The New Welfare Paradigm

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

The key is universality of services and benefits. That's what Charles
means by the comparison with the public schools. Family allowances such
as exist in many advanced countries are a model. So too
is universal day care.

We are not at a point where we can realistically put this forward, but
need to be formulating our ideas about policies. One basic component of
a left social welfare strategy is a rigorous
anti-familism: in other words, we need to be for services and benefits
being available to each individual, from birth up, as a right of
participation in the society, not to a family as the
recipient unit. The religious right is familist exactly because that is
a reactionary social welfare policy -- and, as a result, a pro-corporate
one.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Charles Brown wrote:

>
> >>> sokol at jhu.edu 04/30/01 04:00PM >>>
> Having said that, I do belive however, that the US approach to public
> welfare has a major flaw.  It is conceived primarily as a an emergency
> assistance instead the procurement of public goods.  That is - aid to
> children at risk instead of decent public education for all, transportation
> for the poor and people with special needs rather than decent public
> transit for all, shelters for marginal elements instead of public housing
> for all, etc.
>
> The betrayal started not with Reaganite rolling back of the New Deal but
> the New Deal itself - which was based on the capitalist/neoclassical
> premise that the private provision of necessities of life is the norm -
> while public goods are but failures of the private markets.
>
> ((((((((
>
> CB:  You make a good point , Wojtek.  How can we shift the whole range of social and welfare services to the classical U.S. public schools model ? That must be part of the New Welfare Paradigm.
>
> Bring in the New Welfare Society , prevention and cure !  Expand Headstart to a
> marathon of services. Jobs or income now