Blog Post 3 National Gov

The video we watched depicts a republican politician discussing the reduction of social safety nets in the United States. The video itself operates on two distinct levels as there is the original video intercut with a reaction to that video. The main point of the reactor is a part of the video in which the conservative admits that their policies would initially cause suffering if implemented. The video wishes to highlight the hypocrisy in conservative merit-based assessment of social inequality. Certainly the conservative movement in the United States operates on a fairly confused platform. Many of their fiscal policies run contradictory to what years of economic research has disproved. Clinging to the idea that de-valuing workers in favor of the corporations that employ them will somehow lead to a rise in wages. This has been proved untrue as even those corporations given massive tax breaks, like the massive US-based fast-food chains, still by and large stick to the federal minimum wage for their "unskilled" employees. When discussing wages it very quickly can become a discussion of human rights and civil liberties. What is a person owed by their government? This is often the question that divides the left and the right. In short, those on the left believe it is a government's responsibility to provide for her people, whereas the conservative belief is that each individual is responsible for their own well being and that the government should interfere as little as possible in what they consider personal matters. The conservative notion is indeed a romantic one, and attractive to many. However, it relies on an understanding of the individual's relationship to the state as isolated from context. For a conservative system like the one described in the video to work there must be no outside financial factors. No stock market crash, no economic downturn, no pandemics and no inflation. In a world such as this merit may indeed decide someone's position in society, but it is hardly a realistic expectation. Inflation has quickly outpaced the federal minimum wage, and what was fair years ago does not necessarily apply anymore. There are schools of political thought that view the right to live as an inherent civil liberty. If this is taken into account then from that perspective the conservative movement in the United States fails to account for all basic civil liberties. Another facet of the situation that is ignored by this ideology is the history of institutional disenfranchisement of minority groups in this country. For someone to be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps they must first have boots. Formal segregation ended only about sixty years ago, around the same time women were allowed to open their own bank account for the first time in the country's entire history. The path to financial stability was only recently made available to everyone, and even when the policy based obstacles vanished the societal barriers still existed. It is inherently difficult to quantify the influence societal discrimination has affected disenfranchised populations ability to achieve financial security. This is because the cause and effect of such issues can be hard to find, is personal financial irresponsibility to blame? Is discrimination? Is it both? The amorphous nature of discrimination makes conversations regarding its solution difficult to have. What is known for certain is that most executive and managerial positions in the US go to men, the overwhelming majority of whom are white. (Commision) Critics of this position would point to the fact that most of the attendees of the related college majors are white men. I would rebut that white men are also more likely to have the money necessary to attend college, and women with said money are more likely to choose a career that is less male dominated for concerns of employment opportunities and possible discrimination. This is without mentioning the fact that these institutions are overwhelmingly white, this is certainly because of the economic disparity but there is another reason. The US exists in the context of her unfair past, colleges were a primary axis upon which segregation was practiced. The intellectual elite of the country were white from its inception, logic follows that this elite would want to conserve its status as a social in-group. Thus we are left with the legacy of stigma and prejudice that american universities are fighting to break free of to this day. Despite these efforts, US colleges are attended by a majority white student body. Fifty-three percent of all students in the US are white, the second and third highest being hispanic and black occupying 20.6% and 13.1% respectively. Many worthy political theorists have tried to find a way to assuage these issues, to varying results. In my opinion Hamilton put it best when he said “A government, to be worthy of its name, must govern its citizens, not just its subordinate jurisdictions.”. Expecting a corporation to meet the material needs of your citizens is far too unpredictable a gambit, and one that has been proven ineffective. Equal opportunity should be strived for by addressing material inequality, and the most dependable way to achieve this is indeed through governmental assistance.