The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work-or even whether they benefit from them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms-student aid, tax relief, and health care-to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” Of people who are rational can overcome the 40% who are totally irrational.“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Until the lunatics who spout this nonsense are recognized as, well, lunatics, it’s difficult to see how the 60% This completely-out-of-touch-with-reality aspect to American society bodes ill for our future. The conspiracy was set up in 1961 to publish his birth announcement in both of Hawaii’s major newspapers so he could be elected president 47 years later, or someone traveled back in time to place theĪnnouncements], & on & on: “don’t confuse me with facts, let me believe what I want to believe.” & we wonder why 50% of Americans don’t believe in evolution… WMD in Iraq, the Saddam – al Qaeda “connection”, the Social Security “crisis”, “weaponized Keynesianism”, “birthers” [Obama was born in Kenya but either Your post several days ago discussed this phenomenon at length, but as you noted, it’s present in virtually every issue we’ve faced in the past decade: “Medicare is run by the government.” “Don’t confuse me with facts keep the government out of Medicare!” Krugman, I believe this “confusion” over government health care is part & parcel of the overall deliberate ignorance many Americans exhibit. Though there are no places where it actually has people also believe that government-provided insurance can’t work, even though there are many places where it does - and one of those places is the In a way, this is the flip side of the persistent belief that the free market can cure healthcare, even Pays substantially more medical bills (47% of the total) than the private insurance industry (35%). One of the truly amazing and depressing things about the health reform debate is the persistence of fear-mongering over “socialized medicine” even though we already have a system in which the government “I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’ ” Inglis recalled. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” A commenter points me to this:Īt a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep.
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