Tara:

I tend to agree, but have a slightly different perspective.

I worked in social services when I was younger and realize that some people are just not equipped to do well in our economy. Just by luck of the draw they were shortchanged of intellect, mental stability or the socio economic states of their family. The people I worked with were lucky enough to fall on the social safety net side of the line. That’s not true for everyone. Only one IQ point separates the intellectually disabled from the normal. One group goes to prison, the other gets SSDI and a case manager. I’ve had clients on either side of that line and it seems fundamentally unfair that just having a bad day when you get assessed can have such a dramatic lifelong effect.

But that can’t be corrected by government systems, nor is it caused by political policy or taxing decisions. It’s a problem that has always been with us and always will be. Some people are just better equipped to do well in the economics and societies they are born into. We can’t erase that problem and have to figure out a way to manage it.

And throwing more money at the problem doesn’t work. We are proof of that. Contrary to uninformed emotionally driven assumptions the United States leads much of the world in social spending. If you include spending privately sourced, (like health insurance), that is sourced publically in other countries, you find that the United states ranks in the top five countries for social service spending.

Of course much of that money goes to paying the exorbitant health care CEO bonuses, the lack of taxation of much of the health care industry and the shocking inefficiency of government related bureaucracy.

One solution to all this might be to apply the charter school model to existing government social programs. Charter schools work so well in reforming public education that the public school systems established in the early 20th century see them as threats to their existence. Which they are. And rightfully so. If we can use the Charter school model to eradicate vestiges of archaic government intrusion into social services we might be able to bring social services into the 21st century.