How much waste is tolerable? Seriously, is there a limit to how much waste we’re willing to accept as a cost of doing something beneficial? Or, let’s put it differently – should we refuse to undertake an endeavor simply because waste is a partial byproduct?
Take paper, for example. Depending on the process used by a paper production plant, the waste created during paper production include dioxins (the most lethal human-released toxins in existence), carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen oxide, mercury, nitrates, methanol, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and chloroform. Most, if not all of those compounds cause death in some quantity. Should we not manufacture paper simply because harmful waste is a byproduct of its manufacturing process?
Another good example is plastic. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, plastics account for thirteen (13%) percent of municipal landfill waste. Should plastics be banned from our society due to the enormous environmental waste it causes?
The reason I posed those questions is because I think the answers to them would be useful in guiding this nation toward a reasonable solution to the current national unemployment compensation crisis.
Last week, approximately 1.1 million long-term unemployed Americans lost federal unemployment compensation benefits because the Republican-led House of Representatives refused to vote to extend those payments. Several million additional Americans will lose benefits within the next three months if the House continues with its opposition. Many of those Americans are the chief breadwinners in their families, so millions more will suffer the effects of those lost benefits.
As I’ve been following coverage on this issue in various media outlets. I’ve also been scrutinizing the viewer comments posted in on-line forums maintained by those outlets. From what I’ve seen, most objections to extending long-term unemployment compensation benefits fall within one of three arguments: (1) American needs smaller government; (2) borrowing to provide unemployment compensation makes America weaker; and (3) the long-term unemployed are lazy and deserve no help from the rest of society.
The first argument I view as somewhat delusional. It is fueled by a nostalgic belief that returning America’s government to the size of that institution in 1776 will somehow usher in a utopian era of peace and prosperity. That would never work. The government of George Washington would not have been able to deal with regulation of America’s current military needs, nuclear power, environmental threats, a globally connected financial industry, an international food supply chain, drugs and health care or the support of tens of millions of poor and retired citizens. While government can always get leaner, a bare-bones version would spell social and economic disaster.
The second argument, that borrowing to provide unemployment compensation makes us weaker contains a kernel of truth, but what proponents of that view fail to acknowledge is that providing no unemployment compensation makes us even weaker than borrowing to do so. That’s because while borrowing has a cost (additional principle & interest on the national debt), allowing unemployment compensation to lapse without jobs for those in line to receive that compensation means millions lose their homes, their pensions and investments. Those individuals cease being contributors to the U.S. economy. Instead, they become an additional burden.
The final argument, and the one most given for not extending unemployment compensation, is that the long term unemployed are lazy and do not deserve the help. Never mind that said claim has never been proven to be true. Still, large numbers of Americans believe it and that’s that! Everybody seems to know at least one person who’s doesn’t seem motivated to find a new job, and I personally know a few people like that, too, but a lot of Americans are quick to extrapolate their knowledge of one malingerer to conclude that all the unemployed are similarly lazy. That’s plain stupidity.
That said, I do agree there’s waste in the unemployment compensation system. The problem is that finding and eliminating that waste is virtually impossible in a system as large and unwieldy as our current system is. The system’s critics respond that the only solution is to eliminate the entire system. That’s where they and I part paths. I agree that waste is an inherent feature of our unemployment compensation system, but I also believe that there’s a level of waste that we should be willing to incur because the benefits derived from our unemployment compensation system outweigh the cost we pay for waste. We accept a certain level of waste from paper and plastic production as a cost of reaping the benefits that paper and plastics afford. We can do the same for unemployment compensation.
That doesn’t mean we ignore the waste in our unemployment compensation system. In the same way paper and plastic producers work round the clock to lessen the waste in their own manufacturing systems, so too should our government work continuously to reduce the waste in our distribution of government benefits. A leaner and more efficient system benefits everyone, but just because waste exists in our unemployment compensation system doesn’t justify destroying it. Not now! Not tomorrow! Not ever!
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