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From: michael@psych.toronto.EDU (Michael Gemar)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: (Sharing the costs of) Child making and rearing
Message-ID: <1990Aug23.160712.22482@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 90 20:26:17 GMT
References: <3047@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <11145@cs.utexas.edu> <1990Aug16.163231.3503@ora.com>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
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[This is getting slightly off topic.  Followups that do not bring this
back to feminism should probably go to one of the politics groups. --CLT]

In article <1990Aug16.163231.3503@ora.com> kay@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu (Kay Wienhold) writes:

[in response to discussion of social welfare programs, and Russel
 Turpin's comments that such programs are more effective and successful
 if targeted at the most needy groups, rather than being universal]

>There was quite an interesting article in "The American Prospect"
>(Summer 1990 edition), which addressed the idea that the best social
>"welfare" programs are precisely those that are *not* targeted at the
>poor underclass, but rather those in which everyone participates.  It
>brought up a number of points.
>
>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.  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.

 [comments specific to social security deleted]

>Lastly, it discussed the potential benefits that may accrue with
>having programs in which people of different classes participate.
>This section was a bit weak, but I think the vision of a society in
>which class is *less* of a factor in deciding opportunities and
>benefits is worthwhile.

These two considerations are very prominent in the Canadian way of
thinking about social programs.  In Canada, Old-Age Pension (analogous
to Social Security) and National Health Insurance are available to
*everyone*, regardless of income.  The notion of "universality" of
such programs seems very important to Canadians, so much so that there
was quite an uproar when the Conservative government proposed a
"clawback" tax on old age pension benefits for those above a certain
income.  Of course, at a certain income level people *can* afford to
lose their national pension benefits, and to pay for their own health
care.  However, the Canadian approach works very well precisely
because of the considerations mentioned in the post above.  My own
impressions as an American living in Canada for 4 years are that
Canadian society *is* less class-conscious than the States, and that
there is no stigma attached to receiving government-provided health
care or retirement pay.

 And, lest one fear inefficiency, it should be noted that Canada
spends a smaller percentage of its GNP on its universal health care
program than the U.S. spends on its form of health care, *and* various
measures of health, such as infant mortality, generally show Canadian
health care to be better (or at least no worse) than U.S. care.

- michael