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Social welfare secondary to free market

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by Letters to the Editor

Friday, November 9, 2007

I am commenting in regard to the article written by Kyle Szarzynski ("Homeless pitfall result of neglect," Nov. 6) that focused on the plight of the homeless community in Madison. I think we would all agree that the plight of the homeless, not just in Madison, is a great blemish on our society in general. Mr. Szarzynski accomplishes his honorable goal of bringing attention to Homelessness Awareness Week; however, his negative stance on capitalism is a bit shortsighted.

Mr. Szarzynski is full of praise for the Great Society programs sponsored by LBJ in the 1960s, which did wonders for eradicating poverty. Unfortunately, this great enterprise increased spending financed by taxes, raising inflation and hurting purchasing power in our country. And let's not forget that the dollar was losing its power in the financial markets of the 1970s due to increased federal spending caused by rising commodity prices and the removal of the gold standard. Since Americans were forced to spend a greater proportion of their income on oil, they had less money left for investments in their own country. It was against this economic downturn and eventual stagflation that President Reagan introduced his "draconian" neo-liberal policies that helped free up the market and allowed economic growth back into the country.

I guess the U.S. could have moved toward the full employment, social welfare policies that were simultaneously failing in other industrial nations, but market orientation seems to have worked better. President Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" campaign did decrease spending on welfare, but it also engendered an economy that achieved commendable growth rates while creating new wealth and new jobs, providing potential employment for former "welfare mothers."

The political leaders had a choice to make: Continue mass state spending and continue hurting the entire economy, or cut back the role of the state and embrace the market to spur overall growth. Frankly, I'm glad they chose the latter. I'm not saying that we should disregard the homeless, but it is important to remember that full employment is an impossibility and we shouldn't strive to achieve such impossible feats. But calling a "profit driven society" the disease that causes unemployment ignores the greater forces that politicians must respect when making policy.

Pure capitalism is only one force that can cause poverty, and should not be forced to carry the entire burden of blame. It is important, now more than ever, to focus on international influences when assessing economic policies, not just the capitalism our nation practices. Either way, I would rather live in a profit-driven society that ensures economic growth and innovation over a complacent society that focuses too much on social welfare and not enough on overall growth.

C.J. Smith
UW Junior, Political science
cjsmith5@wisc.edu

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Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 2:00am):

Hey look, another poli sci major who took Econ 101 and thinks he understands how the world works!

Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 2:14am):

The economy exists to benefit people, not the other way around.

Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 10:02am):

C.J., Kyle Szarzynski is just an antagonistic putz who loves to piss people off. And when he's not bashing people who disagree with him, he's bashing Jews everywhere...as if they haven't been through enough already!

When liberals get their act together and stop acting like a bunch of belligerent a-holes, then we'll consider getting involved. Until then, I have classes to go to.

Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 11:31am):

to be fair... this stuff kinda relates more to econ 102.

Anonymous (November 9, 2007 @ 1:33pm):

in other similarly profound and original commentaries today, it has been argued that the sky is blue, the patriots are a superior football team to the dolphins, and sex feels good.

Anonymous (November 11, 2007 @ 11:59am):

Eliminate demandings (billings), pricetags, and ownership (capitalism) and poverty fails to even exist. So, economy/capitalism is the ONLY cause of poverty. Pyramid schemes like capitalism (see backside of USA one dollar bill for pyramid scheme symbol)... do that. As long as people (shoppers) can place "orders" that send slavecorp folk into action OR ELSE... exist... you'll have oppressed people at the bottom of the wellbeing pyramid, with the weight of the world's knees in their backs. If you can't see the servitude infestation within capitalism, and if you can't see the immorality of that, then you're just plain blind.

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