Rich cad, poor cad
I sometimes dig George Lakoff's daft-yet-useful distinction between conservatives as "strict fathers" and liberals as "nurturant mothers"; indeed I feel the scales fall from my eyes when these parental metaphors get used to obscure complicated public policy debates. Still, Lakoff's frame doesn't help me figure out this new metaphor about new state budget surpluses:
"The situation for the states right now is like a father who gets a long-awaited raise at the office, and then comes home and finds out his daughter just got accepted to Harvard," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers.
First of all, Harvard is need-blind. Secondly, most fatherly states (particularly those with Taxpayers-League and Operation Rescue types active in their capitol hallways) would prefer to homeschool their "daughters" and send them out as hollow-eyed missionaries of scripture, selfishness, and shuttered libraries.
No, here's a better metaphor: The situation for the states right now is like a deadbeat dad who won $200 in a scratch game yet still rationalizes his way out of dropping it on the next child support payment. Better to blow it all on a sports stadium instead.*
[*I am aware that the Taxpayers League of Minnesota is against publicly financed sports stadiums too. In this I am their confirmed ally. Which just goes to show you we leftist patriots are actually "strict fathers", thereby disrupting Lakoff's dull schema. More on this later.]
posted by Mark D. @ 10:43 PM |
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2 Comments:
I like Lakhoff's ideas. The problem is that he is a lousy framer, as you point out. Harvard? What does that have to do with the average working stiff who can't afford a state school because the Pell Grants are being strangled to death.
I think the actual problems is that surpluses don't really need to be framed in the terms a "raise". The The core questions around surpluses is, "What are we willing to sacrifce to get them and what do we do with them once we have them?"
For me the surpluses we have are a little false as the number of poor people we have in our state and in the country is going up pretty rapidly. The gap between those people and the middle class is wider. The cost of living, which is Lahoff's point, is rising to obscene levels (Health Care and Education).
At the same time, republicans are basically promising to gut programs adn initiatives that raise the bottom for millions of people.
We can agree that financing a stadium is NOT the purpose of our gov't.
The notion that education in MN is underfunded is pure crap. The problem is how the funding is used. Distance learning has rendered the community college design obsolete (and more unneccesary) as it exists. The subsidy of our taxes goes to support programs that don't benefit the state. I have no objection to learning for its own sake, but I don't want to pay for yours.
Greater competition and accountability for success is the recipe for education reform, not more money.
The republicans aren't "gutting" support. They are making a economic climate that benefits everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats.
-Censored
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