Societal Support and Affordability

[cereus]

From Adam Kotsko:

"In light of recent proposed budget cuts in various countries, I feel compelled to mount a defense of the common sense concept of the government being able to “afford” something:

• If we can afford to spend billions of dollars on weapons systems we will almost certainly never use, we can afford to have a system where a dedicated tax stream pays for some bare-bones retirement and disability benefits, with no more overhead than it costs to print and mail the checks.
• If we can afford to endlessly occupy two countries for no apparent reason, surely we can afford to help people get health insurance.
• If we can summon up $700 billion out of thin air to bail out banks, surely we can afford to fill in the state and local budget gaps that would lead to firing people who provide essential services.
• If we can afford high-tech laboratories to do scientific research the results of which we will basically give away to corporate interests for nothing, then we can afford humanities instruction, which requires a teacher, a chalkboard, and enough chairs for all the students.
• Again, if universities can afford to run money-losing athletic programs, then they can afford to provide the minimal research support funds humanities people require — basically time off to focus on research and maybe the occasional plane ticket, since the other resources they need consist of little more than the pre-existing infrastructure of a good library that you’d need for the university anyway.

The pattern is the same again and again and again: the thing that actually costs not too much money is denounced as unaffordable, while the insanely expensive thing is never even questioned. It’s like if I overdrew my checking account and decided I needed to start buying store-brand cereal while never questioning if I can afford that Lexus."

That wold be Love/Metta in action.

Also another good site:
http://liberationforall.wordpress.com/

Comments

[roykay.livejournal.com]

1) We were supposed to occupy Afghanistan to midwife a liberal-democracy and eliminate al-Qaida and the Taliban. However, that morphed more into another front of the drug war, thus ensuring a whole new set of opponents and alliances. So at this point the original war has been lost - but no one wants to admit they blew it and discuss how they blew it. So they pretend to still be fighting a winnable war.

2) We really couldn't summon up the $700G. Fortunately, we haven't really had to. However, we have probably lost $100G in the name of "responsibility", which mainly means keeping the present system more or less afloat so that it can be mismanaged again. The main thing it did was strengthen GM and Chrysler so they could continue to strong-arm their vendors, dealers and nascent competitors; rather than liquidate into more balanced and profitable units.

3) The manned space program has long been known to be pretty much a waste of money. We hear of great technical spin-off advances, but all these are in the distant past. What we are doing is supporting a government program that lobbies for itself. Humanities would be cheaper, but humanities suffers from the reputation of being a repository for political activists, and people wonder why they should pay for someone else's political activism, when they can't really afford their own.

4) Sports programs get results! Okay, half the time those results are a lost game and the other half the time, it's a lot of money to get a fairly meaningless victory. However, it all plays to a "safe" partisanship, primarily because it IS meaningless. Humanities partisanship tends not to localize. Humanities achievement is hard to gauge and often pretty hard to relate to. The current enthusiasm for "privilege" studies pretty much sets up a war to delegitimatize other people's experiences, struggles and achievements. Few people want to pay for the "privilege" of being delegitimatized.