OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Blaming the poor

Arkansas barrels on with an uncommonly high percentage of poor people and an uncommon resentment of them.

We lead the nation in trying to break federal law and require people to work to get health insurance through Medicaid expansion. Most Medicaid expansion recipients work already. Those limited earnings are what put them on Medicaid expansion rather than basic Medicaid.

It's not good work. It's probably not regular work. And that's why those people need help on health care.

Our state policymakers, well-off enough that they spend half their time in Little Rock collecting the lagniappe of taxpayer reimbursement, can't seem to abide the idea that somebody somewhere might be getting public money for nothing.

I sense these policymakers see "poor" and "lazy" as synonyms. After all, everyone has the opportunity to get up off the couch and go to Little Rock and get paid for saying "aye" to unconstitutional bills.

Now we're the third state, behind Montana and South Carolina, to say we'll opt out early from the federal pandemic-based unemployment compensation supplement of $300 a week.

The recipients won't opt out. The governor will opt them out, to cheers from the Legislature and the Chamber of Commerce.

Our low-paying employers, meaning most of them, say they're having trouble re-staffing on the menial end for the re-emergence from the virus. They assert that some people stay home to do nothing and make out better or about the same with that supplement.

I'm sure such cases exist. Otherwise, a neighborhood restaurant wouldn't still be closed. Another wouldn't be closing Mondays and for lunch. You wouldn't be seeing signs at fast-food joints offering $300 bonuses for taking a job. That's a better deal for the employer than paying $300 more every week.

So, in Arkansas, we'll jerk that $300-a-week out of poor folks' hands and force on them the dignity of busing tables for less. The boss says he needs these folks to help him make all the money he needs to get this economy rolling for the betterment of everyone, including the guy busing tables.

Let me break it down: Arkansas, one of the poorest states, will, on June 26, stop letting its people on unemployment get the additional $300 per week that unemployed people in richer states will get until Sept. 6. We will leave this money on the table for about two months because we believe we can fully restart our economy when all these rascals go back to the jobs they had before at the pay they had before.

If you take money from a poor person and order him back to the mill, or into the mine, then we'll all have more lumber and paper and dirty energy, you see.

It's a classic matter of perspective and philosophy. Either you cater to the job creators because theirs is the greater virtue or you prioritize the poor people because theirs is the greater need.

Or, in this case, you go get your danged vaccine.

That is the answer. The whole answer. The only answer.

I have no passionate quarrel with the decision to take away the extra $300--a temporary add-on to a program that exists only as a bridge, as something temporary--a mere two months before other better-off jurisdictions will take it away.

There are two separate issues. The policy one is whether the minimum wage should be increased, in turn pushing up other salaries, so that a modest unemployment supplement wouldn't amount to a raise for anybody. The other is an immediate practical one about getting the re-starting economy humming.

But what a humming full economy can't be allowed to do is fuel a virus spike owing to the new strains and the utter brain disengagement by which nearly two-thirds of our state's people have failed as yet to get themselves vaccinated.

Only Arkansas--or, well, maybe a few other gone-Trump states--would turn down extra unemployment compensation earlier than other states while vaccinating fewer people than other states.

We have the right answer. It's reaching herd immunity by the responsible behavior of getting vaccinated.

Somebody start giving $300 bonuses for getting shots, or at least a $100 savings bond like West Virginia or a free beer at a participating brewery like New Jersey.

If we'd kick vaccinations in gear with the intensity with which we intend to kick the economy in gear, June 26 would be as good a day as Sept. 6 to stop giving whatever freeloaders exist their additional $300.

If we don't do that, no date would be quite right.

Meantime, the minimum wage needs to rise. A busboy or busgirl shouldn't have to work two hours for the price of lunch.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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