A Slippery Slope: Economists and Social Insurance in the United States

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Du Boff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Negative Images

Since the 1980s welfare state protections have been blamed for a host of economic problems. In the United States, conservatives have always disliked Social Security but could not effectively attack this popular program until the 1980s, when they devised a new tactic—warning young people that they would never get their “money's worth” from Social Security, which is on the brink of “bankruptcy.” The political climate, dominated by a drive to cut back “big government,” also became favorable for attempts to destabilize Social Security politically. Thus, negative images of Social Security have been forced onto the public agenda, and economists who consider themselves “liberal” have uncritically accepted this new set of political “givens.” It is an example of how they address “crises” as separable issues tied to no particular social context.

War without Citizens

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rosow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Advanced Technologies

Contestation over war memorialization can help democratic theory respond to the current attenuation of citizenship in war in liberal democratic states, especially the United States. As war involves more advanced technologies and fewer soldiers, the relation of citizenship to war changes. In this context war memorialization plays a particular role in refiguring the relation. Current practices of remembering and memorializing war in contemporary neoliberal states respond to a dilemma: the state needs to justify and garner support for continual wars while distancing citizenship from participation. The result is a consumer culture of memorialization that seeks to effect a unity of the political community while it fights wars with few citizens and devalues the public. Neoliberal wars fought with few soldiers and an economic logic reveals the vulnerability to otherness that leads to more active and critical democratic citizenship.

scholarly journals What the Australian Public Knows About the High Court

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-63
Author(s):  
Ingrid Nielsen ◽  
Russell Smyth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
High Court Of Australia

Existing studies for the United States examine the extent to which the public is knowledgeable about US courts, arguing that knowledge of the courts is linked to public support for their role. We know little, though, about the Australian public’s awareness of the High Court of Australia. We report the results of a survey of a representative sample of the Australian adult population, administered in November 2017. We find that few Australians know the names of the Justices, the number of Justices on the Court, how the Justices are appointed or for how long they serve. Awareness of recent cases decided by the Court is mixed. We find that age and education are better predictors of awareness levels than is gender. Our findings are important because in the absence of awareness of the High Court, the potential exists for the public to see the Court as having a more overt political role than it has, which may lower esteem for the Court. The potential for this to occur is exacerbated if, and when, politicians attempt to drag the High Court into the political fray, by attributing political motives to it that it does not have.

scholarly journals Privatization of Social Security Retirement Systems: Lessons and Comparisons from Chile, Argentina, and the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Elisa Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Account ◽  
Retirement System ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Investment Returns ◽  
Group Mobilization ◽  
Retirement Systems

Retirement pensions are traditionally provided through government social insurance systems, which pool risks broadly across the population and provide benefits that are set in law. In contrast, under privatized systems, workers’ benefits depend on their own individual account balances and investment returns, with little or no redistribution and pooling of risk across the population. In 1981, Chile became the first country to fully privatize its social security retirement system, setting an example that Argentina and numerous other countries later emulated. More than two decades later, both Chile and Argentina undertook “re-reforms” to their privatized systems, with Chile maintaining its privatized system while Argentina returned to a fully public system. The United States also confronted efforts to privatize its Social Security system around the same time periods—in the early 1980s and the early 2000s—but ultimately chose to strengthen the existing system rather than privatizing. This article examines and contrasts these three countries’ experiences in the 1980s-90s and 2005-08, probing the factors that led to or prevented privatization. While finances usually provided the stated pretext for reform, privatization is now widely acknowledged to worsen the financial challenges faced by pension systems. Ultimately, neoliberal ideologies were pivotal in putting privatization on the policy agenda, and institutional structures and interest group mobilization helped to shape the outcomes of the privatization effort.

Creating the New System

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-160
Author(s):  
David Madland
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
System P ◽  
Union Policy ◽  
Labor System ◽  
New System ◽  
Intellectual Climate

This chapter explores whether a new labor system could ever become law and overcome the massive political hurdles standing in the way. The path to victory is quite narrow. There needs to be sufficient grassroots activism to push labor issues to the top of the agenda, a strong majority of politicians willing to vote for pro-union policy, champions to drive the policy forward, and a favorable intellectual climate. As difficult as these are to achieve, they are possible if favorable trends continue and rise in intensity. The public must increasingly and more forcefully demand change, and the political and intellectual climate must continue shifting in favor of labor modernization. The chapter concludes by echoing the theme of the book — that a new labor system with broad-based bargaining and encouragement for union membership would help address the fundamental economic and political challenges that the United States faces. The more people recognize this, the better the chances for creating a new labor system.

