A reoccurring conversation throughout the Harvard Trade Union Program has been about our desire to develop a theme around which the engines of the labor movement may be reignited. Last night I think I stumbled across that theme.
Every day we hear our political leaders say we have to cut spending to pay down the deficit. I think there is an argument that not only do we need to avoid cuts but, cutting in this economy is actually the wrong thing to do. Cuts most affect the people who need public services the most. Cutting spending has a disproportionate affect on the very old, very young and disadvantaged Americans. They would be subject to the foibles of the market.
I was in a conversation last night with the staff member of a conservative Congressman. He seemed apprehensive about funding two much needed firefighter staffing bills. I explained the importance of the bills to the smaller communities they would help and then I asked a simple question.
When people call for help and there is no one to come, what then? When all of the cuts are done and the public sector is gone, what do you think that world looks like? What kind of a world do you want to live in? That sounds like a dangerous world to me. It is a world without quality EMS and fire services. It is a world with inadequate police protection. It is a world without quality public education. It is a world without a social safety net. It is a Darwinian world where life is, in the words of Thomas Hobbes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. That is nightmare not the American Dream.
The issue is that the ones who ponder such cuts are not the ones who are affected. To them it is cigars around the bottom line saying, "Look how much we cut!" Rarely do those people face the consequences of the cuts, or even draw the line between the result of a cut (ie: reducing education funding and the increase in crime, reduced ffer staffing and an increase in localized social disaster) but rather state that the reason the disadvantaged have made "poor moral choices" and get what they deserve.
ReplyDeleteI want to live in a world where people are striving to be the best that they can be and there are no barriers. I want equality. I want the money I pay to the government to go for sustained betterment of society(education, health, trades) rather than a consumer-based society (buy more to sustain the economy! Out of control spending to bolster artificial needs.)