Thursday, February 03, 2005
(1:42 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Bitchin'
Bitch PhD made the fateful mistake of actually listening to the State of the Union. Given how upset I was about even the snippet of the inauguration speech that I heard, I didn't listen to the State of the Union -- and given what she says about it, I'm glad I didn't. I would, however, direct all of you to, in blog-speak, "read the whole thing," which I will sample here:If Bush destroys social security and revamps health insurance (sorry, I can't find the link I want, I'll fix this when I do, but the plan is to have taxpayers set up "health savings accounts" and get rid of the deduction for employers who provide health insurance--in other words, as with social security, to promote the "ownership society" by shifting economic costs and risks onto individuals. Remember the last time you had to COBRA your own health insurance? How expensive it was? Yeah, having us all insure ourselves as individuals is a great plan), we're gonna turn into Venezuela, I swear: a tiny elite of extremely wealthy people, and the vast majority of us so unprotected from shifts in fortune that all the middle-class shit we take for granted now--retirement, being able to see a doctor, sending kids to college--will be impossible. Welcome to impoverishing the country, people. Shit, it makes my personal pet issue of reproductive rights seem almost irrelevant: what's the fucking point of fighting for women's right to middle-class norms of autonomy and independence if no one is middle-class any more?Referring to this Crooked Timber post, she remarks:
And how likely will it be that you'll be financially ruined if your employer doesn't provide health insurance and your government doesn't provide social security? Fait accompli. Welcome to the new American order: endless war, but who gives a rat's ass, because we're all too fucking poor and disenfranchised to care about anything beyond our own survival.That's what always bothers me about the idea that government safety nets discourage people from doing productive thing -- in reality, government safety nets (direct, as in the Social Security check, or indirect, as in bribing your employer to take care of you) are the only way I can think of to open up any possible space for doing something productive, i.e., something other than scraping out some bare subsistence level. "Hard work," that holy sacrament of American conservatism, is surely a great thing -- but so is shared responsibility, so is recognizing that we have to live together and that there are advantages to living together rather than living only in and for one's own family unit, so is recognizing that life actually isn't fair and that those who point it out aren't always just lazy whiners who want to leech off of everyone else. It would be great if American society could somehow be about something other than creating and promoting the "war of all against all" -- we were on our way toward another vision in the New Deal, but now we're just fighting for the last shreds. I can't imagine what would produce such a vision today, especially given that the right has effectively stolen all the "good words" and directed them toward their own worship of money and brute force. We need more than ideology critique: we need idolatry critique.
(Footnote: What is there for us aspiring academics? Do we just live off student loans until the student loan program is shut down, then simply go into default? I have a good credit rating right now, but if bankrupcy is inevitable, why not wrack up the debts as much as possible now? Surely our cash-strapped state governments can't afford to build all-new debtors' prisons, right? I'm reminded of Baudrillard's idea that if the powers that be want us to consume, we should consume to excess -- if they want us to incur debt, we should incur catastrophic debt.)
