WELFARE IN THE USA--FOR THE ELITE

THE WELFARE STATE IN THE USA

 Perhaps it is another outgrowth of our sordid past as a nation which ruthlessly uprooted, imported and enslaved large numbers of black Africans (as is our penchant for hand guns and assault-weapons for self defense) but, for whatever reason, today, the USA has an antipathy for its poor, and underclasses black or white. Today in the USA being poor is considered your own fault. The unemployed or underemployed are viewed as citizens who never took advantage of the opportunities available to them, or simply were improvident, or did not work as hard as those who consider themselves successful. Then too, our political history and the tendency for some to a rigid adherence to an inflexible Constitution tends to supports those who make these claims. The 18th Century authors of that great document could not possibly have foreseen the need for welfare intervention, and it makes no clear provisions to redistribute money collected by taxation.


 As a consequence of its history, our political system, and Constitution, the USA has become the world's great hold-out against welfare. Particularly odious is the very efficient and successful Nordic or European-style "welfarism". In our present political discourse even the word "Europe" has begun to carry a negative connotation to the American right and its business classes and is often wielded as an epithet. As a consequence of this antipathy; of the approximately two dozen modern, industrialized, wealthy nations in the world, such as Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and those of Western Europe, the USA, with the largest economy and the most affluent upper class, has the most stingy, minimalist and least effective, (but most expensive) social-safety net for its citizenry. Our nation also boasts the shortest lifespan, highest rates of income and wealth inequality, highest rates of infant mortality, highest rates of gun-related fatalities, poorer health and health-related outcomes than those of all other wealthy nations.

Yet welfarism is not dead in America. It is a little spoken of secret that the USA supports an elaborate, nay even "European" style safety net, one which gets little attention from our corporate-sponsored press and media. For the truth is that more government funds are doled out as welfare to businesses, banks, military suppliers, and big business agriculture in what can be termed "corporate welfare" than to the infamous 47% of our population singled out as "moochers" by Mr. Romney during the last presidential race. Enormous funds are expended by the USA government to help insure the profitability, access to markets, sustainability, insurance against loss, support for research, development and planning, and the well being of its most affluent and connected citizenry....the corporatists, oligarchs, military-industrialists, bank officials, and other elites. The USA has a well-developed and well-funded welfare system, but though we all pay for it, the funds are showered only on the largest businesses, their CEOs and the well-connected. The rest of us are on our own to sink or swim. The vast amount of our wealth and government largess derived in large part from taxing the 99% is used to support this privileged element of our citizenry, perhaps only one tenth of one percent of our population. The rest of us are pretty much left to fend for ourselves.

So lets not go around claiming we are not a welfare state. We are! The only difference in our nation, which has traditionally tended toward its capitalist elites, from say that of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, or France is that our welfarism is directed not at the majority of our citizenry but functions to support our banks, industries, military, and the cadre of elites who control and or own these institutions. Once our citizenry come to realize this fact, perhaps they will not be so biased against appropriate and necessary government intervention on behalf of its poor and working class citizens----and then we may be more likely to institute a more sustainable and equitable division of assets in this great nation.

Perhaps the first step in this monumental change of perception will be to understand the actual function of our bloated military. Our military has long ago surpassed its Constitutional mandate and libertarian-sanctioned aims of simple defense of the homeland. With its massive military outlays annually, and world wide military footprint of more than 900 bases on every continent and nearly rocky islet in the world oceans, it serves not for simple defense but as an adjunct and protector of our great industries and their economic world interests. Our military expenditures also underwrite our European competitors who are protected by our military umbrella and thus can cut their military costs to the bone. We all pay for this largess to our industries and to the world in the name of "defense". But it is in large part only another face of industrial and corporate welfarism.

Therefore let us all remember this when in two months, the Obama Administration will have to face up to the Republicans who are the real advocates of welfarism, and who will attempt to cut the minimalist safety net we have in this nation so as to protect their corporate welfare clients---and the great military industrial complex, massive agribusinesses, pharmaceutical companies, and the industries which support them. Watch out! Do not support corporate and military welfarism. We must all fight for a better balance in our government's outlays...for the betterment and true welfare of our nation as a whole.

Get the picture?

rjk I