Government Does Have Important Role
In case you missed it (and you probably did because the media considered this a non-story), this country’s social well-being has fallen to its lowest point in almost 25 years, and those who are suffering most are children and young people.
The social-health index was developed by respected researchers at Fordham University’s Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, and it goes back to 1970.
The results of this year’s study are dismal. Four of the six problems in the survey affecting young Americans - child abuse, teenage suicide, drug abuse and the high school dropout - worsened in 1994, the most recent year covered by the study. This is the first time that four issues involving children all have shown deterioration. The study did find a slight decrease in child poverty - making 1994 only the fifth-worst year for that indicator since 1971.
According to a study released last week by the Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, about 12 million American children go hungry or are threatened with hunger. “Recent scientific evidence now demonstrates that the type of hunger we have in the United States - mild malnutrition - produces long-term and even permanent cognitive impairments in children.”
The teen suicide rate is almost twice as high as it was in 1970. And as we all know, the welfare “reform” bill devised by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton inevitably will shove more kids into poverty. On a social-health index with ratings from 0 to 100, America scored 37.5.
This rather rude reminder that things are not hunky-dory here in Mudville got the reception that bad-news messengers usually get: a nice blank wall of denial.
Political discussion these days is limited to how to dismantle government, so sitting up and suggesting that government actually might make a renewed commitment to social and economic justice in this country is like passing gas at a tea party.
Think about what is not being discussed in this political campaign.
We have the most expensive health-care system, per capita, in the world, but between 41 million and 44 million Americans still have no health insurance.
Even though most families rely on two wage earners, the annual household income of the poorest fifth of Americans declined, between 1979 and 1994, by 3 percent to $7,800. Income for the next-highest fifth declined 4 percent to $19,200. In the middle fifth, the decline was 2 percent to $32,400. But because wealthier Americans enjoyed such a dramatic increase in their incomes, total household income grew by $1.1 trillion.
Morton Mintz, a superb reporter, suggested last summer in The Washington Monthly some of the questions that we usefully might consider in this campaign.
For example: The corporate tax rate was 31 percent during the high-growth 1950s; it is 15 percent now. Returning the corporate tax rate to 31 percent would increase annual revenues from that source by 250 percent. Do you favor it?
The pay gap between chief executive officers and workers is wider in the United States than in any other country. Would you favor a limit on the corporate tax deduction for executive compensation in excess of, say, $3 million?
Have we convinced ourselves that nothing can be done about any of this?
That’s not true. We know which programs work and which don’t; we see programs that work all the time. We just don’t have enough of them.
Have we convinced ourselves that we don’t have the money? Say we put some unheard-of sum into a renewed war on poverty - $100 billion to tackle housing, education, job training and day care all simultaneously. Where could we get a sum like that in an era of tight budgets?
Well, in 1995, we spent $167 billion on corporate welfare, according to the Center for Responsive Law. The Pentagon wants to spend $1 trillion for a new generation of jet fighters even though we already have the best in the world. That comes to about $10,000 per household. We only need 10 percent of that.
Perhaps the most useful question of the year came from media critic James Fallows back in January:
“A generation from now, people will look back on us, especially at today’s Democrats, and wonder what we were thinking on one fundamental issue. That issue is the role and purpose of government. … Democrats have done very little to challenge the modern Republican proposition that government is simply evil, that it is wasteful, oppressive, misguided and inefficient. Therefore, the contest boils down to who can hack the most out of this evil presence in the shortest possible time. What can the Democrats be thinking? Not only are they doomed to lose any government-hating contest, but they also are ignoring the history of their growth - and the country’s.”
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