Blog 2012 07 16 – Universality
I am often conscious that my parents’ generation had a
vision of universality in social programs.
My parents saw this as meaning several important things:
- Everyone would pay into
the programs and everyone would be equally eligible to benefit from them
regardless of need.
- Such programs would be
society’s way to make sure that everyone had a basic standard of living
and of security no matter what catastrophe’s may happen. We are our brother’s keeper.
- It was understood that such
programs would reduce inequalities and give everyone a fair chance at a
good life.
- It was understood that as
individuals, we had to take care of ourselves and take care not to overuse
the system so that the system would work.
- We would need a strong culture
of mutual responsibility, one for the other. The universality programs formed part of
a social contract where people would have the right to fair employment and
the responsibility to contribute to the fabric of society through working
and paying taxes so that the system would work.
I have often thought that in my generation we have been
gradually dismantling those programs – to my great sadness. It seems that the word “universality” is not
popular any more. We hear questions
like, “why pay for a rich person to have a benefit they don’t need and don’t
want?” We hear statements like,
“Shouldn’t people be responsible for themselves?”
I have felt great attraction to these ideas about individual
freedom and responsibility for self.
These libertarian ideas where there is no role for government and every
person should take care of oneself seem attractive when your only goal is to be
independent and to do whatever you want.
But the generation just leaving us now had seen the great
depression. They understood that to end
up on the rails and begging for a day’s work and a bowl of soup is a
possibility for anyone no matter how personally responsible they are and no
matter how hard they work. You can’t
always do what you want and sometimes you
need help. They understood the power of
working together for the common good.
Universality helps reduce the inequality between
classes. We learned from Wilkinson and
Picket in The Spirit Level that a
more equal society has better social outcomes of all types than a more unequal
society. It produces more stability,
less violence, better health and education and more opportunity.
In Ed Broadbent’s book, Democratic
Equality, I found a very clear explanation for why “Universality” is very
important, and why we should not let it go, but rather reclaim it for ourselves
and for generations to come:
- Bo Rothstein makes the case that the main source of the
escalating differences between Sweden, for example, and the USA is whether
the programs are universal or selective.
She finds unqualified support for universal programs. Selective programs, requiring criteria
and a means test, for example, are invasive of personal privacy, strip
people of dignity, and are prone to problems of procedural justice. Bureaucrats have to find some reason to
justify their decisions – even if it is arbitrary. There is a cycle of cheating, getting
tough, and more cheating. P18,
Democratic Equality. I
interpret this to mean that selective systems create bully bureaucrats and
cheaters. We make people bad
instead of creating a climate for them to find their dignity and climb out
of their poverty. Universal systems
provide a climate of worth and dignity and hope.
- If a program is universal, it’s benefit is a
right. If a program is selective,
then it is altruistic – the rich taking care of the poor. Where do you draw the line between who
gives and who gets? What is
fair? Do the needy deserve help or
are they to blame for their own distress?
You avoid the control game – one side suspicious, looking for
cheating and increasing the controls.
The other engaged in more evasion, lying, and cheating trying to
avoid the controls. P20 Democratic
Equality
- A universal policy is
easier and cheaper to implement. It
requires fewer bureaucrats who have to make fewer decisions. Because there is no cheating dynamic,
you don’t need large numbers of enforcers or investigators. There are fewer issues of abuse of
power. This is demonstrated by the
United States having the highest health care costs in the world without
the best health outcomes.
- Sweden deliberately chose
universal social programs as a way of avoiding the problems of procedural
justice. It is not clear if the
program actually saves enough money to pay for the costs of the needs of
the poor but it definitely creates a more stable society (P21 Democratic Equality)
- In a universal system, the
demand comes from the majority of the population. If you took all the social programs in
Sweden away, the people would still want education, healthcare, unemployment
programs, and so on. They would
just have to buy insurance or otherwise pay for them out of their own
pockets. It would likely cost them
a lot more. If people chose not to
buy insurance when they were young, when they got old we would still have
to take care of them. There is no
evidence a democratic government can just let people rot because they
didn’t plan ahead and catastrophe struck.
(p21)
- “. . . the Nordic type of
welfare state is not an altruistic luxury established to take care of ‘the
poor’. . . Since the demand for
social insurance and social services exists, the costs will be there,
whether or not the demand is filled by government provision or market
forces. Most of the evidence seems
to show that, due to the problem of asymmetric information in this area,
mandatory and universal systems are more cost-efficient than private
insurance systems. P27 Democratic
Equality
- in the mid 1980’s, 54% of single-parent families in the USA and 46% in Canada lived in poverty compared to only 6% in the Netherlands and 7% in Sweden. Out of 100,000 population, 580 were in prison in the USA compared to only 40 in Scandinavian countries. Surely poverty could be a primary reason for this difference. P28 We note as Harper cuts social programs he is simultaneously planning for more prisons -- all likely if predicted consequences of Bill C-10 come through.
This is the
battle the Quebec Students are fighting for in the Maple Spring. Universal Education.
This is why we
must fight for proper education funding for our schools at all levels. This is why we must fight for single-tier
universal health and promote the addition of pharmacare and dentacare.
But the big
discussion must always be – how generous should the universal programs be? How
will we finance them? And how do we
solve the problems of growing dependency if too many draw out and not enough
contribute? Why would anyone work if we
had, for example, a guaranteed annual income system to redistribute wealth.
These are hard
questions and will be explored further in future blogs, but for now, let us
just say – the stresses that we feel in our society today – the global
financial crisis; the loss of high quality jobs in favour of growth in the
retail sector; the loss of jobs to other countries; the deep disparity between
the rich and the poor that grows every day; the increasing number of
catastrophic weather events as climate change accelerates; the potential
conflict as oil and other resources decline in availability – these stresses
must be addressed one way or another.
Either we will plan for a complete social restructuring of our society
and put in place compassionate universal social programs to cushion the blow,
or we will face increased chaos, public unrest, instability and violence. Governments will move away from democracy
towards police states.
Clarence Skinner
was the great social justice minister for Universalism in the twentieth
century. In his book, What Religion Means To Me, (p14) He
said:
“To me the highest type of
religious experience is that which gives man a sense of unity and
universality. Most of our life is spent
in narrow segments. Our horizon is
hemmed about by kitchen walls, office desks, narrow prejudices of race, class
or creed. In [our Universalist] religion,
these partialisms, broken fragments of life, are lifted into a vast and
profound oneness. Our littleness becomes
stretched to cosmic greatness.”
Let us all promote the values of universality and mutual responsibility one for the other in Canada and around the world.
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