These days, in the Trumpian era, certain politicians are busy shredding the “social safety net” that sends “our” money to “those people,” who are undeserving.
Sheila Kennedy, a law professor at Indiana University Purdue Indianapolis, says we should rethink what we mean by “social safety net” and who it benefits.
She writes:
A “social safety net,” properly conceived, is the web of institutions and services that benefit all members of a given society while building bonds of community and cross-cultural connection. In this broader understanding, the safety net includes public education, public parks, public transportation and other services and amenities available to and used by citizens of all backgrounds and income categories.
Public education is a prime example. Even granting the challenges—the disproportionate resources available to schools serving richer and poorer neighborhoods, the barriers to learning created by poverty—public schools at their best integrate children from different backgrounds and give poor children tools to escape poverty. Public schools, as Benjamin Barber has written, are constitutive of a public.
Common schools create common cultures, and it is hard to escape the suspicion that attacks on public education have been at least partially motivated by that reality. While supporters of charter schools and voucher programs have promoted them as ways of allowing poor children to escape failing schools, the data suggests that most children—including poor children—are better served by schools that remain part of America’s real social safety net.
This point was recently underscored by Thomas Ratliff, a Republican member of the Texas Board of Education—a board not noted for progressive understandings of the role of education. After setting out the comparative data about costs and outcomes achieved by traditional public schools in Texas and those operating via various “privatization” programs, he concluded
When you hear the unending and unsubstantiated rhetoric about “failing public schools” from those that support vouchers or other “competitive” school models, it is important to have the facts. ISDs aren’t perfect, but they graduate more kids, keep more kids from dropping out and get more kids career and college ready than their politically connected competitors. Any claims to the contrary just simply are not supported by the facts and at the end of the day facts matter because these lives matter.
Recognition that “these lives matter” is the hallmark of a society with a capacious understanding of citizenship—both in the sense of who counts as a citizen, and what constitutes the mutual obligations of citizens to one another.
The actual social safety net is not limited to the (grudging and inadequate) financial assistance given to the most disadvantaged in our society. The true safety net consists of the many institutionalized avenues within which the citizens of a nation encounter each other as civic equals, and benefit from membership in a society built upon the recognition that all their lives matter.
Defining the social safety net that way allows us to see that the portion of our taxes used to assist needy fellow-citizens isn’t “forced charity.” It’s our membership dues.
The definitions of basic terms is subtly changing to reflect the business model rather than the commonwealth model where “social safety net” gets its legitimacy. For instance, the term ” citizen” means being a born in the US and living here legally; but it’s slowly changing to mean ALSO being able to pay-for-play. Or, as you say:
“These days, in the Trumpian era, certain politicians are busy shredding the ‘social safety net’ that sends ‘our’ money to ‘those people,’ who are undeserving.”
POSTSCRIPT to my note above: So they are hitting taxes at both ends: First, they are cutting taxes for the rich (it’s still that laughable “trickle-down” theory); and second, they are changing the meaning of citizen and the citizen’s relationship to taxes (pay for play instead of common good) so that whatever taxes actually do get paid are still under the control of the rich and their surrogates in Congress.
The irony is that such taxes used for the common goods (like education for all) ARE an investment for all of us, including the rich. The “raise all boats” idea speaks to avoiding tears in the basic FABRIC of a CULTURE on which we all depend for peace and order and creative growth that,in turn, underpins the economy–the one that is the over-focus of those rich and powerful among us.
To them I would say: Keep going with your anti-government Randian selfishness and see what happens. And that’s not a threat–it’s just a recognition of how cultural realities really work.
The Alt Right and/or extreme Right, so extreme they are almost in orbit around Alpha Centauri, has spent decades pumping out propaganda and misleading allegations that all social safety net programs are welfare and only benefit deadbeats who refuse to work when the opposite is true. To the deplorable people who listen to the Far Right Hate Media Machine, everyone who collects from these programs are con-men and frauds (like the Malignant Narcissist in the White House) that lie repeatedly to take advantage of that social safety net to get this money so they don’t have to work.
