...and how even more of them would have been better.
I've been thinking quite a bit this last week or so about governmental mandates for things like health insurance, particularly in light of one of the major events in my father's childhood and my family's history. Anyway, I wanted to share it with everyone, for what it's worth.
My paternal grandfather was a southern Democrat, a hard worker, a small-businessman, a father both loving and strict, and a virulent anti-union man. He was deeply angry about being forced by the government to pay into Social Security. Social Security, of course, is a federal mandate and that is what I am writing about today.
In 1953, my grandfather was out logging on property he owned when his tractor turned over on a slope and crushed him to death. He died with all the money he had in his pocket, because again that was the kind of guy he was. By the time his body arrived at whatever official location it was taken to, all that money was gone. Presumably someone stole it off his corpse.
The result of this was that my grandmother, who had moved as a very young woman directly from her family's home to my grandfather's, was left with three children between the ages of 7 and 15, a house and some land, relatives in another state, and not a penny on hand or coming in. She had never worked outside the home before. She did work and worked hard after that, moving the family repeatedly to take various jobs and opportunities (at least once being cheated of money by supposedly respectable, small-town business-people), and doing whatever she had to to support and raise her children well. My grandmother was a tough person, and I miss her deeply to this day.
But what, second to my grandmother's strength, was the single largest reason that my family survived, my father and his younger sibling were eventually able to go on to university, and all three of the children became healthy, capable, stable and economically strong adults? It was Social Security survivor benefits, which would not have existed for them if my grandfather had had a choice of whether to pay in ahead of time. Every month after his death my grandmother received a small amount to take care of the children, because the government had forced my grandfather to pay into social security.
Thank God and the voters for the government, and for federal mandates!
You know what would have been even better? If there had been the kind of safety and health rules in 1953 that exist now, forcing my grandfather to also have a decent canopy on his damn tractor. (A couple years ago, my father was on a long distance trip with some other guys when one of them started going off about how the evil government was causing him business problems by forcing him to put particular canopies on his tractors. Dad looked at him blandly and calmly mentioned that his own father had been killed due to lack of just such a canopy. The other guy didn't say much after that.)
It has been pointed out before, but if a health insurance mandate is not allowed, then what basis is there for the social security mandate that saved my father's future, or any other? How many children will suffer, and how much economic damage will be done to their families, communities and the nation as a whole because they or their parents are unable to afford the healthcare necessary to keep them alive and healthy?
3:29 PM PT: An update: Commenters have, correctly, brought up a distinction between a "tax" such as Social Security (money goes to government; money comes from government) and a "mandate" such as the healthcare insurance requirement (money, in many cases, goes to big business; money hopefully comes back from big business but probably less than goes in; caveat that the same law limits those businesses in whom they can deny, what they must cover, other things, and financial help is provided to the low income). Presumably OSHA requirements such as I spoke of are in the second category, since the government is saying, "you must buy this safety equipment" rather than manufacturing and selling it themselves at cost.
I accept this distinction, and certainly believe that some things should be done by government directly rather than by requiring private purchases! Still, the distinction does not affect - I think - the point I am trying to bring out above: If the government does not have the ability to require people to do things that will protect themselves, their children, their employees and society, regardless of whether that is through a tax or a mandate, then individuals and society will suffer. What's more, the right wingers are going to attack these programs no matter which way they are structured.