By BILL CHAISSON
Why do we have government programs that benefit people other than ourselves? Most of us (excluding, of course, many corporations and some very rich people) pay taxes to support the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP aka “food stamps”), subsidized housing and Housing Assistance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Most of us will never draw upon the resources of these programs. But in point of fact, we don’t know for sure whether we will ever need them or not.
The simplest answer to the question, “Why have these programs?” is “Wouldn’t I want them to be there if I needed them?”
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” This is the Golden Rule. It is found at Matthew 7:12 and again in more familiar form at Luke 6:31, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It is called the “golden” rule because it is the basis for all of Christian morality. It is prominent in Confucianism and is also part of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam. Before the advent of Islam on the Arabian peninsula, the morality of the golden rule was not practiced. Instead, the survival of the tribe was pre-eminent and vengeance was a code. But in the Qu’ran at 83:1-6 we find “Pay, Oh Children of Adam, as you would love to be paid, and be just as you would love to have justice!”
When I was in college I went abroad for a semester. I enrolled in classes that introduced me to Nordic culture, including one called “The Danish welfare system.” It was, truth be told, the least interesting class I took, mostly because it was taught by a very bored civil servant. I did, however, manage to learn something about the history of the Danish social system.
Its roots are in the agricultural communities, where cooperatives were initially formed in order to spread the cost of expensive, infrequently used equipment across several farm families. From the late 18th to the early 19th centuries in Denmark there were large transfers of property from the crown to farmers, so that by the second half of the 19th century two-thirds of farmers were owner occupiers. Population growth in this period also produced a class of landless day laborers. The absolute monarchy was replaced with a constitution in 1849.
Denmark remained a predominantly agricultural economy much longer than Germany, the United Kingdom, or the Netherlands. But in the late 19th century, as their industrial sector developed and more of their population moved to urban centers, the people were inclined to continue the cooperative model, even though they were no longer farming. The shift from a monarchy to a constitution in mid century caused a modern government to evolve and it took on the duties of the rural cooperative. In a farming community you had disasters in the form of fire or flood that could ruin someone. So could serious injury, illness, or death. The vicissitudes of the market economy (Denmark generally avoided tariffs) could then contribute toward leaving an unlucky farm family destitute. All of this and more was mitigated by the benefits administrated by the cooperatives.
When Danes became urban-dwelling factory workers and the vagaries of life conspired to leave them in need of help, it came from the government. Agricultural life was less of a cash economy than urban life. In the country people had resources to share. In the city they were paid in cash and part of it went to the government so that it could come back in the form of services.
The Social Democratic Party of Denmark was founded in 1871 expressly to address the needs of the growing class of urban workers. Most of the modern Danish welfare state was built starting in the 1920s under the leadership of a Social Democratic prime minister. It was, of course, not the first. In India in the third century BCE Ashoka urged living by a form of the Golden Rule. Umar, the second caliph of the Rashidun caliphate created the first welfare state in 634 CE. In the 1870s Otto von Bismarck created the first modern welfare state in Imperial Germany. A welfare state can, therefore exist within any sort of political system.
Denmark, however, was a liberal democracy with a capitalist economy, just like most of the rest of western European countries, all of which have broad social welfare networks. In the 19th century social democracy was borne as an alternative to communism, which advocated a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Social democracy advocated using existing political structures to transition to socialism. Over time — particularly since World War II — this goal has been replaced with reaching a stable compromise between capitalism and socialism. As such it has become associated with Keynesian economics, state intervention in the market process, and support of the welfare state.
Why does government need to intervene in the operation of the free market? Well, because capitalism famously has no morality, leading to situations like representatives of Goldman Sachs showing up in Congress to explain why they constructed and sold securities that were designed to go into default. But why take money from successful folks like those at Goldman Sachs and give it to other people who have been less fortunate or whose bad decisions have put them deep in the weeds?
Stephen Pearlstein, writing in the Washington Post in 2013, put it charmingly: “The traditional liberal defense of redistribution, of course, is that a lot of what passes for economic success derives not only from hard work or ingenuity but also from good fortune — the good fortune to be born with the right genes and to the right parents, to grow up in the right community, to attend the right schools, to meet and be helped by the right people, or simply to be at the right place at the right time. A market system should reward virtue, they argue, not dumb luck.”
And the Golden Rule tells you to remember that even if you were born lucky, you may not always be.
Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times.
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.