The Conservative Myth of Social Safety Net Built on Charity

[piscator]

The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity

Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future. And conservatives tell themselves a story, a fairy tale really, about the past, about the way the world was and can be again under Republican policies. This story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life. Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again.

This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy. It existed in the 1980s, when President Reagan announced, “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern,” and called for voluntarism to fill in the yawning gaps in the social safety net. It was made explicit in the 1990s, notably through Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, a treatise hailed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state. This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” It’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee references when he says that the “alternative to big government is not small government” but instead “a voluntary civil society.” As conservatives face the possibility of a permanent Democratic majority fueled by changing demographics, they understand that time is running out on their cherished project to dismantle the federal welfare state.

But this conservative vision of social insurance is wrong. It’s incorrect as a matter of history; it ignores the complex interaction between public and private social insurance that has always existed in the United States. It completely misses why the old system collapsed and why a new one was put in its place. It fails to understand how the Great Recession displayed the welfare state at its most necessary and that a voluntary system would have failed under the same circumstances. Most importantly, it points us in the wrong direction. The last 30 years have seen effort after effort to try and push the policy agenda away from the state’s capabilities and toward private mechanisms for mitigating the risks we face in the world. This effort is exhausted, and future endeavors will require a greater, not lesser, role for the public.

...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ty/284552/

[Blind groper]

It is very simple really.

People who are forced to, by the threat of prison, will pay up to a third of their income in taxes, much of which can be used to support the poor.

Without that threat, most people will not give more than 1% of their income directly as charity.

Government coercion works. Private charity does not. Rely on the latter, and people die of starvation.

[Drewish]

Another article that beats the shit out of a straw man. Really? Old voluntary men's cooperative in the 19th century didn't take care of women? So that's evidence that they wouldn't work today? Women were getting locked up if they had opinions for "Hysteria" by licensed physicians. Does that mean we shouldn't trust licensed physicians today? (Just to name one example) What crap. Conservatives believe this. I'm not one, but take my word for it. When they say, "We used to do this..." they're not saying that something similar or in the same vein might work today. They mean the EXACT same thing because that makes total sense. And because I can show that we have better medical care now in 2014 than we did in 1890, that proves that our government interference with health care is what's made it better. Checkmate right wingers.

[MrJonno]

It is very simple really.

People who are forced to, by the threat of prison, will pay up to a third of their income in taxes, much of which can be used to support the poor.

Without that threat, most people will not give more than 1% of their income directly as charity.

Government coercion works. Private charity does not. Rely on the latter, and people die of starvation.

I wouldn't give much more than that because I'm a bastard , it takes laws to make me less of a bastard and for society to function. It's one thing to recognise people act on short term self interest (including myself) but its another thing to recognise that isn't going to allow a society to function.

It doesn't take god for a human being to be decent but it does take a policeman with a big stick

[FBM]

In my experience, the vast majority of people are decent without a policeman with a big stick and would be so without a god, too. However, there's the occaisonal douchebag who fucks it up for everybody else.

[MrJonno]

In my experience, the vast majority of people are decent without a policeman with a big stick and would be so without a god, too. However, there's the occaisonal douchebag who fucks it up for everybody else.

If there was a TV and electrical goods shop where there were no staff, no security and no chance of ever being caught if you stole a new laptop.

I accept in the first day you might not help yourself (but the shop would still be emptied by those who would). When it gets refilled on the 2nd day and the same thing happen you might still say no. However eventually most of us will be tempted (are you really going to spend a £/$1000 on a new laptop in that situation).

This isn't some theoretical situation it happens every day with media piracy. Yeah some people might come up with a pile of shit about why its ok to pirate stuff but they are dishonest (to themselves as much as anyone else). They pirate (steal) because they know they won't get caught and the product is valuable (to the people stealing)

We do have empathy about causing clear pain to others including theft but only when that pain is clear, immediate and obvious.

Police with a big stick is necessary for society to function in addition to our empathy

[FBM]

Why would someone leave a shop unattended?

Anyway, I wouldn't steal anything from it even if it were and I could get away with it. Not unless I was very poor and it was a grocery store. I wouldn't steal a luxury item like a TV or whatever.

[MrJonno]

Why would someone leave a shop unattended?

Anyway, I wouldn't steal anything from it even if it were and I could get away with it. Not unless I was very poor and it was a grocery store. I wouldn't steal a luxury item like a TV or whatever.

It's a thought experiment, the shop attendant is a proxy for the police in this case.

The riots a couple of years ago showed that 'normal' people who have no criminal record did start stealing tv's when everyone around them was and weren't getting caught. These were normal people who were quite wealthy enough to buy them if they wanted.

Fear of punishment is a major factor in keeping people civilized, its not the only one but its still vital

[FBM]

A riot is hardly comparable to ordinary circumstances. Most people don't live according to mob rules. I think you might be very surprised to find out how many people would choose to live their whole lives without stealing. What makes you so sure that those 'normal' people in the riots weren't poor and didn't have criminal records? Got a link to the incident? Where was it and what were the riots about? I'd like to have a look.

[MrJonno]

A riot is hardly comparable to ordinary circumstances

Economically its the equivalent of getting rid of any taxation that doesn't give immediately give you a benefit. You are basically saying no laws and we will trust you to act decently

[FBM]

A riot is hardly comparable to ordinary circumstances

Economically its the equivalent of getting rid of any taxation that doesn't give immediately give you a benefit. You are basically saying no laws and we will trust you to act decently

No, riots are caused when a lot of people have a reason to be very pissed off. That's not the normal state of affairs. What incident are you talking about? When and where did this happen?

[MrJonno]

No, riots are caused when a lot of people have a reason to be very pissed off. That's not the normal state of affairs. What incident are you talking about? When and where did this happen?

People don't need to be pissed of to riot, many riot basically because its fun and profitable (and no fear of being caught)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots

[FBM]

The people in that riot were pissed off. Got an example of people rioting just for "fun and profit"?

[PsychoSerenity]

Not only that but it was only a small percentage of the local populations that were rioting/looting etc. It had started with many more people in relatively peaceful protests. There may well have been people who joined in just because they thought the could get away with it, but they would be an even smaller number again. Certainly not normal people in ordinary circumstances.

[FBM]

But if there is any common factor it is that the rioters were mostly from low-income backgrounds, suggesting that the long-term impact of the global economic downturn has helped to fan the flames, says Dr Paul Bagguley, a sociologist from the University of Leeds.

Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, claims that inequalities in society are a major factor. Drawing on empirical evidence from around 200 international studies, he shows that it is relative poverty that causes social unrest, rather than poverty per se.

Deprivation and inequality were also cited as factors by the sociologists writing for SocietyGuardian.co.uk, along with rising youth unemployment and the scrapping of some of the support programmes for the jobless.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/joep ... land-riots