Welfare And Poverty Schemata:

157

5.3 Welfare And Poverty Schemata:

How selfish so ever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it Smith, 17591839, p. 4. In Chapter 1, I argued that contemporary generations of UK and US young people are surrounded by neoliberal discourses that negatively depict government welfare services and their recipients. It follows that a good start to gauge the effectiveness of neoliberal discursive interpellation on young people would be to explore their views on welfare and the causes of individual poverty. This area of youth political research is scarce, but in this section, I will attempt to partially fill this gap by unpacking the CriticalPolitical young people’s schemata for welfare and causes of poverty which will later be compared to that of the other two classifications of young people. Generally, as is the case with their views on education and labour exploitation, these young people expressed a consistently humanist and compassionate view, whereby they supported welfare services with few if any restrictions, contrary to standard neoliberal discourses. 48 48 This was generally the case for all the CriticalPolitical young people who were asked these sets of questions with the exception of Jazmin Bresee Participant, who while first expressing the view that welfare services are necessary to keep people afloat, particularly in the current economic recession, followed her statement with views that reflect more standard neoliberal negative representations of impoverished people having more children in order to receive more welfare benefits. 158 Rudy: So on that note what do you think of government welfare programmes? Aimee: I think they’re the least they can do. It’s kind of compensation, because we didn’t sign up for this, we’re forced to live under this system, we’re forced to live under the state and under capitalism. The least you [the state] can do is not let us starve when it inevitably fucks us over. Islington participant Rudy: What do you think of government welfare programmes then? Sam: Yeah well I would advocate more investment in a better welfare programme . I think it’s very important that a society looks after those, who in those kind of lower positions, economically and socially, and that basically that a lot of money is invested in helping them. I think that in the programme s we’re seeing now, I think that is obviously things get a lot worse, and unemployment rises, yeah I think an effective welfare programme is important. Islington participant Rudy: So what do you guys think about welfare programmes? Luz: Being in these systems you know, I actually think favourably of them because I think theyve helped out a lot, and then they get a bad rep from people because you know theyre saying, these people are living off government and theyre not going to want to get a job. But, actually, if youre in it, you notice that its people that actually need it, these people cannot survive you know, its not just moochers, although some people suck you know. Most of the time it is people that need it, and without it they would probably be homeless and stuff. But I think very favourably of them. [....] Lupe: I think it does help people, and I think its really good to have them. South-Central LA participants Rudy: Earlier you brought up Kucinich [Denis Kucinich a well-known progressive Congressman from the US] and you mentioned something about a socialized society along those sorts, what do you mean by that? Ben: Well socialized society. I’m a strong believer in a socialized democracy. So you should be able to elect officials so that’s the democracy part. The public should have some say in what’s going on. The socialized part is what the government provides for you. What’s the point of government if it’s not going to protect you? By protect you I’m going to include the police department, the fire department, and maybe not just protect, but provide, so the roads, the public facilities that they produce, and healthcare. Healthcare is a right that people have. I think it’s the government’s responsibility to provide its citizens with free- healthcare. I think it’s a right because in this country, the healthcare system it’s so confusing. […] But I still have the feeling that it’s somewhat like the old system, where if you have 159 lots and lots of money, you’re good. If you have a stroke or a heart attack, don’t worry you have lots of money, and you can pay for that o r that cat scan or MRI or whatever test you need. If you’re an immigrant from Mexico, illegal immigrant, some of those people are dirt poor, they can barely feed their families. If one of them has a heart attack, do you really think they can afford the surgery, and is that fair? Does someone with more money deserve that surgery more than the immigrant, I’d say no. I think racism is a huge component in the people who advocate for a non-socialized healthcare system. Zoo participant Figure 5.2: Ben’s Welfare Schemata As with Luz’s schemata for music described in the previous section, Ben’s schemata for welfare, is diagrammed above to make his welfare related conceptual, lexical, and semantic associations more visible. Of note are the observations that Ben never mentions welfare at all, which tends to have a negative connotation, and 160 instead uses the much more neutral concept, ‘government protection’. The diagram also illustrates Ben’s accurate conception of a socialized democracy that, like his general views on government protection, is not riddled or inflected with pejorative anti-welfare discourses or dispositions. Similarly, all but one of the CriticalPolitical young people who were asked these sets of questions did not express the standard neoliberal anti-welfare discourses which, in their most pejorative and often fraudulent yet commonly circulated via mass media0 articulation, depict welfare recipients as lazy welfare queens sponging off the government trough. In fact, their views on welfare are arguably emphatically anti- neoliberal, and reflect a pronounced empathetic disposition that echoes Adam Smith’s 17591839 account of human nature described above. For instance, Sam and Ben strongly argued that government safety nets and services should be a given in any society and freely available to all who need them, with Ben going the extra step of associating anti-universal healthcare attitudes with racism. 