Improved Clinch

Count Me Out of the "Next Social Contract"

Writing in the Washington Post, Reid Cramer and Ray Boshara suggest that the next president should engineer a new social contract.

Whenever I read words such as “new social contract,” I immediately check to ensure that my wallet is still in my pocket, and that my arms are close at hand.

The first five paragraphs of Cramer and Boshara’s piece, for the most part, provide advice to the ever growing crowd of presidential wannabes, noting this presidential race as a “historic moment,” since no incumbents are running. Though there may not be any past presidents, or vice presidents running for high office, I’d say that the field of candidates is littered with incumbents, anyway, representing merely the status quo. But I am disgressing from what I desire to discuss in this post.

After the first five paragraphs, Cramer and Boshara begin to describe the “next social contract,” and initially one could be inclined to think that, hey, this makes sense.

We suspect Americans will be able to agree that going forward we need policies that are designed to encourage entrepreneurship and risk-taking, promote long-term growth and wealth creation, and encourage individuals and families...

After the word “families,” though, Cramer and Boshara’s proposal totally breaks down.

”...not as employees, but as citizens. This is why the next social contract must be citizen-based, lifelong, and supportive of families and economic growth. Taken together, these principles offer a vision for the kind of society we should aspire to become, serving as the social and political glue which binds people together in a cohesive collective.

Making the social contract citizen-based means that benefits aimed at individuals should flow directly to them rather than through employers or other intermediaries, and they should be fully portable so that eligibility is not contingent on where you work, where you live or what communities you belong to. Moreover, the next social contract should extend throughout the life course, supporting families as they raise young children. Currently, we seem to have socialized old age and privatized care of the very young. A better approach would be to begin at birth by guaranteeing health care, pre-school and asset accounts for all children. And we should adopt policies that help families balance their work and family responsibilities through, for instance, greater access to flex-time and family income insurance. Furthermore, the goal of the next social contract should not be to eliminate poverty through as-of-right income transfers, but to ensure that everyone is given a stake in our shared prosperity through broad-based asset ownership.

Yeah, a “better approach” is to turn individuals into state dependents at birth, rather than simply at old age, and let’s stop “as-of-right income transfers,” and simply redistribute assets instead.

Count me out.

The Next Social Contract

Posted by on 05/18 at 04:31 AM