Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!ora!ora!daemon From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: (Sharing the costs of) Child making and rearing Summary: Put first things first. Message-ID: <11284@cs.utexas.edu> Date: 17 Aug 90 16:20:01 GMT References: Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 51 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <1990Aug16.163231.3503@ora.com>, kay@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Kay Wienhold) writes: > First, it pointed out that such broad-based programs as social > security are successful because there is no stigma attached to them > (because everyone participates), and because so large a segment of the > population benefits, there is virtually no opposition to it. ... What do you mean by success? Yes, social security is very popular, but it has also been very damaging to this nation. By disguising a transfer of wealth between generations as a forced savings program, social security has effectively displaced a large portion of what Americans would otherwise save and invest. Americans' savings rate over the last three decades has been abysmal, much less than the Japanese or West Germans (or even the Koreans). There was an article in _Scientific_American about two years ago that showed how this difference in savings was in large part responsible for these nations consistently having better economic growth than us over the same time frame. The capital to invest in modern factories and other things that improve productivity has to come from somewhere. In this nation, a large portion of money that would otherwise go to this purpose has been funneled into the world's largest Ponzi scheme. > ... This is in contrast with such targeted programs as welfare, > which serve a much smaller proportion of the population, which > do stigmatize, and which do have a substantial political > opposition. > It also discussed the idea that social security is not seen as > "welfare" per se, but rather as something which is *earned*. This > also deflects stigma from being attached to the program. Whether it stigmatizes or not, and whether it has a political opposition or not, the school lunch program (to name but one example) at least does a lot of good for the poor at a reasonable expense, unlike social security which does some good for the poor, but at a god-awful expense for society. It strikes me that the authors of this article looked at things bass-ackwards. It seems to me that the legitimate goals of welfare are first to keep poor people from suffering malnutrition and other dire fate, and second, to help poor people get a leg up on the ladder, so that in the future they do not rely on welfare. Convince people that a welfare program does these things, and it will have political support. Welfare programs have been losing political support because people are not convinced that they are well designed to do these things. The authors you reference seem to place political support first, regardless of the other effects of a program, and seem to think that permanent and instituted subsidization of a certain class is fine, as long as it is disguised as something else. Russell