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News & ArtsFriday, February 22, 2013
Economy The Decline of Government
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:12 AM
Though neoliberalism has lost its legitimacy, its program is not dead. It now operates like something that's dead and yet still moving, still acting, still doing terrible things. Remapping the Debate:
Looking at the size of the federal workforce without taking population size into account is very misleading. Yes, 110 workers are more than 100, but if those 110 workers are serving 5,000 citizens instead of 1,000 citizens, the effective size of government employment has declined. Putting employment numbers in context is particularly important because of the common assumption that the federal workforce is much larger than it was a few decades ago. In fact, the contextualized picture shows that executive branch civilian employment is substantially down as compared with its peak in 1978. This data viz updates one we originally published in 2011.David Harvey marks the coup against Allende's government in Chile in 1973 as the birth of neoliberalism, as the point at which its policies are properly implemented. 1978, the peak of governmental employment in the US, is a year or two before neoliberalism takes power in the UK and the US. Since that time, anything to do with social welfare has been steadily gutted from the state. Even after the crash of 2008, the attack on the social has not stopped. Obama has merely restored Keynesianism sans its social democratic promises. This is where things stand today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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