Social Welfare Appeals: Fill & Download for Free

There is a simple and inviolable formula that so-called fiscal conservatives and small-government advocates need to keep in mind:Poverty Wages - Social Safety Net = High Poverty + High Crime - Skilled LaborOr in plain English, no society can have millions of adults earning poverty wages (e.g. unbenefitted minimum wage) and at the same time gut their social welfare spending, and have a stable society with low crime and a highly skilled work force.And you can't get around it by demanding that everyone move up the job ladder, because it's really a pyramid, with each tier smaller than the one below it. It's impossible for everyone, or even most people, to move beyond the lower tiers.No matter what, we will always need people to clean toilets, unload trucks, slaughter chickens, pick crops, and do all the other dirty, low status jobs that have to be done every damn day to keep the country running. No matter who finds a way out, those jobs stay, and someone moves in to fill them.So if you pay poverty wages for those jobs, as we do in America, you have unavoidable systemic poverty which is immune to philosophical appeals to hard work and personal responsibility.Which leaves you two choices: either provide social welfare, or accept widespread poverty with the accompanying social and economic instability and high crime.There are no other alternatives.Cutting the social safety net will not turn poverty wage jobs into living wage jobs. It will only turn the working poor into the working destitute.If you want a smaller welfare state, push for higher wages at the bottom. Anything else is fantasy.

I promise this post is about Bannon, it just takes a while to get there.America is built on the myth of the rugged individualist, finding success through hard work. That’s a myth, now more than ever.Every so many years, the political status quo - both conservative and reformative - becomes stale. Its answers seem boring, out of date, and unsuccessful. Other political systems, abroad, have, evolved to respond to the American political status quo, and people feel like our political answers are less successful than they might otherwise be. This is the time when people look for seismic shifts in the political landscape, because no political theory can stand alone without revision forever. In this post, I look at the interplay of political theory and market design.I believe that these shifts happen on a 30–40 year timescale, and that the last major shift was in the Reagan Revolution, which responded to the development of a market-based social welfare state in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s as the norm. That social welfare state was a response to the boom/bust contrast of the ‘20s and ‘30s. The boom was only possible because of a response in the post-WWI time to progressive economic regulation in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and the bust followed as the largesse of the ’20s overwhelmed the established market-political system. The regulatory framework of the Teddy Roosevelt era was desirable because of the previous generation, which had oil barons and railroad tycoons and economic dysfunction abundant. At midway points, there are resurgences which double down on the political theory of the time, as it defines the times more dominantly. Think of the mid-’90s with the “good for business” Clinton/Bush administration and the late ‘60s hippydom. WWII is a counter-example, because it more foreshadowed the social welfare of the future, as the market bust in the late ’20s discredited the all-market-all-the-time approach rather quickly.We’re in a political crisis. Donald Trump is one symptom of it. In a very different way, Bernie Sanders is another symptom. Our economic system is seeming to fall apart at the seams. Debt is rising, income is falling against inflation, and middle-class jobs aren’t so middle-class any more. The richest are getting richer, and the poorest are going into more debt. Solid investments of previous generations are uncertain, businesses are going bankrupt, and the manufacturing/technical skills labor market is destabilized by foreign and robotic competition. America feels stressed, and weed isn’t legal, most places.Steve Bannon has an answer to this crisis. It’s one that I believe is ahistorical, founded on lies, racism, and propaganda, but one which a large and loud minority of people find compelling. He is responding to the failure of the Reagan political-economic status quo to protect average Americans. He’s packaging up ideas of xenophobic nationalism with the myth of individualism, and trying to bring the political establishment down. He found a perfect puppet (but for his ego) in Trump - a previously political-without-a-theory celebrity who was looking for some semblance of coherence. His theory is based on fear, not hope, believing that fear of loss is more powerful than hope for a new future.The counter-example I’d give to this is Bernie Sanders. He also has a response to this crisis, and it’s the same answer he’s had for forty years, because he saw something in the social welfare state that stuck with him. He’s been arguing against the specific contradictions of Reagan-capitalism that appear today since Reagan was running for office. You may note that there was a large number of “Republicans” who turned out to vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary, not out of fear of Clinton, but because they were conservatives who saw an answer to the political-economic questions of the day that they found appealing. It wasn’t because they suddenly became liberal or socialists, it’s because he had an answer, was an adult, and wasn’t afraid to listen. A lot of those voters turned to Trump because he also had an answer - any answer - rather than denying the fundamental issues of the time.This was Clinton’s error; while she was factually correct on most of what she said, her political worldview was incomplete, unsatisfying to a large number of voters. She said, “times are tough, but we can get through it with moderate modifications,” rather than “tear it all down” (Trump), or “there are fundamental issues to be addressed and modified for the good of all” (Bernie). She was just out of step with the dominant political *feeling* of the day, and that doomed her.Bannon is popular because he has an answer that makes people feel like their struggles aren’t their fault. He gives people a scapegoat. He answers the stresses they have today. That’s what makes fascism so dangerous - when people are desperate enough, any answer will do, even if it comes at the cost of others.

You belong to a less common breed of conservative, an old-school type. Modern conservatives, who are more right-wing radical than conservative, would likely view you as a savior who brings a good conservative argument for policies the base wants or as a tempter who is attempting to infiltrate.There are good conservative arguments for gay marriage, universal healthcare and social welfare programs. That kind of talk may land you with the Democratic Party, but in some states it has good cross-party appeal.You’re not rare, thankfully. I for one appreciate your listed stances and your presence.