World Wide Shortages: Wisdom, Compassion, Humanity

"Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"

Axel Oxenstierna, Chancellor of Sweden to his son (1648).

I reflect on this quote from time to time and conclude that nothing has changed since 1648. That was about two decades before my first European ancestor arrived in Virginia.

I would like to believe that the American Experience has added to the world's stock of wisdom, but the more I study our own history, the less my confidence in that hope.

Still, I think it is at least a mixed bag. Some wisdom, some foolishness, some downright selfishness and inhumanity.

Today's Washington Post  has a very illuminating article on the SNAP program (formerly known as Food Stamps) in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The article is worth reading for a number of reasons. First, it illuminates the amount of work that poor families have to go through to take advantage of SNAP. more importantly, it makes it clear that SNAP is much more than a program assisting individuals and families. It keeps whole communities alive.

Without safety net programs like SNAP, even more small businesses would have closed and small towns across the land would have become ghost towns. As the article explains:

"At precisely one second after midnight, on March 1, Woonsocket would experience its monthly financial windfall — nearly $2 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Federal money would be electronically transferred to the broke residents of a nearly bankrupt town, where it would flow first into grocery stores and then on to food companies, employees and banks, beginning the monthly cycle that has helped Woonsocket survive."

More importantly, programs like SNAP, Unemployment compensation, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security help us avoid persistent regions of deep poverty and hunger that once existed across Appalachia and other rural areas of the country.

But if you read the article, be sure to also read and reflect on the many mean-spirited comments made by Washington Post readers.

And ask yourselves the question: "What kind of country do we want to be when we grow up?"