Government Shutdown & The Real Reason We Fund Social Services
Hint: It’s Not About Your Bleeding Heart
Trump bragged recently that he might keep the government shutdown going for months or even years. That plays well for a lot of people who would prefer to get rid of the federal government or drastically reduce it, at least. I mean, it’s only a partial shut down. We still have the military, and not everyone wants to be paying into entitlements for lazy welfare queens.
While economists warn that 800,000 people going without paychecks, small businesses loans not being processed, and people on food stamps unable to buy groceries for “months or even years” will definitely drag down the economy for all of us, some people are asking if a smaller government might be the path to greater personal freedom.
For some Trump supporters, the shutdown is a way to choke off bloated spending without having to go through the legislative branch. Just cut the flow of cash, like stepping on a garden hose.
Where did this idea come from that it’s the government’s job to provide social services for people who can’t afford things, in the first place?
A Look Back
Long before the Declaration of Independence, before the Articles of Confederation, before the Constitution, American colonists looked to the English system as a model for their philosophy towards social services.
Before the Middle Ages, feudal lords were responsible for much of the care for sick and poor people living in their domain. In Medieval times, relief for the impoverished fell to the Church. Church run hospitals not only administered to the sick, they took in orphans, housed the elderly, boarded travelers, and looked after the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. The Church fulfilled the need for public institutions and tithing was treated as a form of public taxation. In an agrarian barter economy, this kept things relatively stable for about a millennium or so.
The Industrial Revolution
Industrialization brought the decline of feudalism and the growth of commerce. Barter gave way to cold hard cash. In an economy built around capital, interest, rent, and wages, it became much more complicated to take care of the unemployed, disabled, widowed, elderly, orphaned, and infirm.
Detached from their feudal estates and no longer able to get by on what the Church could provide from a barter economy, people who lacked the skills or ability to earn a wage began to wander into cities that were not at all equipped to handled them.
Paupers begged, grifted, and stole trying to survive. Destitution begets desperation. Crime skyrocketed.
You don’t just walk up to someone and rob them at knifepoint in a rural bartering community where everyone knows you and the church is your landlord. I mean, you can, but there will be certain repercussions from your community. It’s not in your best interest. You have better options. However, if you’re starving on the streets and you can disappear into a crowd or hop to the next city, you do what you have to do to survive.
How did the more prosperous citizens take to the influx of beggars, muggers, and pickpockets in their milieu? It turns out, people who are well off don’t like being robbed, they don’t want to be bothered by dirty vagrants as they walk down the street, and they certainly object to being threatened at knifepoint. And when rich people don’t feel safe, they clamor for law and order.
So England passed the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, a large scale reform that dramatically changed the care for disadvantaged people in order to meet the needs of an industrialized society. The law imposed a government tax to care for the poor, modeled after the church’s system during feudal times. It mandated that children be put to work to support their parents, set up apprenticeships for those who needed skills, and built homeless shelters.
The law marks a critical turning point in social services history. The state now codified into law the idea that disadvantaged and suffering people had a right to government help.
Across The Pond
Early American colonists in tiny farming communities helped each other out under the ethic of mutual aid. You help your neighbors, and tomorrow, they help you. You know, it was all peace and brotherly love… as long as you were white.
As their towns grew larger, so did the number of criminals, orphans, and people with disabilities. So the colonists drew from their British roots and adapted the model of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601.
Thus the colonists imported a legal standard decreeing that relief for the poor was a public responsibility, that family members should be responsible for each other, and that children without family to care for them should be apprenticed. They built almshouses and tied eligibility for aid to a person’s place of legal residence. Vagrants were told to keep it moving.
The Rise of Social Philosophies
The 1800s saw a time of rapid industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. Rather than blaming the Industrial Revolution for the rising poverty, wealthy American philosophers began to espouse a staunch individualism, making the case that destitution was the fault of the destitute. Need was no longer seen as the result of misfortune.
Social Darwinism likened poverty to a genetic trait that could be bred out of existence by simply eschewing the indigent. Laissez-faire economics convinced those in power to “leave it alone.”
Laws were passed that chipped away at people’s eligibility for assistance. The government began to relinquish some of its responsibility for providing services, arguing that the private sector would pick up the slack. Although some organizations tried, it was never enough to fill in the gaps from the government services that were cut.
This idea that poverty was a flaw of the individual, for which society bore no responsibility, had the additional benefit of excusing wealthy mining barons and factory owners for grossly underpaying their workers, keeping inhumane working conditions, and all sorts of other labor abuses.
And when poverty is on the rise, when people are left with few options to survive, the have-nots begin to rise against the haves. That is how it always goes. Then powerful people again bellow for law and order, and the government is called upon to make social reforms.
We watched this happen all throughout the 20th century. When the bourgeoisie feel safe, they don’t want to pay for the ne’er-do-wells. When people can’t get their basic needs, crime increases, and the well-off bark and bay for reform.
Social services are not gifts that bleeding hearts have tied up in a bow to drop at the feet of the less fortunate out of some sense of martyrdom, guilt, or doltishness. Honestly, I think we’d be better people if that were the case, but it’s just not how change has historically been made in this country. We see change when it benefits the well-to-do.
We have social services because they protect those who are not destitute, diminishing the amount of desperation in the world just enough to create safety for wealthy and middle class people to walk freely in the streets.
So if the “months and even years” do drag on, and food stamps benefits and other vital services begin to dry up, and people grow angry from the hunger in their bellies and the cries of their children who need medicine, remember to lock your doors.
If you want law and order, people need food in their bowls, adequate shelter, dependable healthcare, and a sense of basic dignity. If you want to be safe in this world, you have to understand that we are only as safe as our most desperate citizens.
