May 31, 2013
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Social Responsibility
In many nations today, there seems to be a move away from governmental concern over social welfare. Rising political movements seen to focus on shortening or canceling many social welfare programs, even those which seem to benifit the entire nation. Even the U.S. – one of the richest nations in the world – has a growing political presence demanding drastic reform or even repeal of many social welfare programs which have demonstrated positive economic and social benifit to the nation as a whole.
To what degree is a nation responsible for the welfare of its citizens? How should this responsibility be expressed?
Comments (5)
It is all the symptom of a recession combined with a long term, long distant war effort. It is sufficient to put strain on any government. I don’t think it is that governments want to cut back but that they have no choice but to cut back.
@Zeal4living - Hi Jurgens,
Actually, the US political movement away from support of social welfare and other government programs assisting citizens seems to be more of a reaction to the changing American demographic. With the rising percentage of non-white representation in the electorate there has been a concerted effort to deny this group any assistance by more traditional older more conservative voters who see themselves as very threatened by this perceived imminent loss of political control. the fact that the US has elected and reelected a president with an African father who was raised partially outside the US is a shock to this group. they feel further threatened by what they see as a generation of culture change which they did not expect and do not like. They have, for example, voted in the House of Representatives to revoke the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) thirty-seven times (!) even though they will benefit from it and know that their vote is futile.
The fact that the world was on a decades-long economic binge with little though of financial reality and the collapse of much government funding schemes five years ago has added to the world-wide move toward austerity – where the first programs cut are always those benefiting the least powerful group of citizens of every nation – even when such austerity is pretty clearly not the optimal economic solution.
@tychecat - Thanks for the insight.
@tychecat -
You are not qualified to represent the, “more traditional older more conservative voters” because you don’t have a clue what drives them. The race card, as you played it, is a fictional fragment in the tiny mind of race baiters like you. It isn’t 1840, and race doesn’t matter to us.
The people you flippantly dismiss are cross because they are trying to do productive things like run businesses in an economy where the federal government is consistently hostile. People are förbannad because the police state and constant wars are bleeding the economy, enriching the war machine, and the insane politically motivated monetary expansion has ruined the prestige and value of the dollar. That is why Barry Soetoro has embarrassingly low popularity. The only reason he won either election is because the Republican party chose candidates that were only slightly more inept. Reform only matters to the small percent of authoritarian radicals on the ultra left. People voted for the current chief bureaucrat because he was the least of two evils. Evil, however, is still evil.
Before this host evaporates completely, it needs to be said that you have proven to be unrepentantly wrong about the two issues we’ve bickered about. I proved you wrong about the Great Depression using both epistemological and statistical arguments. You made third grader errors while arguing the statist position and showed yourself to be factually incorrect on the Constitutional role of the branches of government. I’m not an American and even I know the US Constitution better than you.
You continue to reveal yourself as an authoritarian fossil, and you continue to arrogantly spout your opinions which when enacted in the past pushed mankind into a collectivist nightmare. My final word to you is this. I’m young and will continue teaching my college students for decades to come. You sit around being a grumpy old tyrant.
@virtus1 - Now, Now, Virtuis, don’t get your knickers in a bind.
It seems to me that you have some trouble puzzling out my position on subjects – something my students never had any trouble with.
When I was teaching, I became locally notorious for:
1. Leading a teacher’s strike
2. Facing down the local – and state – super conservatives who were then, the John Birch Society (google them -I expect they were somewhat before your time)
3. Being lied to – face to face – by the then president of the U.S. (That was an experience – it happened in the office of the Secretary of State of the US in 1967)
You are right abut my being arrogant – it comes with the TNS membership.
Incidentally, enjoyed my visit to Sweden.