[PEN-L:11975] Re: Big mouth

["Max B. Sawicky" <maxsaw@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Welcome to the club. I had a brother who hung himself in a mental hospital
> in 1971. Frankly, anecdotes like this are about as useful as Ronald
> Reagan's anecdotes about welfare queens driving Cadillacs.  .  .  .
>
> The problem we are dealing with is a social problem. The American people
> were sold a bill of goods when they were told that the solution to inhumane
> mental hospitals like Boston's infamous Mattewan, subject of Frederic
> Wiseman's "Titicut Follies", was to empty the mental hospitals while giving
> each discharged patient medication to help them function.

Actually, they (we) were also told that the public sector would
provide care in decentralized facilities.  We also had the
institution of rights for mental patients, even a "Mental
Patients Liberation Front," and those rights have proved to
be a double-edged sword.

> The true solution is group homes where the chronically ill can get adequate
> supervision and medical attention. Even though these group homes are
> cheaper than the old-time mental hospitals, the ruling class doesn't want
> to foot the bill. Psychotics, like disabled children and poor people with
> AIDS, are just not important enough. This is the significance of the
> balanced budget austerity program of the Democrat-Republican party. Less
> money for social services so that people like Bill Gates can afford a $30
> million house instead of a $20 million house.

As my 'anecdote' (unlike yours) pointed out, there isn't any such
safety net. The L&O story, while falling short of great art or
trenchant Marxist analysis, reflects that dilemma.  Everybody with a
pulse understands that the homeless reflect some kind of failure of
policy, or a 'social problem' if you like.

Whether the 'solution' is taxing Bill Gates is another
matter, but even so, this amounts to the old joke
about economists assuming a ladder to get out
of a hole.  There is no safety net, so shit happens
and stories are told to that effect.

Even if there were such facilities, there would be people
who would refuse to live in them and civil libertarians
who would defend their right to do so, with the best
intentions in the world.  It's not quite the simple morality
tale you make it out to be.  There are villains enough in
other respects, so it ought not to matter.

MBS



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Max B. Sawicky            Economic Policy Institute
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