Public service programs stabilize capitalism by softening its harms while stigmatizing recipients
Evidence
The public service sector plays a critical part in softening the impact of the economic system on those who are not its primary beneficiaries and inducing people to accept the neglect or inadequacy of primary economic and social institutions. … Public support and employment programs expand to ameliorate the impact of unemployment or reduce the incidence of discontent; they contract when employment opportunities improve. Moreover, they are designed and implemented to convey the message that welfare status is to be avoided and that work, however poorly rewarded, is preferable to public assistance. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 126
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: welfare regimes are counter-cyclical pacification systems that manufacture a work-over-welfare moral message regardless of actual wage conditions.
- XREF: connects to: Public agencies have absorbed formerly private responsibilities for the poor. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 87; Governments respond to social inequality by hiring more public servants rather than redistributing income.; Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 42 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Welfare functions as social control by giving workers something to lose
#expands(0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1661 - Systemic economic transformations require a legitimising ideology to offset their cruelties
#expands(0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 219 - Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost
#complicates(0.75) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 42 - Redefining poverty as a distinct culture justified cash floors over redistributive policy
#expands(0.72) — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 149