The Weakening of the American Social State

As we approach the end of the 1^st quarter of this new century, the challenges are piling up like a backyard wood-pile preparing for a long and very cold winter. It’s June, the beginning of blessed summer with the kids home from school, but political winter will come quickly and its demands are unrelenting.

Consider how the far-right has shredded the social fabric

How very liberal of you, Jim.

Not so much liberal as socialist, recognizing that our best economic times came as a result of Roosevelt’s social programs, lifelines thrown to a drowning nation. His Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civil Works Administration (CWA), Farm Security Administration (FSA), National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) stabilized a broken economy, preparing the U.S. for the demands of wartime production as the clouds of war crept over Europe and Asia.

Socialism is a widely misunderstood designation in America

Why it carries the stench of communism is a mystery to me, but the word seems to shake Americans to their core, even though it runs through our society from bottom to top. Bernie Sanders is the only politician I can remember to wear that badge proudly and he’s so rare a congressional animal that he caucuses with the Democrats.

What too few of us seem to realize is that America is already a socialist society and Republicans as well as Democrats made their contribution. Dwight Eisenhower, the first Republican president to follow FDR, created the Interstate Highway system, a socialist (paid for by the state) project of gigantic proportion. Ditto for our elementary schools, state universities, national electric grid, government funded research, public utilities, military and the public funding of farm subsidies, along with so much more.

Capitalism (and the extreme right) loves socialism, so long as it’s their brand

On average, this capitalist society we treasure so dearly has thrown us a recession every six years. In the serious ones, investment banks fail, housing markets collapse and job losses are widespread.

Let’s parse that: In two out of three of those circumstances, homeowners lose their place to live and/or job losses spur a huge number of personal bankruptcies. It’s true that 58%, of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, according to the CNBC Your Money Financial Confidence Survey. Hold on to your hat for how we treat investment banks.

When investment banks get rolled (the 3^rd circumstance), the government has a uniquely socialist solution. It bails them out or, failing that, arranges a shotgun marriage with a more stable bank. That’s your and my money doing the heavy lifting. Interestingly, when ‘investors’ enjoy profits it’s the wonderful benefits of capitalism. When capitalism falls on its ass, it screams for socialism to pick it up, dust it off and send it on its profitable little journey to the next recession.

So, if you lose your job or have an unexpected medical disaster, you’re on your own. When capitalism collapses, it’s on you and me

Heads they win, tails you lose. But don’t for god’s sake, under any circumstances, call it socialism. That’s an American no-no and the reason we continue to fall in world rankings.

(Market Watch) “So much for America being No. 1 — the United States has dropped to No. 28 in a new report measuring social progress around the world. In fact, out of 163 countries, only three — the U.S., Brazil and Hungary — have citizens who are worse off now than they were about a decade ago.

“This is according to the Social Progress Index, which began measuring the quality of life (independent of economic indicators) across the globe in 2011. It looks at 50 well-being metrics — such as access to health care, education, nutrition, safety, the environment and freedom — to measure quality of life. And America has fallen from 19th place in 2011 to 28th place this year, despite the country’s overall wealth, cultural impact and military power compared with the rest of the planet.

“The report reveals a number of troubling disparities in Americans’ quality of life. For example, while the nation ranks No. 1 in the world for its access to advanced education and the quality of its universities, it’s down at No. 91 for its access to quality basic education. U.S. kids get an education roughly on par with children in Uzbekistan and Mongolia, according to the New York Times, which got an advance look at the report before it dropped on Thursday.

“And although the U.S. is among world leaders in medical technology, it’s No. 97 in its citizens’ access to quality health care. Indeed, Americans share health statistics similar to those of people living in Chile, Jordan and Albania…The U.S. also suffered low marks for having higher homicide and traffic fatality rates, worse sanitation and internet access, as well as discrimination and violence against minorities compared with most other advanced countries.”

Yeah, but we just don’t have the money we once had

True enough. Forty years of union-busting, lowered taxes and off-shoring our industrial power to China sure had its affect. While our middle class was disappearing, China built a middle class twice the size of what we used to have in just seven years. But communism’s command-economy is not a place we will ever go, now should we.

But my business years covered the 50s, 60s and 70s and, not to rub salt in the wound, but I was part of that lost middle class and it was a wonderful place to be. Almost anyone could build a small business from scratch, we had a 92% graduated tax rate and everyone but a crook paid their taxes. In 1979 the national debt was $879 billion.

What a mess we’ve made since Reagan. Now the debt is 36 times what it was, $31.4 trillion and no one pays their fair share of taxes except—guess who?—the wage slave who gets it taken automatically out of his paycheck.

Meanwhile, the best places in the world to live are all Scandinavian—and socialistic

Makes you wonder…