The 'Julia' Backlash: Because Americans Like to Pretend They Don't Need Government

[KingOrfeo]

From The Nation:

There’s been a lot of over-thinking it about poor Julia, the composite character created by the Obama campaign team. In my book, she’s a success despite the backlash, because, in keeping the focus all about policy, the infographic of her life got even her detractors to spell out the popular stuff that they’re against. Ross Douthat, usually a master of obfuscation, is forced to tick off the injustices:

The list of Obama-bestowed benefits includes Head Start when Julia’s a tyke, tax credits and Pell grants to carry her through college and low-interest loan repayment afterward, guaranteed birth control when she’s a 20-something and government-sponsored loans when she wants to start a business, all of it culminating in a stress-free retirement underwritten by Medicare and Social Security.

Oh, no! A stress-free retirement! Sounds awful.

Campbell Brown saw in “The Life of Julia” evidence of Obama’s ongoing tendency to condescend to women, calling it “a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help.” About a family member who lost her job, Brown writes, “Friends and family, not government, have been there at the dire moments when she has asked them to be.… he, and they, wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Obama does condescend to women. But his policies generally don’t. Faux protestations that women are smarter than men: that’s condescending. Telling us it’s “common sense” that 15-year-olds can’t figure out how to take emergency contraception correctly: condescending. Backing policies that enable to women to access reasonably priced health insurance, earn fair wages, pay for college, start a small business: that’s showing respect.

“The Life of Julia” doesn’t condescend to women, either. (And don’t forget, many of the policies Julia benefits from—the Small Business Administration loan, the better kindergarden for her son Zachary, Medicare—also benefit men.) We’re just unaccustomed to having our attention drawn to the way the government provides benefits and social insurance to a middle-class person throughout his or her life. Suzanne Mettler’s work has demonstrated that far more Americans make use of government programs—like the mortgage interest tax deduction, student loans, tax deductions for employer-sponsored health insurance and Social Security—than realize they do, a phenomenon she refers to as the “submerged state.” And even when people are aware of their reliance on government programs, they tend to be embarrassed about it, as the New York Times found, or dislike that they do. The backlash to “Julia” made it clear that, as Nancy Folbre put it, “liberals need to make a stronger case for collective investments in the development of human capital.” As Folbre points out, Julia is not the recipient of public assistance—in fact, she’s a “model member of the business community” who pays taxes, might have employees, invests in the economy through consumer spending:

Sure, we could move toward an every-man-for-himself economy. But private insurers typically have a financial incentive to exclude those most at risk. And choosing to invest only in your own human capital is a lot like choosing to invest all your resources in one small company.

Most of us will do better with a diversified portfolio that includes both socially responsible commitments and protection against long-term uncertainty.

What’s most remarkable about “The Life of Julia” is how much the government doesn’t help her out with, as my colleague Bryce Covert observed. Paid leave to care for Zachary? Childcare after she goes back to work? There’s no government help for Julia there, giving her plenty of time to rely on the bonds of kinship Brown so prizes.

 

[Liar]

Bonds of kinship are awesome. For those lucky enough to have them.

To those who don't live in a complications-scrubbed cliche. Well, fuck 'em, I guess?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?


I've been told for decades that we needed our safety net for the weak, the disabled, the very elderly, etc.

Now, we need a safety net for everything.



In fact, we need it now, more than ever seeing how it is bankrupting the middle-class...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

… an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, rigid, far-seeing and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that.
Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

[ottohauser1977]

"Didn't need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight...." Okay, Archie Bunker, we heard your rant. Are you done, yet?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Where does it end?

State-sponsored serfdom?

