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The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:03 pm
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:03 pm
quote:
The right yearns for an era when churches and local organizations took care of society's weakest—an era that never existed and can't exist today.
quote:
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.
LINK
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:05 pm to Cole Beer
As opposed to the liberal myth of a government run social safety net that doesn't turn into a hammock.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:06 pm to Cole Beer
Big Bad conservatives aren't going to take welfare away. But it is monumentally out of control, and needs reform in a bad way.
Typical Fear Mongering by the left.
Typical Fear Mongering by the left.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:07 pm to Godfather1
quote:
As opposed to the liberal myth of a government run social safety net that doesn't turn into a hammock.
...or a tool to perpetuate the status quo of a large segment of minorities living in poverty and being dependent upon the safety net.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:09 pm to Cole Beer
quote:
The right yearns for an era when churches and local organizations took care of society's weakest—an era that never existed and can't exist today.
Wasn't just the church people used to rely on this thing called, family.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:11 pm to constant cough
quote:
Wasn't just the church people used to rely on this thing called, family.
or, on a larger scale, emigration
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:18 pm to Cole Beer
quote:
The right yearns for an era when churches and local organizations took care of society's weakest—an era that never existed and can't exist today.
I bet the OP hates Christmas too...
quote:
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
ETA: Forgot the LINK
This post was edited on 3/24/14 at 2:25 pm
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:21 pm to Cole Beer
It's not charity that alleviates poverty, anyway.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:23 pm to Zephyrius
quote:
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
Poor people don't use the Treadmill. That's why poor people are obese.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:25 pm to Zephyrius
quote:
I bet the OP hates Christmas too...
I actually do. Hooray for the war on Christmas!
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:25 pm to Godfather1
quote:
As opposed to the liberal myth of a government run social safety net that doesn't turn into a hammock.
No conservative I have ever known has ever said "Let's completely do away with welfare and let charities figure it out". Don't feed the trolls, especially when they are creating a false argument and attributing it to you.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:29 pm to ironsides
quote:
No conservative I have ever known has ever said "Let's completely do away with welfare and let charities figure it out"
Well, now you know one. In fact, I'm not too keen on charities. I'm for starvation as a motivator to work.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:31 pm to ironsides
quote:
No conservative I have ever known has ever said "Let's completely do away with welfare and let charities figure it out".
Huh? I say we should completely get rid of welfare all the time.
This post was edited on 3/24/14 at 2:32 pm
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:36 pm to constant cough
Let me rephrase this as a question: are you guys for eradicating all forms of government payments to individuals including unemployment insurance (for a limited amount of time), all food stamps, etc., Social security?
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:37 pm to ironsides
quote:
Let me rephrase this as a question: are you guys for eradicating all forms of government payments to individuals including unemployment insurance (for a limited amount of time), all food stamps, etc., Social security?
Yes!!!!
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:40 pm to Cole Beer
quote:
Cole Beer
12 posts today. Including starting this thread. you have had 24 posts since 2011. Has the roommate come back?
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:41 pm to Cole Beer
This is going to be problematic for a lot of poliboarders. This debunks a lot of shtick.
quote:
One problem with the conservative vision of charity is that it assumes the government hasn’t been playing a role in the management of risk and social insurance from the beginning. It imagines that there is some golden period to return to, free from any and all government interference. As Senator Lee has said, “From our very Founding, we not only fought a war on poverty—we were winning.” How did we do it? According to Lee, it was with our “voluntary civil society.” We started losing only when the government got involved.
This was never the case, and a significant amount of research has been done over the past several decades to overturn the myth of a stateless nineteenth century and to rediscover the lost role of the state in the pre-New Deal world.
The government’s footprint has always grown alongside the rest of society. The public post office helped unite the national civil society Alexis de Tocqueville found and celebrated in his travels throughout the United States. From tariff walls to the continental railroad system to the educated workforce coming out of land-grant schools, the budding industrial power of the United States was always joined with the growth of the government. The government played a major role throughout the nineteenth century in providing disaster relief in the aftermath of fires, floods, storms, droughts, famine, and more.
quote:
Business risk management through the law was crucial in building out this nineteenth-century capitalist economy. The limited liability corporation, for instance, allowed for a massive expansion of passive investments, which provided necessary working capital for business. Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University, called this “the most effective legal invention for business purposes made in the nineteenth century.” Bankruptcy laws were introduced in the wake of nineteenth-century economic crises to allocate losses and help the economy move forward.
As for social insurance specifically, the historian Michael Katz has documented that there has always been a mixed welfare state made up of private and public organizations throughout our country’s history. Outdoor relief, or cash assistance outside of institutions, was an early legal responsibility of American towns, counties, and parishes from colonial times through the early nineteenth century. During this period, these issues were usually dealt with through questions of “settlement.” A community had a responsibility to provide relief to its own needy, native members, defined as those who had a settlement there. This became increasingly difficult with an industrialized society, as people moved to and fro looking for work and were forced out of communities when they couldn’t find any.
The next major initiative was the construction of poorhouses by state governments, especially in the early nineteenth century. The central idea was that by forcing people in need of aid to live in poorhouses where living conditions were quite harsh, there would be fewer applicants. This ended up not being the case, as able-bodied people would still seek out these poorhouses, especially when work was slack and unemployment high. Worse, these institutions became the default support for orphans, the mentally ill, and the elderly without income or family to support them.
quote:
As the political scientist Theda Skocpol has documented, there were also multiple examples of state-issued social insurance programs before the New Deal. In the wake of the Civil War, Congress established an elaborate system of pensions for veterans. At its height in 1910, this de facto disability and old-age pension system delivered benefits to more than 25 percent of all American men over 65, accounting for a quarter of the federal government’s expenditures. Between 1911 and 1920, 40 states passed laws establishing “mothers’ pensions” for single women with children. These programs provided payments for needy widowed mothers in order to allow them to provide for their children.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:41 pm to ironsides
quote:
Let me rephrase this as a question: are you guys for eradicating all forms of government payments to individuals including unemployment insurance (for a limited amount of time), all food stamps, etc., Social security?
Yes, but I do not identify as a conservative.
Posted on 3/24/14 at 2:42 pm to HempHead
quote:
It's not charity that alleviates poverty
This.
A social safety net is not sonething designed to live on. It's supposed to hold you over and help you get your life in order and as fast as possible to get off the safety net and be a productive citizen with your own means of living comfortably.
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