49 Luz disclosed her personal experiences in using welfare programmes, noting that people who use such programmes desperately need and are helped by them, while Amy tied her arguments for the need for welfare provisions to her anti-statist and anti-capitalist views, arguing that it is the very least that the state can do for the citizens it subjugates and oppresses. Corresponding to their views on welfare, are these young people’s views on, and informed explanations for, the causes of poverty. When asked about the causes of poverty, CriticalPolitical young people generally pointed to structural political-economic factors, rather than expressing typical neoliberal person-blame discourses that emphasize individual choices as the main contributors to homelessness and poverty: Luz: It could be the capitalist system. There are a lot of people who have tried and owned their own stores but when you have these monstrous companies you’re going to run out of business. And then eventually these people have nothing to live with like no income. Lupe: There are some people that can’t work because they’re immigrants, drugs and companies leaving to different places for cheaper labour so people are out of jobs. South-Central LA participants 49 A merited view, given that a prominent rationale for the opponents of universal healthcare in the US is that it would be overrun by ‘illegal aliens’. 161 Rudy: So our economic system is described as capitalist, where people are said to be rewarded on how little or how hard they work. What do you think of this? Aimee: Um, it’s completely not the case that people are rewarded for how hard or how little they work. There are loads of people who work really really hard their whole lives and are still really poor. Yeah it’s completely, and likewise people who do basically no work who inherit loads of money and are really rich and don’t have to work. So yeah just the whole idea of trickle down wealth as well, if rich people get richer it will ultimately be better for everyone, is just I think, proven itself to be completely not the case; especially in terms of globalization and stuff. […] Rudy: So why do you think that some people are poor or homeless? Aimee: Basically because. I think poor people are poor because it’s always going to drive up profits if you pay people less. Yeah basically just in the system where the ultimate focus is on profit, the n it’s always going to be about anything that’s going to increase profit rather than looking at what’s going to be best for the workers or anything else apart from profit. Also, unemployment is linked in, because it’s always made an issue in this country with immigration as well without looking at the fact that the reason they use labour from undocumented workers and stuff is because they can pay them less which is an issue of capitalism again rather than. Islington participant Of note in these extracts is Lupe’s mentioning of drugs as a possible cause for poverty, which is a commonly held view that corresponds to a general neoliberal individualist discourse. However, it is a noticeably quick and almost offhand disclosure, which is overshadowed by her other views which stress more structural factors like immigration status and job outsourcing as reasons for why individuals suffer from poverty. Luz and Aimee strictly stressed structural economic factors as the major contributors to the proliferation of poverty, with Luz essentially describing the effects of contemporary monopoly corporate capitalism in depressing wages and running small businesses out of business. While Aimee’s response is interlaced with a rather precocious political-economic lexicon including the accurate use of concepts like ‘trickle down wealth’ and ‘globalization’ to argue that trickle-down neoliberal economics have not worked to lift the majority of people out of poverty. Overall, the extracts discussed in this section demonstrate that, like their socio-cultural schemata, CriticalPolitical young people’s schemata for welfare and poverty are imbued with humanist and empathetic tendencies, and informed 162 and sophisticated understandings of the complex issues of welfare and poverty. They also demonstrate a key structural understanding of these issues, and indeed seem to be disposed to expressing structural concerns, which is a possible explanation for why most of their responses did not evoke or reflect standard neoliberal discourses on these topics. It is notable that all of the CriticalPolitical young people’s socio-cultural and political-economic schemata share virtually identical central tendencies and conceptual associations, which are for the most part, not inflected by neoliberal discourses. However, in the next section, their divergent views on voting, capitalism, and human nature are discussed, as well as how some of these reflect discourses crucial to neoliberal hegemony.

5.4 A Creeping Neoliberalism and Fatalistic Dispositions: