Unintended or Hidden Consequences

Kamala's Policies Will Backfire

When I was young, I grew up poor. Like JD Vance, I was able to go to college and thus jumped from working poor to being part of the middle class. My kids have it fundamentally better in life than what I experienced as a child.

But will my kids use this to their advantage? Will any kid use free handouts and forego existing comfort to get ahead in life?

My father went to school for 8 years and my mother for 10. Both worked all their lives and I was not struggling with substance abuse by parents the way JD Vance did. However, my parents were always emotionally immature and I grew up in a Cluster B household that was passed down from all the generations before them. The German upbringing in general is more harsh than what other cultures experience. And the Prussian working class upbringing is even more geared towards non-emotional relationships with family members and prioritizes a form of authoritarianism as the primary parenting style. As an example? Father serves himself dinner first and no one is allowed to speak at the dinner table.

I had to work hard to go to college. No, I did not have to go to the army, college is free in Germany, but my parents were initially dead set against their daughter going to college. College was considered a waste of time and money (“You are not earning money, while you go to college”). My parents did not value education the way an academic family would, and wanted me to go down the path of an apprenticeship like they had done.

I fought for years. And finally graduating as one of the best in my class plus my promise to study something practical like engineering convinced them to let me go. Well, semi-convinced. When I told my father I would sue them if they did not let me go, he did not speak to me for several months. And… it basically took until my mom’s death in 2020 to repair this relationship to a point where we can actually have a conversation. I never really recovered from how bad living in my parent’s house was during my last year of Highschool and I felt like the rotten child and a bad person for years just because of all the screaming and yelling that occurred. It did not help that the minute I moved out after Highschool my brother told me: “It is so nice here at home now that you left. Nobody is screaming anymore.” And it made me feel like everything was always my fault. My brother is 5 years younger. When it became time for him to go to college, nobody fought him. It was expected. Quoting my mother: “We saw how well college worked for you, so now we are no longer worried about letting your brother go as well.” Thanks mom.

I had to fight really hard to go to college. But I did.

Three degrees later I am wondering if this or other fights are necessary for many kids to make the jump from working poor to middle class. I wonder if it is necessary for a kid like me to really, really want to change the trajectory of life. For me the hardest fight was the fight against my parents, against the working class culture (yes, it is a unique culture and you are considered a traitor if you leave this environment) and the desire to make something out of myself.

I am looking at other teens and young adults that can make something out of themselves despite being poor, but they do not. I see them insisting on an increase of the minimum wage, complaining about the tax on tips (my step daughter jobs as a waitress) and the long working hours (she works around 30h a week and rarely exceeds an 7h work day) and how hard it is to rent a place. But then I see them not improving on their lives. A friend’s son lives in his brother’s basement, has no driver’s license, and will turn 23 this fall and is delaying getting his license week after week, because he prioritizes gaming over anything else. Yet, he is complaining and extremely frustrated about his living situation. He cannot move, because thanks to not being able to drive, he has to stay within walking distance from his job as a pizza maker. He feels stuck. He made himself stuck by refusing to put in any effort to change his situation. He is essentially still too comfortable.

Both of these examples are kids who love instant gratification. They spend money without a thought about saving, both having too little impulse control. They vape marihuana. And I cannot help but think that just the ability to use vaping as an escape to make yourself instantly feel better and more relaxed dampens their desire to change their situation. Both complain about anxiety and depression, but are refusing any actions that would make them unstuck. Offering to help with resume or job searches are ignored. Offers to help with studying for the driver’s license tests are denied. I do believe that smoking too much of the high potent weed this generation has access to is bad for growing brains.

I am observing that every time there is a free handout people abuse it. Not everyone. But enough people to ruin it for everyone.

If you give social benefits to those that never paid into the social security system, you create a society of entitlement and a thought that there is free money to be found. So many illegal and legal immigrants into Germany are drawing from the social security fund available. Nearly half of the people receiving the new “Bürgergeld” (a form of social assistance) in Germany do have a migration background. In three of the German states it is more than 70%. And many Germans of the middle to lower class are now questioning whether it is actually worthwhile to work as this article from Reuters explains.

If we look at what Kamala promises with her new policies, we see a lot of fluff and well-sounding promises, but not necessarily a path to how to achieve what she is proposing. JD Vance already replied in detail, so I am not going through it case by case. Even when discounting what is being said since everyone overpromises and underdelivers during campaigning, I do not think Kamala’s policies will deliver much good. What is not new in Kamala’s write up is the fact that she plans to take from the rich and give to others that she feels deserve more. It is a classical redistribution of wealth and will lead to needed higher tax revenue for the government and more governmental required oversight to control. Do we really want more governmental involvement?

I also find some of the so called proposed policies naively put forward, completely ignoring the clearly unintended or maybe intended consequences. If you increase minimum wage you will automatically force business owners to increase prices or they will see a loss in their revenue. Alternatively they will cut jobs. Emission standards have severely harmed the automotive industry among others and done nothing to improve the world climate. And do we really want government housing? What does this even mean? To me, it sounds horribly close to the government housing of Eastern Germany. Who do you think will be prioritized to live in those new rental units? And when can we expect to get empty units to be confiscated and used for the “deserving people”?

The more you read Kamala’s proposal the more you read a built in hierarchy of a group of people that can be taken from to give to others that are perceived less privileged. It is the same oppressor vs oppressed dynamic that we are seeing in socialist countries. Another step towards more government control. Another step towards a more communist governance. Just worded less woke and more palatable to many Americans who do not think passed the initial sentence and cannot read between the lines.

My conclusion is relatively simple. We need to encourage hard work and go back to a merit based reward system. If you work hard, you should see improvement to your life. If you put in effort, you should be able to afford more. Social assistance should be for those that are disabled, too ill or too old to work. Not for those that enjoy their “me time” too much.

I do not want to work more so others do not have to work at all.

That simple.