The Cult of Personal Responsibility, and our future poverty

(President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)

 

When a recent article highlighted America's impending retirement crisis (lack of savings, lack of fixed pensions, threats to Social Security, etc.) one of the first comments to the story read, "SS was NEVER intended to be the sole means one took into retirement. Of course when you hammer out personal responsibility and hammer in an entitlement/victim culture, WALL-LA! You have exactly what is happening now." ("Old and Broke in America? It Doesn't Have To Be This Way, Says Sanders," Common Dreams, June 3, 2015)

This comment, of course, is one of the most popular battle cries of the the political right (perhaps second only to "Millionaires and billionaires need tax cuts!"). They believe that if you end up in a bad situation, it means one thing and one thing only: You didn't practice "personal responsibility."

In Colorado, for example, when Republicans refused additional funding for a breakfast program for low-income children, a Republican state legislator said, "As a family guy myself with children and grandchildren, I take a very strong responsibility to earn money to feed my own family." The implication was clear - "Those parents don't practice personal responsibility...I do. And it doesn't matter if they can't find a decent-paying job or haven't seen a raise in years. They're just not practicing personal responsibility." ("Party-line vote on legislature's budget panel blocks new funding for school-breakfast program," Denver Post, January 21, 2011)

When Mitt Romney made his famous 47% speech during his presidential campaign, he said, "I'll never convince [low-income Americans] that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

There are, of course, people who are reckless in their day-to-day behavior. And every person makes mistakes in judgment from time to time - that's part of being human, we're not perfect creatures. But stereotyping struggling and low-income Americans as people who are lazy and don't take personal responsibility is utter nonsense. Consider...

--> If someone loses his/her job because the employer sends it to a third-world labor market, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If that same person is the victim of employment discrimination against the unemployed, and has a hard time finding another job, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If that same person's credit is destroyed--because he/she lost the job, experienced employment discrimination, and couldn't pay the bills anymore--and then experiences even more employment discrimination because of that credit destruction (this is a Kafkaesque downward spiral that many Americans have gone through)--how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If worker productivity increases, but wages stagnate and prices for goods & services increase, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If companies are spending profits on stock buybacks instead of better wages for their better-producing employees, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If college graduates are earning less, on average, than they did 15 years ago, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?   

--> If Corporate America transitions from secure, fixed-pension systems to more illusory, stingy, and risky 401K systems (that are, by the way, more dependent upon those stagnant and dropping wages), so that their wealthy executives & investors can become even more wealthy, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

--> If the economy goes into recession due to rampant white collar crime and fraud (as it did in 2007-2008), and millions of people lose their jobs, how is that a lack of personal responsibility?

The answer to all of these questions is: "It isn't." Unfortunately, addressing structural problems is difficult. It requires deep thought, critical thinking skills, and work - a lot of work. And the people who throw out insults against struggling Americans, well, they simply don't want to do that work. It's much easier to say, "They lack personal responsibility," than it is to research problems, craft solutions, and implement solutions. It takes work & effort to separate people who are trying hard to be successful from those who are not. It's much easier to lump them all together and say, "They're lazy." Indeed, it is the people who are blathering on about "personal responsibility" and casting a whole group of Americans as "lazy" who are themselves the lazy ones. They're too lazy to consider people individually, too lazy to consider macroeconomic problems, and so they sit on the couch, throw out insults, and consider the matter done.

Ironically, the Cult of Personal Responsibility is personally responsible for our looming old-age poverty crisis. They provide cover for white collar crime & fraud, laugh off job outsourcing, and are oblivious to the phenomenon of increased worker productivity and stagnant (or dropping) wages. Instead, they heap all of the blame onto the unemployed, the homeless, the working poor, and every other non-wealthy group in America. The Cult of Personal Responsibility will look at an impoverished retired person and say, "You say your house lost its value after the fraud-fueled recession? You say you never got a raise, even though your company's executives kept getting bigger and bigger bonuses? You say you are mired in debt from a college degree that never paid off? You say you were laid off when your job was outsourced to another country? Hmmm....sounds like you, my friend, did not practice personal responsibility! Shame on you!!!"

