On the "Luxury" of Self-Esteem

I've had a number of friends who have, at one point or another, hit hard times financially. Some of this just goes along with being a millennial and having a lot of friends who entered the working world during and shortly after the financial meltdown of 2008; some of it's because no matter what the broader economic cycle looks like, there are always going to be some people who, through bad luck and happenstance, find themselves on the outs. It happens. Nature of a dynamic economy and us being trapped with occasionally malfunctioning meat sacks for bodies.

All my friends are decent people. They'd work hard if they could, and it cuts them deep when they can't.

It *also* cuts at them when they're on disability, unemployment, or just come into a few bucks from friends or family -- any kind of money that they feel they didn't "earn" -- and want to spend a little on something that isn't a basic life-or-death necessity. I have seen so much *agonizing* over whether they're "allowed" to spend $5 on a bottle of nail polish or tickets to a show or a couple of carefully-nursed dive drinks so they can spend an evening hanging out with friends.

It kills me. Because we're not talking about welfare-myth caricatures who blow their entire allowance on lobster and steak and snazzy Obamaphones. We're talking about good and frugal people who wrack their souls over allowing themselves the teeniest tiniest little bits of joy that they're worried might be "nonessential."

Which is, by the way, a lie. Joy IS essential. Maintaining your optimism and self-esteem in the face of the constant bludgeoning barrage that is being unemployed in This Dumb Society is absolutely essential. You need hope. You need to feel like you're still a full-fledged person and yes, you're allowed to enjoy music and the company of friends and feeling a little bit pretty once in a while. IT'S ALLOWED. IT'S FINE. YOU'LL GO CRAZY WITHOUT IT, TRUST ME.

What this whole thing is really about is whether the poor are allowed to feel like genuine full-on people. So much of the punitive "they can only have cold water and beans! anything else is a LUXURY!" stuff isn't really about what's in the best interests of the poor (nobody cares about the actual best interests of the poor, that's why we won't give them health care or child care or a half-decent education), it's just about undercutting their self-esteem that last little bit by telling them that they're not good enough to have the things reserved for Real People With Jobs.

The effect of that, whether intended or not, is to make people feel like absolute garbage. It makes people feel morally culpable for plain bad luck. Which accomplishes nothing productive, although it does allow fragile people without any real self-esteem of their own to feel momentarily superior, and it also allows unscrupulous employers to exploit their desperation more easily.

Now there are, certainly, people who do their best to scam the system. They exist! There are people who just don't care to have legitimate jobs and get by with welfare grifts and fraud. I know a few. They're not my *friends,* but I know them, and I know the Janice Soprano lowlife isn't a complete myth.

But the question is this: Is it better to punish good people who are trying their best to do the right things, and make their lives more difficult so it's harder for them to climb out of that hole, or is it better to accept that Janice Soprano will get some checks she doesn't deserve? Because you have to pick one. Either good people suffer unnecessarily, or crummy people get a few bucks they did nothing to earn (and, keep in mind, you can't actually tell which ones are which; that's why you have to paint with a broad brush one way or the other). Either self-esteem is affordable for the poor, or it's a luxury we don't care to allow them.

And I think which version you choose depends heavily on whether you've ever been or had friends who were poor. Because the question looks a little different when you see it applied to people you know to be decent and struggling, rather than the caricatures imagined of strangers.