The welfare myth
Dependents of the State
By AMIA SRINIVASAN, NYT
Of all the sins to which an American can succumb, the worst may be dependence on the state.
Think back for a moment to the two biggest missteps in the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney’s dismissal of the “47 percent” of people “dependent on the government,” and President Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” intended to remind American business owners that their success wasn’t all due to smarts and hard work, but also to the roads and bridges built by others, the government-sponsored research that produced the Internet and the “unbelievable American system we have that allowed you to thrive.” Both statements came off as stinging insults directed at large groups of voters, and both were seen as tactical disasters.
Conservatives champion an ethos of hard work and self-reliance, and insist — heroically ignoring the evidence — that people’s life chances are determined by the exercise of those virtues. Liberals, meanwhile, counter the accusation that their policies encourage dependence by calling the social welfare system a “safety net,” there only to provide a “leg up” to people who have “fallen on hard times.” Unlike gay marriage or abortion, issues that divide left from right, everyone, no matter where they lie on the American political spectrum, loathes and fears state dependence. If dependence isn’t a moral failing to be punished, it’s an addictive substance off which people must be weaned.
Like so many politically important notions, the concept of “state dependence” purports to do no more than describe the way things are, but contains within it a powerful and suspect moral judgment. What is it for one thing to depend on another? Put most simply, X depends on Y when it’s the case that X wouldn’t exist if Y didn’t exist. More subtly, X depends on Y when it’s the case that X wouldn’t be in the state it is in without Y’s being in the state it is in. Americans who collect food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment insurance or welfare checks are said to be dependent on the state because the lives they lead would be different (indeed, worse) if the state did not provide these services — at least without their working harder and longer. Despite the symbolic resonance of Ronald Reagan’s fictitious “welfare queen,” most of the people who rely on means-tested social services either cannot work, have been recently laid off thanks to the economic downturn, or are already working in poorly paid, immiserating jobs. Of the 32 million American children currently being raised in low-income families — families who cannot afford to meet their basic needs — nearly half have parents who are in full-time, year-round jobs.
(More here.)
By AMIA SRINIVASAN, NYT
Of all the sins to which an American can succumb, the worst may be dependence on the state.
Think back for a moment to the two biggest missteps in the 2012 presidential election: Mitt Romney’s dismissal of the “47 percent” of people “dependent on the government,” and President Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” intended to remind American business owners that their success wasn’t all due to smarts and hard work, but also to the roads and bridges built by others, the government-sponsored research that produced the Internet and the “unbelievable American system we have that allowed you to thrive.” Both statements came off as stinging insults directed at large groups of voters, and both were seen as tactical disasters.
Conservatives champion an ethos of hard work and self-reliance, and insist — heroically ignoring the evidence — that people’s life chances are determined by the exercise of those virtues. Liberals, meanwhile, counter the accusation that their policies encourage dependence by calling the social welfare system a “safety net,” there only to provide a “leg up” to people who have “fallen on hard times.” Unlike gay marriage or abortion, issues that divide left from right, everyone, no matter where they lie on the American political spectrum, loathes and fears state dependence. If dependence isn’t a moral failing to be punished, it’s an addictive substance off which people must be weaned.
Like so many politically important notions, the concept of “state dependence” purports to do no more than describe the way things are, but contains within it a powerful and suspect moral judgment. What is it for one thing to depend on another? Put most simply, X depends on Y when it’s the case that X wouldn’t exist if Y didn’t exist. More subtly, X depends on Y when it’s the case that X wouldn’t be in the state it is in without Y’s being in the state it is in. Americans who collect food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment insurance or welfare checks are said to be dependent on the state because the lives they lead would be different (indeed, worse) if the state did not provide these services — at least without their working harder and longer. Despite the symbolic resonance of Ronald Reagan’s fictitious “welfare queen,” most of the people who rely on means-tested social services either cannot work, have been recently laid off thanks to the economic downturn, or are already working in poorly paid, immiserating jobs. Of the 32 million American children currently being raised in low-income families — families who cannot afford to meet their basic needs — nearly half have parents who are in full-time, year-round jobs.
(More here.)
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