In fact, the Malignant Narcissist in the White House has collected about $1-billion in corporate welfare, and one of his current and still-open lawsuits is against a small town where he has one of his golf courses. He claims this town is charging him too much in property tax. The town says the land the golf course is on is worth about $12 million. In the lawsuit, Trump claims it is worth less than $2 million but in his economic disclosure documents for the election, the same golf course was listed by Trump to be worth $50-million.
Who are these deplorable, ignorant, racist, biased Americans that swallow this swine flu?
I went to a meetup group last night and in a conversation with another person at the meetup, he told me about a friend of his who voted for Trump. A few weeks after the election, he asked this friend of his what he thought now. The friend said he was happy and satisfied with What Trump was doing.
The person I was talking to then said he asked his friend what he thought about all of Trump’s repeated lies.
The friend reared back in surprise and said, “What lies? I haven’t heard any lies!”
Lloyd Lofthouse: The other Trump-supporter tack is to say: Well, Obama did X, (or Hillary or some other democrat). So I guess that makes Trump’s lies okay. The hidden mantra of this whole argument is: false equivalence.
And BTW, I don’t remember Obama trying to take down the government and the Constitution that he swore to uphold. But leave it to them to find something–it’s like a math problem to them–subtract a one from both equal sides, and you come up with equality again. But here’s the caveat: the equation: Obama lies=Trump lies is the moral equivalence of: if Obama lies are wrong, then Trump lies are also wrong. So who’s the hypocrite or moral degenerate here: The Trump Supporter who ignores Trump’s lies.
As most here understand, it’s not about politics anymore anyway–it’s about survival of a way of life. And those Trump supporters will be the first to squeal (and blame Obama or Hillary) when they start feeling the heat.
Oh, CBK, you can be sure that when things go into the toilet, Trump and his supporters will be “blaming Obama.”
Or anyone else except themselves. 😔
Two paragraphs for the ages in today’s Charles Blow NYT column:
“I think any who have been holding out hope that Trump will eventually change into someone more polished, professional and amenable than the man we have come to know must simply abandon that hope.
“This is a 70-year old man who has lived his entire life as the vile, dishonest, incurious creature who got elected. That election validated his impulses rather than served as a curb on them.”
The blame Obama game has some validity, but instead if dwelling on it, why not learn from it?
Obama was not a hawk on Wall Street, and he paved the road very smoothly for DeVos to travel on with his love of privatization and charters/test-and-punish conversion of public education. And now after successfully launching his wrecking ball on public school educators, he essentially gets rewarded with a $60 million dollar book deal.
Trump is the devil; but Obama is a bastard.
Norwegian Filmmaker: You’re still doing it. But that’s okay. And I think ignoring the emoluments clause doesn’t matter after the president leaves office?
Believe me: I am mortified about Trump.
Public education and libraries are an investment in our collective future. They provide all people with access to opportunity, and they are especially important to the poor as they have fewer opportunities at their disposal. These public institutions are democracy in action. Looking out for the poor and vulnerable should be everyone’s interest.
As Sanders said, health care should be a right free from profit. As the Republicans dismantle the ACA, they are discovering the complex set of checks and balances within ACA that allowed it to provide service to our diverse population, and about fifteen million Americans will be abandoned as a result of the Republicans’ eliminating the collective social contract in the ACA. Their ideology is about “individual responsibility’ or what some may call selfishness.
The rise of libertarians and radical conservatives has resulted in a disinvestment in the common good and the belief that the federal government should only support the military and free market capitalism. Looking out for the citizens that pay taxes is not in their interest. In my opinion, this is short sighted and selfish. If we destroy our common ideals identity, and institutions, what will hold us together?
Robert Rendo, If you are reading this, please note:
I apologize for writing your name. I stupidly entered your name because I had just finished reading an essay of yours a minute before posting on this blog . . . it was an essay that you had published elsewhere, and I wanted so badly to contact you. I don’t know your contact info. I see you no longer write on this blog much as you used to. This is what happens after you work on a shoot since 4 am this morning and just get off a set!
People, this was my comment about my country, and I am sorry for the writer’s slip. Don’t I feel silly!
If anyone knows Robert Rendo’s contact info, please post it to this blog.
Thanks,
E. Morris / Norwegian Filmmaker
Norwegian Filmmaker,
Rcbluemoon@aol.com
Thank you, Diane, and apologies to Rendo for this! I should not write or type when I am exhausted.