Assuming we can get past the cognitive dissonance of how the same government that’s so massively incompetent, if not venal, in the performance of functions you don’t like will miraculously perform sufficiently, if not spectacularly, when it comes to the execution of Biden’s “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill, the contents of which remain largely a mystery because, as Bernie Sanders contends, the media has done a crappy job of selling to the public as the bros expected it to do, the next question is “why?”
Some proponents of President Biden’s plans are inclined to grant Mr. Manchin’s point and then argue for programs like the child benefit on the grounds that it is a worthy kind of charity.
The better argument is that Mr. Manchin is wrong. Paying taxes is not a form of noblesse oblige, and the social safety net is not a philanthropic project. This nation’s prosperity is a collective achievement, and Americans are entitled to share in that prosperity. Americans also need government support to contribute to that prosperity. A basic goal of providing more help to parents with dependent children is to allow those parents to engage in paid work and to allow their children to become flourishing members of society.
This raises an interesting point, and one that has greater merit than the New York Times editorial articulates. A nation functions on the backs of those who do the most menial of jobs as well as the most illustrious. The garbage needs to be picked up, even though we don’t build statues to celebrate sanitation workers. Shelves need to be filled so we can buy the common necessities of life, even though we don’t know the names of the shelf stockers. Take any “lowly” job and consider how well society would function without them.
We need them. We can’t do it without them. And they are not well-paid for their efforts, as important as they may be to society’s well-being, for the pedestrian reason that they require no special education or skills, and can theoretically be performed by pretty much anyone willing to put in the effort to do so.
The Times’ claim that “this nation’s prosperity is a collective achievement” is not as shallow and platitudinous as they make it appear. But does that answer the question of whether this is some debt owed them?
It is hard to persuade an aging nation to pay for child care. Only about a third of American households include dependent children. While older Americans may have raised children, they may also recall a time when raising children was considerably less costly.
This isn’t a fair representation of the issue, although it feeds into the younger generation’s assumption that the olds are just selfish and greedy, caring only for themselves and unwilling to throw a bone to the young and struggling. Then there’s the “considerably less costly,” for which no cite is provided and reflects a childish grasp of the relative costs.
The “social safety net,” which was a liberal (not progressive) ideal so that nobody should starve or die for lack of basic medical care in this nation of prosperity, was directed not toward those who earned or deserved it, but toward those who desperately needed it. So what if they made terrible choices in their life that gave rise to the circumstances? We still don’t let them die. This was not a matter of duty, but of charity, a reflection of our good will toward man rather than their having done something to deserve it. Many did. Some didn’t. It did not matter. They were human beings and we would not let them starve.
Granted, it didn’t work that way much of the time, but we’re not looking at government incompetence at the moment, since we’re now on the fantasy side of how groovy the government can be.
But if we’re being asked to provide novel services without regard to need at other people’s expense, a very different concern is raised. We are no longer talking about the social safety net, but about some amorphous debt owed to people whose contribution to our national prosperity is anything but clear. Some will be hard-working poor who are very much a critical cog in the gears that keep society running, but others are not, some for reasons beyond their control but others because they either made poor choices or decided not to play the game at all. They too have made a choice.
There are plenty of families who raised their children on their own dime, or at their own sufferance, because that was the only available option. And they managed, sacrificing their own wealth or dreams for the sake of their children. For most of us, the sacrifice was more than worth it as our children turned out to be the greatest treasure of our lives.
And many of these same people are now trying their best to earn enough, save enough, to cover their current cost of living, inflation be damned, as well as save for retirement, help out their own kids when needed and perhaps even enjoy a bit of the good life for which they went to work every day, even when they didn’t feel like it or some traumatic event happened a thousand miles away that made them sad. Not everybody is Bezos. A lot of these now-childless couples were sanitation workers or shelf stockers too.
Do they owe a duty to you because they struggled through it, made sacrifices, made the choice to go without a Starbucks mocha frappuncino or an Apple iPhone 37? The willingness to give for the sake of others isn’t necessarily the question. They may very well be willing to pay for the social safety net so that no one dies because of poverty in America. But they don’t do this because you don’t feel like making hard choices for yourself and demand your entitlement to a life without sacrifice. They don’t owe you. And they aren’t the “noblesse.” They’re just decent, hard-working good people. And they’re charitable.
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Dear Mr. Greenfield,
When you state, “This was not a matter of duty, but of charity, a reflection of our good will toward man rather than their having done something to deserve it” it appears that you are referring to government undertaking our our personal obligation “of good will toward man”, financed by involuntary taxation. But I am not sure your use of the word “charity” is appropriate. Charity, by definition, is the “the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.”
Agreed. When I give my money to the poor, that’s charity. When you take my money at gunpoint and give it to the poor, that’s theft.
Paying taxes is a duty and money is fungible. Since you’re in such a good mood this weekend and I know you hate analogies I won’t list a hundred examples like “am I a mass-murdering psychopath or doing my duty” by funding a tiny sliver of the drone program so famous for collateral damage but it wouldn’t hurt for you to admit the limitations of this line of inquiry.
As much as a leftist as I am, even I don’t feel anything approaching duty, charity, enjoyment, patriotism, or a sense of accomplishment in April. I’d rather save for my future or do things I want to do with the money I earned, just like everyone else.
Too perfect. As the commenters who precede you ignore, it’s the purpose, not the mechanism, that’s in issue. And as you ignore, national defense and welfare are motivated by obviously different concerns. Two sides of the same coin of idiocy. Absolutely perfect.