"We know that the number of government jobs has been increasing steadily, and that the number of applicants is increasing still more rapidly than the number of jobs. … Is this scourge about to come to an end? How can we believe it, when we see that public opinion itself wants to have everything done by that fictitious being, the state, which signifies a collection of salaried bureaucrats? … Very soon there will be two or three of these bureaucrats around every Frenchman, one to prevent him from working too much, another to give him an education, a third to furnish him credit, a fourth to interfere with his business transactions, etc., etc. Where will we be led by the illusion that impels us to believe that the state is a person who has an inexhaustible fortune independent of ours?
Frédéric Bastiat

There is black and white, and if you refuse to believe that, then you will accept grey and let me tell you gray tends to black for when you say ∃ of anything is a good function of government then ∃ is everything ¬∀ and while you may be able to advocate for ∃ you won't be allowed to define it and in this manner its limit will be ∀ for ∑f(∪∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will never tend to ∅ by definition so it is easy to see that it is, indeed, an ∀ or ∅ when it comes to government. (Now, the ∑f(∩∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will tend to ∅ but that is politically unattainable for the obvious reason that the more ∃ is defined, the smaller the ∩∃ becomes.)
A_J, the Stupid

 

[Liar]

Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?


I've been told for decades that we needed our safety net for the weak, the disabled, the very elderly, etc.

Now, we need a safety net for everything.



In fact, we need it now, more than ever seeing how it is bankrupting the middle-class...

It has been argued by some that the benefits for the working middle class in form of grants, deductions, student loans, subsidized daycare and schooling and so on and so forth (list could be made loooong) "grease the wheels" of the national productivity, provides a more mobile and adaptable workforce and contributes more to the growth of the economy than it costs. The private sector would be as borked without it as it would be without Gubmint funded roads and law enforcment and stuff.

Damned if I know if it's accurate. It's the philosophy behind the rationale for it, anyway.

 

[Liar]

Where does it end?

Depends on the slipperyness of your slope.

State-sponsored serfdom?

Ah.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It has been argued by some that the benefits for the working middle class in form of grants, deductions, student loans, subsidized daycare and schooling and so on and so forth (list could be made loooong) "grease the wheels" of the national productivity, provides a more mobile and adaptable workforce and contributes more to the growth of the economy than it costs. The private sector would be as borked without it as it would be without Gubmint funded roads and law enforcment and stuff.

Damned if I know if it's accurate. It's the philosophy behind the rationale for it, anyway.

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frédéric Bastiat

What happens when costs and regulations compliances become so complex that the small guy cannot hope to enter into Capitalism and markets with his ideas and labor?

Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy:

"contributes more to the growth of the economy than it costs"

The problem here is that we never truly measure the cost other than the tax dollar amount, because that is easily seen and measured, but that which we have great difficulty in calculating is what did we do without when that tax money was confiscated, where would the invisible hand have directed it? to what energies? what efficiencies? what innovations?

We can easily see here in the States, the frantic wondering, "Why is the Middle Class disappearing, where does it go?" coupled with the just as frantic urge to confiscate more tax dollars to throw at it in order to "grease the wheels."



You loot the private sector, strip every dollar of 40¢ for overhead, and then give the other 60¢ to your political base in order to revitalize the looted.

What's not to like about that plan?
A_J, the Stupid

Political Realists see the world as it is: ... In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of common greed...; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.... In the world as it is, the solution of each problem inevitably creates a new one.
Saul David Alinsky
Rules for Radicals

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Depends on the slipperyness of your slope.

Ah.

No slope is terribly slippery at the crown, but as the slide begins, the coefficient of friction varies in proportion to the amount of government applied to Sisyphus's back..

 

[RobDownSouth]

Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?

"so many benefits"?

Which "middle class" benefits, pray tell, are "excessive" in your mind?

Homeowner mortgage deduction?
Student loan interest rate subsidy?

Give us some specifics.

 

[pierrelarue161]

"so many benefits"?

Which "middle class" benefits, pray tell, are "excessive" in your mind?

Homeowner mortgage deduction?
Student loan interest rate subsidy?

Give us some specifics.

Being middle-class, for starters. We're all supposed to be back in the sweatshop, working for a pittance with no legal rights or protections. Preferably no vote or education. Didn't you know that? What kind of American are you, believing in a land of opportunity? How un-American of you? Communist, yes, that's what you are, a flaming pinko-Commie-liberal, for believing in that leftist garbage!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"so many benefits"?

