The intersection of individual triumph and government action

We all have our own north star, our biggest aspirations for personal fulfillment: a stable and fulfilling career, a family, a nice home in a dream location, and a secured retirement. There is finality in fulfillment and many have reached it. But the environments we grow up in have some of the biggest influences on the probabilities of those achievements, and the conditions we are subjected to are conditions we have little to no control over. The school we go to, the wealth of our family, the historical struggles of the immutable characteristics we have, the wealth of the families around us, and the economic conditions of our neighborhoods either facilitate the path to our dreams or make them harder to reach. The depressing realization that our north stars can be out of arm’s length is one that many people sadly experience.

There is no shortage of complex issues; issues that have taken decades to reach the debate floors of government halls. And a common solution for these complex issues, the onus to solve, is placed on the individual.

“Just work harder.”

“Just move elsewhere.”

“Stop making bad decisions.”

“Learn how to save money.”

“Clean your room.”

“We all have troubles, why are you so special?”

Make no mistake, every one of us has potential, and there is virtue in self-fulfillment, in self-determination, and in reaping the fruits of success. There is seldom more fulfilling than overcoming obstacles by our own determination and grit. However, it is irresponsible and damaging to expect that individuals solve structural problems. These are pessimistic arguments—arguments that miss the point.

Individual success warrants individual praise, but little praise is given to the policies and actions by government—at the behest of collective demands—which have helped our individual success become realized. In the case of female athletes, how often is credit given to the landmark legislation of Title IX? For those who were able to rebound after losing their job, how often is credit given to social safety net programs that ensured they would not fall through the cracks? For a child who excels in school in a historically disadvantaged community, how often are programs that advance equitable funding given credit? When thinking about the butterfly effect, how often do ostensibly minor revisions to laws snowball into millions of individual success cases, which go unrecognized? The answer is too many to count.

I have a pre-existing condition, and while the Affordable Care Act leaves much to be desired, the security that one single provision offers for people like me saves lives and helps people get ahead. I was able to go through college knowing that if anything serious happened, I was still insured and my pre-existing condition could no longer hinder my individual potential. When I got sick, my family’s health insurance kept us afloat in the worst of times. However, there was somebody my age, living in the same community and going to the same school, whose family went bankrupt because of the costs of their child’s illness. Why should I be so lucky? Why couldn’t that other family be as secure as I once was? It was not fair. It was wrong. It is still wrong that it still happens.

Fiscal Policy Analyst Nicholas Hess

It is time to crowd out the notion that individuals have the onus to solve society’s problems, just like it would be ludicrous to expect a sprinter to race the same race when they start a hundred yards behind everybody else. How can one individual solve the rising costs of living, or circumvent price gouging, or resume life when the factory their town relies on for economic prosperity closes down? How can one individual solve rising inequality and the fact that the U.S. has less social mobility than other industrialized nations? We have to understand the intersection between government action and individual success. We have to understand this in order to create more individual success stories. In turn, we create a more just society.

I pursued this career because policymaking is a game of inches; it is the art of the possible. And while many laws are far from perfect or ideal, seemingly inconspicuous changes in existing laws can have success and create opportunities so people can reach closer to their north stars. Being at the forefront of policymaking, closing economic disparities, and resolving historical injustices, whether it is monumental or incremental, is a great honor of mine.