Why So Small, Uncle Sam?

The U.S. Welfare State is laggard for many reasons, but I believe the most compelling explanation as to why politicians have worked so steadily to keep the welfare services offered by the state is actually quite simple: racism. While there are institutional barriers to welfare reform, the state has proven strong enough to effectively promote the creation of an employment-based social safety net (Dobbins 72). This corporate safety-net is spotty, to say the least (more so in recent years as companies have trimmed costs and unemployment is much higher).  Not to mention part-time employees are often ineligible for corporate benefits and the unemployed often fall through the cracks completely. The argument often goes something like this: if we increase guaranteed benefits, productivity will decrease because people will have no incentive to work. Unfortunately for republicans, this particular version of the “moral hazard” argument has been disproven over and over (see Hacker, Moss and Stone!). Of course, if you link a benefits system to an economy which has proven to hire whites preferentially (aka the U.S), then you’re going to end up with white workers as a group receiving far more benefits than discriminated-against minority groups.

Of course, many disagree with the idea that racism has been the primary hindrance to the creation of a “European-style” welfare state. Charles Noble argues, “The impact of social heterogeneity on the development of welfare-state institutions has depended on how political institutions have dealt with it. It appears that by giving “sharp expression to them, political systems with decentralized government and party institutions have tended to magnify these divisions” (22). He believes race is thus not the primary reason we are a “laggard welfare state”, but actually the fact that we are a federalist nation which simply exacerbates “divisions” between groups. However, as Professor Bensonsmith mentioned in class, our decentralized, cumbersome government has managed to pass remarkable welfare legislation, like the G.I bill…which suggests to me that it isn’t the structure of the system which is the primary problem (although it does make reform much harder). Rather, as Jill Quadagno explains beautifully in her work The Color of Welfare, “The motor of American History has been the continual reconfiguration of racial inequality in the nation’s social, political and economic institutions. It is this characteristic that has impeded the development of a comprehensive welfare state. I conclude that overcoming racial inequality remains America’s unfinished task” (15). To cite just one of many examples: FDR caved to southern democrats with the 1935 Social Security act and created two tiers of racially segregated benefits.

To continue to pretend that it is mostly our government’s inability to pass reform legislation in general which keeps us all from receiving the benefits citizens of other developed countries have taken for granted is to avoid the fact that we are not anywhere close to being a color-blind nation and our policies reflect that. Many studies have shown that voters in the United States vote based upon emotional and cultural factors, which explains why our policies (or lack thereof) reflect our internal racial discrimination. Therefore, it is not because we are a “socially heterogenic” society, but rather because we are still a racist society which prevents us from becoming a modern nation which fulfills the promise of equal opportunity.

Sources:

Frank Dobbin “The Origins of American Exceptionalism”

Jill Quadagno “The Color of Welfare,” Introduction;
Charles Noble “Welfare as We Knew It,” Chapter 2

Deborah Stone “Welfare” from Policy Paradox

David Moss “Private Risk;”
Jacob Hacker “The Privatization of Risk and the Growing Economic Insecurity of All Americans” http://privatizationofrisk.ssrc.org/Hacker/index1.html