The New Welfare Paradigm

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema crdbronx at erols.com
Tue May 1 06:42:53 PDT 2001


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



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