It's this imbecilic and irrational thinking that's driving old-age poverty and, mark my words, it's this imbecilic and irrational thinking that will prevent us from properly addressing old-age poverty. The political right (the Cult of Personal Responsibility) will cast every struggling senior citizen as a person who failed to practice personal responsibility, and then, wringing their hands and moaning to the heavens, they'll block every government effort to help them.

The New Deal pointed to a better way. New Deal policymakers understood that larger forces and economic patterns often hindered the ability of Americans to better themselves. For example, when President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, he said: "The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure." One might supplement that statement today, and say: "The simple-minded cry of 'personal responsibility' does not adequately address the vast complexities of life and the great power of economic manipulation that rests in the hands of high officials, corporate chiefs, and billionaire power brokers." 

$0 spent to create a new national jobs program, but TRILLIONS spent to destabilize a nation and arm our opponents

(A WPA poster by artist Albert Bender, created in Chicago, 1941. The CCC employed millions of Americans. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

In 2012, when Republicans blocked a bill to create a new national jobs program for unemployed veterans, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) said, "We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids." Senator Dean Heller (R-Nev), one of the few Republicans to support the bill, disagreed with Coburn: "After everything our veterans have done for us, the least we can do is make sure they are afforded every opportunity to thrive here at home." ("Senate GOP blocks veterans jobs bill," CBS News, September 20, 2012)

Over the last several years, Republicans have scoffed at every effort to create a new national jobs program. Democrats too, have been weak. For example, when the late Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) tried to create a new WPA in 2011, he received little or no support from his fellow Democrats and no support from President Obama. Hence, Lautenberg's bill died in committee.

Meanwhile, according to the National Priorities Project, we've spent over $818 billion on the war in Iraq. And, when other war-related items are thrown in, estimates of the total cost typically extend into the trillions (see, e.g., "Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion," Reuters, March 14, 2013).

And what have we received from our multi-trillion dollar investment? Well, according to a 2013 report from Brown University (as summarized by Reuters, see previous note): "...the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it. The war reinvigorated radical Islamist militants in the region, set back women's rights, and weakened an already precarious healthcare system...Meanwhile, the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud..."   

In 2014, after ISIL took over the city of Mosul, they seized 2,300 U.S.-supplied Humvees and "approximately three divisions worth of equipment" (enough equipment for about 50,000 soldiers). More recently, when ISIL overtook the city of Ramadi, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter reported that "Iraqi forces showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site. That says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves."

Why are we spending trillions of dollars on a war where the opposing forces are acquiring a great mass of our weaponry and equipment, and where many of those who we fund do not want to fight...but spending zero dollars on a new national jobs program - especially when 21 million Americans wish they had a full-time job but can't find one?

(In the New Deal's National Youth Administration, young unemployed men and women could earn some money and learn a trade. Above, an NYA woman trains at the Washington Navy Yard in 1943. The NYA employed millions of Americans. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

A few months ago, Doug Bandow of the conservative CATO Institute wrote, "American foreign policy is controlled by fools. What else can one conclude from the bipartisan demand that the U.S. intervene everywhere all the time, irrespective of consequences?...Not only has virtually every bombing, invasion, occupation, and other interference made problems worse. Almost every new intervention is an attempt to redress problems created by previous U.S. actions. And every new military step is likely, indeed, almost guaranteed, to create even bigger new problems" ("American People Must Say No To Washington's Foolish Policy Of Constant War," Huffington Post, March 19, 2015).

I am not usually in agreement with someone from the CATO Institute, but on this matter I wholeheartedly agree. The only change I would make to Bandow's statement would be to add the words "and domestic," i.e., "American foreign and domestic policy is controlled by fools."

As Republicans are trying to reduce funding for education; as our infrastructure crumbles; as our beautiful national parks are suffering from a multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog; and as millions of Americans can't find a decent paying job (if any job at all), we keep spending billions upon billions of dollars on a war started on misinformation and lies - on a war with bad outcomes. Worse still, outside of small pockets of resistance, the American public has shown no will to resist (in a substantial way) these wasteful and deadly policies.  

Isn't that amazing?

