Fun Science Fact #28: Compassion is not a zero-sum game.
In the few days since the Paris attacks, I’ve seen a half-dozen or so posts arguing that we shouldn’t be helping Syrian refugees, because there are other folks here at home who are more deserving of our compassion. These are mostly repurposed older posts that originally argued that we shouldn’t be helping undocumented immigrants. They include pictures of a hungry kid, or a sad puppy, or a homeless person sleeping on a steam grate, and come with a tag line saying that Syrian refugees (or whoever the demonized group of the week happens to be) get free health care and welfare benefits, while returning veterans (or whoever the valorized group of the week happens to be) are left to die in the streets.
Apparently, this is a pretty compelling argument, because these posts all seem to have a long trail of comments along the lines of “Yeah!” and “Disgraceful!” and “I also agree that we should not help those refugees!” However, this is in fact a profoundly stupid argument. It’s a classic example of what we refer to as a false choice. We don’t actually have to decide whether to be nice to refugees, or to be nice to veterans. The fact that some veterans are treated badly doesn’t mean that we should also treat refugees badly. It means that we should treat all veterans well.
“But wait,” I can almost hear you arguing. “Our government is broke! We’re deep in debt! We can’t afford to be nice to everyone, or we’ll end up like Greece!”
Well, no. Actually, that’s a crock too. Here in the United States, we have what is known as a fiat currency. Greece does too, of course, but they don’t have control over their own monetary policy. That means, in essence, that unlike Greece, we have exactly as much money as we choose to have. That’s how we can spend a trillion dollars blowing things up in the desert, hand over another trillion to our grandparents, and still cut taxes.
There are limits, of course. Eventually, if we keep printing dollars, we’ll get to the point where our currency will begin losing value. That point, however, is apparently a long, long way away, because even after several rounds of quantitative easing over the past seven years, inflation remains practically nonexistent. Moreover, the amount of money it would take to re-settle a few thousand refugees (or to provide basic healthcare for the undocumented workers who allow huge sectors of our economy to function, for that matter) is trivial in a country that spends five billion dollars a year on deodorant.
This is not to say, of course, that the government ought to be handing out satchels of money on every street corner. We absolutely should not, however, cry poverty as an excuse not to do something that needs to be done. At the end of the day, the people sharing these post and liking them aren’t worried about increasing the national debt, and they’re probably not actually all that worried about the fate of homeless veterans either. What they are is crap-their-pants frightened of people who look slightly different, speak with an accent, or pray to a different God.
The thing is, though—if there is a God out there somewhere, I’m pretty sure he’s not handing out bonus points based on whether we picked out the right skin tones to discriminate against. There are a whole lot more verses in the Bible about taking care of the downtrodden than there are about all the sex stuff that people seem to like to focus on. You might want to consider that the next time you’re deciding whether to hit the “share” button.
