Maybe life is like a ride on a freeway

AGE OF THE GEEK COLUMN:Do not stare at the sun.
Seems to be a pretty straight forward rule. Right? The sun is a giant nuclear furnace projecting radiation through the cosmos. Even filtered through the protective layer of our atmosphere it can burn your skin during prolonged exposure. So don't look directly at it.
And yes, this includes during an eclipse. Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can still result in permanent partial blindness. Sure, "common sense" may tell you that if the sun is being blocked by the moon, then it shouldn't be dangerous, or at least as dangerous as it would be otherwise. It seems like simple enough logic, and yet it's wrong.
I doubt I'm telling anybody reading this anything they don't already know. For the last several weeks the only thing more inescapable than news about the eclipse have been the warnings about looking directly at it.
And yet, I can all but guarantee that there is some fool out there seeing spots today, and who possibly will for the rest of their life. You can warn people of the dangers. You can explain to them in great detail what will happen if they ignore your warnings. And yet, there will always be people that do it anyway.
What do we do with these people? As a society I mean.
Obviously I'm not just talking about people that look at the sun during an eclipse, but the ones that just can't seem to get it together. People that fall into drug habits or can't manage to hold onto a job. People who are their own worst enemy, sabotaging themselves with a persistent inability to recognize the difference between the chute and the ladder.
Sure, you can personally cut these people out of your life. Do everything you can to separate yourself from them so they don't bring you down. But turning a blind eye to people doesn't remove them from society at large nor does it reduce the impact they have on it.
For all the talk about lack of jobs in the country, one of the biggest problems in rural areas is actually a lack of laborers. The Washington Post recently wrote about a Wisconsin factory that was forced to bring in a robot to do automated line work. Not just because it was economically efficient, but because they can't keep their line staffed with humans of even baseline reliability. It turns out that not showing up to work high or drunk is too much to ask of some people and these factories apparently cannot afford to pay enough to attract anybody else.
It's a problem that should sound familiar to anybody working in similar factory jobs here in Iowa. Declining populations are limiting employee prospects, which limits growth, which causes businesses to close or leave, which contributes to declining populations in a cycle of economic downfall.
In another contrast between reality and "common sense," too little unemployment can be just as unhealthy for an economy as too much. How do you grow a business when your pool of potential employees consists of the two percent of people in an area that don't already have a job? Sure, you can poach already employed people, but that just shifts the problem onto a different business.
Which brings us back to the original question. What do we do with that last couple percent of people? Families are increasingly unable to support relatives that aren't carrying their own weight and the social programs designed to help these people are continually demonized and defunded. Then there are those that fall on the wrong side of the law. Let's have no illusion about the fact that a felony conviction can often mean a lifetime sentence of economic hardship for a person long after they've supposedly paid their debt to society.
Even for the people that do everything right it seems that there are an ever increasing number of chutes these days and relatively few ladders. Those that can perform low skill jobs aren't really given what they need to succeed. We tell people "you can always get a job flipping burgers," but then scoff at the idea of paying fast food workers a living wage.
Yes, it's possible for a person to start at the bottom and work their way to the top, but it's not possible for all people.
Social Darwinism would say just let the rest fail. If they can't swim, then they sink. It's harsh, but their problems are their own. Personal responsibility and all that, right?
Except their problems are not just their own. Their emergency room visits cost all of us. If, in their desperation, they turn to crime, it costs all of us. Nobody lives in a bubble. Like it or not, we're all in this together.
So again, what do we do? We outlawed debtors prison for a reason, even if we've brought them back in everything but name. Universal basic income is an idea that is increasingly being thrown around, but even if it's economically viable, the United States has a long way to go before it becomes politically viable.
Life is a treadmill and you every generation has to move faster than the previous just to keep up. We've got to start thinking harder about what we can do for the people that can't keep pace before people start making "modest proposals."
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and there's more to living than only surviving. Maybe I'm not there, but I'm still trying.