(Older unemployed Americans could find job opportunities funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the WPA. Above, a group of WPA workers are creating an atlas for Baltimore City in 1936. The WPA employed millions of Americans. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)

Republicans are raising taxes, tolls, fees, and fines on the middle-class & poor, while lowering taxes for the wealthy: "It's a madhouse!"

(When I see tens of millions of middle-class and low-income Americans continuously voting for Republican politicians who want to implement regressive taxes, tolls, fees, and fines on middle-class and low-income Americans, it makes me want to react like Charlton Heston does above.)

In January of this year, The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released the findings of a recent study they performed for all 50 states. Here are some of the things they found:

--> "Virtually every state tax system is fundamentally unfair, taking a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families. The absence of a graduated personal income tax and overreliance on consumption taxes exacerbate this problem."

--> "Combining all state and local income, property, sales and excise taxes that Americans pay, the nationwide average effective state and local tax rates by income group are 10.9 percent for the poorest 20 percent of individuals and families, 9.4 percent for the middle 20 percent and 5.4 percent for the top 1 percent."

--> "In the 10 states with the most regressive tax structures (the Terrible 10) the bottom 20 percent pay up to seven times as much of their income in taxes as their wealthy counterparts."

Despite these findings, Republicans keep pushing for more and more regressive taxation. For example, the Republican Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, wants to get rid of income taxes and replace the loss of revenue with regressive sales taxes. And, until he gets his way, he appears to be willing to bring his government to a halt ("Paul LePage Vows To Veto Every Democratic Bill Until Party Helps Kill Maine's Income Tax," Huffington Post, May 29, 2015). 

In 2013, in Republican-controlled North Carolina, "the General Assembly...passed and Governor McCrory signed a massive tax shift into law...a plan that will give huge breaks to the wealthy and corporations while forcing the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers in the state to pay more on average" ("The almost forgotten regressive tax shift," NC Policy Watch, August 29, 2013).

In Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback has gone on record saying he wants to replace his state's income tax system with a regressive consumption tax system (heck, in Kansas they even tax food) ("Lawmakers tackle education, social issues but budget remains," The Topeka Capital-Journal, April 4, 2015).

And this is happening all across the country, and not just with taxes, but also with tolls, fees, and fines. See my blog post "Ten Ways The Political Right Is Vacuuming Money Out Of Your Wallet With Their Trickle-Down Economics. Welcome To The Great Right-Wing Revenue Switcheroo."

Now, Democrats are guilty of this phenomenon too, but Democrats usually engage in regressive taxation grudgingly because they're not getting the federal assistance they need....because.....(drum roll)....Republicans have been handing out gargantuan tax breaks to the wealthy, at the federal level, for 35 years. That is the important distinction: Democrats engage in regressive taxation because they're forced into it, via Republican-fueled trickle-down economics at the federal level (which results in a federal government that is less willing and able to help with things like infrastructure and education), but Republicans engage in regressive taxation because that's their modus operandi. Their goal is to burden the middle-class and poor with more taxes, tolls, fees, and fines, so that their super-wealthy campaign donors can pay less. Make no mistake about it, it's 100% class warfare. As billionaire Warren Buffet has said, "Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won. It's been a rout."

(Herman Oliphant, left, speaks to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., in 1937. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

 

New Deal policymakers had a different philosophy. For example, "When it came to taxes, Roosevelt simply believed that rich people should pay more than poor people. And in emergencies, they should pay a lot more." Herman Oliphant, a U.S. Treasury lawyer and tax expert during the New Deal, felt that tax policy "could be made the vehicle for fundamental social reform, specifically targeting the accretion of economic power among a small group of companies and the people who ran them." (Joseph J. Thorndike, Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR, Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2013, p. 45 and 133)  

Unfortunately, we don't have a Roosevelt in the White House today - nor do we have many New Deal-type policymakers in Congress or the executive branch. And so, we are living in an era where the middle-class is shrinking but being asked to pay more and more, and the rich are getting richer but being asked to pay less and less. And, as if that particular insanity was not bad enough, Republicans are working feverishly to cut government funding for things like food assistance and education, thereby putting even more financial stress on middle and low-income Americans. Furthermore, in voting behavior that can only be described as jaw-dropping, tens of millions of middle and low-income Americans continue to vote for Republican politicians. And those of us who don't vote this way are still dragged into the foolishness, forced to pay higher property taxes, higher sales taxes, higher bridge tolls, higher car registration fees, higher college tuition, more traffic fines, and so on.

