cheap motels (much more expensive than apartments) because they don’t have the first/last/deposit money for an apartment. Then they eat (again expensive) fast food because they lack a kitchen. Whenever they are able to put some aside, many of them spend it on booze and cigarettes instead of using it to get out of their rut. Even many of the “homeless” who beg on street corners spend their money on drugs. Something like 40% of my earnings go to income-based taxes, much of which is spent on “entitlement” programs supposedly intended to solve poverty and lack of health care. Surely someone who is choosing between food and medicine would qualify for some of this. If the Marxist redistribution of wealth is working so badly that a lot of people fall through the cracks, let’s shut it down and let workers keep more of their earnings.
What does “can†afford mean to you?
Was that addressed to me?
I was responding to an earlier comment that used the expression “can afford” — best ask that commenter first. For what it’s worth, considering the elasticity of the expression, I was intending it in a way that would do justice to the idea that some homeless really cannot afford it.
I have made use of shelters on past occasions, and on rarer occasions have slept outide–tented or tentless. But I have never been unable to afford such as tylenol. But I do not claim to have been among the chronically homeless. Such occasions were transient, and I was a young man at the time.
Do you see my last comment as polemical? I am not denying any problem, nor gainsaying any solution. My distinction in types of homelessness was an attempt to distinguish between what may be two very different problems, calling for very different solutions.
But I am glad you want me to be clearer on what I mean by “can” afford. Should my limited clarification of what I mean by “can” afford (and I admit that my clarification so far is slight–in part because I have not fully clarified to myself what I meant by it); should it be inadequate for discussion I will gladly do my best to clarify further. The last thing I would wish to to is to equivocate.
Respectfully,
L.
Largo: I was just asking how you, and anyone else in the conversation, define the expression “can afford.”
It wasn’t an attack. I just thought that maybe I think of it differently, so I spelled out my meaning and asked yours.
I was not threatened, simply bewildered by your your previous comment:
Lately, words seem to mean almost anything, and I fear that “bewilder” has lost its old, useful sense.
I distinguish between asking about what one means by a term–e.g., what do you mean by “crime”?–and asking about the nature of a thing–e.g., what is crime? The distinction is between the lexical and the conceptual.
If you say “Jack committed a crime”, I might ask you whether by “crime” you mean (1) a statutory offense, or (2) a kind of depraved or heinous behavior. At times, what has been a crime in the first sense need not be a crime a crime in the second — and vice versa. E.g., misogyny laws.
But of someone says that we can eliminate crime by abolishing all criminal statutes, we would laugh at him (or be bewildered) because of the incongruity of the two meanings of “crime”. We agree (I hope!) that we cannot eliminate crime by abolishing criminal statute.
And if we agree that misogyny is not criminal (in the sense of being heinous or depraved) but not on whether (say) marijuana use was, I might ask you explain the nature and consequences of crime, whereby we might come to some meeting of minds. But I would not ask you what you meant by “crime”, because I know the answer.
I don’t know how will I am explaining my difficulty — I find it difficult to explain the difficulty — but perhaps it can be summed up as follows. You can ask me what I mean by “crime”, and you can ask me what I think crime is. But you cannot ask me what I mean by crime. That is to say, I don’t know how to make any sense of the question–that is is what it is.
Does that make sense to you? And if it does, don’t speak further of the affordance and what it means to be able to afford something–I mean, not yet. Let me see whether what I said makes sense first.
Respectfully,
L.
Perhaps in parallel to my last comment, let me speak at least lexically about “afford”. When you say
this is contrary to one established sense of “afford”, or to one established way of using the term. For there is nothing exceptional about saying “I can afford A or B but not both.” If we make an exception when A and B are basic necessities, we get odd results (in our language, I mean):
If A and B (say, food and medicine) each cost five dollars, and you have only nine dollars, then you are not able to afford A–since it would leave you unable to buy B, and unable to afford B–since it would leave you unable to buy A. So you can afford neither A nor B. And if I give you ninety cents, you will still be unable to afford either. But if I give you a dollar, you will (abruptly) me able to afford both. Indeed, you will not be able to afford either until you can afford both–according to the exception you make when A and B are basic necessities.
To this, I say three things. First: there may be a special moral significance to being able to afford (“afford” in the usual sense) one necessity only at the forgoing (I was almost going to say at the expense) of another. This is worthy of discussion.
Second: exceptional use of a term can have bizarre consequences. Can there be an instance where one might want to say “I can afford only food or medicine — not both!”? One needs to elaborate that one is making exception to the exception, etc.
Third: unscrupulous arguers will use this to pull the wool over people’s eyes. If “afford” has a usual economic sense, but is given an exceptional moral sense, there can be confusion over whether, at any moment, one is making an economic statement or a moral statement. Of course they can be linked, and one may wish to discuss both! But one does not want them to be confused. Perhaps even worse is an honest thinker who, because of such confusion, leads himself astray. (Perhaps instead of using the (economic) term “afford” in an exceptional (moral) sense, it would be better to a moral term in conjunction with the economic term. It may take a few more words to say what is to be said, but it would be clearer.)
Finally: as a rule of thumb, when I am tempted to add an exceptional meaning to a term, I ask myself whether I am trying to correct a nearly-true statement in a wrong way. Consider this piece of sophistry:
Joe: “I can’t afford food and medicine!”
Bob: “Can you afford food?”
Joe: “Yes.”
Bob: “Can you afford medicine”?
Joe: “Yes.”
Bob: “Then you can afford food and medicine!”
Bob is trying to perpetrate a fallacy here. The only valid thing for him to say is “Then you can afford food or medicine” — which, rhetorically, has the opposite effect (which is why dishonest Bob does not say that).
But the problem is with the fallacy, not with the premises. “You can afford food” is a true premise. Can we name one sort of thing that cannot be afforded, but which has moral consequences? You suggested one: basic necessities. Can Joe not say “I can afford some of my basic necessities, but not all of them. I have to choose between food and medicine (or food and rent, or …); I cannot afford both”–which is not to say that he cannot afford either.
Or shall we take Bob who is down to his last $100–in his pocket–but who tonight is expected to pay his landlord $500 rent, who needs to refill his $200 insulin prescription, and who has a job interview across town, but no bus ticket, and no guarantee of being hired. Of course (in the absence of other information) we would say he should buy a $2 bus ticket to get to his interview. Here, I think, transportation would at the moment be a ‘basic necessity’. But alas, because he lacks the ability to afford all his basic needs, Joe is unable to afford a bus ticket to his interview. Too bad, Joe.
(I’m sorry, that may have been too snarky, but it is getting too late and I am getting too tired. I want to make a reference to Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass and about the pliability of words. If one is tempted to stretch a word to mean something else, there is probably another word out there already that means just that — if one is really talking about something meaningful at all.)
G’Nite!
Respectfully,
L.