But it is nice to see how much you hate Bernie.
Yes, Jake is blurring the lines between welfare and defense, but that’s the point he’s trying to make. We give the money up to the government who does with it as it will. The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. So, respectfully, he is talking about the purpose even if in a round-about way. He’s throwing up his hands, in a way, or else wiping the blood from them as if only a few drops of water could do so much.
I’d guess he’d rather so-called “welfare” purposes to outweigh so-called “defense” purposes, but I am reading between the lines to get there. If I knew what he meant by “leftist” I might be able to predict a little better, but I’m terrified to even begin to ask.
Please understand I’m trying to help him and realized I’ve been too eager to tear him down because I see my own faults reflected in his inability to see the point. So, in an act of radical self-love, I’m flipping the script.
You might want to be a bit more circumspect about eliding national defense, a specific purpose stated in the Constitution for which the federal government exists, with the social safety net, for which there is no express constitutional purpose can be found. It’s one thing to complain that the cost of national defense is too high, but then, it too is voted by Congress so it’s not as if they don’t have a say. If we, or our allies, should need defending, we have the ability to do so as the Constitution mandates.
But transfer payments have no mandate beyond our good will to provide them. As much as Jake may prefer monies spent on national defense be spent on social welfare (or nothing, if I understand his libertarian posture here correctly), it’s not a trade-off as silly people tend to argue since we would still need to provide for national defense.
Economic security = national security.
Cool game.
Fords = potatoes
On this, we agree. But the robes are unlikely to ever consider whether we are right based on emanations and penumbras.
Jake isn’t saying the government has an obligation to provide economically for the citizenry at current. He’s making an argument that the economic welfare of society is as important as the nation’s security. The government as it is ought to be providing for the general economic welfare of society at large at least as much as it invests in defense. That’s a moral argument he’s making, not one which can be refuted by citation to the Constitution. There ought to be a mandate, we say. Whether we could possibly justify that is for another episode of Jake’s Takes.
Give me a bit more than X=Y to work with next time, please comrade.
Then it appears I will need to explain this further. Whether it’s as important, what it’s moral, is a normative thing about which there’s no useful argument. If that’s how someone feels, that’s how they feel. My point is that the federal govt exists to fulfill certain duties given it by the Constitution. As for other things it does, assuming it has the authority to do so (remember, it’s a govt. It’s not your best friend or doggy), it does so because of the will of the public and the question is why the public wills it to be done.
Bear in mind, we all have our relative values of things. Jake’s is no more right than anyone else here, nor more wrong. But either way, it is not one of the purposes for which the United States of America was formed.
On that one statement I can agree. Economic security is a part of national security as no nation that does not have a stable economy is really secure.
But realize that welfare economy != economic security, in fact a nation with a healthy economy with full participation will significantly reduce the “need” for welfare as most people will be working and earning a living and only those with severe disabilities needing assistance. This should be the goal of any economic system.
But when people start deciding to not participate in the working economy because they feel they can get enough on welfare and other assistance and that they have a “right” to not work and collect assistance then the economy starts becoming unhealthy, and when that non-participation becomes generational than the issue is severe and needs addressing. Work if you’re able (and a very small percentage are incapable of performing *any* kind of work) and help those who really need it.
Where do you think the US is?
Scott,
Sorry for the dive down the rabbit hole, this is kind of a button issue for me, I started a short comment and it just grew. delete it if you want.
Dear Mr. Greenfield,
Thank you for reminding us that social spending is not a power enumerated in the Constitution, nor necessary and proper to facilitate the exercise of any enumerated power ceded to the Federal Government. As James Madison stated:
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
James Madison, Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo (now Haiti) to Baltimore and Philadelphia.
SHG, one of the problems with increased kids’ care when articulated and opposed by the old (me) is that we gladly suck down Social Security and want even more without blinking (often).
Indeed, I don’t need SS but you can’t take it from me. Why? Well, ’cause!
All the best.
RGK
Remember when FDR proposed social security as a stop-gap measure that would naturally expire once it was no longer needed to overcome the losses of the great depression for those unfortunates at retirement?
If all the money ever taken from me for social security had instead been put into a personal IRA to earn on the index I think I would be looking at a much better retirement than I currently am, even given at least 3 recessions in my working career.
Looking back is easier than predicting the future.
Beyond the problem of making people increasingly dependent on the state for everything, there is the hook that always comes with the federal dollars. Take the king’s bread, sing the king’s song. Bow to the hat on the king’s pole.
Is your noblesse oblige broken?
Ok Boomer
Maybe your best comment ever.
As an alternate to duty or charity, let me suggest enlightened self-interest. The safety net protects a reserve of labor, reduces crime, generally promotes quality of life for everyone.
Personally, I think that higher wages are likely to work better than entitlement programs.
There’s a lot to be said for enlightened self-interest, which is often the missing component in so many of these discussions. A thriving economy for everyone solves a lot of other problems without even trying.
I don’t mind paying my fair share, but for several years now, I feel like I’m paying my share and the shares of several others. When more people pay no net taxes than do, the system is screwed up and unsustainable. I think we are very close to that point. The debt is already going to fall on our great great grandchildren.
Why expand the safety net to encourage others to decline from their living responsibilities and then coast on through life.
I’m not a lawyer. I’ve been working six to seven days a week since the shutdown. Yet, with this proposal I will be working more hours, and being taxed more, to serve (working in a restaurant) those who will benefit from more time and capital.