To put it simply: It's a madhouse.

(Also see "The Crazy Republican War on Food Stamps," The Atlantic, June 26, 2013, and "House Republicans just voted to give the very wealthy a tax break," Fortune, April 26, 2015)

The New Deal helped excavate our history

Above: The visitor center at Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia. The building was started by WPA and CCC work crews and then completed after the war. Ocmulgee National Monument protects Native American history and, according to the National Park Service, "The largest dig ever conducted in this country occurred here at Ocmulgee and the surrounding area. Between 1933 and 1936, over 800 men in Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, Civil Works Administration, Federal Emergency Relief Administration and later the Civilian Conservation Corps excavated under the direction of Dr. Arthur R. Kelly from the Smithsonian Institute...All together 2.5 million artifacts were found..." Photo by C. Smith, used under the CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license. 

    

A new article by Dr. Bernard Means (Virginia Commonwealth University) highlights the New Deal's contribution to archaeology. In "Labouring in the Fields of the Past," Means argues that "With the New Deal, a new age dawned for American archaeologists and American archaeology."  He highlights how increased funding, increased manpower, and the experiences of managing new and larger operations were of great benefit to the developing science of archaeology.

All was not rosy all of the time of course. For example, sometimes record-keeping was less-than-ideal, sometimes excavation techniques did not follow best practices, and sometimes politics delayed or squashed proposed projects. Still, New Deal funding facilitated many excavations that otherwise may never have occurred.

Here are some interesting facts & figures from Means' article:

1. The WPA and the CCC contributed the most to archaeological work, but archaeologists also received assistance from the Civil Works Administration, the National Youth Administration, the Public Works Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.

2. Means reports that he has "accumulated information on approximately 1700 New Deal surveys and excavation projects" and he includes a map and a state-by-state table in his article.

3. Means also reports that there is "Sufficient documentation...to show that New Deal archaeology of one form or another took place in at least 381 counties across 36 of the lower 48 states. In some cases, these were very minor efforts—a day’s work at best—and, in other cases, years were spent at the same site."

So, despite some problems here and there, we see--yet again--how New Deal policymakers connected the dots. People needed work, archaeologists needed help, history needed discovering - and so, they made it happen. Compare that to today, where, for example, our infrastructure is falling apart, 21 million Americans wish they had a full-time job but can't find one, and our Republican-led Congress delays & blocks every infrastructure idea that comes up - even their own (see yesterday's blog post, "Senior Republican on Infrastructure: 'The problem...is really more Republicans than Democrats.'")

Senior Republican on Infrastructure: "The problem...is really more Republicans than Democrats."

(In the video above, President Roosevelt warns America about politicians who say they believe in one thing or another, but are unwilling to secure the necessary funding to actually get the job done. Original YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZGkNAUSvY.)  

Republicans in Congress are having a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that some type of revenue is needed to pay for infrastructure repairs and improvements. Their patron saint Ronald Reagan had the same mental stumbling block (but even he was not as obstinate as today's Republicans). The conservative movement has scratched its head over the past many years, asking, "Hmmm....so, we need revenue to pay for things?? That's weird."

The following was recently reported by the Huffington Post:

"Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that his own party is one of the main problems when it comes to finding a path forward on long-term, increased funding for the nation’s roads, bridges and transit systems...'The problem...is really more Republicans than Democrats...Clearly, this is something that we’re supposed to be doing. A true conservative looks at it and says...we’re supposed to defend America, and build roads and highways.'"

Inhofe is 80 years old, so when he says "true conservative" he may be thinking about Eisenhower Republicans - and those Republicans actually did care about America's infrastructure. But those Republicans, by and large, have been replaced with Paul Ryan Republicans. And Ryan Republicans are far more interested in protecting the fortunes of their political campaign donors than with infrastructure improvements that will strengthen the United States. That's why they're trying to eliminate the estate tax--a tax that only affects the wealthiest of the wealthy--and that's why, when President Obama proposed a large infrastructure plan, financed by taxes on tax-avoiding multi-national corporations, they called it "envy economics."

