Answer: This is a tough one. Conservatives have huge power in Congress and in many states. But many people are taking action around jobs and wages and in some regions of the country minimum wage levels are going up, and sometimes pretty rapidly. In 2010, no one would have predicted that a $15 an hour minimum wage would be on the books in a fair number of cities and regions in 2015.
9. Assertion: Gramps has one more point. He knows about people. He's been around. The American People are suspicious of government and they don't like welfare-type programs. A large government jobs program is dead on arrival.
Answer: The job program is about work, not welfare. Full-employment supporters should not badmouth government handouts; some people need and deserve government assistance, whether or not they work. But the jobs program is about work and enabling the work ethic.
Furthermore, the attitudes of average Americans are less conservative than grandpa thinks. In surveys they give majority support to food stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security, government infrastructure projects and much more. How strong these beliefs are, and whether public opinion would fall away when right-wingers attack job programs as inefficient, socialistic welfare boondoggles is not clear. There is a class of things including welfare and affirmative action and income redistribution that turns off quite a few people B even people who are living on government payouts. Few Americans B certainly fewer than Dutch, Danish, and French people B show a forthright appreciation of welfare programs. Few could say this: A Welfare programs are really good. They help make America great. Most people will need government handouts at some time in their lives. It is good and moral that we help one another through our government. Poverty and unemployment have systemic causes. The victims are not the cause.
I can see that the folks at the table are not comfortable with that idea. But, in fact, gramps loves that Medicare pays most of his medical bills and he needs his Social Security to get by. Uncle Joe and Aunt Isobel once had to go on food stamps for more than year when Joe got permanently laid off by the Ford Motor Company. The cousins have received Pell Grants. But those are exceptions to the rule, right?
Not really. Americans need to know wide usage of government programs and conservatives need to learn compassion. Political education in this direction is being done all the time by community activists, on-line sites, progressive unionists, Moral Monday participants, liberal pastors, and outstanding politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps someday we can banish the term welfare and start over. Maybe all social welfare programs, from unemployment insurance to welfare itself can be called the American Independence Program, because without Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, and, yes, welfare, people are less free and more enslaved to poverty and worry and stress. But whatever the wording, Americans, especially conservatives, need to stop picking on poor people. I think Baby Jesus, who's responsible for the Xmas holidays, would have wanted that.
[i] The work of Mark Zandi during the Great Recession is useful here. For example, he estimated that the Bush tax cuts were 1/15 as effective as direct job creation.
[ii] As an example, Medicare fraud usually involves crime by private businesses B doctors, clinics, and so on. It's really private-sector crime, but few politicians say we should eliminate the private sector element in government medical programs. Of course, the Social Security Administration is not perfect. Nor are people in the system. Some people are listed as deceased who are not, and vice versa. But erroneous payouts are less than 1%, and the cost of keeping perfect records would require more spending, and Congressional conservatives won = t support that. Better to use the problem as a target for undermining Social Security. See Michael Hiltzik, A 60 Minutes Bungles Another Hit Piece on Social Security, @ March 16, 2015, Los Angeles Times, accessed at latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-60-minutes-bungles-20150316.
[iii] This is a common right-wing approach. Republican Representative Paul Ryan says, A We need to reform our poverty programs. We = re going to have a debt crisis if this country keeps spending money we don = t have. @ Ryan quoted in Parade, August 17, 2014, 14.
[iv] Valuable here are Philip Harvey, A Responding to Rising Unemployment: Can We Afford Jobs for All? @ Uncommon Sense 14, October, 2001, accessed 11/30/2007 at njfac.org/us14.html; and Thomas L. Hungerford, A The People's Budget: Analysis of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget for Fiscal Year 2016, Economic Policy Institute, March 18, 2015, esp. 10-12 on taxation.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
