It’s a hell of a thing when the nominee of the far-left Green Party espouses a stronger work ethic than the President of the United States. But that’s what we’ve come to.
For all the talk sparked by Mitt Romney’s remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who are dependent on government benefits, it’s not a simple left-right thing.
Dependency is good, of course, if your goal is to build a coalition of takers who live at the expense of makers. But not everyone favors that strategy.
I was talking with Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, the other day; she offered a different approach, one that harkens back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Back in the Great Depression, FDR was more focused on getting people back to work than on handing out money. He set up the WPA and the CCC to provide employment for out-of-work Americans — jobs building needed infrastructure: bridges, post offices, courthouses and other federal buildings.
The idea was that taxpayers should get something out of helping the unemployed.
The Green Party’s Stein has a similar suggestion, and comments: “If you don’t have work, you’d go to an employmentoffice, not an unemploymentoffice, and you’d get a job, not sit home, depressed, with a check.”
At its peak, the WPA employed over 3 million men and women who would’ve otherwise been jobless.
And the Civilian Conservation Corps put the unemployed to work improving national parks and other pieces of federal land.
When I hike in the Smokies, it’s often on trails that were built by the CCC — and of course we’re still using many of the buildings and bridges that the WPA built.
By contrast, what will we have to show in decades to come for today’s 99-week extended unemployment benefits and other government giveaways? Not so much.
So why don’t we have programs in which “you’d get a job, not sit home, depressed, with a check?”
The short answer is because key power players would ratherhave you sit at home, depressed, with a check. There are a lot of reasons for that.
First, unions don’t particularly like the idea of the federal government hiring unemployed people to do work that they’d rather have their workers do, at much higher rates. FDR had his own problems with the unions, who weren’t so happy with the WPA or the CCC — but organized labor is much more powerful now, and Obama isn’t likely to buck it.
Second, working — even in a program like the WPA — enhances feelings of self-esteem and independence. But the politicians don’t want you to feel self-esteem and independence. They want you to feel dependent — on them.
As the rebellious 1980s rock band The Rainmakers sang in its song “Government Cheese,” dependence is the key: “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.” A more succinct summary of the Obama administration’s agenda would be hard to find.
Not everyone — even in the 47 percent — wants to be a beggar. And not everyone on the left — as the Green Party’s Stein demonstrates — favors a politics of dependency.
But it’s a close-run thing, these days. November may decide which way the balance tips, long-term.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee.