Comments

1
Clearly, we are Sooooo much better off under neo-lib rule. [rolleyes]

A quick glance at the economic stats affirms that. Unfortunately, everyone failed to do that prior to the last election. Totally irrational.
2
I get a queasy feeling when examining the political-business elite structure in America. It reminds me too much of what I read about the sclerotic Roman imperial aristocracy/bureaucracy alliance. For hundreds of years, things would change just enough to keep the elites in power and the whole imperial game in motion, while everyone else ended up progressively worse off.

The whole rotten organization may need to break apart before anything better can be built in its place.
3
I think this has more to do with the expansion of state and local governmental employment (and salaries).

Feds concentrated in distributing the tax dollars but let states hire and implement.
4
"Since that time, anything to do with social welfare has been steadily gutted from the state."

Spending on food stamps has increased substantially over the past few years.

Obamacare is a big expansion of the welfare state.

Eligibility for Social Security Disability has been been continuously expanded over the decades.

Eligibility for and spending on Medicare and Medicaid--less than a decade old in your magic year of 1973--has grown also.

There there are the smaller programs that are still around and still receive funding--Section 8/public housing, subsidized bus passes, energy subsidies, subsidies for home and cell phones, WIC, etc etc.

Your Marxist narrative of decline is false. The only real retrenchment of social welfare is the time limit on TANF (which should be reversed).

And David Harvey is a Leninist asshole.

5
@4 Food stamps are means-tested, which means they're directly tied to the poor state of the economy for most Americans.

Personally, I have a problem considering Obamacare in the same social democratic category as say, Social Security or Medicare. The vast majority of the actual administration is passed to for-profit enterprises, which is why a lot of leftists had big problems with it. So I guess technically you could say it's a social welfare program, just one with many incompetent aspects that is a huge monetary boon to certain industries.

Actual welfare was gutted during the Clinton Years. Basically we've seen effective social democratic mutual aid programs phased out and replaced with programs that encourage precarity, anxiety, and concentration of wealth instead.
6
@5 Seconded, and you could throw in Medicare Part D in the assault on social welfare and common sense. It was correctly predicted to become a colossal giveaway to Big Pharma because the core principle was the feds could not negotiate volume discounts. Obamacare is a similarly elaborate transfer program for the health insurance industry.

@4 needs to distinguish between lip service, circumstantial growth (crises), and attacks on social welfare programs for the poor. Meanwhile, it's a truism that federal aid to fiscally dependent corporations and the wealthy has been growing like weeds.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.