Give a man a fish?

The old, old debate continues – how much help ought we to give people using tax money? The current variation on the debate is the unemployment benefits question. On the radio today, someone said we shouldn’t extend benefits any further because “If someone will come to your house every day and give you fish, you have no incentive to go out and catch your own fish. But if the only way for you to get fish is by getting it yourself, you’ll find a way. Even if it means learning new ways to fish – if fishhooks aren’t working, you’ll make a spear, or a net.”
That analogy is all right, as far as it goes. But, the reality is that unemployment is not enough money to make it more attractive than employment. Sure, we’re giving the man a fish, but it’s a minnow. He can’t live on minnows. The point of the minnow is to keep him alive long enough to go catch a salmon, or maybe he can use the minnow as bait for the salmon. If we have a minnow to spare, we should give the guy a damn fish so he'll eat for today.
The real problem is, we as a society are out of minnows. We don’t even have enough to sustain the people who are incapable of fishing – the people whose physical, cognitive, or mental health disabilities render them unable to go out and get a job that pays enough to support them. We haven’t got enough minnows to feed them, or to pay the people who bring them minnows. So we REALLY don’t have enough minnows for the people who could fish for themselves. Certainly not for over 10% of the population, for over two years per person.
Ordinarily, I lean hard Left on these issues. But to my own surprise, I’m thinking the Right has a point for once. I don’t agree that the people who are unemployed are lazy, or don’t want to work. Everyone with half a brain cell would rather catch salmon than wait for someone else to bring them a minnow. If they need a minnow to sustain them while they fish for salmon, I’d like to be able to offer them one - as well as a new rod, a tackle box, and some fishing lessons. But, as the Right points out, we’re out of minnows. So, I’d like us to save the few minnows we have for those people who need them most.
Mind you, if (God forbid) my own job goes away and I find the fish aren’t biting, I may feel differently about the question. But regardless of how I feel, it will still be true that we ought to give the minnows to those who can’t fish, first. The ones who can fish may need to find different streams or learn different fishing styles. But the ones who can’t fish need the minnows to live.

© John M. Munzer