Re: Chicken Choices

March 24, 2008

> strike, we are as prepared as we can be. We also have an emergency

> fund. It isn't easy to have both of these (and even less easy not to

> dip into our savings), but this helps ensure that we will not end up

> suddenly tossed economically into poverty, to some degree.

We had insurance of several types and an emergency fund, as did my parents.

In the end, if you take several hits in a row, it just doesn't help you

recover enough because you take another hit before you recover from the

first one. They're helps, they're not guarantees, and they definitely have

their limits.

KerryAnn

www.cookingTF.com

March 24, 2008

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Insurance doesn't cover everything. In fact, often enough it covers

little or nothing, despite what insurance customers are led to

expect. Insurance companies have entire teams of lawyers and claims

analysts and other specialists -- entire DEPARTMENTS -- devoted to

nothing other than weaseling out of paying for claims. A very good

friend of mine works for a major insurance company, so in addition to

all the media reports (and all the cases discussed in " Sicko, " which

is actually very good) I hear a lot of inside stories about how these

things work, and the whole system is truly appalling.

So what happens if you lose your job and can't find another one for a

good long time because the economy is turfing faster and harder than

it has at any time in the last sixty years? What happens if your wife

loses her job too, if you're married? What happens if someone in your

family takes ill and you have enormous medical expenses that insurance

won't cover?

Of course it's good to be as prepared as possible, but sometimes it's

just not possible to prepare adequately. I'm reminded of the time

when my grandfather got sick and then died right after I lost my job,

and I had to pay for all kinds of resulting expenses despite not

having any income. My savings went poof, my credit went poof, and

times were hard. Or the more recent period when my (uninsured) mom's

long, drawn out, multi-year illness sucked away a debilitatingly

enormous amount of money -- at the same time that the (insured) woman

with whom I was at that point essentially in a common-law marriage

with was going through her own set of long, drawn-out, multi-year,

life-threatening, and expensive health problems, which of course made

everything even more difficult and draining (in every last sense of

the word) for everyone concerned. Now, I'm sure some members of the

list, whether publicly or just in the privacy of their own minds,

would simply scold me for not making the right choices to navigate

those situations unscathed, and in truth, hindsight can be 20/20 and

there are plenty of decisions I wish I'd made differently, but the

fact is that nobody can ever make all the right decisions, because

we're all only human -- and perhaps even more importantly, because the

" right " decision can often be determined ONLY in hindsight.

And besides all that, what happened to ordinary human compassion for

the less fortunate?

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> To some extent I think this assertion is true, but isn't this why we

> have insurances of various forms and savings? Again, not saying that

> all can afford them, etc... but we make less than 23k per year yet we

> make sure we have appropriate insurances so that when something does

> strike, we are as prepared as we can be. We also have an emergency

> fund. It isn't easy to have both of these (and even less easy not to

> dip into our savings), but this helps ensure that we will not end up

> suddenly tossed economically into poverty, to some degree.

>

> Thus, wouldn't you say that since we know trouble is coming, we should

> as much as possible prepare for the coming trouble? " Accidents " are

> rather frequent, so should we not prepare for them since we know they

> are somewhat inevitable?

March 24, 2008

,

I agree with the general point of your post, and I am not against

compassion at all, or our food buying club wouldn't have so many low

income members who often receive pricing that is below what we pay to

help them through hard spots, among other examples.

I also agree that you cannot prepare against everything, and that

insurance companies are often evil and vile in their practices (for

instance, we just had a baby a few months ago and our company denied

all the claims, so now we have $3,000 in unpaid medical bills that we

have been fighting about for almost 6 months). So, I am not speaking

as one who has no experience with these issues, nor one who is

naive.

But, I do think there is a lot that average, middle and lower middle

class folks can do to prepare. Just as we have lost a lot of common

sense practices in the area of food, so also in other areas of life.

Things have not always been this way because our standard of living

has not always been so inflated, our families and communities so

fragmented, among many other factors. So, I also don't want to be

reductionistic in approaching these problems.

Again, I desire to have a balanced view; I don't deny that sometimes

calamity is too large that even the best prepared can be swept away.

And I don't deny that we often don't realize how poor our decisions

are until later, as you said no of us are perfect. Shouldn't that

all the more encourage us to make greater provision for when we make

bad decisions? I fear that we use the above as excuses for not doing

what is right and wise.

At the same time, there needs to be some accountability for our poor

decisions and some measure of personal responsibility for the

outcomes of our actions. The fact that the gov't is bailing out both

corporate and personal America because of the greed exhibited by both

is ludicrous, and that that money will now have to come from those

who, for the most part, made better decisions, is an injustice.

Personal responsibility and compassion need to be balanced. I have

enjoyed help but that help also required I take responsibility for my

poor decisions and " grow up " into a better decision maker and more

responsible person. Moreover, the help I received was personal,

therefore it actually worked as opposed to the impersonal, gov't

forces of help that have very low success rates and often cause more

problems than they solve (as many of the posts in this thread have

illustrated). Compassion that is little more than purse strings

certainly doesn't help people in the long run, especially if what

they need is someone to confront their poor decisions and bad habits

that put them at greater risk when calamity comes.

So, I hope this better framework to my thoughts. I don't think we

need to throw a wedge between personal responsibility and compassion,

between calamity and preparation, etc... If you were to find someone

on the street who got in a car accident because they were talking on

their cell phone and listening to their ipod while driving, do you

call for help and take care of them or leave them there bleeding and

broken? Of course we show compassion and help them even though they

are responsible.

But if we really care about the person in their calamity we also need

to address what caused what happened. And we need to care for those

who that person hurt, both in that moment and by holding that other

person accountable for their actions.

March 24, 2008

Hi ,