Social Welfare Policy

My first home work assignment for this class is now done...I didn't realize how much political reference was going to be involved in this class, I am hoping the textbook  is at least an unbiased view of just the facts but I am unsure if that is even possible...So this is an excerpt of what I have passed in for this week, it was pretty basic - read the chapters and write about some information or concept that we were surprised about, well after reading the assignment nothing surprised me in the state of our country right now, so I picked  a couple things that I thought were notable.

“Conservative economists believe that “investment” is key to prosperity and favor the wealthy getting tax breaks to have more money to invest.” I completely disagree with this line of thinking because as it has been proven that it doesn’t work. In the early years of the Reagan administration and in the when the wealthy received massive tax cuts, it didn’t help the economy because the wealthy spent their tax savings on their lavish lifestyles and corporations used their tax savings to buy other companies, or transfer their operations abroad which left many Americans without jobs (p 9).

The conservative belief that the entire social welfare federally funded programs be eliminated.  I think the majority of citizens want to work and make a good life for themselves and their children but can’t do so if there are no jobs available because it was better to send the jobs to another country to pay less overhead! Again in 2008 during the younger Bush administration, with the bank bailouts, complete collapse of the housing market and economic meltdown. Those wealthy conservatives were not too proud to take a federally funded social welfare program then, when they needed it! What is funny and sad at the same time is that Greenspan, the “oracle” of economic acumen and at that time the "Fed" top dog on the economy actually admitting to “making a mistake in trusting that banks and corporations were capable of protecting their shareholders”

On page 12 there is quote; “the radical socialists believe that social programs are like junk food, they provide just enough sustenance to discourage revolution but not enough to make a real difference in the lives of the poor, but it is a form of social control.” That really sounds like a crazy person’s thinking. I personally fall in between the conservative belief of a bare minimum safety net in social welfare programs and the liberal belief that social welfare programs are “social justice” that are promoting public good. I have lived in the same city for 22 years and have witnessed the gross abuse of social welfare programs, this is not social justice. I do support the idea of investing in “human capital” which invests in education and job training.

Just to clarify, I am not anti-social welfare by any means, especially at this point in my life. After working hard my entire adult life I was “downsized” in the 2008 economic fallout then “deemed” disabled in 2009, along with my husband being downsized in 2009, only to exhaust his "unemployment" and take a part time temp job in April 2011 which was short lived because he was diagnosed with MS in July 2011. His MS was missed for 5 years, he developed 6 lesions and 4 lesions of them are in the frontal lobe of his brain so the MS had 5 years to eat away like termites which has left him unable to work at all. It is unsafe for him and a total liability for an employer, but he is fighting for SSDI, a social welfare program he paid into for his working adult life but is being denied! I guess it was a good thing I busted butt for the 17 years that I could because we would probably would be homeless and I would not be getting the education necessary to go back to work at least part time in a field that I may be able to help other people facing an uncertain future due to a disability.