America’s Free-Market Family Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-42
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Leave ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Child Benefits ◽  
The Government

This chapter contrasts two models of the role that government can play with respect to families. Free-market family policy, which the United States has adopted, is premised on the view that all government needs to do to support sound families is to support strong markets, which will in turn benefit families. In contrast, pro-family policy, which other countries have adopted, is based on the idea that families do better when the government actively supports them. Pro-family policy considers markets an important tool for distributing the resources that families need, but it regulates them to reduce economic inequality and insecurity and institutes programs like paid family leave, paid vacation, universal childcare, and child benefits. Of the two types of policies, free-market policy leaves families more vulnerable to market forces. That creates devastating problems for families when economic inequality and insecurity increase, as they have in the United States.

The Death of the Welfare State and the Rise of Free-Market Family Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Government Support ◽  
The Government ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
Government Benefits

This chapter shows how, in the last decades of the twentieth century, the United States abandoned its view that insulating families from harm by market forces was a basic function of government. This shift began in the early 1970s. At that time, it had looked like the government would move further toward protecting families by enacting two proposed pieces of legislation: a guaranteed income plan for families with children and universal daycare. Both plans ultimately failed, however. Their failure was partly a product of happenstance, but two other forces were also at work. The first of these was the growing—but false—belief that government support for families weakened them, whereas markets made them strong. The second was the rising racist—and equally false—belief that the majority of government benefits were going to undeserving African Americans. These forces coalesced in the passage of welfare reform in 1996 and gave rise to the free-market family policy we have today.

How We Fail Our Children Part I—The Caretaking Young Children Need

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-118
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Early Childhood Development ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Childhood Development ◽  
High Quality

A question for any thriving society is how to ensure that children have the things they need to do their best. Two different approaches, pro-family policy and free-market family policy, claim to satisfy children’s needs well. Countries with pro-family policy go out of their way to make it easy for parents to spend time with their children when kids most need it, as well as to provide them high-quality caretaking while parents work, and generous material support. In contrast, under free-market family policy, the United States expects parents to negotiate these conditions on their own, privately arranging for time off from work, reasonable work hours, caregiving while they work, and enough cash to support their kids. This chapter uses recent research on early childhood development to construct a list of the caretaking conditions that help young children thrive. It then considers the extent to which children receive these conditions under free-market family policy versus pro-family policy. Ultimately, it turns out that by far the biggest casualties of free-market family policy are our children.

scholarly journals A Precis on How Democracies Die as a Consequence of America’s, Failure of Government Working for the People while Serving the Interests of the Wealthy

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. p65
Author(s):  
Frederick D. Bedell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
States Government ◽  
The Government

This precis speaks to the failure of the United States government to sustain the wealth of the middle-class after the post-World War Two years’, while serving the wealthiest Americans. It will document how the country has become polarized and fractured along ideological and cultural lines. This situation has created a segmentation of the country that has competing visions, purpose and meaning which is tearing it apart.It will also focus on the inequality in the country that has emerged from the Oligarchy’s domination of the political and free market space-government of the 1%, by the 1% AND FOR THE 1%. Their mantra is to keep the government out of business and have business in the government.

How We Fail Our Children Part II—Young Children from Poor and Low-Income Families

2020 ◽  
pp. 119-141
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Year ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Material Support ◽  
Low Income Families

Free-market family policy puts most American families in a difficult position when it comes to the trade-off between earning income to support a family and making sure young children get the caretaking that suits them best, but it clearly puts poor and low-income families in the toughest positions. This chapter considers the extent to which poor and low-income US families can privately provide the conditions that help young children thrive: adequate material support, a parent at home for up to the first year, good daycare and prekindergarten after that, and time with a nurturing parent. It also compares the likelihood that young children will receive this support in the United States under free-market family policy and in countries with pro-family policy.

The Free-Market Family

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Family Ties

This book critiques the expectation embodied in American public policy today that families will privately provide the resources and circumstances they and their members need through the market and without the help of government. This expectation, it argues, is eroding the well-being of American families across the economic spectrum. Free-market family policy, it asserts, is undermining the promise of the American Dream, which envisions a social order that helps all people reach their full potential and that supports the opportunity for all to lead rich, fulfilling lives. Without thriving families, children can’t reach their full promise; nor can most adults live happy lives without strong family ties. Despite this, under free-market family policy, market forces are decimating the well-being of families. Part I demonstrates how the rising economic inequality and insecurity of the past several decades are making it increasingly difficult for family members to reconcile work and family, are destabilizing marriages and cohabiting relationships among poor and working-class adults, and are making it impossible for families at all income levels to secure for their children the circumstances they need to flourish. Part II shows that, for much of our nation’s history, government’s responsibility to buffer families from market forces was considered a key part of the social contract. It is only in recent decades that free-market family policy has supplanted this social contract. Part III considers how the United States can construct an economy that supports families and truly enables them to thrive.

Insulating Families from Market Forces—The Rise of the Welfare State

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-175
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Free Market Economy ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Government ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter shows that the constant in America’s relationship with markets hasn’t been the acceptance of a free-market economy, but rather the belief that the economy should serve the interests of families. The nineteenth-century rise of the market economy in the United States, it demonstrates, was accompanied by the rise of a set of beliefs that historians call the “ideology of separate spheres.” This ideology sold Americans on the market economy by claiming that it would help families thrive. By the end of the nineteenth century, though, it became clear that the market was failing to deliver on this promise for working-class families. Reformers then called for the government to step in to use regulation to support the promise that the market would protect families. The New Deal arose out of that view of the government’s role. For much of the twentieth century, the government’s responsibility to safeguard the well-being of families against harmful market forces was a fundamental part of our nation’s social contract.

Land reform in the 1950s in Italy and the United States: the thinking of Mario Einaudi

Modern Italy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-371
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Tennessee Valley ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

The article discusses the thinking of Mario Einaudi in relation to the ambitious measures with which the Italian government sought to move towards land reform in the immediate post–war period. Einaudi, an intellectual and academic, was by birth Italian but moved to the United States during the Fascist period. Like his father Luigi, the noted economist, he was convinced of the need to stimulate the free market in land in order to increase productivity and modernise cultivation methods; in his writings he repeatedly sought to develop a plan of action that would facilitate collaboration between Rome and Washington in this field, identifying the Tennessee Valley Authority approach as especially suited to the Italian case. However, while his ideas achieved a good public airing, they had a limited impact: on the political front, Cold War priorities pushed Italian and US Marshall Plan experts more towards the redistribution of landownership than towards stimulating the productivity of agricultural businesses, in the attempt to rapidly build a consensus behind the government; and on the cultural front, at the end of the 1950s the issue of backwardness in the rural South started to be interpreted in terms of cultural and social anthropology, an approach which did not directly relate to the development of political programmes.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Comparison and analysis of the fda approved orphane drugs registerand the vital and essential drugs list of the Russian Federation

2020 ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
D.S. Yurochkin ◽  
◽  
A.A. Leshkevich ◽  
Z.M. Golant ◽  
I.A. NarkevichSaint ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Rare Diseases ◽  
Orphan Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orphan Diseases ◽  
Essential Drugs ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Comparison And Analysis ◽  
The Government

The article presents the results of a comparison of the Orphan Drugs Register approved for use in the United States and the 2020 Vital and Essential Drugs List approved on October 12, 2019 by Order of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 2406-r. The comparison identified 305 international non-proprietary names relating to the main and/or auxiliary therapy for rare diseases. The analysis of the market of drugs included in the Vital and Essential Drugs List, which can be used to treat rare (orphan) diseases in Russia was conducted.

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