Note to readers: This is the first part of a three part series where I offer my thoughts about how best to achieve the one thing I believe America needs; a cutting edge, fully fleshed-out biotech/tech industry.
Over at TechCentralStation, Gregory Scoblete has an article up concerning Bush’s new social policy described in his acceptance speech last Thursday. In it he first lays out the philosophical differences between the new plan, the welfare state, and small government;
The Nation State was defined and legitimated, in part, by its ability to ensure the material well being of its citizens. In contrast, the Market State earns its legitimacy by providing the opportunity to its citizens to advance their own well being. The Nation State is characterized by top-down, government centric solutions like the welfare state, that make absolute guarantees about the material outcome of its charges. The Market State simply says: we’ll guarantee a set of basic tools and an open playing field, but after that, you’re on your own to make of it what you will.
He then goes on to describe the three duties of the new market state;
1) Giving all citizens a “leg-up” at the beginning of life;
Even the President’s proposed spending initiatives — increased money to education, to child heath care, and to junior colleges – had one consistent, Market State theme: the State is responsible for laying the foundation for your well-being but ultimate success is up to you.
2) But as the quote says, the rest is up to you;
Bush’s domestic agenda, allowing younger workers to direct the investment (of their own money) in Social Security, of portable pensions to follow a mobile work force, and reforming a cumbersome tax code, is specifically aimed at devolving responsibility for individual welfare from the State to the individual. He touts it as an “ownership society” but it could just as easily be called an “opportunity society” – under Bush’s vision, the government promises that all citizens will have the opportunity to advance themselves, regardless of station. That is a distinctly different promise than the traditional Nation State compact that guarantees your welfare by redirecting wealth from one population segment to another.
3) So the Federal Government can focus on it’s real duty, defense;
Now, the first criticism that I have about this plan is that it really only addresses defense and covering the costs by shifting the responsibility of many social programs onto the individual. What it does not address, something I will address more specifically in my follow-up post titled “the Signapore model” is how the government can assure prosperity by encouraging a leadership in what I have already labeled a cutting edge, fully fleshed-out biotech/tech industry.
My second criticism would be that it gives no plan on how to reform the failing K-12 system. The likely fixes would of course be steering those less intelligent or less motivated students into various vocational training tracks and for allowing competition in various public/private schools.
P.S. I know that Paleos and libertarians will decry and have decried the expansion of government described in both Bush’s speech and this article, but they don’t have much to fear, since this is a direct call for the dismantling of the present welfare state. Also pragmatism argues that the best policy is not an ideologically pure form of government, but allowing a little of the evil that is socialist government.
Posted by scottm at 05:50 PM