Which "middle class" benefits, pray tell, are "excessive" in your mind?

Homeowner mortgage deduction?
Student loan interest rate subsidy?

Give us some specifics.

Quote me so that you do not have to put words into my mouth that I never posited.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Being middle-class, for starters. We're all supposed to be back in the sweatshop, working for a pittance with no legal rights or protections. Preferably no vote or education. Didn't you know that? What kind of American are you, believing in a land of opportunity? How un-American of you? Communist, yes, that's what you are, a flaming pinko-Commie-liberal, for believing in that leftist garbage!

Welcome to Lit. You'll fit in just fine here. Say, do you speak fluent wingnut? We have an opening for a wingnut translator for the upcoming summer months.

Oh, just an FYI, be careful about disagreeing with Miles. He takes it as a personal insult when you don't agree with him, and will post personal information about you, your children, your parents, your in-laws and your friends.

 

[pierrelarue161]

Welcome to Lit. You'll fit in just fine here. Say, do you speak fluent wingnut? We have an opening for a wingnut translator for the upcoming summer months.

Oh, just an FYI, be careful about disagreeing with Miles. He takes it as a personal insult when you don't agree with him, and will post personal information about you, your children, your parents, your in-laws and your friends.

Bilingualism, too? How un-American? Didn't you know that we should all talk like Dubya now. Or was that Mitt? Or John McCain? I lose track. One Republican oligarch is the same as the next. When you've voted against one, you've voted them all down (I've been a liberal in denial until yesterday, calling myself a centrist).

Seriously, thanks for the welcome and the warning. Damn fascists better not rain on my parade.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Where's the quote, or is this just more Left-wing Cherokee-Kenya bullshit.




Why does lying come so naturally to you?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Depends on the slipperyness of your slope.

Ah.

Please don't quote it; just iggy it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Being middle-class, for starters. We're all supposed to be back in the sweatshop, working for a pittance with no legal rights or protections. Preferably no vote or education. Didn't you know that? What kind of American are you, believing in a land of opportunity? How un-American of you? Communist, yes, that's what you are, a flaming pinko-Commie-liberal, for believing in that leftist garbage!

Maybe people oughta give some thought to what theyre gonna do after they get their Affirmative Action diploma from Pixley-Hooterville College and Nail Tech Institute.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Quote me so that you do not have to put words into my mouth that I never posited.

Man up, Chief.

You opined that the middle class was the recipient of "so many benefits", so I'm challenging you to enumerate those benefits that you consider to be "excessive"....

..unless of course you really don't know what benefits the middle class receives and were merely regurgitatin' a libertarian talkin' point.....

 

[Ham Murabi]

Of course the middle class needs help. Government starts pissing around with health care and suddenly it's way more expensive. Help!
Government starts handing out loans to students and suddenly tuition costs skyrocket. Help!

 

[trysail]

The SNAP/Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, just announced that it is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed The Animals." This is because the animals may grow dependent on handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.

Hummm...

 

[pete]

The SNAP/Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, just announced that it is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed The Animals." This is because the animals may grow dependent on handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.

Hummm...

haha

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Man up, Chief.

You opined that the middle class was the recipient of "so many benefits", so I'm challenging you to enumerate those benefits that you consider to be "excessive"....

..unless of course you really don't know what benefits the middle class receives and were merely regurgitatin' a libertarian talkin' point.....

I never said that.


You are simply a liar.


To prove you are not, quote me...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Of course the middle class needs help. Government starts pissing around with health care and suddenly it's way more expensive. Help!
Government starts handing out loans to students and suddenly tuition costs skyrocket. Help!

Plus they have to shoulder the burden of the safety net to the poor and ensure that their children's teachers and administrators are not only paid better then they are, but also get free health care and pensions.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I never said that.
You are simply a liar.
To prove you are not, quote me...

Typical Glibertarian. Runs like a scalded dog when asked to provide specifics to back up his whiny diatribes.

I own you, bitch.