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I want to help the poor, really I do! From: New York News and Features Paul Ryan, the celebrated Republican idea man, delivered a speech today entitled “Restoring the Promise of Upward Mobility in America's Economy.” Upward mobility is a vital concept for Ryan. He is the author of a plan that would, as budget expert Robert Greenstein put it, “produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history.” Upward mobility is Ryan’s constant answer to this objection. In his telling, his plans would make the economy more open and free, making it easier for the poor to rise and the rich to fall. As Ryan says, “We believe that Americans are better off in a dynamic, free-enterprise-based economy that fosters economic growth, opportunity and upward mobility instead of a stagnant, government-directed economy that stifles job creation and fosters government dependency." Ryan assumes that increasing the role of the market and decreasing the role of government will increase upward mobility — the wealthier people can get, the easier it will be to get wealthy or to fall out of wealth. But he doesn’t argue it explicitly, and for good reason: There’s no reason to believe it. In fact, the evidence all suggests exactly the opposite. Economic mobility is higher in countries with higher levels of equality and lower in countries with lower equality. The correlation is very tight: Ryan tells a story in which, over the last several decades, the United States has seen lower levels of economic mobility because government has grown too large. But higher inequality and lower mobility have been growing in tandem. So, what does Ryan have to offer in defense of his promise to “restore upward mobility?” He offers a riff about the importance of education reform, without either explaining what such a policy would entail or how it would differ from the very aggressive education reforms the Obama administration has implemented. He praises the role of private charity, suggesting that rolling back government assistance for the poor will encourage the private sector to step in, a decidedly shaky proposition. Mostly, he talks about welfare reform. There is a consensus that welfare as we knew it did create serious cultural pathologies. Ryan cites the case of welfare reform frequently. To him, it proves that large cuts to programs that help poor people of any kind at all are not only harmless but will help the poor. “The welfare-reform mindset hasn’t been applied with equal vigor across the spectrum of anti-poverty programs,” he says. Thus he proposes enormous cuts — to ’s health-insurance grants, Head Start, food stamps, and, especially, Medicaid, which would have to throw about half its current beneficiaries off their coverage under his proposal. Ryan paints a picture in which we face an impending debt crisis but also have the good fortune of spending cast sums on poor people in a way that harms them, allowing us to reap large budgetary savings while giving the poor a helping hand. What an incredible stroke of good fortune! But is it true that these programs foster dependency? Ryan avoids fleshing out his implication with any specifics, perhaps because to do so would quickly expose the vapidity of his claims. For one thing, welfare reform was undertaken during the nineties boom, when a red-hot employment market made it possible for people to transition from welfare to low-rung jobs. The notion that there are jobs today going unfilled but for the laziness of the poor has no relationship to reality. Second, welfare was designed to replace the role of a male breadwinner and thus created a family model in which a single mother could expect to receive a basic income in lieu of work. That isn’t true of the programs Ryan wants to slash. There is one ironic exception here, though: Medicaid. Medicaid offers health care for the very poor, along with nursing-home care and other special medical needs. It is possible that the availability of Medicaid could reduce a person’s incentive to earn more money, because at some point, they would earn enough to no longer qualify for Medicaid and then they’d lose their health insurance. But this would only hold true if we enact Ryan’s proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Otherwise, people will have access to health insurance at every income level. Ryan likewise argues that “Medicaid is reaching a breaking point.” It’s true that the cost of Medicaid has risen. But it’s both far cheaper than private insurance and has grown at a much slower rate. Medicaid has gotten more expensive because health care has gotten more expensive. For all his self-proclaimed wonkery, Ryan does not engage with any of the details of the policy here. All he offers is hand-waving cover designed to justify the infliction of catastrophic harm upon the poorest and sickest among us. What’s the word for that? Oh, right — brave. |
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10/24/2012 7:59 pm |
Your comment shows how well you are educated and especially so on the issues that affect the less well off segment of our society.
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10/24/2012 8:00 pm |
I agree with you Ryan could be the Greatest Vice President Ever of course anyone would be better than Biden.
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To try and untangle their political rhetoric requires some thought. I guess some here don't have the patience and desire to even think about it. My conclusion about conservatives is that the more tangled they make it...the greater the number of people they can get to support it. For some like yourself and leafline it's simply an affront to any thinking person. For me it's an affront to those who spout it. To believe they have to resort to it to get elected. If only these folks would say what they mean, then we wouldn't need to explain to everyone what they don't mean.
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leaf, There's one sure way to get people to understand what he means.....elect the son of a bitch! The Republicans are on a death march, by electing them it's the surest way to get them to their destination. Just think, after they lose this election, we will have to deal with twice the obstructionsism and go through this whole damn thing again in another four years.
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Leaf, You're ideas are right. It would be interesting if Romney is elected to see how it would play out. The funny thing about the right wing extreme is that they play more aginst the Liberal side than they do playing their own hand. When Obama was elected, I felt he was in a awful postion. He would fall and has fallen somewhere between those that supported him and those that were against him. It was apparent that no possible direction he could take would please his own, and certainly would not please his distractors. Without Obama to be against, Romney would find himself in the same position. all those that support him will find he will not deliver to them what they expect. Even more so because of the diversification of the extreme right. For example, Romney has said he would appeal Obamacare and put in a health care reform plan like he had in Massachusstes. No way will any health care reform plan be acceptable to his constituency. Romney, if he's telling the truth, would become a psuedo liberal without Obama there to be compared to, he will never be able to do enough to satisfy those folks. He would become a traitor to his party but would still be a radical right winger to the democrats. Until the conservative side, distances itself from it's extreme and admits that some ideas the democrats have are acceptable nothing will get done. Incorporating convervative ideas into liberal thought or liberal ideas into conservative thought is the only solution.
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Leaf It's the mentality of the right wing groups that will make what I say happen. The moral majotrity, tea party, government deregulators, tax abolitionists, and prolifers. Thee people will not accept a partial victory. As soon a the government caves in on making some headway for their cause it does two things, justifies them to be right and then motivativates them to get even more. For example those that would beleive in deregulation, will not be satisfied if the government is less regulatory (which Romney would make it) there would still be laws and regulations that would impact thier ability to do whatever they wanted. They would become more adamant to get all regulations dismissed. They have very short memories of what was Liberal for what is Liberal always just becomes what is. The same goes for the other groups. Any group that has single minded purpose is dangerous to this country. Giving in to them only makes them want more.
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