The Political Economy of Religion and Social Insurance in the United States, 1910–1939

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Scheve ◽  
David Stasavage
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Income Redistribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Individual Preferences

There are few scholars who would disagree with the proposition that individual economic position and economic risk play a critical role in shaping preferences for income redistribution and social insurance. There is less consensus, however, about the extent to which non-economic factors also influence individual preferences regarding social insurance provision. A number of scholars have examined how issues of race and identity have influenced the development of social insurance programs in the United States, as well as individual attitudes with respect to these programs. In a theoretical context, other authors have considered how attitudes toward income redistribution might also depend upon psychological dispositions such as the “belief in a just world.” In this article, we focus on religiosity as an important factor that can shape both individual preferences and policy outcomes regarding social insurance in the United States. To do so, we develop an argument about religion and social insurance as substitutes that draws both on existing work on the political economy of social insurance and on findings in social psychology regarding what we call the “coping effect” of religion. We test our hypothesis using historical evidence from two early social insurance policies: workers’ compensation legislation enacted by state governments between 1910 and 1930 and New Deal unemployment relief.

The Political Economy of American Strategy

1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron L. Friedberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Defense Spending ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Strategic Posture ◽  
Extended Posture

Recent discussions whether or not the United States is strategically “overextended” raise two important questions. First, to what extent can the fiscal and industrial difficulties of the last several decades be attributed to the comparatively high military budgets of the post-1945 period? Second, can the United States continue to maintain something resembling its postwar strategic posture without doing itself grievous economic harm? Although the issue remains open, defense spending would appear to bear only a small part of the responsibility for present U.S. economic problems. As to the future, the question is not so much whether the burden of an extended posture can be borne as whether it should be borne, and who, precisely, should bear it. These are political issues: they are conditioned but not determined by economic factors.

Polarization, diversity, and democratic robustness

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (50) ◽  
pp. e2113843118
Author(s):  
Jenna Bednar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Political System ◽  
United States History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Polarization Diversity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Information Diversity ◽  
States History

In the Madisonian Constitution, fragmented and overlapping institutions of authority are supposed to manage democracy’s innate rivalry, channeling competition to serve the public interest. This system of safeguards makes democracy more robust: capable of withstanding and, if need be, adapting to challenges posed by a changing problem environment. In this essay, I suggest why affective polarization poses a special threat to democratic robustness. While most scholars hypothesize that polarization’s dangers are that it leads to bimodality and extremism, I highlight a third hypothesized effect: Polarization reduces interest and information diversity in the political system. To be effective, democracy’s safeguards rely upon interest diversity, but Madison took that diversity for granted. Unique among democracy’s safeguards, federalism builds in a repository for diversity; its structure enables differences between national- and state-expressed interests, even within the same party. This diversity can be democracy hindering, as the United States’ history with racially discriminatory politics painfully makes clear, but it can also serve as a reservoir of interest and information dispersion that could protect democracy by restoring the possibility that cross-cutting cleavages emerge.

scholarly journals Trade and the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy: The Case of the United States Peanut Program

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 595-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo M. Nayga ◽  
Robert B. Borges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Peanut Butter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Demand ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate

AbstractNAFTA and GATT will dramatically alter regulations protecting U.S. peanut markets and will allow foreign producers considerable access to domestic market. Traditionally, the political economy surrounding peanut policy has been favorable to domestic producers. Rising peanut butter imports, decreasing domestic demand, and possibly the inadvertent effects of domestic policy, ironically implemented to protect domestic producers, have contributed to significant increases in Treasury costs. These increased Treasury costs have dramatically changed the political climate surrounding the peanut program. In this light, the effects of GATT appear manageable; NAFTA may ultimately require major policy reform. Possible alternatives are presented.

Political Humility and Forgiveness of a Political Hurt or Offense

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam S. Hodge ◽  
David K. Mosher ◽  
Cameron W. Davis ◽  
Laura E. Captari ◽  
Joshua N. Hook ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Willingness To Forgive

The political climate in the United States is turbulent. The current study examined how (a) one’s own political humility and (b) one’s perceptions of the political humility of another person affect one’s willingness to forgive another person for a political hurt or offense. Participants ( N = 494) reported a recent political conflict and reported their forgiveness of the transgressor of this political hurt. Both the participant’s political humility and perceptions of the offender’s political humility were positively associated with forgiveness, whereas political commitment was negatively associated with forgiveness. Moreover, political humility buffered the negative relationship between political commitment and forgiveness. We conclude by discussing limitations, suggestions for future research, and practical applications.

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