Circling the Drain

One of the primary critiques of the modern United States is that its government does a poor job of meeting the needs of the citizenry, especially the low-income, mentally ill and medically fragile members of the citizenry. I don't really buy into that framing of the subject. The United States has high social distance between the affluent and the indigent and low social trust between groups. And this limits how effective a government can be when it has to appeal to citizens for legitimacy.

So it's more accurate to say that Americans do a poor job of meeting the needs of other Americans. Sure, many of the programs and the like would be administered by governments, whether they be federal, state or local. But the final responsibility, where the buck stops, as it were, is going to lie with the populace as a whole,given that need for the consent of the governed.

When I talk to people, a vicious cycle comes into view almost immediately; many people who would like to do more to help others are of the mindset that there is no-one ready to help them, should they need it, and so they feel an overriding need to look to their own well-being. In other words, Americans are wary of looking out for one another, because they don't believe that their fellow Americans are looking out for them, and they fear being left in the lurch.