Living in the Insect World

Everyone remembers the Aesop’s fable about the Grasshopper and the Ant.  All summer long the Grasshopper lives the good life, enjoying the tall grass and never thinking about tomorrow.  His neighbor, the Ant, has no time for such frivolity.  He keeps busy tending his crops, fortifying his house and saving up for the winter.  When the snows come, the Ant is warm and comfortable, with a refrigerator full of berries, and the Grasshopper is left out in the cold.  Hard-hearted Aesop ends his tale with the Grasshopper knocking on the Ant’s door and asking for a bite to eat.  The Ant, he tells us, “rebuked him for his idleness” and slammed the door in his face.

As I’ve watched the current budget debate in the US Congress, I’ve been struck by the degree to which the Republicans seem to view themselves as virtuous Ants and the Democrats as idle Grasshoppers… or maybe “Grasshopper enablers.”  The Republicans believe that they’re the responsible ones who worked hard and saved, and they resent the idea that they should share what they’ve accumulated with a bunch of Grasshoppers who weren’t as disciplined and diligent as themselves.

But we don’t live in a world of fairy tale insects.  In the human world, some people inherit money and some inherit debt.  Some kids go to good schools and are encouraged to go to college, and some go to awful schools and aren’t encouraged to do anything at all.  In the human world, a person can work hard all his life and watch his 401k disappear in a stock-market downturn.  Or he can succeed in a demanding job that’s made suddenly obsolete by new technology, or outsourced to cheaper labor in India or China.  In the human world, smart, hard-working people sometimes do everything “right” and still fail, while lazy people of dubious character make millions and live a life of luxury. 

The social safety net we’ve created is meant to help us grapple with the capriciousness of this human world.  It’s meant to help those who would otherwise be forgotten or left behind, and it’s meant to provide opportunity for those who would otherwise have none.  Head Start means that kids who come from poor backgrounds can start school on an equal footing with kids whose parents read to them at home.  Social Security means that old people won’t end up penniless as a new generation takes their place at the office, in the factory, or on the farm.  Medicaid means that the poor can receive basic medical care and treatment they could otherwise not afford in a world of skyrocketing healthcare costs.  And unemployment insurance means that those who have worked hard but lost their jobs will be able to pay their bills until the next job comes along.

There are plenty of hard-working, successful people who understand all of this, of course.  Prominent billionaires like Warren Buffett, for example, have repeatedly called for higher taxes on the rich so that our social safety net can be preserved.  And a growing number of America’s wealthy seem to appreciate the fact that a society harshly divided between haves and have-nots is ultimately not in the best interests of either. 

Further, and this is probably a topic deserving of another column, it’s worth pointing out that America has greatly benefited from some of its Grasshoppers.  Thomas Jefferson, to cite one example, died broke and deeply in debt.  The father of the Declaration of Independence might have appreciated Social Security. 

But if the current budget debate is any indication, the Republicans in Congress are having none of this.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, they appear to believe we’re living in a simple, binary world of Grasshoppers and Ants, the worthy and the unworthy.  And from what I can tell, they seem intent on eating every berry in the fridge.  Personally, I think it’s time for those of us living in the human world to close the book on this fairy tale.