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Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl
Not sure why you guys are freaking out (or looking forward to new stone stadiums like I am) about some work program when Dvalt1 is only talking about how while economically it makes sense to just give people money; money is liquid and people can spend it how they want, politically people wants jobs as their source of income and look down on cash hand outs as incentivizing indolence. If that's the case, then in the future when larger portions of income go to a smaller portion of the population and we need to redistribute more to more of the population, is it better to invent high paying 'make work' jobs so people feel a sense of self worth to mask the handout or should we straight up give them money and let the stigma of welfare handouts fade?
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Originally Posted by goofyballer
That's kinda what I'm talking about with Ashtabula 2036 - not just "what do we do for these people", but also "how do we get them to accept it"?
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Originally Posted by sylar
Overall unemployment is under 5 percent. Many communities are way above that. One way to reach out to the working class america is not to rub their nose in it, or say that no one would choose steady employment, room and board, probably good health insurance, and some constructive preparation for the rest of their life.
Part of either solution, or both (unspecifically: welfare state handouts or civic service/work programs) is ensuring that we treat everyone with dignity.
I don't mean tone policing to make right-wing morons feel better, not that cheap stuff we debate on the forum.
I mean a conscious cultural shift to celebrate things like civic service. The analogy to the military as modern America's new #1 jobs program is a good one. How many sportball games adulate military members before the game or whatever? We've made military service the culturally and socially acceptable national service while some of us heap disdain and throw shade at civic service, public unions, etc. and work with the political class to dismantle the sector.
Now, you'll rightfully get critics who point out that this culture shaping stuff is for mages and wizards and idealistic and sure, fair enough. But re-shaping the image of military service was in fact actually a consciously undertaken propaganda goal of the American government and the military service after Vietnam. I mean 'propaganda' in a value neutral way, it's not a criticism. Look at military service ads that continue to this day: join the Army, help Haitian kids get food in a crisis, etc. It's been highly effective too.
Check out Gallup's historical trends of "which institutions do you trust?" and the military is one of the few American institutions that is ascendant in the public's eyes.
Also most of what we now remember about the WPA and the CCC is the sometimes intriguing art of the propaganda posters and the newsreel footage of the CCC in uniform building bridges over streams or the WPA building golf courses or whatever. Again: propaganda, all of it. To sell the service as desirable, beneficial to the community, to improve morale.
I realize I'm halfway to sounding like a Soviet here but I'm not asking for May Day parades in Red Square, just some reasonable levels of accommodation to the notion that if we're doing make-work programs, it can't be half-assed or haphazard or forget that the whole goal here isn't just to put money in someone's pocket but also to let everyone feel good about it. The cynical me can easily poo-poo this stuff as I'm sure many critics can, and yet how much of the story of Trump: Now President are fairly transparent paeans about the importance of feelings, and dignity, and pride.
I think anyone interested in the project is going to have to start there, to 'invest' capital -- time, energy, clever branding, money whatever -- into reforming and reshaping civil service or public work as desirable, prideful, something worth investing in. Not just for the overseers at the high levels of government, but for the participants.
And I take it on its face this is all much, much harder to do with the traditional welfare state programs that simply guarantee an income and transfer money. I can understand it's just one of those things baked so deeply into out lizard brains that our work and our productive capacities define us that for some, for many -- a handout is a slap in the face.
We're faced with only "non-ideal" options here and so if we're ceding that the global ascendancy of the far right populist movements is subconscious reflexive lashing out due to the global meritocracy programs of the neoliberal elites working too well and enriching too few, we should reconsider things we've tried before during moments of cultural and social despondency that also featured an embrace of more stridently radical political solutions (e.g., the 1930s Depression era that saw both the rise of global considerations of communism AND fascism). One of the areas that my read of history suggests had success was things like work programs and far more robust civic service programs than what we have currently; we're instead now doing just the opposite. The closest modern equivalents are the programs and institutions like public unions we're in the midst of helping America's Scott Walkers tear down year over year.
Last edited by DVaut1; 12-01-2016 at 06:25 AM.