Welcome to the Republican Party

There are a number of jokes going around that end “Welcome to the Republican Party” and, I have to admit, they are pretty good pieces of propaganda.

All are related to the idea that someone is getting something for nothing at the expense of hard working Americans and if you’re opposed to this gross injustice, then the Republican Party is for you.

The latest one I heard had the young daughter of a Liberal couple explaining to her Republican neighbors how when she grew up she was going to make sure that the unemployed and homeless had enough to eat and a place to live. The neighbor said to her she didn’t have to wait; she could come over to her house, do some chores and the neighbor would pay her. Then she could take what she earned and use it to help the unemployed and homeless.

After thinking about it for a while, the child asked why the unemployed and homeless didn’t just come and do the chores themselves. The punch line then followed, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

So being a Republican means giving up your job so an unemployed or homeless person can have it?

Because that’s what’s happening in the story. You will excuse me, but I suspect it will be a cold day in hell before anyone, Republican, Democrat or Independent does that.

Nor is anyone proposing that; nor is anyone proposing that the unemployed or homeless be maintained at anything approaching the economic level of even the lowest level worker. The much repeated story of people living high off the hog on welfare is a myth. Tell you what, if you think they're doing so well, how about you change places with them?

What we’re really talking about is a small percentage of income for the general good and this includes caring for those that have fallen on difficult times. Clearly there is much to discuss here about how small a percentage and how much caring is necessary. Personally I like “as little as possible” and “just the basic necessities” as answers to those questions.

But I suppose the real moral of the story could be something like why don’t those lazy bums earn their own living?

Well, the truth is that the overwhelming majority would be quite happy to earn their own living. Are there some people jobbing the system? Absolutely. My mother-in-law used to work for the welfare department and had stories that would make you grit your teeth. My favorite (or perhaps “favorite” isn’t exactly the right word) was the one about the women who arrived, in a taxi cab, to establish her daughters own welfare account on the daughters 18th birthday. There is clearly a chronic welfare society in our culture that needs to be addressed. The anecdotes are depressing, but the reality is that the dollars involved are fairly small.

The overwhelming majority of people getting financial assistance are not chronic welfare recipients. There are some of those, but there are also the temporarily unemployed and those with ongoing unemployment issues.

There are a number of reasons why an unemployed person might not be unable to get a job. The most obvious reason would be there aren’t any available. The same Republican politicians that tell you to moan about contributing to unemployment and welfare appear to be ok with corporate America outsourcing millions of manufacturing jobs overseas in order to make more money for the wealthiest segment of society.

They want you focused so much on the nickels and dimes taken from your paycheck to help the less fortunate that you overlook the $5 bills and $10 bills that never make it into your paycheck. Why don’t they make into my paycheck you ask? They don’t make it in due to the unfair share of American income diverted to the already rich in order to make them richer.

While the real income (in other words adjusted for inflation) of the bottom 80% of American wage earners has increased by 19% over the past 30 years, the real income of the top 20% has increased by 88%, the top 5% by 245% and the top 1% by a whopping 345%.

Please explain to me how this is right, fair or even rational?

In contrast, in the 30 years prior to that, the real income that marked the top of the lowest income quintile rose by 99.5%, the 2nd quintile by 95.4%, the 3rd quintile by 107.9% and the 4th quintile by 109.9%. At the tippy top of the income scale, the minimum income to be in the top 5% rose by 103.4%.

No wonder so many people remember those as the good old days of economic prosperity. It wasn’t so much that there was more prosperity, the prosperity was simply shared more evenly.

A second reason the unemployed might not be able to get a job might be the jobs are simply not where the unemployed are. If you live in Nevada or Florida, a job in Nebraska doesn’t do you a whole lot of good. If you live in Buffalo or Syracuse, a job in New York City may not do you much good either.

But the third, and most troubling reason, is that you just may not be qualified for that job.

The minimum educational requirements for well paying jobs in the U.S. has steadily risen over the past 20 or 30 years. Some of that rise is real, and some of it is illusionary; a matter of employers wanting employees to be better educated whether it’s necessary or not. Yes there are still jobs where you can make a decent salary without a college degree, but they are getting fewer and fewer.

This all goes along with the manufacturing jobs being outsourced. You could do a fine job on the assembly line with a High School diploma. Dedication and a willingness to work hard for an honest day’s pay meant more than being computer literate, knowing how to calculate sales margins or being able to do calculus.

Those days may well be gone. Even if a college degree might be unnecessary, a technical degree or specialized training might be. Retraining is often the key to helping people get back into the work force. So part of that welfare you’re complaining about goes for retraining and isn’t simply doled out as cash.

Now, in fairness, let’s address the strongest argument against welfare and unemployment compensation.

One can argue hey, wait a minute, why isn’t the contribution to the general good voluntary? What gives the government the right to decide who deserves my charity? The choice should be mine and not some politician’s.

This is a fair observation and, in a perfect world, or even a significantly less complex world, this would be the best solution. But things are just too complicated these days for private charity decisions to work well. The first problem would be that funds would tend to be readily available in prosperous areas and scarce in areas with severe economic problems. Unfortunately, as inefficient as it often is, government is probably the best suited for addressing the issue on the local, state and federal levels.

So while the jokes are clever, a little objective analysis shows them to be what they are, well designed, but very inaccurate, propaganda, intended to leave you with a totally misleading set of impressions.