So, if you experience one of America's quarter-of-million annual water main breaks, or if you hit a pothole that permanently loosens your dashboard, be sure to remember Inhofe's words and put the blame where the blame belongs: Republicans.

(Also see, "$478B Infrastructure Bill Blocked By Senate GOP," The Fiscal Times, March 25, 2015, and "Senate GOP Blocks $60B Obama Infrastructure Plan," USA Today, November 3, 2011) 

A dam failure in Texas is a warning about our infrastructure

(In the short video above, we see the Bastrop State Park dam failure that occurred this past Monday, and also learn about the risk posed by Texas dams across the state. Original YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZPXycqycHw.)

Two days ago, a dam at Bastrop State Park in central Texas failed, causing road closures and warnings to nearby residents to seek higher ground. The dam was over one hundred years old and, according to data provided by KVUE Television several months ago, had not been inspected in 10 years ("Dangerous Dams in Texas," KVUE-ABC, February 19, 2015, see the data map at the bottom of the article).

As the Earth continues to warm, and as the number of extreme weather events increase, it's likely that dam failures will increase: "Over the past century, dams made in the West have become more mismatched with their ambient climate" ("World's Dams Unprepared for Climate Change," Scientific American, September 16, 2011).

In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America's dam infrastructure a "D" letter grade, and reported that "Thousands of our nation’s dams are in need of rehabilitation to meet current design and safety standards." A year earlier, the ASCE had given Texas dams a "D-" letter grade, and highlighted that there was "no state funding to cover the cost of dam repairs, and federal funding is very limited."

Far from being concerned about their 2012 "D-" letter grade, "In 2013, the [Republican] state legislature decided to ease regulations on rural property owners, so more than 3,000 dams are exempt from inspection," a decision that "doesn't sit well" with homeowners who live near the private dams. The problem, of course, is money. While billionaires keep adding billions to their personal fortunes, and while conservative politicians continue to protect the super-wealthy from increased taxation, rural homeowners in Texas don't have the money to repair the dams on their property and the state has "no money for repairs. The state hasn't funded repairs in five years." ("Hundreds of Texas dams at risk of failure," WFAA-ABC, May 13, 2015).

During the New Deal, policymakers invested large amounts of money in dam construction and repair. For example, the PWA helped fund large dams, and the WPA and CCC built or repaired smaller to mid-sized dams (and many of these were on private property). As long as states or local communities were willing to pitch in some money--sometimes as little as 12-20% of the cost of the project--the federal government would frequently kick in the rest. Some of the dam work by New Deal agencies was less-than-perfect, but then, so was the technology of the time. In many instances, however, the dams are still in operation today and have provided solid service for three-quarters of a century.

(WPA workers constructing the Johnson's Pond Dam in Salisbury, Maryland, in July of 1936. The dam is still operating today and has provided eight decades of boating and fishing opportunities, "producing quality bass, bluegill and chain pickerel." Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)

If we wanted to, we could create a new public works program, like the WPA, to repair (and in some cases dismantle) our dams. Such a program would greatly benefit people who have dams on their property, and it would also benefit people who are threatened by these dams. Unfortunately, many of our political leaders today are so busy pampering the super-wealthy, and so obsessed with insulting the non-wealthy, that they don't have much time for infrastructure concerns.

Instead of action, we have perpetual cynicism towards action. Right-wing politicians, think tanks, media organizations, and talking heads--and the billionaires who fund them--have been very successful in convincing tens of millions of Americans that government is always bad. And that's unfortunate, because, as President Ronald Reagan said, "The WPA was one of the most productive elements of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies because it put people to work building roads, bridges, and other projects...it gave men and women a chance to make some money along with the satisfaction of knowing they earned it" (Ronald Reagan: An American Life, by Ronald Reagan, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1990, p. 69 of 2011 paperback edition).

Osaka Garden and the WPA

Above: The caption for this 1937 photo reads, "Japanese Gardens erected in 1893 for World's Fair in Jackson Park [Chicago]. Restored and repaired by the WPA." You can find current information about Osaka Garden at http://www.chicagotraveler.com/attractions/osaka-garden.html. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and the New Deal Network.